[pech0rin]

This is the most childish thing I’ve read. And shows a lot about he doesn’t have any people relying on him or community to support. He takes one hike and throws away 60m. Doesn’t try to find anything interesting to do at Atlassian just calls his coworkers NPCs. This is zero-empathy Peter Pan syndrome at its worse.

Sad how he just goes adventure hopping to try and find meaning. The problem is no matter where you are you are also there. Time to look inward and not outward.

[antics]

You are catching a lot of flak for this, but there is one thing you are right about. If you make tens of millions of dollars, and can't figure out what to do with those resources, you shouldn't be calling your coworkers NPCs. You're the NPC.

I truly mean this in an entirely non-judgemental way. I wish the author luck in achieving his dream of becoming high agency rather than simply high freedom. I wish it for everyone who wants it.

[dangus]

I’m not afraid to be judgmental…

The article author hasn’t figured out that he got to where he is because he was lucky, not because he was special in some way.

The cringe comes in with the way he does it. He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.

It’s amazing how even millionaires and billionaires don’t understand that national debt doesn’t work like personal debt.

But anyway, that’s a tangent. The guy dumped his girlfriend so he has no family to spend time with, and he’s wondering why he’s bored. His only attempts at stimulation involve self-service: how can I be smart and successful especially in a way that everyone will know it?

I can only imagine how being financially set for life would positively impact a typical fiscally responsible family (people with the restraint to hire a financial advisor). Imagine being able to cancel daycare and spend your days with your family instead of burning your life away in the office.

I even know a person who has no children but thanks to a windfall just does his hobbies and hangs out with friends. Still works a day job for health insurance but now work doesn’t define their life. They’ve done things like learn how to DJ and travel to see their international friends on longer visits and not just little two week vacations that corporate zombies get to take.

But the author is struggling to find a way to make work define their life, to get their life to return to capitalism that they have been blessed to escape.

Hey author if you are reading this, try doing something positive like help people. Volunteer. Everything you have tried so far has been self-centered.

[bawolff]

I don't know i agree. I think its brave to be honest about it. Being able to acknowledge you don't have it together is the first stage of growth.

Most people struggle with meaning, most people don't have it figured out.

So what, dude who suddenly fell into massive wealth tried a bunch of cliched things to find meaning. Did they work? No, these types of cliched things usually don't. However you don't find meaning without trying things. You have to fail before you suceed.

[neuronic]

But both of you can be right. I would not judge the author for their attempt to find meaning but it is hard to read something like "all coworkers are NPCs" and dehumanizing expressions like that.

No, your coworkers are complex human beings with complex lives of their own seeking stability and a content life for themselves and their families. Blaming people for not always maximum pushing and risk taking is very simple minded. It is fine to enjoy a content, stable life without aiming for the stars all the time. It doesn't block you from being a star seeker yourself.

Responsibly raising a family is a massive and tiring task on its own but of course you can take the easy way out like Elon and delegate "family" to others starting at insemination because you burned your brain with drugs and had too many conversations with Peter Thiel. Most people don't want that.

And when he mentioned DOGE it was an immediate red flag. These people do not care why or for what purpose governments exist. They only see the inefficiencies and blockers and fail to understand that governments are not profit oriented companies. This is pretty much like failing pre-school. These folks belong in emotional special needs schools.

[m463]

It would be interesting to learn what a bunch of people actually do with found wealth.

I've read that lottery winners frequently become seriously unhappy.

Maybe some of us aren't ultra-rich like this guy, but we might deal with some of the same existential issues either planning or encountering retirement.

[vasco]

Yeah that comment just reads like someone who is pointing down at how unenlightened someone is, when that someone just finished telling you that they don't know what they are doing and being honest about it.

Would it be so much better for the author to hide this phase of personal growth, and then later on comment on other people's struggles to mock how far they are from them?

[danielbarla]

While the tone of the post might come off as childish, I don't think it should be dismissed quite so off hand, because I think there's a lot more behind it than one might think.

I cannot but help think that there's a fair bit of truth behind Terror Management Theory [1], which paraphrased states that a lot of human activity is centered around the need to get our minds off the topic of our mortality, or to find something meaningful in it. I can totally see that someone who spends much of their life working towards a goal of essentially getting rich now finds that he is somewhat rudderless after that point. Is finding something interesting to do meaningful? I mean, it's completely subjective.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

[lazide]

Nihilism when understanding/dealing with the problem is also a common trap in Buddhism, and a big reason why Monks will often discourage unguided meditation practice. The Void is a powerful thing to grasp, and can very much be ‘held wrong’ [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81]

Ultimately, that nothing ultimately matters, also does not really ultimately matter.

All we really have is now, and the conditions which have led to now, and our ability to do things within our power now. And that does matter, as much as anything ever can. Which is something. Getting through to that point is not a given.

IMO, part of what made the Buddha, well, the Buddha, is he tried to make it better. Despite knowing all this. And despite it being much, much harder, messier, and more painful than the path he could of taken - which is opting out.

Will you make it better (in your judgement)? Make it worse (in your judgement)? Rely on someone else’s judgement? How accurate is your judgement?

Or opt out (and what does that mean)?

Buddha (depending on the tradition) taught a path to reduce pain, and in some cases opt out (for Monks, at least, to some extent) by hopefully seeing the truth as best as one can.

That form of Buddhism is not very popular.

Religions that give a narrative involving conquering (Islam, Christianity in the recent past), surrendering (Modern Christianity, Jainism), or being chosen/made (Judaism/Hinduism) for/by a deity to achieve heaven or have one’s fate decided are much more popular.

I expect for much the same reason that action movies, dramas, and epics are more popular than quiet walks in the woods.

[richiricho]

I think it shows a complete lack of curiosity.

I watch a youtube video about anything like creating my own door fixtures through 3d print and metal casting.

I would immediadlty buy a nice old house, start working on it.

I have so so many things i don't have time due to money and work, he is so so far away from being intersting, it hurts to read that

[nextlevelwizard]

OK, but what is the solution? To get a (or multiple) child(ren)? Make a "family" that you don't actually want just so you can have people who rely on your support? And what then when you use your millions to support and nourish your kids? Then you get to read on HN about how they are "nepo-babies who did nothing on their own and are worthless human beings".

How do you know what he did at the company? When you get acqui-hired for large sums you are dropped somewhere in the management block where lets be real most people have no idea what they are doing and they dont even care they are there just for the money.

[numpad0]

Buy a RocketLab Electron launch and insert a literal hunk of lead or a beam reflector cube into geostationary graveyard orbit. They never had GTO launches before, let alone direct GEO, and I think no one had ever done an intentionally passive object into GEO let alone commissioned by an individual, it'll be an all around achievement. It's going to stay there for a geological timescale with negligible risk of space junk and gets its own Gunter's Space Page and Wikipedia article with legitimate interest from public.

There are countless stupid fun in the world that money can do that isn't about buying out a human or legally punching an NPC in face. As well as legit meaningful businesses that may or may not make money but kinda fun and useful. The fact that this person is being unable to come up with such a task suggests existence of a problem, though I wouldn't know if it's mental or developmental or physical or circumstantial.

[bumby]

David Brooks has a good book called “The Second Mountain” where he details the shift of priorities later in one’s life. The “first mountain” is what this guy achieved, monumental material success and freedom in pursuit of the “aesthetic life” that is overly portrayed in social media as the ultimate goal. But Brooks’ position is there is a “second mountain” to climb focused on commitment to a purpose beyond ourselves. Somewhat paradoxically, the second mountain is defined by a constraining of the freedom we pursue originally because it requires dogged commitment.

[richiricho]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai

Familiy is an option. But being curios and having hobbies also. Or helping people around you. Or starting to think about the people around you and enjoying the support you can provide.

I had my nihilistic depression phase for a decade. There is not much to it.

[saagarjha]

There are lot of things you can do in your life other than being in a relationship you are unhappy about.

[rw_panic0_0]

to start going to therapy bro, it's like on the surface

[awb]

Abstracting out the details, it’s the same theme as the general who wins the war and now there’s no war to fight and thinks to himself, “Now what?”

There are many people struggling with far greater challenges in life and with far less support, but feeling directionless and without a purpose is a common struggle that many people go through.

[necovek]

Many "generals" turn to crime because it's largely compatible in the way things are achieved, types of rules in place, and the rewards (at least here in the Balkans).

Possibly speaks more of the culture I am surrounded with than "generals", but maybe not.

[Pxtl]

> calls his coworkers NPCs.

Seriously, that's kind of a "fuck you" moment to all the people who helped him earn those millions isn't it?

Between this and hanging around with the head-cases at DOGE, I think the first thing he should spend his money on is a shrink.

[elevatedastalt]

To be fair, he was not calling people at Loom NPCs. He was saying that he didn't feel like joining a big company Atlassian coz he feels he would be surrounded by "NPC coworkers" there.

[dorfsmay]

You forgot:

> So I broke things off after almost 2 years of unconditional love.

[wukerplank]

Fully agree, and my first association was the "Men Will Do Everything But Go to Therapy" meme.

[dbtablesorrows]

What's with this therapy industrial complex?

Men need purpose not some consoling words.

[FooBarBizBazz]

Many people, myself included, are skeptical of "therapy" and do not automatically consider its practicioners to be legitimate authorities. These are people who need a job just the same as you, and this is the one they landed in. Whether they do anybody any good is hard to say.

One source of skepticism is that they are not really invested in you. If you succeed or if you fail, if you're happy or if you're sad, what's it really to them? Will they have to live with the consequences? At least in a relationship the "therapist" maybe "has some shares" in the other person. (Granted, you can also reverse the logic, e.g., "my parents didn't pay attention to my happiness and just pushed me to become a doctor" / "my wife just wanted me to have money because she wanted to spend it".) This is also why I am skeptical of startup advisors: I'm sure they mean well, but, if you really don't know what you're doing, it's probably better to be an employee for a while, under a boss who succeeds only when you succeed.

Another is that, when I hear therapistic language, a lot seems to embed assumptions of omnipresent psychic violence, and this disturbs me. Perhaps there are people who truly are trapped in situations of "psychological abuse", "gaslighting", and so-on, but my sense is that these words usually become weapons that people wave around, as they adopt darker and darker interpretations of their own, imperfect but basically good, relationships. Then the cynic in me says: Wouldn't causing people to reject their "organic" relationships, create dependence on the relationship with the therapist?

That "therapy" grew out of psychology also is grounds for caution, to me. There is an underlying manipulativeness in the field. Many of the famous experiments, stories of which attract students into the field, were quite manipulative. Some of the core theories of psychology that you learn in school, like operant conditioning, are fairly inhumane. If this is the ground that you build on, what kind of structure do you get? Who is attracted to the field to begin with?

Also, the very fact that the meme is gendered tells you something. Sure, men don't trust therapists, any more than college-educated women trust bearded imams. If a whole school of thought seems somehow not to be on your side, you're not going to trust it. (And I do not mean to imply that to be "college-educated" is ideology-neutral, or that the hypothetical imam is not actually on the hypothetical woman's side.)

...

In the context of this blog post, though, I kind of get it. The guy literally climbed, if not Everest, then some similar peak in the Himalayas. So when you focus on that it's kind of funny.

I'm not sure how what he's doing is "wrong" and what other thing he could be doing would be "right" though. What is the therapist going to tell him to do, and why would that thing be superior to climbing mountains at random? Does existential angst even have a solution?

...

Some of the religions have their own answers, which would encourage different behavior, I suppose. E.g.:

a.)

> 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

> 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

> 38 This is the first and great commandment.

> 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

> 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

If the author of the blog repeated the second half of verse 39 to himself over and over, he might do something different. You do pushups, you develop muscles. You repeat mantras, and, if those mantras are really meaningful, you can shape your own mind.

Or, the works of mercy:

> feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned, bury the dead

> admonish the sinner, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offenses willingly, comfort the afflicted, pray for the living and the dead

Add in Galatians 3:28 and you've got the high points of Christianity. If you take the words seriously they can affect how you think and what you do: "Right thought, right speech, right action".

b.)

I recall also once reading a Jain text and seeing the Ten Virtues, and reflecting on them altered my behavior at the time, in a positive way. These can be found e.g. here: https://jainworld.jainworld.com/pdf/Ten%20Universal%20Virtue...

One virtue that it emphasized, which is not emphasized to the same degree in Christianity, is honesty. Yes, Christianity inherits the Ten Commandments (which are actually good), but "thou shalt not bear false witness" seems like a somewhat more narrow thing. In much the same way that "though shalt not kill" is really, debatably, the more limited "though shalt not murder". Indeed, Jainism seems to go further than Christianity in many respects. Those virtues, by the way, are (per the previously-linked text):

> 1. Uttama Kshama - Supreme Forgiveness (To observe tolerance whole-heartedly, shunning anger.)

> 2. Mardava - Tenderness or Humility (To observe the virtue of humility subduing vanity and passions.)

> 3. Arjaya - Straight-forwardness or Honesty (To practice a deceit free conduct in life by vanquishing the passion of deception.)

> 4. Shaucha - Contentment or Purity (To keep the body, mind and speech pure by discarding greed.

> 5. Satya - Truthfulness (To speak affectionate and just words with a holy intention causing no injury to any living being.)

> 6. Sanyam - Self-restraint (To defend all living beings with utmost power in a cosmopolitan spirit abstaining from all the pleasures provided by the five senses - touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing; and the sixth - mind.)

> 7. Tapa - Penance or Austerities (To practice austerities putting a check on all worldly allurements.)

> 8. Tyaga - Renunciation (To give four fold charities - Ahara (food), Abhaya (fearlessness), Aushadha (medicine), and Shastra Dana (distribution of Holy Scriptures), and to patronize social and religious institutions for self and other uplifts.)

> 9. Akinchanya - Non-attachment (To enhance faith in the real self as against non-self i.e., material objects; and to discard internal Parigraha viz. anger and pride; and external Parigraha viz. accumulation of gold, diamonds, and royal treasures.)

> 10. Brahmacarya - Chastity or celibacy (To observe the great vow of celibacy; to have devotion for the inner soul and the omniscient Lord; to discard the carnal desires, vulgar fashions, child and old-age marriages, dowry dominated marriages, polygamy, criminal assault on ladies, use of foul and vulgar language)

In particular, I note both Arjaya and Satya.

(A new thing to me, that I notice now, is the inclusion of abhaya (fearlessness) as a kind of tyaga -- a kind of renunciation, a giving-away, a charity. This is food for thought.)

(And personally I would moderate Sanyam.)

My point is, if one needs direction, perhaps these are where one should be looking?

Just miscellaneous thoughts.

[darthrupert]

Going to therapy when all your problems are this mundane would be like going to open heart surgegy because you heartrate got slightly elevated.

People need meaning, not therapy. Meaning used to be provided by religion and philosophy. Religion is diminishing and philosophy is too difficult.

[oliwarner]

I agree, but rather than just laying into them, perhaps it's a symptom of too much money. Perhaps that's the cause, not something that has happened upon an already vapid simpleton.

It follows that completely removing any potential scarcity might separate you from other people. And how long would you last stewing in your own mental urine before you started thinking of others as less?

Honestly I read this as something to pity; a situation to avoid. Megalomania robs otherwise interesting people of all their humanity and having read a few more comments here , the best thing he could do would be to throw as much money as possible into therapy. You don't have to spare any sympathy for him but Vinay desperately needs help.

[shinycode]

I agree. He could give the money to greater causes and start over. That’s a challenge worth a post and a read and good use of time instead of what he just did.

[SuperHeavy256]

it's so easy to point fingers. why don't you do what you're telling him to do instead?

[ip26]

As a founder, the people relying on him would have been the employees at Loom. But now that’s done. Far from the first story about a founder feeling unmoored after a buyout.

[cwalv]

To me it reads like the author wants you to think this way. There's more than a little self loathing in there, starting with the title.

But IMO it's not surprising. When I left my first "real job" after ~4 years, it took months before I stopped dreaming about that job. I was amazed how wrapped-up I was in it.

What is surprising is that they put this out there so plainly. Unless they're just trolling .. but I'm going to go with "not trolling", because cynicism just leads to sorrow.

[jcgrillo]

Seems like the ex dodged a bullet

[zozbot234]

OP has enough money to live like an actual Doge [0]. (And get a pet Shiba Inu K-9 while he's at it.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(title)

[martins_irbe]

The post title should read, "I am poor and have no idea what to do". :D

[gamblor956]

Fully agree. Clients like this are why I left firm life and went in-house doing corporate tax work.

[rideontime]

BTW, Honey was, in fact, stealing affiliate commissions.

[antony_pond]

You are so full of judgmental behavior, envy is probably driving your ego.

[orochimaaru]

I have a different take. Most people in corporate jobs are NPCs, me included. I don’t mind it. My meaning and purpose is the family I’m trying to support. If that means things at work are on autopilot so be it. It’s just a matter of priorities.

So yeah - it’s fine to call me an NPC. I just have my priorities figured out better than the author.

[rat87]

That sounds like the opposite of an npc. Someone with a personal life. One of the reasons its a stupid insult. If you want to rag on people for being shitty or minimumn effort workers then do so. NPC implies you cant tell the difference if they were replaced by a shitty program that repeats the same lines over and over.

[jszymborski]

What about wanting more people to know you are rich is not childish?