Ditto. I wish I found Cal's writings earlier in my life. I followed the line of thinking in OP for 5 years. Since I was following my "passion", I wasn't making that much money and thus was obsessing over my career day in and day out. Then at one point I decided to sell my soul to big tech. After some time, I realized that I actually don't care about my career that much. Ultimately all I want is to increase my hourly rate as much as possible. Making money is a problem to be solved and minimized, not something to be passionate about
I see the pragmatism of this, but can’t reconcile the cognitive dissonance.
I personally hate when quality is a nice to have rather than a first class citizen because it results in so much more misery, stress, burnout, micromanagement that is 100% avoidable. By working someplace that (dys)functions that way, I feel like I’m enabling and contributing to ruining everyone else’s lives… and that makes me feel worthless, I can’t do it.
I see the rationale reason for doing it the way you do it, but I don’t seem able to do it myself.
Yeah maybe you're right, I'm just rationalizing it. But money is sooooo important. I feel like everyone should give big tech a shot, even if it's for a few months. You get paid so much and the expectations are so low at the beginning. You can easily coast during that 6-month trial period and spend most of your time working on your own stuff. If it's remote, and you structure your time right, it's basically free money
