6 ms·
Good question, my career is very important to me. It gives me an identity. I just can’t sit at home all day. I’m gonna die with boredom.
by bekman 7y ago
Good question, my career is very important to me. It gives me an identity. I just can’t sit at home all day. I’m gonna die with boredom.
- ianai 7y agoHave you considered starting your own business out of an office? That’s more than enough money to support yourself and do what you want.
- is_true 7y agoThat's really smart. I hope I would've thought of that 5 years ago.
- puranjay 7y agoYou're a smart man. I wish I had done that.
- collyw 7y agoPersonally I would say the opposite. You should define yourself by outside interests rather than by what other people pay you to do.
- nkrisc 7y agoGiven the difference between income streams, and the fact that still go to their day job, I would wager their job is an interest to them.
- em-bee 7y agoif i didn't define myself by what allows me to make a living, then i would hate my work. now i am not defining myself only by paid work. but it is part of my identity. if it wasn't i wouldn't be able to do it.
- ticmasta 7y agoBut if you get paid to do what you personally value, isn't that the ultimate win?
- ryanlol 7y agoThis might sound harsh, but if the best thing in life is IT administration for some company then you haven’t looked very far. But hey, who knows, maybe they work for a charity or something?
- puranjay 7y agoAt a personal level, I'm not a fan of this generalization that being an IT admin (or any other boring job) is inherently inferior than, I don't know, skateboarding or playing the guitar for a living. Different people like different things.
- kerkeslager 7y agoThat's true, but the way people do things they enjoy when it's a job is very different from how they do them when it's a hobby. I write code for a living, and I write code for fun. I would never choose to write the code I write for a living if I weren't getting paid to, and it's unlikely I'll ever get paid for the code I write for fun.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoYeah, the question is IT administration for what. I do a lot of stuff in my job that I don't enjoy for its own sake, but I enjoy it because I feel alignment with the purpose the organization is serving.
- burntoutfire 7y agoThe problem with that is that, outside of our personal lives, most of our meaningful activities and contributions in society are organized as jobs at companies (or various government bodies). In my country even more so than in the US, as there's almost no volunteering here. It's just hard to feel like you're living a meaningful life without a job, or running a company yourself.
- pdimitar 7y agoIf you get a long enough break from work your hidden inner voices will start talking. You will discover that your identity isn't tied to your work-for-money activities. IMO (I can't be sure of course) you simply never got off the hamster wheel for long enough to give your inner voices a chance to speak.
- eb0la 7y agoI believe the smart part is he knows what he wants... and that's hard, btw.
- vfc1 7y agoYou don't have to work for someone else and be an employee your whole life, it's not the only way. There are other choices available to you. You can also be your own boss too and have other people working for you, or at least help you out occasionally on a part-time basis. You can easily rent an office in a shared space if you don't want to work from home and go there a couple of times a week. Also, you don't have to focus only on your current project if it's not your thing. You can start something else that you would like to create while living off the income generated by your current project. But I get it, the social expectation is that you have an office job, its what almost everyone does. But think about this: someone at your company at a given moment had to quit their job to create the company you work on, right? Otherwise, your current day job would simply not exist.
- PakG1 7y agoAll those things require certain skills and whatnot though. If someone has a good thing going and doesn't want to plunge into the abyss, I'd say good on them. The abyss is full of pitfalls and ways to lose life savings and go into major debt when the lucrative side gig can no longer pay for the vision. Employment is at least guaranteed no debt, especially while the lucrative side gig is going. Correspondingly, when they have this good thing going, they're not being a drag on society. Their employer is still finding value in them too. To those who want to take the plunge and risk it all, that's cool too. On HN, even honourable. But it doesn't have to be the only way.
- vfc1 7y agoThere is not much financial risk involved in his case, and it looks like he already has the skills needed. He already makes over 10 times his salary. In one year of employment, he spared the equivalent salary of 10 years. I think people exaggerate the dive into the abyss thing and risking it all. If you have some savings, you can try to launch a business and if it doesn't work you can always go back to work for someone else. At a given point, someone is going to give you another job as a sysadmin again. He can even work remotely and easily make more than $400 a month. If you are not hiring other people and purchasing equipment, starting a Saas business as a sole founder has minimal financial risk involved compared to almost all other types of businesses, it's really not that risky. I think what holds a lot of people back is the fact that they come from an employee background probably at the family level, and they see the world through the eyes of an employee. They don't even remotely consider the several options that they actually have available.
- runevault 7y agoIt takes a very wise man to realize something that sounds like the obvious answer won't make you happy.
- kerkeslager 7y agoI'm gonna have to disagree that "sit at home all day" is the obvious answer. In fact, that's quite obviously not the answer.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoIt's also a good cover story that makes it easier to downplay your wealth. It's also an effective means to make sure you don't spend all your time spending your income and thereby end up broke.
- sct202 7y agoI think it's great that you know what you want to do and like. The income from your website is probably very mentally freeing, because you could do a lot of different things with your life but you can choose not to.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoI don't think I'll ever quite understand this mentality that "not having a job"=="sitting at home all day". Do people not have hobbies of any kind? They really only find meaning in pursuit of money?
- riantogo 7y agoOP was clear that it is not about money, wasn’t s/he?
- dumbfoundded 7y agoIn this case, the job appears to be the hobby. Just because you get paid for something doesn't exclude it from being a hobby.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 7y agoA job isn't solely about pursuit of money. Presumably, you are doing work that adds value for someone and/or society. It's also a form of security should the online income suddenly dry up. It can also be a source of healthy social connections. I was a homemaker for a lot of years. I did a lot of life enhancing stuff for me and other people. Trying to translate that into an adequate income post divorce has been enormously painful. Some people successfully turn hobbies into careers. Others can't pull that off. If someone's life works, changing some piece of it could cause it to come apart rapidly. Why risk that?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago> Presumably, you are doing work that adds value for someone and/or society. You can do that without being paid for it, and then you can control your own schedule completely. > It's also a form of security should the online income suddenly dry up. That's fair, but chances are if you managed to build something that generates enough passive income to live off of then you probably won't have much difficulty finding a job if you needed to. > It can also be a source of healthy social connections. I personally thing relying on work for social interaction is a terrible idea. > If someone's life works, changing some piece of it could cause it to come apart rapidly. Why risk that? Fair enough, but all I'm saying is I don't really understand how it works for them. To me, my job is just how I put food on the table, and my pursuit of money is purely so that one day I can do that without having to sell my time to someone else.