The last two months have been two of the hardest months of my life. I considered killing myself for the first time in probably a decade.
Prior to May I was already not in the best place. My main source of income, yield earned on crypto holdings, had been going down and down with the market to where I was having to dip more and more into principal—which itself was going down—to cover our expenses.
This is what led to the original concern over whether I can still justify keeping Minor Dissent my priority and led to the reinstatement of Actualization Hub.
Then in May I converted all the USDC I’d accumulated over 2021 from profit taking which I planned to pay the IRS with to UST for a 2% increase in monthly interest. A few days later, it was worth basically nothing. This was obviously devastating and led to me realizing that I’ve been a lazy pussy who has coasted for too long and that I need to get serious about providing real value again. At the time, the idea was to reinstate my coaching practice.
However, a few weeks later, Celsius, who I had been holding 25% of my net worth in for the interest, locked withdrawals and has now filed for bankruptcy. Thankfully, it was only 25%, but I obviously withdrew all my assets from all of the interest platforms as a result and my income went to zero.
Also around this time, I completed my taxes and learned that how much I owed was twice what I expected. All the cash I’d saved to pay it was gone, my net worth was now 33% of what it was six months prior, 25% of that was locked in Celsius, leaving me only about 25% of my former net worth. Meaning that a tax bill I was suspecting to be a few percentage points of my wealth was now going to be almost half of it.
Also, throughout all this my wife was basically in preterm labor and my second son was born a week after Celsius locked withdrawals.
I now had a new baby and three months of cash before I’d have to sell assets at the bottom to cover my expenses. Suffice to say, full crisis mode was engaged.
I was originally planning on announcing AH coaching to see if there were any bites before I went out and looked for a “real” job, but after thorough deliberation I concluded that while yes I took things “easy” for 2021, the real problem with AH is not me “being a pussy” but that it’s just not a good product.
My original vision for AH was always as a free or at least very cheap resource that scaled, something that helps people like me get access to information I wish I had when I was younger. The fundamental problem with the coaching model has always been that the people who can afford premium priced coaching don’t have these types of problems, and the people that do can’t afford it—or at least, to get them to pay for it requires a level of sales aptitude and a willingness to take on massive responsibility for their decisions which I simply do not possess. I thought maybe I could find some kind of middle ground but after two cumulative years of failing to find it I am sufficiently convinced that my “original” intuition for AH (and MD) as “philanthropic” “public service” type things where I assume they will make zero money and if I get some donations then great was correct.
A normal functional person probably would have just announced anyway to see how it goes, but I am too defectively authentic that I’d rather get a job than compromise my passion projects for money.
So, I started looking for a job. First just anywhere. I strongly considered trying to weasel my way into Gallup and having them teach me how to do business and personality consulting like the pro’s. I could have gotten away with it—I have a knack for convincing important people to take a chance on me—but the more people I talked to and the more I thought about the idea of working in “industrial and organizational psychology” the more I realized that I don’t think I’d actually be any happier doing that than working in technology. Whatever this weird talent in psychology and personal development I have is, it does not fit neatly into the business world. Why “start over” in a new industry, probably having to spend $25K on a degree, so I can make less money just to enjoy my job maybe five or ten percent more at best?
Long story short I ended up getting two offers at the only two tech companies I interviewed with, they bid each other up in salary from $70K to $100K and I chose the one that offered me full remote work.
How do I feel?
I mean I’m still a poorfag. This salary will just barely cover my expenses plus the $2K/mo I will owe to the tax man for the next seven years. So, from a financial position it’s not like some amazing outcome.
But it does prevent me from having to sell any assets, which is nice. And it’s the first time I’ve ever made a six-figure salary. And more importantly, jobs are kinda sick. Having external systems that set how much I work and what I work on to some degree is relieving. Like every day, I will have contributed something of value. Maybe it’s not the most valuable thing in the world but it’s something. Most every day will be a success, unlike the last three years where most every day was a failure.
Also IT in particular is sick. Your salary is directly correlated to how much YouTube you watch (one of my few talents). You don’t have to be a master salesman, you don’t have to be a phenomenal writer, you don’t have to find “product market fit” or whatever. You just have to know obscure shit about technology and you’re really useful and important. If I just spend two or three hours a day watching YouTube videos on technology every day for a few years, I can easily hit $160K if not $200K annual salary.
And it’s not like I don’t like technology. I mean I don’t like anything. If there was any question of this previously there certainly isn’t after eighteen months of basically being able to do whatever I want all day and hating it. But of the list of things I dislike the least, technology is near the top.
I start a week from tomorrow. So… how do I feel?
Excited. A little worried. A little fear of imposter syndrome. Will they find out I’m an idiot and insane person who doesn’t know anything about anything? The good thing is that one of my greatest weaknesses is selling myself and frankly I thought I totally blew it on the interview but they called me “brilliant” and want to hire me so it’s their fault.
The fact that I am not an NPC moron makes me a hot commodity as an employee. I forget how stupid and lazy and incompetent most people are. I think if I forgot this less I’d have lots of self-esteem. Probably too much self-esteem. If I measured myself against the average or even SD1 person I’d probably be a super confident narcissist. But I don’t compare myself to them. My intelligence is in the top 2% so my results should be there at bare minimum. $100K salary is only top 12% for my age (31). Meaning I am a loser for my intelligence level. If I can get to $200K by 35 then I can at least be where my intelligence says I should be.
I’m still in the 96th percentile for Net worth for my age, so at least there’s that. I mean it’s down from the 99th percentile it was a few months ago. And it’s more like 70th percentile assuming Celsius is RIP and I’m factoring in all the money I owe to IRS.
Whatever. Nothing I can do. Other than learn and work hard and be strategic so I can focus on doing the most important things that will provide value to this company, grow my skill set, and try not get all worked up and neurotic about dumb shit I can’t control.
As with all terrible disasters, there is a silver lining. I wish I didn’t have to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to come to these realizations, but such is the case when you’re a stubborn asshole who thinks he knows everything.
Going full time at a business before you have PMF is retarded. I like technology. Technology is a good career. There is no “perfect” career. Everything is hard. Might as well do something you can tolerate that pays well. And with a few years of strategic learning and positioning, I can get to a point where I’m working twenty hours a week on my schedule while making more money that I can figure out what to do with.
My plan is to full commit to this company for two years and then re-evaluate from there depending on my skills, the market, and the growth opportunity.
I have two children now. To be honest I hate newborns. My first son I hated when he was born. I mean hate is a strong word. But I really didn’t like him. I don’t know how anyone can like a newborn. You can’t communicate with them. They need constant attention. You always have to be holding them. You can’t tinker. You can’t do any “deep work”. You can hardly even think. The hardest part about the last month wasn’t really the problems themselves but that I have a new screaming baby that makes it impossible to think about how to solve them.
My eldest son, who is now twenty-one months, is fucking awesome though. Second coolest person in the world behind my wife. Toddlers are the apex of human form. So this new kid will become cool soon enough. He’s getting there. Starting to finally sleep a bit at night so I can write and study.
Anyway, I guess there is your update on how I’m doing. Things were shit. Now things are getting better. I’m an engineer now. And will be for several years. I have a clear path to becoming very useful and making a lot of money which feels nice and makes me happy. Maybe in a year or two my wife and I can stop living like students. We probably won’t—we’ve always been like this and probably always will be. But maybe we can like move somewhere full of rain and trees. And I can have my own office to focus in. And I can build a kart and go racing and we can travel a bit with the boys.
Once I get in a good groove at this new place, I’ll probably start publishing some MD stuff periodically. And probably some AH stuff when I get the inspiration. If you want, I can stop writing in my journal and start barfing my feelings here again.
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Good dae.
Good update fren... Lots of love and God bless
I know it's a bit of an old post but congrats on the job. Six figures to work remotely seems like literally dream employment for me right now.
I make 60k as a chemist inhaling toxic shit all day and have been trying to switch to tech, with just a BS in chemistry and 5-6 years work experience in my field. I've been studying MERN fullstack web dev for over a year on and off but find it truly tedious (except maybe backend stuff which is kind of cool).
I am curious, what "subfield" of IT are you working in? All coding bootcamps, both free and paid, seem to focus on web development, but the idea of doing flexbox bullshit for 10 hours a day for the next 2-5 years sounds like hell to me. Just wondering if there is some alternative subject I can study to get a bridgehead into the profession.