I would not show up, I'd sell the business, and work on more fun projects.
I have written code for 40years, self-taught from 6502 to C++ and now Node.js, and I have always loved it.
Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
21–30 of 104 posts
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#22I might keep working doing what I do now.
I have the job I want. I work remotely. I “retired my wife” when she was 44 8 years into our marriage in 2020 (I was 45) so we could travel and she could pursue her passions. There is really nothing I want to do that work stops me from doing. We travel, we have done the year long “digital nomad” thing, I can go home and spend time with my aging parents and our adult kids (my stepsons) for an extended time.
My other hobbies is I’m a gym rat and just hang out with friends and my wife.
I work in consulting so I never get bored working on the same problem. I’m a staff consultant so the company I work for really gives me almost complete autonomy. I get assigned a project and for the most part I get to lead the projects the way I want.
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#23I would still do a job, but it would be something that is important to me. And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop an index-tracked revenue stream from it. I mean, aside from an initial disbursement meant to wipe out harmful debts and get a few small toys, the vast majority of that $10M would go towards being productive revenue-generating assets. No, not from the backs of ot…
> And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop an index-tracked revenue stream from it.
Buy $5M of VOO and $5M of VTEB or BND. Send dividends to your bank account. When your bank account is over the FDIC limit, buy more of whichever fund has less $. Dividend yield on VOO is about 1%, bond fund is about 3%, approximately $200k/year from dividends, but if that's not enough, sell from the fund with more $ as needed. If you go with VTEB (tax exempt bonds), you'll have a very low federal tax with $50k of mostly qualified dividends and $150k of mostly tax exempt interest; if you go with BND, you're still only looking at about 20% effective tax rate Single, or 15% married filing joint.
Probably check with your insurer and get an umbrella policy for $5M+ cause they're cheap and you don't want to get a judgement and lose out on the easy life.
Send me a check for about $10k a year as a reminder of how much work I did for you right here in the open :P (j/k, I'm not a financial advisor, I can't take compensation for this). You could do something fancier like optimizing the tax-exempt vs regular bonds or think about your preferred stock/bond ratio or exotic investment options to enrich the advisors, but $10M is enough that anything safe (80:20 to 20:80) will work unless you overspend, and it's not enough that getting a little more return is going to let you keep a private jet (better to charter anyway).
On the OP's question. I kept working while I was having fun and then worked on cleanly transitioning things out so I could feel good about leaving without loose ends. I went back to work part time in order to insure domestic tranquility. :P You can do a lot with computers without a job/company/product, but IMHO, optimizing things is more fun when you have a lot of users and you can see the results, so that kind of leads towards working at least a bit, even if you don't have to.
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#24Nope, I would probably even quit at 250K of savings. Take some time off, then maybe learn pixel art / design , and spend 2 years to make a game or SaaS to get around 2k income per month for 2 years and then repeat the cycle. The initial money secures basic housing and bills, and the small monthly income is good enough for me.
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#25[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#26Hell no. I would mess with my stuff, no AI, no bullshit, just fun programming. But I would also do things for myself: better health, better food, better socialization.
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#27All these "NO" answers haha... makes sense why there are record layoffs and zombie/dead startups.
I think Claude Code will save many small businesses.
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#28I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the legendary Office Space scene yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu2HhlTEHMc
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#29All these "NO" answers haha... makes sense why there are record layoffs and zombie/dead startups. I think Claude Code will save many small businesses.
"Nobody wants to work anymore"[0] is a trope as old as industrialization itself.
0: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/w3si8l/nobody_wan...
Re: Ask HN: If you had $10M in the bank, would you still show up to your job?
#30If you live in a modern 1st world country and have a family, at least 1 child or some old relatives and at least minimal ambition to eat good food and have okay level of life - 10M is not much at all.
It’ll get you okayish to allright property (depending on the region), will cover all basic expenses and (if you don’t have anyone with serious illness or financial problems) some non basic ones. For up to 10 years max.
Then what?
If you want to hear people’s passions I suggest using vague “F U money” term instead of a pretty small specific number.