Quit Your Job

> Although it is still unclear how many Thiel Fellows were actually successful, "Mr. Thiel says companies started by the fellows have raised $73 million, a record that he says has attracted additional applicants. He says fellows “learned far more than they would have in college.”

Source: Wakabayashi, D. (June, 2015). College Dropouts Thrive in Tech. The Wall Street Journal@College Dropouts Thrive in Tech

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> Notable recipients include the following people (year they were awarded the fellowship is indicated in parentheses):[20]

> Laura Deming (2011) – founder and partner at Longevity Fund Paul Gu (2011) – co-founder and head of product at Upstart[21] James Proud (2011) – founder of Hello, which made Sense, a sleep tracking device[22][23] Dale J. Stephens (2011) – founder of Year On, formerly UnCollege, a gap year program with training in work skills and life skills[24] Dylan Field (2012) – co-founder and CEO of Figma[25] Taylor Wilson (2012) – the second youngest person to produce nuclear fusion[26] Ritesh Agarwal (2013) – founder & CEO of OYO Rooms Austin Russell (2013) – founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies and the world's youngest self-made billionaire as of 2021[27] Vitalik Buterin (2014) – co-creator of Ethereum[28] Simon Tian (2015) – creator of the Neptune Pine, a crowd-funded smartwatch Cathy Tie (2015) – founder of Ranomics and Partner at Cervin Ventures[29] Boyan Slat (2016) – founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup[30] Robert Habermeier (2018) – co-creator of Polkadot[31][32] Erin Smith (2019) – creator of software to detect Parkinson's Disease

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Fellowship#Notable_recip...

I get the general call to action that those who have excess resources should leverage that to take big risks, but this really undersells the possible consequences of losing everything you own. No, you don't always keep your network and skills. Sometimes, you lose everything. You lose friends from fallout or you belatedly realize that your network isn't as resilient to you becoming a penniless loser as you thought. Sometimes you go into debt and make enemies. Sometimes you become homeless and then develop a mental illness or a drug addiction. Sometimes you skip the homeless part and just commit suicide [1]. How many people can stomach that kind of outcome?

I do like the general message which I think should be said more often but I feel like people who charge ahead on this call to action should also triple check that they can truly accept the actual risk they might incur. I also think the amount of risk you take has diminishing returns. Making "fatal leaps of faith" doesn't seem to be as necessary or pragmatic as it's presented here.

[1] (heads up: this is a link to a suicide note) https://archive.fo/QaLIw

I would point out that in Western society there have been groups such as religious orders dedicated to the "virtue of poverty" for at least 8 centuries[0] so this is not exactly a new idea.

I'm sure that back then, the ideas probably elicited at least one similar reaction from someone in the equivalent of your position. But enough other people found those ideas sufficiently inspiring that the group has persisted since 1208. It seems unreasonable to call "cruel" something that has given meaning to so many people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi#Founding_of_...