4 ms·

> Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. 35-year-old here, with a similar box of CS knowledge floating a

> Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. 35-year-old here, with a similar box of CS knowledge floating around. Comfortably sub-million, but with a nice house and a couple dogs. You really aren't obliged, and you don't really need to "make some money" out of it. More money would be nice, don't get me wrong. But you said you learned it because you enjoyed it. Which I did, too. I got my money's worth out of the learning. You are not obligated to financialize everything you enjoy. It's super important to understand that. The mortgage anxiety--I get that too. YMMV, but for me, all it took was practice. I don't think about the mortgage on my house. I've owned it for about five years. The money goes out every month. I work on renovating a room or building some furniture or going for a walk with my dogs. It need not be a terrifying specter; it'll either get paid in due course or I'll die and won't have to worry about it. I think there are a lot of brains (and mine is definitely one) wired to make a bigger deal of things than necessary to provide a sense of direction and meaning, but this one is so abstract and so luck-based that, for me at least, it was deeply valuable to fight against it. I kicked it into the back of a closet, and for me it's a lot easier now to just live. Again, YMMV.

nightski 4y ago
With your career you are trading time for money. It makes complete sense to optimize that. Most of the professional work you do will not be what you would work on in your free time anyways, it’s work to make some other person rich.
- eropple 4y ago
  > It makes complete sense to optimize that. Maybe? Like--define optimize. VC-chasing (alluded to by the great-grandparent poster elsewhere in-thread) is almost certainly less optimized from an EV perspective. If it's one's dream, absolutely chase it--but it should not feel obligatory because you absolutely can have a lot of happiness now without precluding later happiness, too, if you so wish.
  - nightski 4y ago
    I don't need to define optimize because it will be different from each person. It's up to each individual to decide what is optimal for them. Nor did I say one had to optimize. I just said it makes sense if someone chooses to do so.
- RangerScience 4y ago
  (IMHO) Balance comes from forces in opposition. If you're only trading time for money in your career, IMHO, you don't have a career, you only have a job. At the least you should also be trading your time for expertise, networking, and accomplishment, although I would also recommend some degree of self-actualization and everyday enjoyment (if you're in a position to seek for those).
  - letsdothisagain 4y ago
    This ties back really well to the OP. The most important thing in interviewing is dividing people into these two categories. 10 years of experience clocking-in and clocking-out is no experience at all. I'll hire some kid who is a go-getter over that. Unfortunately in academia it only matters if you hit your grades, which are gamed to hell and back. So you really can't tell at a glance if an A student is going to be good or bad, I hired based on a transcript once and got burned so badly that I'll never do it again.

nightski 4y ago

With your career you are trading time for money. It makes complete sense to optimize that. Most of the professional work you do will not be what you would work on in your free time anyways, it’s work to make some other person rich.

eropple 4y ago
> It makes complete sense to optimize that. Maybe? Like--define optimize. VC-chasing (alluded to by the great-grandparent poster elsewhere in-thread) is almost certainly less optimized from an EV perspective. If it's one's dream, absolutely chase it--but it should not feel obligatory because you absolutely can have a lot of happiness now without precluding later happiness, too, if you so wish.
- nightski 4y ago
  I don't need to define optimize because it will be different from each person. It's up to each individual to decide what is optimal for them. Nor did I say one had to optimize. I just said it makes sense if someone chooses to do so.
RangerScience 4y ago
(IMHO) Balance comes from forces in opposition. If you're only trading time for money in your career, IMHO, you don't have a career, you only have a job. At the least you should also be trading your time for expertise, networking, and accomplishment, although I would also recommend some degree of self-actualization and everyday enjoyment (if you're in a position to seek for those).
- letsdothisagain 4y ago
  This ties back really well to the OP. The most important thing in interviewing is dividing people into these two categories. 10 years of experience clocking-in and clocking-out is no experience at all. I'll hire some kid who is a go-getter over that. Unfortunately in academia it only matters if you hit your grades, which are gamed to hell and back. So you really can't tell at a glance if an A student is going to be good or bad, I hired based on a transcript once and got burned so badly that I'll never do it again.