I have a very close group of 3 friends that I have known for at least 6 years each. We all come from immigrant families, went to a competitive, top 100 high school and all did well and went to good schools. We're all 24 now and two of them are busy hopping from job to job to find the biggest paycheck, bragging about their $160k base salaries (consulting/private equity) not including bonuses and how they quadrupled their savings with margins trading. Then there's me and my other friend in this group.
I've only ever done startups and the closest I've been to a BigCorp job was a yahoo internship. The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. The other friend is on his 7th year of college. He picked majors because they were highly regarded and he saw that we were doing similar things, but did not interest him. Over the years he looked at our relative career success, did not think he possessed any real skills for the workforce and became suicidal, attempting to kill himself twice. Saved the first time because of a malfunctioning old handgun and the second because of a goodbye email he sent to the 3 of us. I check my email way too often and saw the email first and called 911 and then kept him on the phone.
I'm not quite sure what the moral is, but it seemed relevant and I wanted to share. I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. None of them love what they do.
If you don't love what you do it's probably not worth it in the long run. Doing a startup isn't necessarily going to put you in a financial disaster. It just makes the end result more volatile.
The way I look at it is with life there's a bell curve (maybe not normally distributed but still a curve distribution). Those with a steady consulting job will fall into the "average" middle area of the curve and be "safe" financially and might not ever be poor OR rich for that matter.
Those taking risks like in a startup would more invariably end up on one side of the curve (either on the side that makes you poor due to debt etc, or extremely rich but most likely you won't end up as an "average" middle area where everyone else is and regret not taking any chances in your life).
" I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. None of them love what they do."
I think that's the money quote here. I think Steve Jobs said it best in a commencement speech:
...I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
I've only ever done startups and the closest I've been to a BigCorp job was a yahoo internship. The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. The other friend is on his 7th year of college. He picked majors because they were highly regarded and he saw that we were doing similar things, but did not interest him. Over the years he looked at our relative career success, did not think he possessed any real skills for the workforce and became suicidal, attempting to kill himself twice. Saved the first time because of a malfunctioning old handgun and the second because of a goodbye email he sent to the 3 of us. I check my email way too often and saw the email first and called 911 and then kept him on the phone.
I'm not quite sure what the moral is, but it seemed relevant and I wanted to share. I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. None of them love what they do.