[srconstantin]

I'm so relieved to hear this from someone else.

About two years ago I read an article by Peter Thiel and it was kind of my "ask what you can do for your country" moment. That was when I realized that I didn't want to be an academic, that I believed people who built technology in the private sector were actually doing more good in the world. So I thought "I want to be an entrepreneur."

I've had to scale back a little as I did a couple of start-ups and learned how ignorant I was. I'm not ready to be CEO of anything. I'm not even sure I want to be; I want to write algorithms more than I want to manage a company. Honestly, right now, I want to work with people smarter than I am, and get better at what I do.

I'm done with the notion that you should always start a company right away in your early twenties, that you shouldn't have to take any time to pay your dues or build mastery. I don't want to work at a silly, unsuccessful start-up just for the sake of "being an entrepreneur." I want to get as good as I can at what I do. I want to work somewhere where I'm not the only one who's heard of an inner product. I want to do something substantive, and I'd rather do something substantive at 35 than something crappy at 23.