Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jayski 1223 days ago
I'm going to say something that sounds shitty, because I don't want it come off like I'm bragging, I promise I'm not. Just trying to bring context to how financial circumstances might affect your outlook in this situation.

I founded a startup 15 years ago and have done well. It's nothing youve heard of and Im NOWHERE close to owning a yacht or a private plane.

With this mild success I was feeling depressed, didn't know why I was building this company for. Sure I could buy nice things, but it seemed pointless.

Then I had kids and it changed everything, I love every minute of it. Its very clear to me I'm working for their future benefit.

I think the difference is that my mild success allows me some game changing luxuries:

- We have a maid that handles all cleaning duties.

- I'm super involved in my kids lives daily, but we do have a nanny that can care for them if we want to take a break. This allows me to lock myself in my office and play guitar, piano or read whenever I want to. After 60-90 minutes I start to crave hugging my kids and go play with them. Its also not a big deal for me to work out daily.

- I only have to take on work projects that interest me, all the boring stuff I've done 50 times I can delegate to other engineers. Forget building another API endpoint, integration or CRUD.

There's an interview with Steph Curry where they ask him what the greatest luxury money allows him: A Nanny.

So I guess my point is, money doesn't fix everything but it can make things a lot easier and enjoyable.