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Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts (2019)
- dottedmag 4y ago> I’m going all in on independence, and I’m going to try to make a living with my own bare hands starting from nothing. This sounds pretty wild, given $511K/y last year. I don't want to sound bitter about it, but I am a sole provider for a family of 5, and I guess I could _retire_ after two years of these earnings.
- shadowfoxx 4y agoYeah there's some real mental gymnastics here; "Starting from nothing..." "...The goal is to provide for my family before I run out of savings"
- travisjungroth 4y agoI’d take it to mean starting a project from scratch. Obviously he’s not “starting from nothing” like he was kicked out of an orphanage.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago> I don't want to sound bitter about it, but I am a sole provider for a family of 5, and I guess I could _retire_ after two years of these earnings. To be clear: You really couldn't. After tax that's probably more like, what, 300k depending on where you live. Family of five, you could save, what, 250k optimistically? Which means 500k in two years. And you cannot retire on 500k. But, say, 10 years? That's doable depending on your expected income in retirement. Which is, admittedly, still pretty damn good...
- dottedmag 4y ago> And you cannot retire on 500k. Not everyone lives in US, and I would not be starting from scratch, unlike what author suggests :)
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- legulere 4y ago500k for lets say 50 years means 10k per year (let's say you get out inflation by investing). That gets you pretty far in a lot of places.
- hosh 4y agoIf your intrinsic motivation is for your family, you might be able to pull it off. It's a recipe for burnout, but it can be doable. Assuming that the work itself is something you're not intrinsically motivated for. You'd also be sacrificing a lot with time with your family. Your marriage will get tested. You'll miss out on some things with your kids growing up. If the stress is severe enough that it changes how you would habitually relate to your family (getting crankier, for example), that is the kind of dad you will be remembered by your kids. The question is if on your deathbed, looking back at how it all played out, that the sacrifice was worth it. I don't think there is a universally right or wrong choice in this. The emotional toll of not having enough to support your family and being in a soul-sucking job is worse.
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- airza 4y agoOther than the fact that it is insanely self-indulgent to brag about leaving all this money behind, but it’s not even true. I left my job to work on my own project/startup for a while and the shine certainly wears off after a while.
- paales2 4y agoAt first you choose something, after a while you have something. That is the time to choose something again.
- ok_dad 4y agoDid the shine wear off once your personal project became actual work? I want to quit and work on my personal stuff so badly, but I think I'll get to the point that I won't see a reason why I stopped getting money for doing the same thing.
- airza 4y agoIt was actual work from the start. I just underestimated how much work. It was quite edifying though.
- moosedev 4y agoPlease update the post title to add “(2019)”.
- rippercushions 4y ago(2019). If you're wondering what happened next, he bootstrapped a business selling PDFs and videos and claims to be have made over $200k off it in 2021. https://dvassallo.medium.com/from-employee-to-bootstrapper-941f061f207f https://dvassallo.medium.com/from-employee-to-bootstrapper-9...
- ghostbrainalpha 4y agoIs there reason to doubt his "claim"? His class costs $375. It seems reasonable that he has 600 sales in a year.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agono but making money by telling people how to make money is pretty friggin lame. i wouldn't want to take a course by someone who didn't make money via some other means
- kritiko 4y agoAh the old rise & grind trick of teaching other people to have grindset. I went to his Twitter/website and the course is well marketed. But it's disqualifying to me that he's not building something else.
- berkeleyjunk 4y agoI think this depends a lot on how you are wired. Not everyone thinks of their job as their identity (some certainly do). Some people would just do the job for the lots of money/security and do something more meaningful in their spare time.
- nonameiguess 4y agoAmazingly little perspective some of these guys have. Appears to have been his first job and he's 8 years in, so we're looking at what? A roughly 30 year-old guy who has worked at all of one employer and he's sitting here talking as if he's an expert on what motivates humans across a lifetime. Feel free to share your experience and beliefs, but please don't act like this is science and you're some kind of authority. You have no idea if you'll even still agree with yourself in another decade. I know for damn sure I no longer believe life has the same purpose for me I thought it did when I was 30.
- saulpw 4y agoWe travel around our world 4 times: the first, to fall in love; the second, to teach people what we now know; the third, to apologize for being so arrogant; and the fourth time, to say goodbye.
- travisjungroth 4y ago> Feel free to share your experience and beliefs, but please don't act like this is science and you're some kind of authority. I’d suspect there’s a correlation between this behavior and quick IC SWE promotion at big companies.
- taeric 4y agoThis is a false idea that we have any idea what motivation actually lasts. As the saying goes, "change is the only constant." Certainly intrinsic motivation is the more likely to last compared to extrinsic. But, I think there is a lot of selection bias when we choose to claim which is which. And there is a lot of ignoring what having the ability to take a risk has. Stability and safety can help most anything last.
- chatterhead 4y agoMoney motivates me intrinsically. Feel free to send me whatever monies you have that don't have that affect on you.
- uni_rule 4y agoYou fool! Not starving or freezing is an extrinsic motivator!
- citizenpaul 4y agoExactly, I despise these articles. I will never believe they are anything other than propaganda to trick people to want less money from work. Oh so this guy is starting a company. Is there any chance that perhaps he cannot afford to pay people $500k like he was making. Now I guess he has some intrinsic motivation to promote lower pay so he can hire people to work for him cheap.
- HWR_14 4y agoI'm sure some subset of people are intrinsically motivated by money as a high score. I'm extrinsically motivated by money. That's nice too.