I remember when I was in college and told my friend that I just spent a sizeable (for a student) amount of money on an electric guitar and couldn't be happier.

I remember when I was in college and told my friend that I just spent a sizeable (for a student) amount of money on an electric guitar and couldn't be happier. His reply was: so, how are you planning on making that money back with it? I had no reply to that. There are people who, as zombie fiction for teenage audiences author Jonathan Maberry put it "think like insects" - they have but one overriding goal in life: maximize their total wealth. This is an approach to life so foreign to me yet so often rewarded that it makes me wonder who's really happier. One thing I know is that I hate working with such people - reading their code feels like listening to muzak - it works, but there doesn't seem to be any actual thought or design behind it. Long term it becomes unmaintainable, but that usually doesn't matter much, because projects get rewritten all the time.