Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

I get where you're coming from, but I think the fact that this take is at all interested says more about our culture than anything else.

I'm not an anthropologist, but I'd be very surprised if there were many cultures that told their kids to do more than "get married, have kids, spend your time doing something of value to your tribe/village/country".

These are just your mentor's values, and your mentor's opinion on what is boring.

You are free to entirely ignore your mentor's opinions, and take the path that works best for you.

Please, don't let them guilt you into doing something that's not right for you. There are many, many interesting things to experience outside of entrepreneurship.

Big ideas are sometimes - perhaps even often - best realized inside big companies, with all the resources needed to make the desired impact. Your shift over to a big tech might be just what you need to make this a reality.

Then just work and be happy. Why chase other's ideas of interesting? You know what's boring? Hollow shells living lives they don't want.

My ideal situation would be to have paid off house, enough money for the kids private school - then spend my time building stuff I want to build irrespective of whether it's useful or not.

Some of these are small, some of these are big. It's easier to make money off the small stuff - they require less resources (time, money) and they either fail or start bringing in money early on.

I got to the point where some projects were able to make more money than I could make working and I used it to try to make a startup around some big ideas (raising money). That failed - and then I lost the revenue from the small stuff as well.

I spent the next years starting small projects bringing little revenue (enough to live on, but not developer salary level) and I coasted through BS jobs that pay well and don't require too much energy. I also relocated to a LCOL, low tax, good quality of life location.

I'm using the money from working to buy / build my dream house and I'm expecting I'll need 2-3 more years of developer salary income to get to the point where I have a paid-off house and enough money in the bank to be safe.

At that point, I think I won't bother anymore with the high paid BS jobs and just try to grow my revenue by building small stuff I care about. Once I have enough passive revenues to be comfortable, I'll start looking into the big hard ideas.

Something I've been doing for the last 10 years is to note every business / tech idea I have and prioritise them according to various parameters. In that way, whenever I have time for another side project I can pick a small idea and start working on it. It worked pretty well and it's fun to see old ideas coming back to life (or see someone else in the market bringing them to life) and notice patterns in your ideas.

If you're required to work in order to live, you're missing out on a certain degree of freedom. Building your own project allow you to minimise or delegate that always-on responsibility and give you more choices with what you're going to do with your life.

Your cushy job may be golden handcuffs but it's still handcuffs.