I just realized I’ve been working for twenty years and have unexpectedly been a bystander to some crazy things. Some of the beats: - grew up in the Bay Area in the 90s, my high school had this strange thing called “the internet “ which got me into programming - in college some friends of an older sibling told me to drop out and join their startup. No dummy me, I said I wanted to finish my degree. A year or two later they got acquired and were all deca-millionaires. I learned some advanced data structures and how to code a compiler. - first job out of college was at a game company for a whopping $44k - did a startup with some buddies in SF. - the Dotcom bubble was crazy. I remember sitting with a PM who had been a barista six months ago saying the craziest shit about what the product needed in over the top jargon and me going “why don’t we fix these problems we know our customers have” and getting shouted down. - same PM doing a “leadership retreat “ in Tahoe and breaking a leg skiing. Cost tens of thousands, in retrospect almost certainly was sleeping with the CEO. - I heard the phrase “dub-dub-dub” from same PM - crash happened, money dried up. I Want to say I ran into said PM working a coffee shop later but might be a false memory. I was told this was the case. - I visited a friend at eGreetings. They’d laid like 95% of their workforce off and had moved all of their Aeron chairs and the last few people to a single floor. I cannot describe how surreal it was to see this Sargasso Sea of thousand dollar chairs. At the time these were a prestigious symbol of how important you were. My buddy gave me one on the way out. I still have it, though an arm has broken off and it needs air. - some startup friends were like “hey, we’re going to this new search engine company named after a number, come join”. Me: “why? There are like 5 search engine companies already. nope, I’m going back to making games”. It was 2002 - joined a gaming studio for 50k, publisher went out of business and so did we. Joined another for same salary. - by 2006 I’d been promoted a few times to Director with a whopping 150k/year. It felt like so much money. - did another failed startup - joined Facebook pre ipo thanks to another friend who convinced me it was real tech and PHP wasn’t all bad. I used to sit 20 feet from Zuck and the rest of leadership. A lot of cool stories from this time but I’ll hold off for now. - did another startup that literally cost me millions due to what I walked away from - came back Reflections: - I really thought that I wanted to make games but it turned out I just like fun Tech. Don’t go into the games industry, it sucks. - I’ve always told myself that money isn’t important, and I believe that to some extent: I’ve always lived within my salary even though it is a quarter of my comp, but being financially independent changes things. My advice is to understand where the money is and see if it overlaps with your passions. If I didn’t have my head up my ass I would have been a millionaire in my twenties. - why all the startups? It’s a lot of fun and a great learning experience. - that said, being a millionaire doesn’t feel much different to me. I drive a Toyota. I probably DoorDash more than I should. Maybe there’s a level of rich with private jets and yachts that is something amazing but hedonic adaptation etc. makes me doubt it. TC: $1M (~300 salary/bonus, ~700 stock) Edit: Some people were asking about my net worth but I thought it would be more interesting to go over my net worth over time: - I think I had about 50k in 2005, the S&P 500 had done nothing but go down since I graduated but I kept putting money in. - I was worth about 300k in 2010. As an index fund investor I remember thinking I might as well have stuck my money in a mattress for how much it had grown. Still I felt pretty good about it, I was on track for being a millionaire by 50 assuming historical stock market performance. I abandoned my generic index fund strategy this year too: it was so obvious that tech was going to blow up that I took a heavy tech position (but still a general fund) - ~6m today, so it’s been a pretty good decade. I still do mostly index funds, just industry targeted. And have a pool of money I’ll take bets with. My biggest miss of the decade investing was buying nvidia at $18 and selling at 100. It was so obvious that ml would need linear algebra hw that it was an easy buy, then I chickened out when I heard google was going to make their own chips (sorry for the lack of faith nvidia). I bought peloton about six months ago I think they have a legitimate chance to revolutionize exercise. I’m likewise bullish that Airbnb is more than a place to find a bed. We shall see.
We aren't born free in a capitalist society, so the money really is to purchase our freedom. I don't have much interest in material things either(I still drive a $600 civic), but I can't wait till the day I don't have to worry about going to work for a corporation just to afford my rent.
Where the hell are civics going for $600? Do you have to take it to the shop monthly? Did you miss a zero?
Agreed it is great getting to the point you don't need to work. You can still work to have fun, meet people, and have a challenge but having freedom is great
You're telling me you could've joined Google when it was startup? Wow.. are you one of those 10x programmers?
He basically did with Facebook. And the guy still likes working tech after 20 years, so yeah.
Insane.. my idol lol
PHP isn’t all bad, right? Was my first kiss 🍆🤩
Not at all! It’s like JavaScript where it has some bad quirks (like how array passing works), but actually works pretty well.
Hack makes it scalable for Facebook. Looking at WordPress (the only other PHP codebase I've looked at) and it's a fucking mess.
Agreed, the games industry is overrated, I’m in it and it’s not as fun as people would think.
It scarred me. I don't think I want to come back there.
Wired and a few other magazines have done stories about how awful the game industry is from the inside. No job security, people treated like parts to throw away after ship dates, etc. I just thought it wouldn't be great if you were over 25, but it looks awful for everyone.
Interesting story! Where did you have the most fun? Also, how much did you make from your pre IPO FB stint?
I don’t mean to be glib but I’ve had fun with just about everything. The most fun is starting something from scratch where you’re just building like crazy and aren’t paying the consequences yet but this answer feels like cheating :) It’s easier to say what I hated: I was running a large engineering group at one point and it was awful, I wasn’t doing my job if I was too hands on and mistakes I made in leadership caused whole teams to waste weeks of effort and it would kill me. As I’ve gotten older and talked to people about this I’ve learned mistakes are inevitable and you have to forgive yourself, but that period was not good for my health and I’ve avoided being in that situation since.
Oh and I had around 50k shares in various states of vesting at the ipo. I walked away from ~20k for the startup.
Let's do a startup together
I would, but my “idea” requires legislation to change in the next 5-10 yrs.
Give me a couple more years and I’m down :)
20 feet from Zuck? Do you have some fun/interesting story to share? :))
Google+ was super scary. I remember Mark got us together and gave a great talk about greatness, mentioning the movie Troy and punching noses and fortune favoring the bold. It was a great talk. I’ll also say that the portrayal of Zuck in the media couldn’t be more off from what I’ve seen. I’ve never heard of him insulting people like Jobs, Gates, Bezos, Musk etc all do. He really believes in making the world better. I know some of the details of the things Facebook is blamed for and, again, the portrayal is way off. Sorry to bring this up but it bothers me.
I also remember Chamath giving a talk to us in boot camp where he called us spoiled and soft because we got free soda and how his team was at a different location with no free soda. It was strange. For me, having worked with some mega egos in the past, it was a huge turnoff because people like that are usually better at taking credit than getting things done. I’m not saying he isn’t smart and capable, and I hear he’s mellowed a little over the years but that guy was in the top 0.001% when it comes to self confidence
Good guess. Wish my company guessing game was better. Thought I was the shit getting a job at Intel in the late 90s.
Definitely got lucky.
But your 1M TC shows that while landing at FB early was mostly luck, you have the skills and drive to make the most of it. Bravo!
Does it matter? I mean the passion? We just need to put ourselves in money, isn't it?
I do think passion matters if you can manage it, and I’m very lucky to have had that generally. It would be really privileged of me to say money doesn’t matter. But, for me, it isn’t so important any more. Is that what you’re asking?
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Is this the tech lead?
No, Tech Lead doesn’t have 20 YOE. He has probably 2 or 3 YOE.
Wrong he has 20