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What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

mtlynch.io

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Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#51

Post by deft »

mtlynch wrote: post #36

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about this post.

Thanks, I liked your post but couldn't help but feel a bit jealous. I've seen a few of your other blog posts before and really liked them. Have you still been working with Sia? What are your thoughts on Filecoin or other alternatives? You're one of the few people with any understanding of this, what are the barriers preventing adoption and even lower prices? Have you read or contributed to the source code?

Was that too many questions?

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#52

Post by Thespian2 »

m1n1 wrote: post #4

how does he pay the bills? and how about health insurance?

This is a fundamental problem with Health Insurance being primarily tied to employment. Many older devs, with families to take care of, would experiment this way with health insurance better than what is currently available outside of employer-provided versions.

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#53

Post by matte_black »

blunte wrote: post #44

Once you finally break free of the office/corporate mentality, suddenly the world opens up. The possibilities are so vast (but not all possibilities mean income). Breaking free from the golden handcuffs (or in my case, aluminum handcuffs), you start to realize that high income and lots of stuff really doesn't matter as much as experiences. And then you might even consider doing work that doesn't leverage your brain a…

Once you finally break free of the startup/entrepreneurial mentality, suddenly the world opens up. The possibilities are so vast (but not all possibilities mean freedom).

Breaking free from the gold rush (or in my case, app rush), you start to realize that huge exits and lots of users really doesn't matter as much as comfort and stability. And then you might even consider doing work that doesn't give you equity or has potential for huge payoffs. That's actually freeing, because it means you're allowed to do your job, then go home and relax. You stop thinking about how much work you could get done if you weren’t relaxing (which usually sucks you back to a computer to chip away at a never ending todo list).

I envy the people who are simply happy in serving others. They may or may not become super wealthy or travel as much, but they usually do not start with the idea of “the only work worth doing is for a company I own”. Instead, they seem more likely to take jobs with an expectation of being useful rather than an egotistical view of time/benefit. They will surely have more boring times, but they also have much greater chance of both being happy (living a normal life) as well as actually filling their years with meaningful accomplishments.

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#54

Post by marssaxman »

monktastic1 wrote: post #21
imbusy111 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you are being sarcastic. How do you put off $1M in assets with a $200k median salary in four years? $200k x 4 x 65% is just $520k without even any expenses paid such as the ~$72k you would have paid for a room in a shared apartment.

350k isn't uncommon for a senior SWE at Google. In a state with no income tax (such as WA), it's not unreasonable to estimate he takes home 250k (71%). Suppose he spends $60k a year, leaving him $190k/year to bank. Given the performance of the S&P 500 in the last four years, that could be a million today.

I don't know where these numbers come from. I made a gross salary of $140k the year I worked at Google as a senior engineer, and I made some extra money via 401k matching too. $190k would definitely have been more than my entire income, that's for sure. It's hard to imagine that salaries have more than doubled in the six years since then. And... spending only $60k a year, living in Seattle? Yeah, maybe if you live like a monk, or you really enjoy commuting in from distant suburbs.

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#55

Post by monktastic1 »

marssaxman wrote: post #54
monktastic1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

350k isn't uncommon for a senior SWE at Google. In a state with no income tax (such as WA), it's not unreasonable to estimate he takes home 250k (71%). Suppose he spends $60k a year, leaving him $190k/year to bank. Given the performance of the S&P 500 in the last four years, that could be a million today.

I don't know where these numbers come from. I made a gross salary of $140k the year I worked at Google as a senior engineer, and I made some extra money via 401k matching too. $190k would definitely have been more than my entire income, that's for sure. It's hard to imagine that salaries have more than doubled in the six years since then. And... spending only $60k a year, living in Seattle? Yeah, maybe if you live li…

I was a senior swe in Seattle myself. The total comp range is enormous.

Despite my handle, I didn't exactly live like a monk. 2k a luxury high rise and 3k for everything else felt positively princely (though the city has become more expensive since I left).

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#56

Post by mtlynch »

deft wrote: post #51
mtlynch wrote: post #36

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about this post.

Thanks, I liked your post but couldn't help but feel a bit jealous. I've seen a few of your other blog posts before and really liked them. Have you still been working with Sia? What are your thoughts on Filecoin or other alternatives? You're one of the few people with any understanding of this, what are the barriers preventing adoption and even lower prices? Have you read or contributed to the source code? Was that t…

Thanks for reading!

>Have you still been working with Sia?

Not really anymore. It's hard to walk away because I have so much fun experimenting with Sia, but I don't think I can really make a living doing anything with Sia. My Sia blog had a dedicated, enthusiastic following, but the niche is so small that the following was like 50 people.

>What are your thoughts on Filecoin or other alternatives?

I haven't looked too deeply into Filecoin. I read their whitepaper, but I feel like it's hard to really grasp before I have software I can actually run. They still haven't published any code, just some whitepapers.

Filecoin has so much money and so many employees that it's plausible that they're working on something in secret that's going to blow everyone else away once it's released. But it's also possible that they've got nothing and they're going to release a $250M dud.

I think Storj is a trainwreck with almost zero chance of coming out of the decentralized storage game on top. They're not even really a decentralized storage project. They're an open source project that tells people they're decentralized to cash in on the trend towards decentralization.

>You're one of the few people with any understanding of this, what are the barriers preventing adoption and even lower prices?

The biggest barrier right now is how difficult it is for customers to store data on Sia.

I can sign up for AWS/GCP/Azure and have data in their clouds in ~15 minutes. With Sia, there are SO many steps just to start uploading data and the process is not documented well. Not only that, there are huge waits between steps. So it's like start Sia, wait 36 hours for the blockchain to sync, create a wallet, wait an hour for the wallet to initialize, unlock the wallet, wait 10 mins for wallet to unlock, and on and on.

Even after Sia is totally initialized and ready for use, it's still much harder than anything else to use. They don't yet support backup and recovery, so you're stuck uploading an additional copy of all your data to another cloud provider anyway. And then even in the remaining scenarios, there are no client libraries for using Sia, so you have to write a ton of boilerplate code to wrap HTTP calls to their API.

>Have you read or contributed to the source code?

I've read a lot of Sia's source code. I'm the #9 top contributor to their core codebase. Relative to other cryptocurrency projects, their code is good, but that's kind of a low bar. I think their code has been degrading over time. Their functions are getting much longer, more complicated, and depend on increasingly complex lock synchronization behavior. Their builds are broken about 50% of the time just due to flaky tests.

>Was that too many questions?

I'm ready for more!

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#57

Post by bradlys »

marssaxman wrote: post #54
monktastic1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

350k isn't uncommon for a senior SWE at Google. In a state with no income tax (such as WA), it's not unreasonable to estimate he takes home 250k (71%). Suppose he spends $60k a year, leaving him $190k/year to bank. Given the performance of the S&P 500 in the last four years, that could be a million today.

I don't know where these numbers come from. I made a gross salary of $140k the year I worked at Google as a senior engineer, and I made some extra money via 401k matching too. $190k would definitely have been more than my entire income, that's for sure. It's hard to imagine that salaries have more than doubled in the six years since then. And... spending only $60k a year, living in Seattle? Yeah, maybe if you live li…

$5000/month in Seattle is well more than doable. I live off Google compensation is also incredibly high. $140k is less total comp than what many new grads get at Google.

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#58

Post by willbw »

matte_black wrote: post #53
blunte wrote: post #44

Once you finally break free of the office/corporate mentality, suddenly the world opens up. The possibilities are so vast (but not all possibilities mean income). Breaking free from the golden handcuffs (or in my case, aluminum handcuffs), you start to realize that high income and lots of stuff really doesn't matter as much as experiences. And then you might even consider doing work that doesn't leverage your brain a…

Once you finally break free of the startup/entrepreneurial mentality, suddenly the world opens up. The possibilities are so vast (but not all possibilities mean freedom). Breaking free from the gold rush (or in my case, app rush), you start to realize that huge exits and lots of users really doesn't matter as much as comfort and stability. And then you might even consider doing work that doesn't give you equity or ha…

Is it just me or is this style of comment, where you replicate someone else's comment and change some words to make them appear foolish, tremendously irritating and not conducive to good discussion?

Imagine having a conversation in person where someone parrots back your phrases changing a few nouns. Would you do that?

It is also such a derivative style of commenting, I've seen it many times on HN and I wish people would not recycle it any further.

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#59

Post by endgame »

willbw wrote: post #58
matte_black wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you finally break free of the startup/entrepreneurial mentality, suddenly the world opens up. The possibilities are so vast (but not all possibilities mean freedom). Breaking free from the gold rush (or in my case, app rush), you start to realize that huge exits and lots of users really doesn't matter as much as comfort and stability. And then you might even consider doing work that doesn't give you equity or ha…

Is it just me or is this style of comment, where you replicate someone else's comment and change some words to make them appear foolish, tremendously irritating and not conducive to good discussion? Imagine having a conversation in person where someone parrots back your phrases changing a few nouns. Would you do that? It is also such a derivative style of commenting, I've seen it many times on HN and I wish people wo…

The not-snarky version is "should you reverse any advice you hear?" http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-...

Re: What I’ve Been Doing Since Quitting My Job

#60

Post by [deleted] »

blunte wrote: post #44

Once you finally break free of the office/corporate mentality, suddenly the world opens up. The possibilities are so vast (but not all possibilities mean income). Breaking free from the golden handcuffs (or in my case, aluminum handcuffs), you start to realize that high income and lots of stuff really doesn't matter as much as experiences. And then you might even consider doing work that doesn't leverage your brain a…

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