8 ms·

Hear, hear. I live the Bay Area, am in my 20s, have a ton of programming experience and also a strong math background. The temptation to play startup roulette i

by darnoc 17y ago

Hear, hear. I live the Bay Area, am in my 20s, have a ton of programming experience and also a strong math background. The temptation to play startup roulette is high. But at the end of the day I can't shake the feeling that spending the healthy & free years of my life working 90hrs a week on something that no one will even remember in ten years is a fool's errand. Yes, there is a small chance that I could get rich and never have to work again. But the far greater likelihood is I'll just wind up in my mid-30s doing the same thing and wondering what happened to the last decade. So I work 20hrs a week consulting and spend the rest of my day reading, studying (I'm getting a masters in my spare time), cooking or playing music. There are definitely days when I am envious at my friends who work in tech, what with their fat 401ks and rockin health care and 4x income. But usually not. I'm in way better shape, have read 10x as many books in the past year, traveled more, etc. Most importantly, every time we hang out I just sense that they are unhappy and bored. I realize most of the people reading this are going to be a lot more like aforementioned friends than like me so I hope this doesn't come off as insulting. When I think of my friends I really wonder what makes it worthwhile for them--but of course I could never ask that without sounding like a jerk. So if anyone is reading this I'd love to hear. Is it just the $$? Because I feel like you need so much less of that than you think to be really happy.

mncaudill 17y ago
Completely tangential, but how did you get into consulting? I'm also in my 20s, in a tech-heavy area (RTP, NC), and have been considering doing something like that on the side, but have no good idea where to start.
- darnoc 17y ago
  I just sort of lucked into it. My first job out of college I worked for a professor who went on to start his own consulting firm. They hired me on and when I said I wanted to work as a contractor they were fine with it. I have to say it's a fantastic setup--if you get the chance to become self-employed, take it. The best part is never feeling guilty about being out of the office or taking off for extended periods.. in fact I've probably taken about 8 weeks of vacation so this year. Of course the downside is that vacation = unpaid leave but I find that the time is worth so much more than the money to me right now. My job is kinda specialized, it has to do more with statistical programming and mathematical modeling than the coding that most people on HN do, so I guess that helps when it comes to trying to go it alone. To the extent that I'm qualified to dispense advice it would be to develop a specialized skill that your average competent hacker doesn't have, particularly if it involves a lot of math--a lot of good coders I come across know surprisingly little math. Most of the people I know who are successful consultants have such a background.
  - mncaudill 17y ago
    Thanks for the reply!
mofey 17y ago
For your startup you want to work on a product you're passionate about. It can be an experience in and of itself. Most hackers don't want money to feel rich, but buy themselves financial freedom, so that they can read and study during the day like you, for example.
- abalashov 17y ago
  "Most hackers don't want money to feel rich, but buy themselves financial freedom, so that they can read and study during the day like you, for example." Exactly. I think that really cuts to the essence of the matter.
jimbokun 17y ago
You are the real life Mexican Fisherman. http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html
nostrademons 17y ago
"So if anyone is reading this I'd love to hear. Is it just the $$? Because I feel like you need so much less of that than you think to be really happy." In my case, it's not the money, it's the information. I work at one of the large tech companies in the valley, as a full-time employee. I spend about 20 hrs/week (out of about 50 hrs/week spent at work) actually coding, and most of the rest of the workweek reading & studying. After all, I can't write my code without understanding how it fits into the rest of the system. The thing is, I can't learn the stuff I'm learning now anywhere else. Universities don't have it. The open-source world doesn't have it. It's all proprietary & confidential, and the only way to learn it is to work on systems that require it. It was the same way for my last salaried job - I wanted to know how the financial industry worked, so I took a job at a financial software startup. As it turned out, I didn't want to learn how the financial world worked ;-), but I'm glad I had that exposure, even just as a high-level overview. The money is just an added perk - it's nice to get paid 4x more and have a 401k and health coverage, but really, the only reason I care is that everyone else is getting it and I don't wanna feel like I'm being ripped off. I work for other organizations because I want to work on interesting problems, and I wouldn't have the opportunity to do so without the help of others. I was a voracious reader in high school and college, and kinda feel like I've "read out" what's available through the public library system. A lot of books I check out now just feel shallow & superficial compared to what I've been exposed to in a professional context. University libraries are still somewhat interesting, but again, they often have the problem of being access-controlled to people enrolled in the university. I'd rather have people pay me to learn than pay someone to learn.
- dkersten 17y ago
  Agreed. I'm currently working for a salary lower than what I'd normally accept for two reasons: 1. I like the people I work with and the work environment. 2. More importantly for me at the moment: I'm learning things which would be difficult for me to learn elsewhere. For example, in a few weeks, I'll be going to the middle-east to install some hardware and train the customer (as a software developer, I wouldn't normally get hands-on experience with the customers, hardware, support and trouble shooting - all of which I think will be useful if I do decide to go the startup route); I was also put in charge of implementing a new interface for our system (and the accompanying test-suite), so I got free reign to design and program it however I want, communication with the hardware vendor and time to learn technologies which I never knew anything about - all of which, I think, will be useful to me. Having said that, I don't intend on staying here forever. Before I hit my 30's, I want to have taken two or maybe even three years off to travel, meet people from around the world and do what I love to do (which incidentally is software, but slightly different than what I do in my work - I might very well go startup for this, because it would be something I enjoy, even if its never profitable).
HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
I think you're right. My wife is a horse trainer, makes not much money (no way we could survive without my salary!) and loves her life. When she first decided to do this, I was irritated and thought it was a waste of all that intelligence, but then I remembered that life is short and slips away quickly and realized that she was lucky to have found the kind of work that makes her truly happy. Enjoying the life we have now is far more important than how many toys we leave it with. For me, I'm focusing first on all the things I wanted to do but that I put aside for so many years: for now that's building boats. I'm still doing tech entrepreneurial work on the side, but it's aimed at replacing my corporate income and simplifying my life, not at getting rich.

by darnoc 17y ago

mncaudill 17y ago

Completely tangential, but how did you get into consulting? I'm also in my 20s, in a tech-heavy area (RTP, NC), and have been considering doing something like that on the side, but have no good idea where to start.

darnoc 17y ago
I just sort of lucked into it. My first job out of college I worked for a professor who went on to start his own consulting firm. They hired me on and when I said I wanted to work as a contractor they were fine with it. I have to say it's a fantastic setup--if you get the chance to become self-employed, take it. The best part is never feeling guilty about being out of the office or taking off for extended periods.. in fact I've probably taken about 8 weeks of vacation so this year. Of course the downside is that vacation = unpaid leave but I find that the time is worth so much more than the money to me right now. My job is kinda specialized, it has to do more with statistical programming and mathematical modeling than the coding that most people on HN do, so I guess that helps when it comes to trying to go it alone. To the extent that I'm qualified to dispense advice it would be to develop a specialized skill that your average competent hacker doesn't have, particularly if it involves a lot of math--a lot of good coders I come across know surprisingly little math. Most of the people I know who are successful consultants have such a background.
- mncaudill 17y ago
  Thanks for the reply!

mofey 17y ago

For your startup you want to work on a product you're passionate about. It can be an experience in and of itself. Most hackers don't want money to feel rich, but buy themselves financial freedom, so that they can read and study during the day like you, for example.

abalashov 17y ago
"Most hackers don't want money to feel rich, but buy themselves financial freedom, so that they can read and study during the day like you, for example." Exactly. I think that really cuts to the essence of the matter.

jimbokun 17y ago

You are the real life Mexican Fisherman. http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html http://www.protolink.com/MexicanFisherman.html

nostrademons 17y ago

"So if anyone is reading this I'd love to hear. Is it just the $$? Because I feel like you need so much less of that than you think to be really happy." In my case, it's not the money, it's the information. I work at one of the large tech companies in the valley, as a full-time employee. I spend about 20 hrs/week (out of about 50 hrs/week spent at work) actually coding, and most of the rest of the workweek reading & studying. After all, I can't write my code without understanding how it fits into the rest of the system. The thing is, I can't learn the stuff I'm learning now anywhere else. Universities don't have it. The open-source world doesn't have it. It's all proprietary & confidential, and the only way to learn it is to work on systems that require it. It was the same way for my last salaried job - I wanted to know how the financial industry worked, so I took a job at a financial software startup. As it turned out, I didn't want to learn how the financial world worked ;-), but I'm glad I had that exposure, even just as a high-level overview. The money is just an added perk - it's nice to get paid 4x more and have a 401k and health coverage, but really, the only reason I care is that everyone else is getting it and I don't wanna feel like I'm being ripped off. I work for other organizations because I want to work on interesting problems, and I wouldn't have the opportunity to do so without the help of others. I was a voracious reader in high school and college, and kinda feel like I've "read out" what's available through the public library system. A lot of books I check out now just feel shallow & superficial compared to what I've been exposed to in a professional context. University libraries are still somewhat interesting, but again, they often have the problem of being access-controlled to people enrolled in the university. I'd rather have people pay me to learn than pay someone to learn.

dkersten 17y ago
Agreed. I'm currently working for a salary lower than what I'd normally accept for two reasons: 1. I like the people I work with and the work environment. 2. More importantly for me at the moment: I'm learning things which would be difficult for me to learn elsewhere. For example, in a few weeks, I'll be going to the middle-east to install some hardware and train the customer (as a software developer, I wouldn't normally get hands-on experience with the customers, hardware, support and trouble shooting - all of which I think will be useful if I do decide to go the startup route); I was also put in charge of implementing a new interface for our system (and the accompanying test-suite), so I got free reign to design and program it however I want, communication with the hardware vendor and time to learn technologies which I never knew anything about - all of which, I think, will be useful to me. Having said that, I don't intend on staying here forever. Before I hit my 30's, I want to have taken two or maybe even three years off to travel, meet people from around the world and do what I love to do (which incidentally is software, but slightly different than what I do in my work - I might very well go startup for this, because it would be something I enjoy, even if its never profitable).

HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago

I think you're right. My wife is a horse trainer, makes not much money (no way we could survive without my salary!) and loves her life. When she first decided to do this, I was irritated and thought it was a waste of all that intelligence, but then I remembered that life is short and slips away quickly and realized that she was lucky to have found the kind of work that makes her truly happy. Enjoying the life we have now is far more important than how many toys we leave it with. For me, I'm focusing first on all the things I wanted to do but that I put aside for so many years: for now that's building boats. I'm still doing tech entrepreneurial work on the side, but it's aimed at replacing my corporate income and simplifying my life, not at getting rich.