7 ms·

Startup - Bill Watterson, a cartoonist's advice

199 points by linux_devil 13y ago

sergiosgc 13y ago
The title is misleading. This is not by Bill Watterson, it is inspired by Watterson's work...
- jballanc 13y ago
  The art is not Watterson's, but the words are.
  - LTheobald 13y ago
    Can't really say it has anything to do with startup's either.
    - k__ 13y ago
      I thought about starting-up a company about stuff I like to do in my freetime, like creating video-games. But when I look at the game industry I get the fear that it's a bad idea.
Afforess 13y ago
I wish more people in software followed this kind of advice. I see posts about air hockey or ping-pong tables and fully stocked mini-fridges as if that is an acceptable replacement for ones free time and best creative years. Are we children, so easily fooled by the shiny, bright candy in the checkout aisle? Worse yet those who take the corporate-ladder type jobs at a big corp like MS, and sacrifice their friends, family, and home for something as meaningless as office or tablet apps. Your startup is probably not changing, or even improving the world. Your social media killer app is part of the problem, not the solution. And I know Microsoft/IBM/Oracle/etc gave up on improving the world a long time ago, instead opting for "shareholder" value, whatever that is. What good is money you can never enjoy? Your kids won't thank you if they don't even know who you are and have never spent time with you. Exhausted evenings don't count. I have chosen door number 3. I live an ultra-frugal lifestyle and am already planning an exit from my day job in the next decade, to retire before 40. People like Bill Watterson, Cory Doctorow, and Richard Stallman are on to something. They are actually enjoying life now - Are you?
- sker 13y ago
  Both approaches aren't mutually exclusive. I give priority to what you and the article are saying, but once you realize that, there's no reason why it can't be complemented by a high paying job. 40 hours of work a week, if you manage to find something you (half-)like, is a minor inconvenience compared to the alternative of not being able to enjoy many of the things our modern world has to offer.
  - eksith 13y ago
    Problem is that many of the things the modern world has to offer fall conveniently between the short pauses of sanity we have to enjoy them in that 40 hours of work a week. And excluding work, we also need time for life as well. Things like shopping, laundry, cooking (if we do that at home) and fixing things that break. I hear plumbing does this quite often. Almost as much as code. The modern world has created an atmosphere that specifically caters to these things. Even games, if you think about it, are to be quickly done with in time for the next expansion or chapter. When was the last time you spent 6 hours working your way up to get a magic key with a picture of a goat to unlock a treasure cave... that itself holds another key to somewhere else?
    - jtheory 13y ago
      This is a bit of a tangent, but no, it's not plumbing; it's the living things that take all the time. I'm sure experiences vary, but since 1998 I've rented houses and apartments, spent a year helping to run a B&B with self-catering apartments, and have owned a house for 7 years now, and in all that time I've probably spent a day or two on plumbing-related maintenance. But taking care of a dog or two? A lawn? A garden? Fruit trees? Children? That's where the serious time goes. I wouldn't advise anyone to avoid taking on organic commitments (ha ha), but it's all about balance. Don't ever get a new puppy (10-15 year commitment) when you or your partner is pregnant. Don't buy a big house with a pool and a beautiful yard and vegetable garden unless you know who's going to be maintaining all that.
  - moron4hire 13y ago
    Yeah, but if you worked 20 hours a week for yourself instead of 40 hours a week for the man, then you could easily make just as much money and have tons more time to enjoy it.
nakedrobot2 13y ago
Again and again, the same point comes up: It is VERY difficult not to compare yourself to others. Once you can stop doing that, you can decide for yourself how to live on your own terms (if - and this is a big "if" - if you are fortunate enough not to have any circumstances on your plate that prevent that - disabilities, debt, bad circumstances, and so on). On top of this challenge, if you have the support of a loving family, your chances are orders of magnitude better. Without such support - or with resistance - then things can be even more difficult. No one said it is easy.
- mercer 13y ago
  Indeed. I find myself become ever more aware of how even when I think I'm not comparing myself to some norm, I subconsciously am doing this anyways. I find that meeting people wildly different from myself in lifestyle or perspective really helps. Traveling to 'foreign' cultures too.
LTheobald 13y ago
A great cartoon but wasn't this posted just two days ago with the exact same title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6303776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6303776
- eksith 13y ago
  Seems to be that the previous submission of the link included a backslash and this one didn't. The HN software may not take that into account.
- shrikant 13y ago
  By the same user, no less!
  - LTheobald 13y ago
    They must really like it :)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
namenotrequired 13y ago
It's funny that some parts of this are exactly the opposite to the culture here in the Netherlands. Everyone's expected to be happy with who they are, and ambition is often looked more or less looked down upon unless you can explain how much happier you are for it even if you don't reach the top. Ironically, with the peer pressure to seem happy, in a collective definition, the result is more or less the same: few people are brave enough to break out of expectations and live according to their personal values.
kevinvernon 13y ago
Great cartoon.. message given through comic is also very nice.. :)
unimpressive 13y ago
At this point "follow your dreams", "live a satisfying life" and other variations thereof are cached wisdom. When you go to a high school class and hear people who admit they didn't go where they wanted in college telling you the same thing, you'll notice something like an epistemic code smell. Unless the proportion of people working for "the man" has changed significantly in the last...whenever this meme became popular, I can only conclude that the sort of "creative work" which seems to have become something of a holy grail to young job seekers is possibly: 1. Unattainable or unsustainable for the vast majority of people. 2. Not as good as it sounds on paper. 3. Economically infeasible. Otherwise we would all be cartoonists. EDIT: Maybe I'm not 'getting it'. Considering that other HN thread on the front page where everyone complains about contrarianism, I have to wonder if theres something fundamental here that I'm not seeing.
- graeme 13y ago
  I think what you're referring to are platitudes. People say "follow your dreams", but most of the people saying that in schools didn't follow their own advice. Watterson actually lived by his own standards. This included forgoing millions in licensing deals, and retiring to pursue personal art, when the strip was at its peak. He achieved great success, but to the conventionally minded he seemed positively insane for a long time. He spent four years living at home, working a day job and submitting cartoons, without success. When most people say "follow your dreams" it's implied that they think you should do so within existing structures.
  - unimpressive 13y ago
    >I think what you're referring to are platitudes. They are, and I guess my point of contention with Watterson is that I'm having trouble distinguishing between his advice and the platitudes, even though he actually lived it.
    - graeme 13y ago
      I think the difference is having your own standard and actually following it, even if others think its crazy.
stevoski 13y ago
I like Bill Watterson's sentiment. It puts into words that I wasn't able to find why I've made the decision I have. That decision: to keep my software company a one-person operation. I don't _want_ the company to be bigger. I don't _want_ to have lots of employees. I don't _want_ to make a quadzillion dollars. I want the joy of running a tiny firm, where I can choose how to run every aspect of it. And have lots of free time for my other pursuits.
- personlurking 13y ago
  Does your one-person operation let you pay the bills or do you do it on the side? I sometimes see small shops here on the streets of Lisbon and they seem like specialty shops where (I imagine) old men who have perfected their craft sell their wares and services. When I pass them I think to myself that the world would be way better if everyone sought to be a master of their craft, if they just focused on one thing and on doing it well...like Jiro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-aGPniFvS0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-aGPniFvS0).
  - stevoski 13y ago
    It is my sole income and sole work. Definitely lets me pay the bills
    - graeme 13y ago
      Are you a fan of rob Walling? If not, you should look him up: http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/dp/0615373968 http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/...
      - mgbmtl 13y ago
        Very cool. This is exactly the type of book I was looking for ideas on how to better describe my current situation and for ideas on where to go next.
        13y ago
personlurking 13y ago
As someone who dodged the corporate world and everything a person is 'supposed to do', I'm now in my early 30s. And while I did do the things I thought important during my 20s, I wish more than ever I had adhered more to the things one is supposed to do in order to 'get ahead'. I liked saying I was living more than everyone else I knew back home who stayed in the same place, with the same people, doing the same things...but I now know I was merely living differently, not necessarily more. My main comparison with all those people now is they are financially sound due to jumping through the hoops, and I deal with near poverty for having vagabonded around the world, learning about cultures and languages, while doing this and that to make ends meet. There's worth in what I did, sure, but that time spent on learning for learning's sake came at a cost. The recent research by Princeton, et al. on the effects of poverty on the mind nailed what I go through daily. Now I'm learning to program in hopes to fix the problem (later, when I've spent a year learning to code) that most affects me day in, day out.
kamaal 13y ago
Amazing advice. But just that these kind of things don't workout for majority of the people. Most people have to get married, have kids, prepare and pay for medical bills, pay rents or loan installments, send their kids to school and live life like other humans around. So you can't really sit the whole day under a tree play lego with your kid. Sooner of later you will run out of money and then the kid will itself want you to go out and work. Our ancestors didn't write Ant and Cricket stories for nothing. Working hard, and then savings and investments matter. Looking back the happiest families I see around with their kids doing well are generally kind of ones where parents worked hard and made sound financial decisions in the past. Which now takes care of their health care bills, post retirement expenses and nearly everything else. So unless, you don't want to run into trouble when you are old you have to earn well enough right now.
- irahul 13y ago
  > So you can't really sit the whole day under a tree play lego with your kid. I don't know where you are getting the idea that the cartoonist(the artist) or Bill Watterson(the cartoonist has used a quote from Bill Watterson's speech) advocates doing nothing. If you go by just the cartoon, the first panel shows him working. He doesn't find drawing the jeep for the advertisement fulfilling, and he isn't interested in having beers with his co-workers. Overall, his job isn't for him so he quits. Later, his old company comes with an offer which he considers but rejects because that will mean not being with his kid and going back to drawing jeeps for advertisements. Do you know Bill Watterson's story? These aren't empty words. He pretty much followed this to the letter and spirit. He started at some news agency drawing cartoons(or was it ads). He didn't find it fulfilling and quit. He started Calvin & Hobbes. He could have become a millionaire had he merchandised it, but he fought against merchandising because he believed it will dilute the art. Now whether he did the right thing or not doesn't matter. Calvin & Hobbes is his; he can do whatever he wishes with it. On a slightly related topic, all this "Calvin pissing on cross" and "Calving kneeling against the cross" make me angrier than it should. For fuck's sake, I don't give a shit whether you are a militant atheist or a religious nutjob. Come up with your own ideas rather than stealing from someone who clearly doesn't wish his creation to be merchandised. As the cartoon states, the whole point is creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul. If your 9 to 5 does that, superb. If not, everyone owes it to himself to pursue something that does.
awjr 13y ago
This calls to me on so many levels. I was contracting all around the UK traveling up to 5 hours per day with a 5:30am start and home around 9pm and even living away. Now I've gone permie locally. I get up at 7:30am, walk the dog, make breakfast for the family, walk/cycle my child to school and then cycle off to work. If my daughter is ill I can even shift work and start at 2pm (wife works to 1pm) so we don't lose holiday. In theory I could work 8am-4pm and be home by 4:20pm. Most nights I'm home by 6pm after going on a long cycle ride. Money isn't as good as it was contracting, but my god, is my home life better, and not just for me. THAT needs repeating, NOT JUST FOR ME. I smile a lot more these days.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  It's not the contracting that was bad it was the kind of contracts you were getting. Did you pay off your mortgage and set aside some money for your kids?
dylandrop 13y ago
Why is this prefixed with "Startup"? Unless I'm missing something... while working at a startup might be more inspiring than a large corporate job, it doesn't seem to be AT ALL what the author is talking about. Leaving your job to become a cartoonist is a LOT riskier than working at a startup.
- graeme 13y ago
  I have no idea. This title ought to be changed. It's not the original, and is not really the context of the original either.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
spin 13y ago
If you're living alone on a desert island, there's one job available: scavenging for food. It doesn't matter if you're a genius mathematician or something, your job is to search for food. If you're in a town full of dotcom businesses, you can probably find a job building web-apps in JavaScript. (Hey, it's a million times better than scavenging for food...) I really like this cartoon. It's exactly how I feel about "having a day job" vs "doing something cool". I've been reading PG's essays for a long time. Since back around the time that he created Y Combinator in the first place. I think his essays are brilliant and honest and inspiring. But at the end of the day... I just don't care about starting a company. If I can live a normal, middle-class life and have a normal, middle-class retirement.... then, man, I really don't give a shit about getting rich. I have an endless supply of awesome things to work on and think about.
billyto 13y ago
Working over the wkend for the company. Took a break to paint a space marine. read this comic. Crying on the inside.
pmelendez 13y ago
Is this the third time this showed up in a week or Am I having trouble with cache?
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  No, this was submitted twice before in the last few days.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Some of this advice is good but I think it ultimately misses the mark it's aimed at. It's interesting how "follow your dreams" and effectively "don't worry about fulfilling your potential" can simultaneously fill the same cognitive space despite being diametrically opposed. I wish I had more time to reply here so if these thoughts are muddled or incomplete: my apologies. Ultimately I think advice like this is possibly a net disservice to people. The end result tends to be people who accept living a life without ever trying very hard at anything. The crux here is that societal pressures on achievement, status, and wealth are onerous and by and large should be rejected but if that leads to nihilism or something close, which it often does, that's not much better. There are many people today who are just not trying very hard, because trying hard has been associaated with corporate bullshit and classism and so on. But many people are capable of some degree of amazing things, and those things take effort and perseverence. Not necessarily sacrifice ofall of one's free time or health or anything like that but it will require effort and time. And without a drive to achieve one can miss out on the potential of creating great art, great tools, or even becoming a great parent. So don't give up on the idea of fulfilling your potential just avoid getting suckered into climbing into a hamster wheel just because you think that's what everyone around you wants. Take the time to make your life choices carefully and intentionally but don't be a nihilist by accident and don't avoid greatness merely because it's hard.
NIL8 13y ago
I'm glad you posted this. It's a much needed reminder. Your artwork is excellent and I love the sentiment. I signed up and look forward to seeing more from you. Keep up the good work! BTW, thanks for the free posters!

199 points by linux_devil 13y ago

sergiosgc 13y ago

The title is misleading. This is not by Bill Watterson, it is inspired by Watterson's work...

jballanc 13y ago
The art is not Watterson's, but the words are.
- LTheobald 13y ago
  Can't really say it has anything to do with startup's either.
  - k__ 13y ago
    I thought about starting-up a company about stuff I like to do in my freetime, like creating video-games. But when I look at the game industry I get the fear that it's a bad idea.

Afforess 13y ago

I wish more people in software followed this kind of advice. I see posts about air hockey or ping-pong tables and fully stocked mini-fridges as if that is an acceptable replacement for ones free time and best creative years. Are we children, so easily fooled by the shiny, bright candy in the checkout aisle? Worse yet those who take the corporate-ladder type jobs at a big corp like MS, and sacrifice their friends, family, and home for something as meaningless as office or tablet apps. Your startup is probably not changing, or even improving the world. Your social media killer app is part of the problem, not the solution. And I know Microsoft/IBM/Oracle/etc gave up on improving the world a long time ago, instead opting for "shareholder" value, whatever that is. What good is money you can never enjoy? Your kids won't thank you if they don't even know who you are and have never spent time with you. Exhausted evenings don't count. I have chosen door number 3. I live an ultra-frugal lifestyle and am already planning an exit from my day job in the next decade, to retire before 40. People like Bill Watterson, Cory Doctorow, and Richard Stallman are on to something. They are actually enjoying life now - Are you?

sker 13y ago
Both approaches aren't mutually exclusive. I give priority to what you and the article are saying, but once you realize that, there's no reason why it can't be complemented by a high paying job. 40 hours of work a week, if you manage to find something you (half-)like, is a minor inconvenience compared to the alternative of not being able to enjoy many of the things our modern world has to offer.
- eksith 13y ago
  Problem is that many of the things the modern world has to offer fall conveniently between the short pauses of sanity we have to enjoy them in that 40 hours of work a week. And excluding work, we also need time for life as well. Things like shopping, laundry, cooking (if we do that at home) and fixing things that break. I hear plumbing does this quite often. Almost as much as code. The modern world has created an atmosphere that specifically caters to these things. Even games, if you think about it, are to be quickly done with in time for the next expansion or chapter. When was the last time you spent 6 hours working your way up to get a magic key with a picture of a goat to unlock a treasure cave... that itself holds another key to somewhere else?
  - jtheory 13y ago
    This is a bit of a tangent, but no, it's not plumbing; it's the living things that take all the time. I'm sure experiences vary, but since 1998 I've rented houses and apartments, spent a year helping to run a B&B with self-catering apartments, and have owned a house for 7 years now, and in all that time I've probably spent a day or two on plumbing-related maintenance. But taking care of a dog or two? A lawn? A garden? Fruit trees? Children? That's where the serious time goes. I wouldn't advise anyone to avoid taking on organic commitments (ha ha), but it's all about balance. Don't ever get a new puppy (10-15 year commitment) when you or your partner is pregnant. Don't buy a big house with a pool and a beautiful yard and vegetable garden unless you know who's going to be maintaining all that.
- moron4hire 13y ago
  Yeah, but if you worked 20 hours a week for yourself instead of 40 hours a week for the man, then you could easily make just as much money and have tons more time to enjoy it.

nakedrobot2 13y ago

Again and again, the same point comes up: It is VERY difficult not to compare yourself to others. Once you can stop doing that, you can decide for yourself how to live on your own terms (if - and this is a big "if" - if you are fortunate enough not to have any circumstances on your plate that prevent that - disabilities, debt, bad circumstances, and so on). On top of this challenge, if you have the support of a loving family, your chances are orders of magnitude better. Without such support - or with resistance - then things can be even more difficult. No one said it is easy.

mercer 13y ago
Indeed. I find myself become ever more aware of how even when I think I'm not comparing myself to some norm, I subconsciously am doing this anyways. I find that meeting people wildly different from myself in lifestyle or perspective really helps. Traveling to 'foreign' cultures too.

LTheobald 13y ago

A great cartoon but wasn't this posted just two days ago with the exact same title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6303776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6303776

eksith 13y ago
Seems to be that the previous submission of the link included a backslash and this one didn't. The HN software may not take that into account.
shrikant 13y ago
By the same user, no less!
- LTheobald 13y ago
  They must really like it :)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

namenotrequired 13y ago

It's funny that some parts of this are exactly the opposite to the culture here in the Netherlands. Everyone's expected to be happy with who they are, and ambition is often looked more or less looked down upon unless you can explain how much happier you are for it even if you don't reach the top. Ironically, with the peer pressure to seem happy, in a collective definition, the result is more or less the same: few people are brave enough to break out of expectations and live according to their personal values.

kevinvernon 13y ago

Great cartoon.. message given through comic is also very nice.. :)

unimpressive 13y ago

At this point "follow your dreams", "live a satisfying life" and other variations thereof are cached wisdom. When you go to a high school class and hear people who admit they didn't go where they wanted in college telling you the same thing, you'll notice something like an epistemic code smell. Unless the proportion of people working for "the man" has changed significantly in the last...whenever this meme became popular, I can only conclude that the sort of "creative work" which seems to have become something of a holy grail to young job seekers is possibly: 1. Unattainable or unsustainable for the vast majority of people. 2. Not as good as it sounds on paper. 3. Economically infeasible. Otherwise we would all be cartoonists. EDIT: Maybe I'm not 'getting it'. Considering that other HN thread on the front page where everyone complains about contrarianism, I have to wonder if theres something fundamental here that I'm not seeing.

graeme 13y ago
I think what you're referring to are platitudes. People say "follow your dreams", but most of the people saying that in schools didn't follow their own advice. Watterson actually lived by his own standards. This included forgoing millions in licensing deals, and retiring to pursue personal art, when the strip was at its peak. He achieved great success, but to the conventionally minded he seemed positively insane for a long time. He spent four years living at home, working a day job and submitting cartoons, without success. When most people say "follow your dreams" it's implied that they think you should do so within existing structures.
- unimpressive 13y ago
  >I think what you're referring to are platitudes. They are, and I guess my point of contention with Watterson is that I'm having trouble distinguishing between his advice and the platitudes, even though he actually lived it.
  - graeme 13y ago
    I think the difference is having your own standard and actually following it, even if others think its crazy.

stevoski 13y ago

I like Bill Watterson's sentiment. It puts into words that I wasn't able to find why I've made the decision I have. That decision: to keep my software company a one-person operation. I don't _want_ the company to be bigger. I don't _want_ to have lots of employees. I don't _want_ to make a quadzillion dollars. I want the joy of running a tiny firm, where I can choose how to run every aspect of it. And have lots of free time for my other pursuits.

personlurking 13y ago
Does your one-person operation let you pay the bills or do you do it on the side? I sometimes see small shops here on the streets of Lisbon and they seem like specialty shops where (I imagine) old men who have perfected their craft sell their wares and services. When I pass them I think to myself that the world would be way better if everyone sought to be a master of their craft, if they just focused on one thing and on doing it well...like Jiro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-aGPniFvS0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-aGPniFvS0).
- stevoski 13y ago
  It is my sole income and sole work. Definitely lets me pay the bills
  - graeme 13y ago
    Are you a fan of rob Walling? If not, you should look him up: http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/dp/0615373968 http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/...
    - mgbmtl 13y ago
      Very cool. This is exactly the type of book I was looking for ideas on how to better describe my current situation and for ideas on where to go next.
      - 13y ago

personlurking 13y ago

As someone who dodged the corporate world and everything a person is 'supposed to do', I'm now in my early 30s. And while I did do the things I thought important during my 20s, I wish more than ever I had adhered more to the things one is supposed to do in order to 'get ahead'. I liked saying I was living more than everyone else I knew back home who stayed in the same place, with the same people, doing the same things...but I now know I was merely living differently, not necessarily more. My main comparison with all those people now is they are financially sound due to jumping through the hoops, and I deal with near poverty for having vagabonded around the world, learning about cultures and languages, while doing this and that to make ends meet. There's worth in what I did, sure, but that time spent on learning for learning's sake came at a cost. The recent research by Princeton, et al. on the effects of poverty on the mind nailed what I go through daily. Now I'm learning to program in hopes to fix the problem (later, when I've spent a year learning to code) that most affects me day in, day out.

kamaal 13y ago

Amazing advice. But just that these kind of things don't workout for majority of the people. Most people have to get married, have kids, prepare and pay for medical bills, pay rents or loan installments, send their kids to school and live life like other humans around. So you can't really sit the whole day under a tree play lego with your kid. Sooner of later you will run out of money and then the kid will itself want you to go out and work. Our ancestors didn't write Ant and Cricket stories for nothing. Working hard, and then savings and investments matter. Looking back the happiest families I see around with their kids doing well are generally kind of ones where parents worked hard and made sound financial decisions in the past. Which now takes care of their health care bills, post retirement expenses and nearly everything else. So unless, you don't want to run into trouble when you are old you have to earn well enough right now.

irahul 13y ago
> So you can't really sit the whole day under a tree play lego with your kid. I don't know where you are getting the idea that the cartoonist(the artist) or Bill Watterson(the cartoonist has used a quote from Bill Watterson's speech) advocates doing nothing. If you go by just the cartoon, the first panel shows him working. He doesn't find drawing the jeep for the advertisement fulfilling, and he isn't interested in having beers with his co-workers. Overall, his job isn't for him so he quits. Later, his old company comes with an offer which he considers but rejects because that will mean not being with his kid and going back to drawing jeeps for advertisements. Do you know Bill Watterson's story? These aren't empty words. He pretty much followed this to the letter and spirit. He started at some news agency drawing cartoons(or was it ads). He didn't find it fulfilling and quit. He started Calvin & Hobbes. He could have become a millionaire had he merchandised it, but he fought against merchandising because he believed it will dilute the art. Now whether he did the right thing or not doesn't matter. Calvin & Hobbes is his; he can do whatever he wishes with it. On a slightly related topic, all this "Calvin pissing on cross" and "Calving kneeling against the cross" make me angrier than it should. For fuck's sake, I don't give a shit whether you are a militant atheist or a religious nutjob. Come up with your own ideas rather than stealing from someone who clearly doesn't wish his creation to be merchandised. As the cartoon states, the whole point is creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul. If your 9 to 5 does that, superb. If not, everyone owes it to himself to pursue something that does.

awjr 13y ago

This calls to me on so many levels. I was contracting all around the UK traveling up to 5 hours per day with a 5:30am start and home around 9pm and even living away. Now I've gone permie locally. I get up at 7:30am, walk the dog, make breakfast for the family, walk/cycle my child to school and then cycle off to work. If my daughter is ill I can even shift work and start at 2pm (wife works to 1pm) so we don't lose holiday. In theory I could work 8am-4pm and be home by 4:20pm. Most nights I'm home by 6pm after going on a long cycle ride. Money isn't as good as it was contracting, but my god, is my home life better, and not just for me. THAT needs repeating, NOT JUST FOR ME. I smile a lot more these days.

CmonDev 13y ago
It's not the contracting that was bad it was the kind of contracts you were getting. Did you pay off your mortgage and set aside some money for your kids?

dylandrop 13y ago

Why is this prefixed with "Startup"? Unless I'm missing something... while working at a startup might be more inspiring than a large corporate job, it doesn't seem to be AT ALL what the author is talking about. Leaving your job to become a cartoonist is a LOT riskier than working at a startup.

graeme 13y ago
I have no idea. This title ought to be changed. It's not the original, and is not really the context of the original either.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

spin 13y ago

If you're living alone on a desert island, there's one job available: scavenging for food. It doesn't matter if you're a genius mathematician or something, your job is to search for food. If you're in a town full of dotcom businesses, you can probably find a job building web-apps in JavaScript. (Hey, it's a million times better than scavenging for food...) I really like this cartoon. It's exactly how I feel about "having a day job" vs "doing something cool". I've been reading PG's essays for a long time. Since back around the time that he created Y Combinator in the first place. I think his essays are brilliant and honest and inspiring. But at the end of the day... I just don't care about starting a company. If I can live a normal, middle-class life and have a normal, middle-class retirement.... then, man, I really don't give a shit about getting rich. I have an endless supply of awesome things to work on and think about.

billyto 13y ago

Working over the wkend for the company. Took a break to paint a space marine. read this comic. Crying on the inside.

pmelendez 13y ago

Is this the third time this showed up in a week or Am I having trouble with cache?

jamesbritt 13y ago
No, this was submitted twice before in the last few days.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Some of this advice is good but I think it ultimately misses the mark it's aimed at. It's interesting how "follow your dreams" and effectively "don't worry about fulfilling your potential" can simultaneously fill the same cognitive space despite being diametrically opposed. I wish I had more time to reply here so if these thoughts are muddled or incomplete: my apologies. Ultimately I think advice like this is possibly a net disservice to people. The end result tends to be people who accept living a life without ever trying very hard at anything. The crux here is that societal pressures on achievement, status, and wealth are onerous and by and large should be rejected but if that leads to nihilism or something close, which it often does, that's not much better. There are many people today who are just not trying very hard, because trying hard has been associaated with corporate bullshit and classism and so on. But many people are capable of some degree of amazing things, and those things take effort and perseverence. Not necessarily sacrifice ofall of one's free time or health or anything like that but it will require effort and time. And without a drive to achieve one can miss out on the potential of creating great art, great tools, or even becoming a great parent. So don't give up on the idea of fulfilling your potential just avoid getting suckered into climbing into a hamster wheel just because you think that's what everyone around you wants. Take the time to make your life choices carefully and intentionally but don't be a nihilist by accident and don't avoid greatness merely because it's hard.

NIL8 13y ago

I'm glad you posted this. It's a much needed reminder. Your artwork is excellent and I love the sentiment. I signed up and look forward to seeing more from you. Keep up the good work! BTW, thanks for the free posters!