You weren't meant to have a boss

You write in your "cliff notes" follow-up to this essay,

"My guess is that this is an instance of a fairly common Internet phenomenon. People are reacting to what they imagine I'd say in an essay on this subject—that an essay comparing startup founders to corporate employees would say that founders are great and corporate employees suck."

Is it wise to waste your precious time explaining yourself to any "reader" who hopelessly injects his own peeves and anxieties into what others say, muting intelligent discussion on any topic that Mr. reader happens to have strong opinions about? I guess it is easier to thoughtlessly fire back than take any of your suggestions under consideration.

You know this essay touches more than a few hot buttons. When you chisel away at the social creed surrounding the safe job in our society, you're asking many people to call into question a lifetime of decisions. Ones, I suspect, that were made mostly out of fear of veering too far from a well-paved super social highway promising happiness and fulfillment through Conformity rather than Individual Desire. You're calling the bluff their life is literally based upon, stripping away some of that veneer of dignity. If they fire back, it's because they have nothing left to say and need to fill the emptiness inside.

If people worship the mavericks and company founders, it's because such individuals exemplify attributes very far removed from the cowardice that most people face in thesmelves even before their feet touch the floor out of bed each morning. They may feel the energy of their own great potential, but have painted themselves into a corner with what they regard as "acceptable" behaviour and risk. So they stand in awe of the achievers and gawk at those who try to be achievers, secretly praying for the day when it might someday be their turn.

Thank you for sharing your thoughtful essays.

one fundamental difference between managers one level up and beyond and programmers is that peer collaboration amongst managers is much-much-much less common than peer collaboration between programmers. This is inversely proportional the higher you go up the hierarchy. it seams to be due to the fact that managers have to deal with that one extra dimension of that programmers don't have to. Apart from managing their own bosses and having peers, they also have the extra dimension of managing their own team or group.

But the biggest obstacle to me in becoming a startup founder is health care. The difference between a W-2 job with benefits and self-insurance medical is huge. Like I-could-lease-a-Laborghini-with-the-difference huge. That's not all. Medical self-insurance goes up a lot: The costs went up double-digits-percent every year when I was a contractor. And I have no medical problems! PG, you should write about this as a barrier to startups.