this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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I've done this shit for decades. Decades.
I'm exhausted. It's tiring. I've been with startup after startup after startup.
I've vested equity after equity into more equity.
I've made $0 off that equity over nearly 3 decades.
My health suffers because of the stress and strain of the jobs I've been forced to put my body through over the years and there's no coming back from that.
My mental health is at a constant tipping point during my every day of work and I wonder just how much longer I can even manage to put in "regular" hours before I just curl up into a ball and wait for the sweet embrace of death.
I've lost decades of my life, thrown away in offices, cubicles, and shitty pizza party meetings to celebrate meaningless achievements that are wiped out in the next quarterly planning session.
Brett Goldstein can go fuck himself with a sandpaper infused dildo.
Sounds like your experience would make a good book, full of cautionary tales π
Appreciated, but I'm not sure if that would be popularπ
People want to read books about how to "win" at capitalism, not how it utterly breaks you and everything you held dear over the course of your life.
I doubt anyone would even be willing to publish it.
I'd consider writing one if people were interested though. I've done it all at this point pretty much. Climbed up and down the ladder of tech and business two or three times over. I've spoken at huge tech conferences, worked for startups, enterprises, mid tier, tech, non-tech, etc. I've owned my own companies, built startups with friends, with foreign investors, and more.
All it's taught me is that I need to go live in the woods alone until death comes.
The best conference I went to was called FailCon. Nothing but speaker after speaker getting up and talking about how their startup had failed. Learned more there than all the bragfests combined.
Just sayin'.
I was in the same place as you. I quit and now I drive a school bus. I am infinitely happier. I will have to work until I die, but it's a pleasant activity and takes only 4-5 hours of each day and I don't mind the thought of continuing this into my 70s or 80s (our oldest driver just retired at age 84).
Of course AI is probably going to fuck me out of this option, but AI will almost certainly replace programmers before it replaces school bus drivers.