Quit Your Job (opens in new tab)

You don't need to risk bankruptcy to follow the article's main idea, which is to try to use your available resources to invest in high risk, ambitious projects. Criticizing the article as speaking of "privilege" misses the point entirely - this is starting from the assumption that you are able, through networking, excess savings from previous jobs, family connections, etc, to amass the resources for this kind of investment.

Most people in this "privileged", or well deserved, position DO NOT invest their lives and talent in these big projects. Instead, they increase consumption and get tied to over-insured, materially comfortable lifestyles. And I'm not talking about the ultra rich here, but simply the top 20% in disposable income of the developed world. Tens of millions of people could use the article's ideas to better themselves and the world around them by spending a part of their life invested in high risk, high potential benefit projects.

The author sees their magazine as one such project. Maybe they are right... Who knows? I think the world is a tiny bit of a better place because they are trying to do it.

What about those who can't afford to do this? I don't think the article is for them (yet!), and that's okay. From time to time I see articles here about web development, these don't do anything for me because I'm not a web developer. Not every idea needs to benefit every person.

I quit my job for about 2 years, thinking I would never go back to full time. It was extremely liberating but also a somewhat scary experience. The reason for this is I think delusional thinking unfortunately plays a big part in what happens to people who stop working for long periods of time.

There are many, many people in my experience who stop working at some point, have nonwork become a big part of who they are, and never go back. They realize their current mode of work and life are making them miserable, so they throw out work complety instead of finding something more balanced.

I've met probably a dozen people like this and most if not all of them are in a deep state of laziness that is probably also a certain category of depressipn. Its quite sad when they realize they are 50, have no money, no way of making money, and no family because they couldn't afford one.

The author to me seems like a very delusional person. I hope I'm wrong but it just comes off as very naive. Is this magazine going to somehow change the world? How is he going to make money? How long has he not been working? How much savings has he lost in opportunity cost?

There is nothing more liberating than not working and convincing yourself that you don't need to work. For every 1000 people who think they are going to do this about 1 succeeds, and 100 manage to support themselves by living cheaply, contributing nothing to society, and mooching off of their relative, friends, and social safety nets.

I should also say I think taking time off, even long periods of time, is one of the best things that people who can afford to can do. It changed my life. I just wanted to point out there is a dark side to this, that a lot of people fall prey to. I could be reading too much into the article but I thought I'd give my perspective as I've thought a lot about this.

i dont think musk, bezos or zuck are good benchmarks for people taking risks.

i imagine them having about as much anxiety about which project next to fund as i have choosing socks. the striped ones that go over the knees but slip a little and have to be tugged upwards every now and then, or the short cute kitty socks that are a bit cold though?

This very much resonates with me. I've built up healthy bit of equity (few hundred thousand), earn double the average wage, and own my own home (mortgaged), I'm still young and have no kids. I really do hold all the cards to take more risks, but I don't. And I very much feel like a status-seeker, not in the social media popularity contest sense, but in the sense that I don't want other people to see me as a failure. That makes the status of a senior job at a big firm, living in an own house in the capital city something to be afraid of losing.

It also resonates with me that trying to iterate on my quality of life, e.g. finding a bigger purpose, passions etc, probably isn't going to happen while working the job that I do. It consumes much of my week and energy, and I find I have little energy or interest to seriously pursue 'big thoughts'. I still enjoy my life quite a bit, but it feels pretty mundane.

So I can very much imagine that quitting my job would be the only realistic path to a different life.

I'm not at all hostile to these ideas, in fact I support them. And I'd gladly read about them in a succinct article. Yet I found the writer to come across as overly intellectual, self aggrandizing, and at times downright weird and full of nonsense.

Here's a direct quote from the article, I'm sure that it speaks to something and to someone, and I'm sure I can find meaning in the analogies and examples, but it's not the type of writing I appreciate:

> Yes, even the bane of Darwin’s faith—the humble ichneumon wasp that lays its maggots inside the living bodies of caterpillars to eat them from the inside and burst out on maturity like some alien xenomorph—is a beautiful creature with a sacred task. Like many parasites, its role in the great chain of being is to test the health and defenses of its caterpillar host population. Its predation weeds out the sickly, preventing the much uglier injustice of collective weakness and disease, and spurring the evolution of stronger and even more beautiful life. Even fearsome Nemesis, born from chaos via night and darkness, is ultimately the hand of God and the minister of justice. Even the supposed exceptions to justice prove its rule.

There's seven references to God, for example. I'm not just interested in this type of writing style or type of magazine. I think that's what most people trip over, not the basic message, nor half of the philosophising surrounding it.

that's just pure luck, and i think a lot of people would imagine this is called "undeserved success".

Musk was notorious for being fired from multiple jobs before he did his own thing. If he lost his wealth suddenly over a few bad bets, I doubt anyone would want to hire him. Why would they? He’s unlikely to listen, to do things their way and they know that. That makes him unemployable.

'hackers' don't need you looking down your nose at them, o righteous one.

One could make an argument that it is because of real world difficulties that one is able to do great work. What did Jesus say about the rich man and the kingdom of heaven? The times in my life when I've lived on the edges are the ones that have laid the groundwork for everything worthwhile I've done in my life. Success and comfort too often bring stupor and cowardice, and not worthy ambition.

My biggest issue with Stoicism is that it is, at its best, basically therapy. Most of the advice in Meditations revolves around putting things into various perspectives that make a challenging situation not feel so bad. This can be quite valuable! However I think there's only so much therapy a person can do before they want to start actively changing their situation. I think the essay wants to go beyond Stoicism, to illustrate a radical path one can take to hopefully alter the circumstance of their existence positively.

I have absolutely no qualms with anyone who takes the "boring" path to provide for themselves or their family (to say otherwise would make me a hypocrite). However I think we tend to vastly overestimate what our needs are. The average yearly median in the US in 2019 was $35,977 according to the Census. This is the median, so 50% of the population lives on less than that! Probably most of the people at that wage want to make more (don't we all?) but I think the author is making the case for giving up on the luxury of tech pay in exchange for finding some actual purpose in our lives. I don't think that's disrespectful, it's just another option.

If someone was really inclined, $20k USD would pay for a year's rent in a comfortable apartment. $20k for other expenses. A year of grinding is open to a lot of people here I bet. They just don't want to do it.

The fear is too large, the inertia of normie life too great.

It’s gussied up a bit in the article but it’s still there in the calls for a leisure class, references to elites, “traditional” relationship values and so on. It’s not a neutral article on the value of following your dreams.

"problems of governance from beyond the established liberal democratic paradigm" ... " the lone overman" ... "Growth Through Struggle" .. "your cosmic duty and win glory only in the bold attempt" ... "our society has been so stagnant and uncreative ... We chose the path of comfort... In our cowardice, we turned away"

Now, what do those stirring words remind you of?

This didn’t affect affect the veracity of their articles, which I found were well written, but the association of their company with unsavoury people should cause all but the most naive and callow to ask WHAT their agenda is.

Similarly, this article is extremely pompous, faux-Nietzschean and comes directly from a media outlet owned by self proclaimed nationalists who are apparently also quite unsavoury. This should cause you concern and you should ask for what purpose such bare-faced propaganda is being pushed.

Or, to put in plain Canadian English “birds of a shitfeather flock together”

He founded a mass surveillance company and is generally right wing/conservative.

it's because Graeber expands thinking on history. who is to say he's right? it's not about that, it's about realizing how much we think we know about history... that we really can't actually know.

filling in the gaps is something people are great at doing. doesn't make it true though.

It certainly doesn't seem like any of your sources actually describe a well-accepted understanding of the history. In which case it's kind of like, ok well sure we can all cherry pick academics who have quite idiosyncratic views of the topics we pick but it's a little bold to be going "Well actually" to the standard view. If you read the paragraph I pulled that quote out of, it's quite clear that the author of this blog has an extremely rose-tinted view of "mortal intensity" and "novel virtue" and finding life "at it's ... highest". A literal reading of that section is advocating for you to quit your job and to rule over those who keep theirs.

Society changed very slowly historically speaking, so yes, there may have been long stretches of peace just as there have been even much later in some parts of the world. However if we understand the purpose of the agricultural revolution to be producing more bodies for warfaring/conquest and consequently leading to the creation of bureaucracy and Civilization (as Fukuyama would argue), then the incentive for which would have been driven by a keen awareness of scarcity and a history of violent warfare. It would be no small coincidence however that this take fruit largely in the fertile crescent before expanding out. Agriculture did sprout in the Americas too for instance (and the strife associated with it), but it came later.

And the harsh thing also depends. The Kitavans for example are well documented to have lived moderately active lives with much leisure time and plenty of food. One tiny example of course but they are far from the only ones. So it depends.

It's just that some distinct socioeconomic classes have the capability of failing and retrying very quickly, due to moneyed resources.

Contrast that to the person without assets or access to capital, they save up, take a chance, fail, and now have to wait maybe 10 years or more to get to the same place with jobs. And with time, there is error introduced, divergent paths, life changing events, or simply competing priorities as the years keep going by. Alternatively, everyone else in their similar situation rationally decides not to bother, a good network for them is one that exposes them to basic personal finance gurus on odd forums and youtube, who give them generic advice that works for a broad population.

On the concept of privilege, there is no parade and red carpet that gets rolled out, you just wake up one day and realize that you don't have to apply for jobs to maintain food and shelter, and that your bank account also has enough to make that seed investment or hire developers. So, if you're willing to play your cards, you play them. Enough people are willing to and their successes wind up outnumbering the poorer people that want to play tech entreprenuer.

Yes that's privilege and it doesn't apply to everyone but its not an obscure level of privilege. You don't need to be a multimillionaire to have it.

The essay is calling out people of means directly and telling them to stop wasting their time.

If you have the means, it is your real job to do so.

The entire article is a call to build a leisure class. Not whisky and xbox leisure. Newton and Seneca leisure.

This doesn't smell like privilege, it is privilege. But it is highlighting not only the opportunity of that life, but the duty.

It doesn't match history - the only reason we have many good things is because poor people took major risks - and it's part of the tyranny of low expectations that is seeping deeper every day into the fabric of our culture.

It's a remarkably effective way of keeping the pours in their place in the name of "empathy" and "awareness". It's akin to a humblebrag where that the rich can talk bad about themselves while shoring up their position.

And it's a kind of talk that I as one of those pours have zero patience with.

I don't think this person is considering the single mom who has to work multiple minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet; the people who have never had any opportunity to have any sort of "network" to magically get another job.

When you're in that position, you're constantly exhausted because of how much you're working. You have no savings. You absolutely cannot afford to just "quit" and have things work out.

I applied all of that and reentered the corporate world like a beast. It is now ten years later and cannot wait to "retire" again. I miss being able to think about things and live life without the narrowing constraints imposed by wage slavery.

You can't understand how liberating it is until you try it but it takes a lot of faith in yourself.

It doesn't make it less valid a path to consider.

"Perchance good sir, could you point me in the direction of the nearest apothecary?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbq6Wfh9fi4&ab_channel=Key%2...

So... communists? Hippies? Not that there's anything wrong with either, I just find that such people are really into work-trade and barter, but they always have cash for alcohol and cigarettes.

It never "just clicks". Meaningful relationships take work. In the modern adversarial dating environment, people are very wary of one another. Helping someone get to know you means getting them to let down their defenses. People are defensive and cautious these days for good reason, but often times it means meaningful connections with potential just don't happen out of apprehension.

These days, a lot of people want a readymade partner. All the tough work of becoming should be finished, there should be no personal growth left to do. If he/she doesn't already have everything you expect then time to look somewhere else. This is unhealthy. We have to rediscover how to look past the trinkets and into the human being we say we want something more with.

It's a pretty idea that people just click, that true love happens effortlessly, but it is not true, and it is a perfect fiction that destroys peoples reasonable expectations and destroys their lives in the process. How many people waited for perfection like that until they found themselves alone at 40? The only thing that just clicks is sexual attraction.

If someone believes someone else owes them romance for putting in effort they have no idea how to go about it, perhaps they never will. When you meet someone who you think is special and you decide to do the work of getting to know them and putting yourself out there for them, you do that knowing that they might not reciprocate, you accept failure as a possibility and you choose to take that risk and engage gracefully.

Your analogies kind of contradict each other. If someone goes hunting for several days but doesn't get a kill, would that person say they're owed an animal? Hunting isn't a transactional activity. Dating/courting aren't transactional either.

I mean, that part is true for literally everyone?

The fact is there's a large number of very, very capable people out there who probably don't need to work for anyone else again if they don't want to. But they get jobs anyway because that's just the kind of people they are. I know quite a few of these people. This essay is a CTA to them.

Give it a few years and you might find yourself in the exact same boat.

And in case you hadn't realised, this whole site is the poster child for a "privileged elite" deciding the world needed something and just going and making it, and thank the gods he did.

Did you read the entire thing?

The best way to fix the problem of evil is to say that the evil has a higher noble purpose and thus is justified. That applies just as much to man as it does to the divine, and has been how the majority of evil acts in the world get justified.

Giving it a fancy name just means it has a fancy name. It doesn't change the content of the idea.

After all, this isn't an essay on ecology. This paragraph wasn't simply added because ecology is cool. It was added to further an argument.

I've come to the conclusion I want to build OS software for co-ops and repurpose as open core for non-co-ops. Think ERP systems that manage point pools for customers, affiliates, workers, etc that can be traded for voting power, and dividends from profits from a network of syndicated worker-owned co-ops....

Example: You work at a WO-pharmacy, and shop at WO-grocery store... you earn x points per hour worked, and x points per dollar spent (upto 10k/annual to prevent whales), perhaps there's a crypto token aspect too that maybe pays out some living dividend too... after you meet a yearly minimum say 500 hours worked, volunteered, or spent you are a 'member' and get full benefits (think like costco) which might include health insurance (eventual goal), equal share of revenue/gains that aren't earmarked for further growth and salaries--equal by point I mean, so each point is 1 share, and if there's 30k in there, and 30k shares and you own 1k shares you get 1k...but points could be syndicated meaning shared across related orgs through partnerships, or single to that co-op, etc... it depends on what they want to do, people still have autonomy. Essentially it's like more centralized DAO's that are networked and have more rules in place to ensure just ownership of more tokens (cash) doesn't give undue power.

Co-ops can set hierarchy choices like do managers/execs maybe get more points/weights based on tenure, level, or is it all equal across the board?

The ERP should have an easy product/inventory listing/tracking thing with federated marketplace... think shopify but products can be imported from other shopify customers into your store, and it feels a bit more like Amazon or Ebay, and you as the store owner might get an affiliate commission.... eventually we can build an fBA like solution so marketplace members can also charge really cheap shipping...to actually compete w/ amazon...

Mom and pops, restaurants, uber-drivers will all have tie-ins to the syndicates so basically small companies and co-ops all can thrive, and big corps can use some of our tools too (but they'll have to pay a premium)... monetization model will mostly be some sort of processing type fee to make nickles and dimes per transaction to pay our devs to continue expanding and things, or perhaps we get shares or something....

I also want to build an intentional community/eco-village with a glamping camp (that is managed/shared by the residents), with earthbag/container homes that are buried... part of me really wants to make this like a big medevil fortress or keep, and go all prepper/doomsday with plenty of rain catching devices, vertical farming, and solar panels.... but I'm not Elon Musk or a 6 figure earner.

Currently I'm working more on a SaaS starter for laravel, as a footbridge to everything else. Basically taking laravel jetstream, adding multi-tenancy (beyond teams but like orgs, which can have multiple teams, and members can belong to multiple orgs, with multiple polymorphic profiles (Employee, Vendor, Consumer, as general pre-configured types and unlimited scaling on types depending on model)...

Also plenty of easy components and a drag/drop tool to help combine layouts that can automatically make views in laravel so basically it's very low-code, and for us backend guys it's a lot easier to launch side projects if we don't need to worry about ui...

I got off on an ADHD tangent here, but my point is... sometimes its better to sacrifice and find something worth growing that can maybe be a side project or something -- if you can get to ramen mrr especially, than it is to work for someone else, and the more people who leave corporate America the higher wages will be for everyone because that drives up demand and lowers supply, so it's a win/win for my ideologies.

The problem is that when you are building something with just an expectation of contributing to the world or intrinsically, it doesn't hurt when you don't get 1000 active users but you are still working on it because you "want to".

I spend 80% of my free time on side things because I love learning and I am curious about the world and that makes me happy.

Socialising and exercise is the rest 20%...

Think balance is subjective for everyone but you can easily notice it when something just makes you miserable.

For instance when I am learning to code, the bugs and things that I don't understand are so freaking frustrating... but I keep going anyways because its interesting.

We are all writers of our own stories including balance I would say...

I eat relatively healthy, and have a reasonably rich social life. I don’t drink, smoke, use drugs, or engage in a lot of vices. I’m home all day, and have lots of time with my family (including a couple of cats, who let me know, when it’s time to give them attention). I take frequent breaks, including occasional naps. Even the computer time isn’t just working. I do all kinds of things, even play games. I work in the living room, so I’m pretty connected to the household. In fact, it’s important for me to force myself to get out. COVID has made it all too easy to stay in.

When I go on a problem-solving coding run, I don’t have bandwidth for anything else, and I’m generally exhausted, when I’m done. It may be hours straight, focused on what I’m doing. As our project is maturing towards release, there are quite a few days like that.

But, yeah, I’m pretty obsessive about coding. It’s not “noble,” and I am quite familiar with addiction. There’s definitely an aspect of that, in my approach to my work. But then, I know folks that have surgery, so they can play golf better (because they were just as obsessed as me, but in making money, and it damaged their health).

Doing what I do makes me feel good, and whole. I have friends that are every bit as obsessed with golf, traveling, music concerts, religion, crafts, hiking and climbing, skiing, martial arts, dancing, playing music, surfing, video games, art, photography, guns, hunting, fishing, cars, motorcycles, or boating, as I am, with software development. Most business owners are just as tied up with their work, as am I.

I guess folks think that these are “healthier” pursuits, but I am not so sure. What I do has the added benefit of producing something that helps folks out. I consider it a craft. I’ve been shipping software, my entire adult life. I guess this crowd doesn’t really grok doing something that doesn’t generate money (quite understandable), but it’s never actually been about the money, for me. If I wanted to make money, I would have done so. I’m pretty aware of my capabilities. As it is, I made enough to be where I am, but not so much, that it became its own problem. I could have made other people quite a bit of money, but they were incapable of seeing past my gray hair. I’m actually grateful, in the aggregate, as it forced me to be where I am.

There’s a deep satisfaction to be had, putting a bow on it, and sending it out the door. It was deeply disappointing, to have my work treated badly by others. It paid the bills, but I died a little, inside, every time my work was damaged, misused, or ignored. When I work for myself, I no longer have to suffer that pain. Out of necessity, the scope is smaller, but I’ve always been able to get a surprising amount done. The project I’m doing now, is the type of thing normally done by a fair-sized team. Now that I’ve had a few years on my own, I can’t see myself ever going back to the rat race.

I enjoy helping people out. I have a skill that can empower people to transcend a lot of pain and misery, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing to use it. I’m not looking for brownie points (certainly not money). Most folks have no idea of the extent of my work, and that’s fine with me. Fame and accolades are a young man’s game.

It is very hard for me to see such dross posted and discussed seriously, earnestly, when everything I’ve been taught about critical thinking as a hacker is to be skeptical, whether of function return codes, technical documentation, or people writing and/or funding obscure online long-form magazines with strong ties to white nationalism/IDW/alt-right/neoreactionarism. As a DC resident, one year after Jan 6, it’s dismaying to see Palladium on the front page, and discussed so credulously here.

The comment above really isn't me. Or rather, it is clearly me (since I posted it), but I don't want it to be.

Where I disagree with you is the implication that undesirable people bring bad behavior with them and pollute this site. I think it's the opposite: something about this site brings out the worst in otherwise reasonable people. Or maybe it's all social media.

In any case, the negative effects clearly outweigh the benefits from participation. This will be the last comment from this account; I'll send a request for deletion. Thank you for accidentally curing my HN addiction! I'll be mindful of the door on my way out :)

I was pretty confident I could get back in, that was the safety net that let me walk out of a job with nowhere to land.

Honestly didn't imagine I'd use it, and I don't love it. But it beats the alternative right now. My entitlement was through the roof :) I'm more grounded now.