[geophile]

Sorry, but no. It was the wrong choice financially, but the right choice for my emotional well-being. I also reasoned about regrets years down the road -- I'd probably regret not having tried my own thing.

And I don't explain this "every chance [I] get". I think about it rarely, and discuss it even less. I've done well enough financially that giving up the Microsoft cash just doesn't matter. I just mention it here because it seemed relevant to the topic at hand.

[gruseom]

I find this reply entirely convincing. Thanks for sharing your experience—it's obviously relevant to the topic at hand.

[Chronic24]

Nice comment.

[WayneDB]

You really don't know if you made "the right choice" for your emotional well-being because you can only see one of any number of possible outcomes.

If you'd have gone with Big Bad Microsoft, a lot of things could have happened. At the instant of deciding - you could have learned how to make decisions based less on emotions and more on logic. You could have helped change the company culture instead of being relatively ineffectual. I wonder - what has your hate-based (I assume) decision really changed for anybody outside of a small Boston startup?

[geophile]

Wow, that's a harsh comment.

Being neither Vulcan nor omniscient, just human, I had to make a decision with imperfect information, and my instincts did play a role in that decision. Improving Microsoft corporate culture was not my goal. Improving the world was not my goal. My goal was to work on software that I was driven to write, using technology that I enjoyed using, and to provide a comfortable life for my family. I did all of those things.

I don't "hate" Microsoft, but combining what I knew of myself at the time, with what I observed at the company, I concluded that I would be happier elsewhere.

[rbanffy]

> You really don't know if you made "the right choice" for your emotional well-being because you can only see one of any number of possible outcomes.

The technology for that is not available yet.

It's interesting to speculate what would happen if everyone had perfect knowledge of the ultimate outcome of every decision and optimized them for their own goals. It would be a completely different world.