[throwanem]

I was more thinking about the kind of guys I've known who've liked throwing around nonsense like "simps". But if it hasn't yet occurred to you that helping other people develop their careers is also a great way to develop your own, I don't suppose I'm all that likely to disabuse you of the oversight.

[fightme]

In my experience, it doesn't help at all. Move to SV and you'll understand.

[mathgladiator]

I did my big tech tour of duty, and most of my later years were all about helping people. Even now, as a retiree, I help people.

[throwanem]

I looked at it early on, right when I was starting out. That was a little before the dotcom crash, enough that only the really smart people were starting to think it was coming. Everything there looked amazing, and everyone I knew there was miserable every day, and I couldn't spend all my time in the Castro. So I took a powder and ended up in Baltimore.

I wasn't sure I'd made the right call till a few years later, when I heard one of the guys I'd stayed with then had killed himself. Sure, so maybe I missed out on a shot at some lottery tickets. So I'll never have fuck-you money, so what? Neither will almost everyone else - we call them "lottery tickets" for a reason, and that's before we get to the shitshow the next five years are going to be.

With the time I didn't waste chasing after them, I've managed to build a hell of a good life for myself, work included. I sit every day in an office full of windows and surrounded by trees, and I'm even still able to enjoy the birdsong once in a while. I don't have to look very hard for good jobs by now; mostly these days they come and find me. I don't want for a thing in this world that money can buy. And it's been a very long time since I had to work with anyone I couldn't find a way to like.

So yeah, the choices I've made have been more than worth what they cost me. Can you say the same?

[fightme]

Who's gratifying his ego now?