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Jupiter CEO Quits $68B Firm to Sit at the Beach and ‘Do Nothing’
- pcurve 4y agoReal reason is more likely this: "Clients have pulled cash from Jupiter for four years in a row and the firm has failed to stem the outflows this year. In the first three months of the year, investors yanked another £1.6 billion, according to its latest earnings report."
- WesleyHale 4y agoBeat to appoint a new captain to blame when the ship goes down.
- rjh29 4y agoIronic that people who make the money to quit and live a life of quiet pleasure and relaxation, are incapable of doing it! That CEO brain won't just turn off.
- paulcole 4y agoIt’s not because the “CEO brain won’t just turn off.” It’s because they either keep doing CEO things or because they keep thinking CEO things. People have a much larger ability to change than they often believe. It’s just that change is hard and it’s easier to say, “This is how I am” than it is to put in the work to change.
- dustingetz 4y agothank you
- daveslash 4y agoI'm fortunate enough to be close enough to the beach that I'm able to go most weekends, or even immediately after work. Man.... when I'm at the beach, I am at the beach an no-where else. I'm sure it would get old over time, but it has a great way of turning my brain off from my day-to-day.
- cableshaft 4y agoVery fortunate. We have to make a weekend trip each time we want to go to the beach, and that's to go to a beach off Lake Michigan (we're nowhere near the coast) and it still takes us about an hour and a half drive each way to get there. Last week, we finally went for the first time this year, and were rained out one day, and then it was overcast, windy, cold, and no swimming because of intense waves the other day (we still went, but it was less than ideal). If we're lucky we might go one more time this year, although that's mostly because last week wasn't great. We usually only make the trip once a year. I did used to live in an apartment that had a nice outdoor pool on the premises, and I'm seriously missing that now that I live in a house. I used to spend an hour out there about 3 or 4 days a week each summer.
- daveslash 4y agoI took it for granted for years. I make a point to get out there frequently now because I realized that I'll probably be priced out of this area within the next few years.
- freshpots 4y agoInteresting. I live 1.25 hours from another great lake and I have made the trip after work some days and weekends too. Totally worth it for me to leave work a little early, get there for 5 pm, enjoy the beach for a few hours and go home.
- rjh29 4y agoBali just launched a 5 year digital nomad visa, as soon as my current rent is up I'm going there.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoGenerally speaking the kind of person who doesn't find work enjoyable will not spend enough of their time on it to achieve the success necessary to acquire the money that would let them live a life of leisure. The workaholics are running things and they can't believe everyone else doesn't want to be like them, which is why I'm spending 40 hours a week at a job where I do actual work maybe 3 hours a week.
- DubiousPusher 4y agoThe real American Dream...
- cbozeman 4y agoI mean... good? Isn't this the end goal for the vast majority of us? What's the point of having a bajillion dollars if you can't go do the things you want to do in life? Why are we all spending 80 hours a week grinding away at a startup or busting our asses in the corporate world if not to elevate ourselves beyond the need for money?
- bogwog 4y agoEgo, power, and/or mental illness? Zuckerberg and Musk come to mind.
- amelius 4y agoThe journey is more important than the destination. Etc. etc.
- personjerry 4y agoBecause real life has feature creep!
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoI think this was from a movie or something, but it was along the lines of: "The guy then asked the tycoon, whose net worth was 300 million dollars, 'Why do it? Why work so hard to get 300 million dollars? Why not just stop when you get to $30 million or something?' To which the tycoon replied 'And that is why you'll never have 3 million dollars'" Point being, the type of folks who want to work super hard to become uber rich are generally not the type of folks that pine to lie on the beach. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration (I mean, Jeff Bezos seems to be "living his best lift" right now), but I think there are some kernels of truth in the type of hyper-driven personality that causes one to become super rich in the first place. If you're just concerned about becoming "moderately wealthy" so you can relax, there are a lot easier ways to do it.
- ryandrake 4y agoI don't think I buy that argument at all. There are a lot of hyper-driven people stuck in poverty or drudgery because the dice rolled poorly in the past (or at birth), and there are a lot of not-driven people who just kind of aimlessly slipped into their wealth. Daddy paid for Stanford and then they just kind of rode the pre-laid train tracks to their executive position at a tech company. The more I live, the more I no longer buy the whole "be driven and work hard leads to wealth" fantasy. Yes, when you get up to the level of Bezos, Musk, Gates, and so on, they're both very lucky and very hyper-driven. But when you're talking about the "mere" 10-30 millionaires, I'm not convinced it's much more than good luck and connections. When I think back to the few VPs and SVPs and whatnot I've encountered in my own work life, I don't recall many that seemed to have that driven "Bezos/Musk" personality. They were bored in meetings, golfing, and occasionally sending E-mail announcement to the division. They were not writing code until 10PM and waking up at 5AM to do a code review with the offshore developer team, all while watching their checking account and wondering whether the whole division would be laid off next month.
- onion2k 4y agoPeople will read this as him jumping before he's pushed, but even if that is the case we should still celebrate this action. Everyone is entitled to say "Yeah, I'm retiring now. I don't want to work any more.", and go and sit on a beach and do nothing. Most of us will never have the resources to actually do it so when someone does I'm truly happy for them. This guy really is living the dream.
- snickmy 4y agoYes, we should celebrate, a lot of people chasing FIRE do the mistake to constantly rebase their expectations. This guy didn't.
- bluehorseray 4y agoI wouldn't go that far haha. This man definitely achieved "FI" well before he became CEO of Jupiter. In any case hats off to him. (edited "FIRE" to "FI")
- jthrowsitaway 4y agoHe achieved "FI" early on then.
- vocram 4y agoYou meant he achieve “FI”. Once you are, going for “RE” becomes the hard part.
- ricardobayes 4y agoThere's always a bigger boat to buy
- usrn 4y ago>Most of us will never have the resources to actually do it Mehhhh. Unless you get married before you have a job (and women usually are careful to prevent that) or are very loose with your money I don't think this is really true in our industry.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rvz 4y agoGood and well done.
- sha256sum 4y agoWho is this person? What is Jupiter? Why should I care that they are going to the beach?
- ASpaceCowboi 4y agoEver heard of Sandstorm by Darude? Yeah that has nothing to do with this
- maneesh 4y agoWhat?
- shoulderfake 4y ago
- jasonladuke0311 4y agoOh, that’s that song!
- smrtinsert 4y agoPrecisely
- dontbenebby 4y ago> Ever heard of Sandstorm by Darude? Yeah that has nothing to do with this Yes, I have. I still remember some girl I dragged into my student slum shared house widening her eyes and asking "Do you have an older brother or something? Why is your library a bunch of Nine Inch Nails or whatever? That's a very old album." and I immediately shot back something to the effect of "I pirate everything because I'm not some rich bitch from Fox Chapel -- I just look at what's well seeded, those weird Russian pill vendors have good taste in EDM, and your stupid CD store got too good at spotting shoplifters." (Yeah, that also has nothing to do with this, but HN needs to have more creative nonfiction and less "Uh sir, this comment is not appropriate for LinkedIn" energy.)
- Terretta 4y ago
- bee_rider 4y agoGood for him. I think this is what most normal people would do if they had a many millions of dollars -- at least for a while. If he gets bored he can go play with an open source project or start a soup kitchen.
- criddell 4y agoI'm pretty sure if I could afford it, I could retire today and never be bored. I wouldn't be doing nothing, except on those days or weeks where I choose to do that (e.g. doing a silent retreat), but I certainly don't need a job to give myself a purpose or to stave off boredom.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- speed_spread 4y agoPlanets have CEOs now? Jupiter has beaches? I must have had a few too many. Anyway, I give him two weeks before he stands back up and buys a big boat to do nothing around the world with influent friends and hookers and blow. Maybe I'm just projecting.
- ejb999 4y agonever could figure out why people keep working well after the point when they have enough money to do whatever they want.
- jstummbillig 4y agoThe people who made enough money to do whatever they want, are typically the type of person who are mostly motivated by work and would also not have gotten there without being motivated by work.
- ejb999 4y agoI understand the people at the very top have different motivations - i.e. musk, bezos, gates, zuckerberg etc - but I am more thinking about the average 'successful' person - i.e. the ones that are never going to be in that very top class, but have managed to accumulate enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, travel, volunteer, or do something else, and still don't. Not criticizing them, just can't relate. I for one have plenty of ways I would rather spend my day.
- jstummbillig 4y agoYou do not make "live comfortably off of it" money (lets say a couple of million in the bank, couple more depending on where you want to live) when not motivated by/leaning towards wanting to work in 99.9% of the cases either.
- rockbruno 4y agoI'm not one of these people but I can say that it's probably because your life would get really boring really fast. As shitty as work is, you can actually get quite a lot of purpose-in-life out of it. Wouldn't be surprised if this person started working again in the near-future.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoI find this kind of comment very sad. Work is easily the least meaningful thing in my life and I never have enough to invest in the things I actually want to do because work takes up so much of it.
- beardyw 4y agoMost of my 43 years in work was making computer systems. I was good at it because I enjoyed it. Now retired and full of years I can't stop. I just do stuff because it's the thing I think about. Mostly it never comes to anything but who cares. Lying on a beach would not suit me at all.
- wccrawford 4y agoYeah, I'm sure after I retire I'll laze around for a bit, but it won't be long before I'm writing software again of some sort. But it'll be what I want to write, instead of what I'm paid to write, which often aren't exactly the same, if at all.
- cableshaft 4y agoI mostly want to retire so I can work on the things I actually want to work on, all the accumulated ideas for side projects I've only been able to take so far in my spare time. Like I have five video games still pretty much in prototype form I keep having ideas for but no time or energy to implement, so I can't do much more than write them down on paper and maybe put a few hours into them a week when I'm not feeling so run down from my day job/maintaining the home/cooking. I don't really want to work on yet another enterprise-level healthcare/finance/insurance system. I'd consider switching back to the game industry full time but it still sounds like it's a shit show for how it treats its employees (some video game company employees are forming unions recently, though, which is a much overdue change), and would almost certainly be a significant pay cut, also I've been out of it long enough it'll probably be difficult to find a company that would hire me again. Also I'd still have the problem of working on games that aren't my own ideas, plus it could be a contractual conflict of interest if I ever did release my own games as it would be the same industry then.
- quickthrower2 4y agoLying on a beach is pretty boring. Bring some kind of surfcraft and it might be more interesting!
- zw123456 4y agoI went to the article, but everything after the first sentence was faded out and they wanted me to sign in to read it. Instead, I made up my own fictional back story about how this happened: Rich CEO meets young sexy tattooed gen-X intern, they date, she takes him to a rave, the smoke weed after and listen to jazz. They fall in love. He quits... now fade out. I am not sure I care what the real story is.
- brailsafe 4y agoYa, sounds pretty decent tbh
- jsnk 4y agoGen X refers to people born in 60s to 80s. I don't think they would be young interns in 2022 anymore.
- rxhernandez 4y agoMost Millennials wouldn't really be interns at this point either.
- brendoelfrendo 4y agoThe youngest millennial is roughly 26 (depending on whose numbers you use), so probably not an intern (though still possible). The oldest Gen-Z are old enough to have been out of college for a couple years now.
- yieldcrv 4y agoRight the CEO is Gen X They would be the same age And with that level of inequality it would be much less interesting to elope with someone that age. Some people think “I like relatable people and I cant relate to people under a certain age, what do you talk about” which simply means they tried the hot younger person first/eventually like everyone else and if they had any game or tolerance they would be with that younger sexier person sexier by the definition of improved utility of sex henceforth making them more sexually attractive at all
- jgrahamc 4y agoFormica, who has been in the UK for almost three decades, said in a telephone interview that his departure was down to personal reasons, including wanting to be closer to elderly parents. He plans to move back to his native Australia. “I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing,” he said in the interview. “I’m not thinking about anything else.”
- guerby 4y agohttps://archive.ph/xHq01 https://archive.ph/xHq01
- levesque 4y agoQuality of the comments is reflecting how little this story brings here. Can we just delete this post?
- dontbenebby 4y agoWe used to have a running (offline) joke in the G+ days among my photog friends that Tom Anderson "doesn't care about anything but women and architecture, and it's reflected in his art", but more founders should be willing to quit while they're ahead. (It was a joke from a place of love, since unlike Mark Zuckerberg, who we'd joke is literally a spy for the Chinese, Tom seems just want folks to use his website and have a fun time, versus feeling entitled interaction or observation.) Also, I seriously doubt this Jupiter CEO is "doing nothing". He's probably reading novels, maybe doing some swimming, or mindfully consuming so kind of coconut based beverage? Who knows -- it's not my business, and at least I'll be honest that I'm jealous I don't have the economic security to do the same -- authenticity is rare these days.
- swyx 4y agoOne day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish. About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman. “You should be working rather than lying on the beach!” The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?” “Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer. “And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!” “And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again. The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said. “And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman. The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!” Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?” The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!” The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”
- quonn 4y agoFittingly named the "Anecdote on Lowering the work ethic".
- Dudeman112 4y agoThe problem being, of course, that if the rolls of the die are ever slightly unfavourable life without funds will be really miserable Oddly enough people mentioning that parable never actually spend their days lazily on the beach. People who don't put their money where their mouth is always rouse my inner cynic One never quite values money until they can't afford to pay for the roof above their heads or the meds that keeps them alive
- mrkramer 4y agoHe joined the company in 2019 and he's leaving it now in 2022/2023. Maybe he didn't like to be WFH CEO?
- noisy_boy 4y agoFinally a guy who has the cash to do nothing, has actually decided to do nothing.
- t_mann 4y agoGreat resignation hitting the the C-suite.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- system16 4y ago> Formica, who has been in the UK for almost three decades, said in a telephone interview that his departure was down to personal reasons, including wanting to be closer to elderly parents. He plans to move back to his native Australia. > “I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing,” he said in the interview. “I’m not thinking about anything else.” Slightly misleading / clickbaity title. It sounds like it was his response to "what's next" and he wants to enjoy some downtime. Not that he never plans to do anything else but sit on the beach and do nothing.
- nemo44x 4y agoThis is just covering his ass. I remember when the CEO of a popular startup decided to step down to "spend more time with my family" and it was picked up be the media as a nice story about a man who feels it's OK to stay at home, etc. It was a total fabrication made up only to not make the struggling startup look bad and failing. Firing the CEO is a bad look. They brought in a new CEO, the company went public years later and is doing splendid, but it was contentious for awhile.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mathattack 4y agoI’ve always wondered why more of my high paid friends in High Finance haven’t done this. After 20+ years of 7 figure salaries, why not chill when the markets turn? What I’ve come up with is the competitive will to work the crazy hours can’t be turned off.
- mmmpop 4y ago> I’ve always wondered why more of my high paid friends in High Finance haven’t done this Their peers won't tolerate that sort of behavior.
- mathattack 4y agoIt is more about keeping score than the money.
- perfunctory 4y ago“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” -- Blaise Pascal I sincerely wish we collectively would spend more time doing nothing.
- slothtrop 4y agoYou wouldn't be here on HN, much less with running water and electricity, if we did.
- poulpy123 4y agoI would do it in the minute if I could
- pru567 4y agoI've come to the conclusion that people can't be happy unless they are building something/building toward something. Doing nothing is not really an option, psychologically speaking. That's imo why adults don't make friends easily because their lives only meaningfully intersect when they have a shared goal.
- EL_Loco 4y agoI would have quit 10 years ago.