Instead of talking jobs, what is everyone up to otherwise? Any interesting going on in life or with your hobby project?
Unfinished and novel ideas are of course most interesting, so feel free to share anything you're thinking about!
Readit NewsReadit NewsUnfinished and novel ideas are of course most interesting, so feel free to share anything you're thinking about!
27/M (today was my birthday :)
Being a productive member of society is meaningful. I'm from Scandinavia and a lot of our identity is tied up with our careers. Being without a job or any structural social purpose is asking for depression.
GWF Hegel wrote about suffering from indeterminacy. In short, autonomy is inherently social, so ways of life that are merely abstract (i.e. that society does not recognize in terms of existing mores) are void of satisfaction. Satisfaction is only real and concrete through reciprocal recognition. So the "I can do anything" type of freedom is only mere freedom (Willkür), which drains the individual of intersubjectively verifiable self-determination. I.e. you're determining yourself, but no one can recognize it without coercion, and you're unable to recognize it in social reality only in your mind. (And conversely, over-determinacy is slavery.
So even if you don't need to work for money, you might need a job to be able to find meaning in your life. We are a social species that survive on collective efforts.
Personally, if I had won lots of money I would strive to live on as if I didn't.
Evergreen link: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp...
The hell with this. Society nows recognizes Early Retirment as a status to aspire to. People look up to joung retirees, and this provides a pretty big identity.
The FI movement now put a name and label on it, so the belonging part of meaning is covered.
So don't chill out too much. Divest out of Coinbase, continue life as before and get used to the money. Take your time before changing everything and increasing your spending levels. In a year or so, hopefully you'll have diversified and your head will have cooled from the new money, and you'll be more leveled and realistic about what this money enables you to do, and how to handle your life going forward.
As far as I can tell, it seems like a large (20-50) percentage of people who have a large windfall... end up losing it all because they don't take the time to learn how to handle it.
Good luck and happy birthday!
I agree with all your advice, but I think that^'s impossible to tell. The vast majority of people successfully and sensibly handling such things are (partly as a result or even 'input' of it) not talking about it.
Dead Comment
It reads like a version of "The Celestine Prophecy" [2] but aimed at a middle-aged tech bubble. Could you (or anyone else) compare the two, for a very slow reader to make a decision? :D
PS yes the comparison is probably too harsh but that was honestly my first gut reaction...
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36481028-4000-weeks-a-li...
[2]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13103.The_Celestine_Prop...
I know I'd like to do that, but I've always liked teaching so maybe it's not fitting to everyone.
E.g. I volunteer at a local (Brazilian) nonprofit org as part of my employers' give-back programs and I love it. I try to get (underpriviledged) kids interested in computer science concepts by discussing how they are applied in games. It is all remote (which adds a level of challenge)
I'd believe many such orgs exist. In fact, writing this it occurs to me that putting together a curated list could be a worthwhile effort.
I also have my email on my profile, please contact me with a bit more info...
Obrigado e tudo de bom pra vc!
My friend, if I had never work again money, I'd just pile up Masters and PhDs.
I‘d probably feel empty myself just accumulating knowledge all my life and not applying it to any high impact problem worth solving.
2. Find love but keep your wealth a secret until you're sure they are the One and financially responsible. Love comes undone fast over money, and you'll probably need a pre-nup to avoid getting cut in half if things go south. Easier if your partner is also a professional and has assets which goes back to them being financially responsible.
3. Establish a relationship with a law firm. You never know when you're going to need them.
4. Build those software projects you've always wanted to.
I think it might have been the best outcome. Actually on second thought, no, I'd love to not work. Congrats.
I'm a similar age as you (30) and like you I've built a decent amount of wealth to the point where I no longer need to work anymore. Over the last couple of years I've had to question what life means beyond money and all the hedonistic pleasures which money can buy.
I don't know how transferable my experience is, but I would warn against focusing on pursuits that are overly self-indulgent. At some point you're going to find there just isn't much more you can want, and you may even find yourself feeling depressed and confused about what your next pursuit should be -- especially if you've always been a highly driven individual like myself.
Instead I've found looking around myself and asking how I can help others has given my life a sense of purpose again. You may not be able to make yourself any happier with money, but you can improve the lives of others. And to be clear, I'm not talking strictly about spending money here (although that is an option), but if you don't need to work anymore simply volunteering your time in a way you believe will make a difference can give your life a huge amount of meaning.
Congrats... but be careful. Some young people underestimate the amount of money needed to "never work again". If you're not working then you don't have group health insurance. You're in the individual market, which often has crappy insurance providers. If you have a serious health issue, and get into a dispute with the insurance provider, your illness can cost millions. If you have > $10 mils you're probably safe though, assuming you invest wisely.
Thanks to Obamacare, individual plans have the same coverage as employer plans. Without Obamacare I couldn't have started my company which now employs 9 people in well paid tech jobs (without a penny of outside investment). I'd be stuck in an artificial set of handcuffs imposed by a stupid legacy system of tying health insurance to employment.
Fk you money where you don't ever need to work again and* maintain a big lifestyle is a totally different story though. Doesn't mean OP can't take a break for a year or two though.
People who find meaning in being rich, enjoy being rich.
I kind of think riches are an illusion - you should just go directly to whatever you find meaningful in the first place. Which might include a lot of experiences to find out what that is. Essentially: living.
You can still do that - although having to do something is very motivating, even if we don't like it!
I've worked with a few people who can afford to retire, but find themselves happier showing up to work everyday.
Also, consider YC's founder matching network. Let someone else figure out what the product is, how to sell it, and you just do the bits that you enjoy.
Looking for external sources of happiness is likely a losing battle. Keep your eyes open and you will likely see somewhere to be useful/maybe even create something that both helps others and makes something for yourself to get to the yachts stage. In the mean time, try working on relationships around you and maybe volunteer/give back with something more valuable than money - yours skills and experience. Good luck!!!
When I had questions, I ended up changing from chemistry to philosophy in undergrad (before dropping out after realizing no one had the answers). Despite the aforementioned realization, the grounding in Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and a few others gave me fertile grounds to later plant seeds of wisdom from thinkers and artists from every walk of life.
I wish I could help you with the struggle, but unfortunately, like most learned things, it’s something that only you can do. If you ever want to, I’d be happy to chat seriously about what it means to be human, beyond making money, any time.
From one sick bed to another: best of luck, and happy birthday.
Also consider the wealth expatriation tax of your host country-they can really sting.
Depending on exactly how much I made, these are daydreams I've had before:
Start a "company" that focuses purely on open source contribution. Pay people tech salaries just to work on open source projects they care about. My main intent would be to focus on areas where no decent open source software exists or is dominated by a small number of complacent companies that consider it a license to print money.
Learn how to teach and mentor kids, then do it. My mom is a high school computer science and math teacher, and I always wonder how much more effective she could be if funding for equipment wasn't an issue. My students would have access to whatever I thought could benefit their education.
Be a stay-at-home father. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I turned 16, and my dad worked from home when I was 8 through 12 (the years following the dotcom crash) I started learning to program and got into robotics at 8 years old and I don't think I would've been nearly as successful starting at that age if I didn't have access to both of my parents pretty much constantly. If I ever have children, I would want to give them the same or better. Try to guide them along whatever piques their interest and enable them to access the resources to do well.
My personal view on life is that there really isn't any higher meaning to it. I'm content to wander the Earth finding and doing interesting things until the day I die.
I was a fat kid who managed to lose the weight around ~16 and kept it off till my 30s. I'm 36 now and independently wealthy - much chubbier now than in my 20s. I can tell you that money and lack of worries doesn't make finding the motivation to see a large weight loss through any easier. I go through periods of working out/playing sports for 3-4 hours a day, but if you like eating, it's easy to super compensate and continue to put on weight. I always seem to manage eating one more croissant.
You don't have to do it all at once to become healthier either. any year where you trend downward, even by half a pound, is an improvement. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Again, easier said than done, but you don't have to be comprehensive - just 1% better every day.
Happy to chat with you about weight loss and health if it would be helpful: zemvpferreira @ the old gmail.
Buying a farm, building a nice private park, building Rome style bath, japanese onsen and having space for family and friends so they would like to visit me because it's very nice.
But sure you need the interest in wanting to design and build your own house, park, pool etc.
[0]. http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/2010/02/bipolar-chronicl...
It made me a better entrepreneur, better father, better spouse.
Like the commenter above stated, there are people who have psychiatric breakdowns following or during such courses. I don't think the Vipassana organization is doing a good job making this information transparent. But, from my anecdotal experience of over 20 years of courses, these cases are very few and far between.
https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/courses/search
Deleted Comment
To start, you can pick a Psychology 101 textbook (I like Psychology and Life [4]) and then read the people and bibliography mentioned in these Wikipedia articles.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_psychology
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_psychology
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Life-Richard-Gerrig/dp/020...
But understanding life has, in my experience, been similar to the hermeneutic circle: to understand a part, you must understand the whole, and to understand the whole, you must understand the parts…
That is: the entry point is here - learn about the world and about how humans think about and perceive it. Start anywhere, but start.
*edit: I forgot to add also history. It also helps to shed light on the different meanings people have discovered over time.
What # employee were you?
Was it options/RSUs?
What % of the company do you have?
How long did you work there?
I ask because I am at a series B, and I'm very optimistic for our future. But I am only employee #100 or so and don't see a big payout for me barring a multi billion dollar exit (a little too far fetched). I'm just curious how it all goes down for those lucky employees.
And keep in mind, at the early stage startups salaries are often lower and the startup is likely pre product market fit. So it is much more risky. Employee #100 feels like the sweet spot because it likely means the startup has found product market fit and is hitting the accelerator re growth, but you still get a taste of early employee equity.
Of course this is just in terms of maximizing "IPO lottery" potential. If you are trying to maximize probable net worth, FAANG probably wins due to higher compensation.
Happy birthday
I've been working at startups for decades but haven't been in the right place at the right time (no complaints, I've made a few hundred grand from options and I still may make more in the future) however I've worked with a number of people who have hit home runs.
Only a few of them have gone on to build their own startups from scratch though which is somewhat disappointing in my eyes. Of course, it's their choice but if I'm ever it that position, I'd definitely fork a new company as soon as the dust settled.
So. . . is it practical for you to start a new company and have you considered it?
Deleted Comment
New friends can be very costly, indeed! Good advise is priceless.
Advise given by other people? Think: What is their financial status? Do they work with these type of questions? Just ask: What would they do with 10k of 100k. Most will burn it, short term! = WRONG
Like I never give medical advise, because I only finished first aid class.
don't be sad.
Edit: and travel the world. Maybe travel the world and angel invest ... startups outside the US would appreciate it!
But first, you must shed al appearance of wealth, and don’t ever let anybody know about your money until your babies need it.
Deleted Comment
I also love Russian lit, so so checkout Oblomov and Tolstoy shorter novels like the Death of Ivan Ilyich. I think you’d really like the japanese book Musashi as well (or the incredible Vagabond manga adapted after it)
If you have money, it won't be fun. And it's hard to un-do.
Great one, I would recommend not taking too long to get back in the game of goals as they keep you moving forward, also maybe start looking for a life partner if you haven't done yet.
At 27 maybe you should look into spending more time with / starting a family?
You don't have to do it with your own cash.
Dead Comment
Instead, one of the goals for my videos will be to take a step back and inspire to create, zero commercial interest, not too much distractions and something parents can trust.
Still in the process of figuring out all the parameters, camera, editing, setup etc but its a lot of fun learning new skills. I have a million ideas for the content already so enough work to be done. If there is little to no ‘success’ in terms of viewers, i really don’t care since i enjoy all aspects of it and im building a nice catalog of creative videos to watch with my kid later. I have no public videos yet (coming very soon) but here are two samples of what to expect:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_3e0tawk45E
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mBZStuxOUlc
I have watched both videos and they are engaging (to me). I think they could use a little bit of more speed and some music or explanations. Also, you could show at the beginning what you are about to make.
I have recently needed to start drawing (nothing fancy) for my side project, and have found tutorials such as your first video on youtube invaluable.
For me the thing I enjoy is that you are setting realistic expectations, not being wasteful (I notice you start from the edge of the paper instead of cutting from the middle, etc.)
I would watch that even as a grown-up.
In principle I'm absolutely in favour of releasing it to the public. To be sure: do you mean the _content_ I create in the video or the _videos_ themselves (I wouldn't mind both, but just to clarify).
One of the things I want to add later are downloadable resources: PDFs with the drawings or cutting templates, so people can get a head start with e.g. colouring instead of having to do the drawing first.
Deleted Comment
I’m very happy with it so far! Video here:
https://twitter.com/tlalexander/status/1455320442642714625?s...
It’s open source, CC0 licensed. Please fork the design files here!
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/d663661f8c0c34e7a29bbfa6/w...
EDIT: you may prefer to watch the project and wait to fork it until I have fleshed out a few more things. In that case feel free to star this git repo and I will update it as I make progress.
https://github.com/tlalexander/brushless_robot_arm/
Definitely considering forking
I haven’t done testing of its capabilities yet as I just got it working today. Also I am running at 24v but I want to try 48v when I can upgrade my odrive controllers to the 56v version.
Not sure about backlash either except joint 3 has bad backlash not due to gearing but from a fixable issue with the way the output connects to the frame.
But I am very happy with this design! I think it’s pretty promising.
Overall great documentation, and the author also sells hardware kits so you don't need to source all gears by yourself.
https://twitter.com/tlalexander/status/1455100498428588036?s...
I stopped working several months ago and have no immediate desire or need to go back to work.
I'm not sure if it's a blessing or curse to have so much free time to grieve.
Enjoying the downtime with occasional spontaneous bursts of tears.
Edit: thank everyone for the kind words. I put together this 4 minute tribute of our times together to honor her/us. She was beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB5_1mdTgcM
Please feel free to reach out if you want to talk with someone in a similar situation to yours.
I'm incredibly sorry for your loss. I'm happy that you had the time with this wonderful woman and that you have the memories, even though I'm sure right now everything is still raw. Godspeed.
There are some interesting similarities between heroin addiction and cancer..
I don't need anything from anyone but I appreciate the sympathy, the amount of views that my video received from this post is crazy. I'm very touched and I hope she is too.
People are precious and our time with them even more so.
I used the time off to travel around in a van, hiking, eating, camping, and visiting friends. I'm now back in the city and catching up all of the life stuff that I put on hold for the pandemic and / or travel -- minor remodeling, maintenance, friends I didn't really get to see during the pandemic, etc.
I've been making big-picture decisions about future work as I go but the next phase is to put in serious hours into the search (since I'm planning to move out side of my current network / FinTech). Looking to start something new sometime this winter.
If anyone has questions about taking a longer time off work (will be 6+ months for me) or about taking more time almost totally away from computers / tech (2+ months), feel free to thread Q's.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27124604
I read through your linked comments, and I think I'm in a fairly similar place to where you were - lucky to have had a high savings rate for long enough that I can afford a long break; maybe forever if I'm frugal, or switch to a less-well-paid industry - and this has made me feel like I'm probably in my last corporate tech job. I haven't pulled the plug yet and probably won't particularly soon, but I'd love your perspective about what's after that leap.
I don't have really any advice for others in this stage yet, since I'm still right in the middle. I hope I move into my next job, whatever that turns out to be, I have more perspective on the post-quitting period.
If you are in the US, what did you do for health insurance?
What are you hoping is different outside of Fintech? Or do you just feel like it is time for a change?
I bought health insurance on the state marketplace where my permanent residence is.
Just feel like it's time for a change, and I'm willing to accept the likely paycut that moving into a less hot segment of the industry will likely mean.
Certainly being a bit less emotionally invested would have reduced the burnout, and lots of people stay motivated and do great work without that level of commitment.
1. Building an open source bicycle computer. It's been over 20 years since they arrived at the scene, and there still isn't one that you could hack! An outrage! No published sources yet, I'm getting stuck on not having much experience building physical things.
2. Getting rid of the directory hierarchy. I have 10K photos, 30K emails, 10000km of GPS tracks, and 10 years of chat logs. Why can't I find anything among them? I own a computer, after all. I have 10 folders called some variation of photos/Cologne/2020/flowers! Having to organize them myself is tedious and a fool's errand, so I'm leaning towards using a database as a file system, to let me just query for files. Geo queries using a map? Yes please. Selecting bounds on a timeline? Oh yeah!
Turns out I'm not alone, Microsoft tried this with WinFS, and failed. But the idea lives on: https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organizatio...
3. Writing. I hope I can find the time to expand on the above on my blog.
All your photos, chats, e-mails, messages, health data (eventually all your data) into a single database, which can be distributed onto multiple removable 'volumes' (disks).
Plug in the volume and the db index is seamlessly merged and queries run on all the connected volumes. No files. No cloud. Data on your disks only.
There are processing nodes that run in the background indexing the content, finding people and locations in the pictures, chats.
It allows you to build up a fully search-able archive of all your data, which you can physically keep in a locker or safe.
But also, if you store and keep all your data on disks that you control, then many of the services that we use could just run as local apps on your server, reading and writing from your archive via an API.
Social apps are just two people's archives sharing content between each other, no 3rd party services required.
I worked a lot on it until about 1.5 months ago, when I got discouraged by how hard and big this project is. Breaking up with my girlfriend around that time did not help either.
But now I see you mention it and it's kind of inspiring, since I've been doing a lot of thinking and gathering strength for another crack at getting a prototype out.
It would be interesting to see what other people have been thinking/doing in this area.
But since there's at least one person who wants it, I might actually jump back to work ;) Thank you !
I am on purpose not addressing the exchange of information between people – never considered it, no vision, would just confuse me.
I'm also not so keen on indexing. I'm envisioning this more as a file system layer, where data is added to the database as it gets saved. Ideally there would be no way to access the data outside of the database (that would cause desyncs and the need to reindex stuff). We don't need no POSIX file systems ;)
Eventually got discouraged by the sheer amount of real-world workarounds and corner cases that need to be accomodated rather than some inexplicable technical hurdle. And broke up with my long-time girlfriend.
Now I have little desire to go back, and things just feel meh. I play basketball sometimes to keep my sanity.
It supports the kind of queries you are after, but it’s a bit of a passion project and development is slow. What’s already there works well though.
I hope it can be adjusted to my needs: I expect I'm going to have to find solutions for tracking files' sources, for snapshots, and for remote/removable storage, in addition to all the UI work.
I'm willing to part with some money to have someone implement it for me if I see there's demand.
Keep all my photos in the directory hierarchy, but have a tool to sort them and sync them between devices
If I sync it with rsync, I might accidentally delete important files. Git would sync properly, but then it keeps the data in the repo rather than the directory hierarchy
It would have been interesting to see how it organizes the UI, but there's no demo version for Linux :P
Today’s sunset around Puget Sound: https://shademap.app/#47.89056,-122.66785,7z,1635813675213t
I hike a lot. Figuring out exactly where & when sunset will hit is next to impossible in mountainous terrain.
Feature request, if you’ll entertain one: instead of a 1-bit sun vs shade, show a heatmap of sun angle. Think “interactive golden hour map” for photographers.
Seems like you've already performed most of the necessary calculations here.
It can be anything, from finishing something with a minimum amount of resources, broken code that somehow works or pure exploration and guessing e.g. phreaking or just finding a random telephone number that gives you goodies.
or, most especially life itself. No point of all work if no play.
I am sure many on here are playing with the same "outside of programming" type ideas.
I've been a budding woodworker for the longest time and even though I keep going back to playing with some kind of tech thing outside my day job, I have been teaching myself how to draw faces (Loomis method), and trying to pick up woodworking again. Each of these require enough time but they're a welcome departure from the usual tech stuff (which I still generally enjoy but has been very intense, working on Pandemic-response projects)
Dang deletes posts just for saying something simple like "yes" -- b/c apparently an upvote is supposed to serve that purpose.
but i suppose such rules are selectively enforced (and probably entails some bias, such as political view, etc.)
Deleted Comment