I'm so relieved to hear this from someone else. About two years ago I read an article by Peter Thiel and it was kind of my "ask what you can do for your countr

I'm so relieved to hear this from someone else. About two years ago I read an article by Peter Thiel and it was kind of my "ask what you can do for your country" moment. That was when I realized that I didn't want to be an academic, that I believed people who built technology in the private sector were actually doing more good in the world. So I thought "I want to be an entrepreneur." I've had to scale back a little as I did a couple of start-ups and learned how ignorant I was. I'm not ready to be CEO of anything. I'm not even sure I want to be; I want to write algorithms more than I want to manage a company. Honestly, right now, I want to work with people smarter than I am, and get better at what I do. I'm done with the notion that you should always start a company right away in your early twenties, that you shouldn't have to take any time to pay your dues or build mastery. I don't want to work at a silly, unsuccessful start-up just for the sake of "being an entrepreneur." I want to get as good as I can at what I do. I want to work somewhere where I'm not the only one who's heard of an inner product. I want to do something substantive, and I'd rather do something substantive at 35 than something crappy at 23.