I Quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

https://medium.com/@dvassallo/only-intrinsic-motivation-lasts-92c0497cf97c

by wslh • 7 years ago

31 31 7 years ago

every time I read a story like this I think the author's earnings have just peaked but they don't realize it

What would your recommended best course of action to someone in this position be? Say you've worked 8 years and went from $75k to $550k pre-tax total comp - would you recommend that they continue slogging for another 2-3 years or?

I'm personally planning on working for large companies the first 3-4 years of my career (out of college) saving ~50% of my earnings post tax then giving some early stage companies another go (whether it be joining in early growth stages or as a founder).

I find it hard to believe that more than say the top 10% of engineering or management talent in tech is making $500k+ total comp in 2019. But I'm open to being corrected.

ignoramous• 7 years ago

Tenuring at BigTech is likely to be beneficial more often than not: http://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

If you're really into making wealth in short amount of time, then you might be right in wanting to be a founder or join a hypergrowth startup: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

screye• 7 years ago

If you are still college, you might not want to strictly plan too far forward. People, priorities and goals change drastically over a span of 3-5 years.

The top 10% of all reported employees at Google are predicted to make ~$300k a year. This is after selecting every variable in your favor. I preselected for the highest paying big company, most paying country, chose stats from Paysa (anecdotally they inflate numbers the most) and judged all TC as cash. Even levels.fyi (more reliable) and blind put a Google L7 at 550k.

Most optimistic guesses put 5% of people at Google at L7 and above.

So even in the most optimistic case it isn't 10%. If, I had to guess I would say the top 0.05% make 500k or more. At best.

HillaryBriss3• 7 years ago

IDK what course of action they should take.

I just think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the unicorns account for a big share of the cash stream which is actually accessible to a working software developer.

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that software dev skills aren't worth all that much in isolation.

A developer who spent many of their prime earning years (15 - 30 years of age) tapping into that stream at a unicorn will find it more difficult, if not impossible, to do that again later in their career.

marssaxman• 7 years ago

When I read this story, what I saw looked to me like the author very much did recognize that their earnings had peaked; they chose a reduced income deliberately, in order to pursue a more satisfying life.

munchbunny2• 7 years ago

This story template increasingly raises conflicting and mostly negative reactions from me. It wasn't always this way.

To the author's credit, $500k in comp as an engineer is not easy. Kudos to anyone who pulls that off.

The reason for my reaction is this: the title can be interpreted two ways:

"I had a great setup but I'm giving it up to take a risk."

"I want to feel motivated again and I'm willing to give up a lot of money to do so."

But I increasingly dislike these posts because (1) we know there's a strong correlation between having a lot of money and success in entrepreneurship. Starting out with a safety net is the best way to derisk! In that sense, this post is just saying "I'm taking a risk after I've derisked it!" And (2) talking about how much money you'd give up to feel motivated is pretty explicitly signalling success to other people in the "I earn enough to be able to talk about it like this" group. That's just upper-middle class signalling.

The author's other posts also don't really address the elephant in the room. He was pulling in $500k. If he fails, and even if he wipes out his savings, he's going back to pulling in more than enough money to live very comfortably while still saving enough for kids and retirement. That may feel like more risk than he's comfortable with, but that means he's about as derisked as it gets at a personal level. His explanation in the post titled "How I set myself up financially before I took the plunge." has to do with allocating his savings to make sure he and his family are taken care of, but it doesn't really talk about the point that he at any point can choose to go back to earning more than enough money. That's a privilege that very few people have. He certainly earned that privilege, but how many entrepreneurs can say "I'm setting aside $1m of my liquid money to bootstrap a startup"?

If the author had left the money out, it would have been a great post about searching for motivation, which we all struggle with, but I think the money aspect undermines the point.

noego2• 7 years ago

Not everything has to have a point or engage in privilege-self-flagellation. The author has an interesting life story and he is sharing it. You as the reader are welcome to do with it whatever you want to. Some people like myself are curious to hear about how someone built a 500k/year career and why they decided to walk away from it. If you don't find it interesting, just downvote it, ignore it and move on. I think you're reading into it and projecting far more than you need to

munchbunny2• 7 years ago

Why do you think I'm projecting far more than I need to?

If you don't find it interesting, just downvote it, ignore it and move on. I think you're reading into it and projecting far more than you need to

You are always welcome to downvote my comment, ignore it, and move on, but you seem to think it's worth disagreeing with me in more words, so here we are.

I think it's reasonable to comment on why I disagree with or dislike a post, especially since I was quite specific about both criticisms and suggestions around what I thought the author was trying to discuss.

Not everything has to have a point or engage in privilege-self-flagellation.

I'm not asking the author to self-flagellate over privilege. Here's what I suggested verbatim: "If the author had left the money out, it would have been a great post about searching for motivation, which we all struggle with, but I think the money aspect undermines the point." Is that unfair? You don't have to agree with me, but that doesn't sound like a request to self-flagellate.

DVassallo9• 7 years ago

Author here. The reason I call out the money is to emphasize that everything was going great with my career. And despite that, I realized that a career as an employee wasn’t the ideal one for me.

I’m very risk averse, but not in the traditional sense where I’m paranoid about losing anything. I protect the (few) important things aggressively and then I feel free to speculate with the rest (savings, time, reputation, etc).

abc_lisper• 7 years ago

Why am I seeing this post again? I remember seeing this or something very similar a few months ago. To me this feels like a humble brag than anything. Its great you were able to pull 500k but it isn't very useful to read an article like this. Most of us aren't making 500kpa, and we are not you, thus most of your thought process doesn't apply to us, so why should we care? Now, if you did do something cool technically (or) served users, we are all ears.

TheLuddite• 7 years ago

This is really irresponsible thing to do.

kradroy3• 7 years ago

It could be, but here we only see a fragment of this person's life. I've often found that people who do this type of thing come from well-heeled families. And they conveniently leave out the details.

"I quit my $500k/year job to paint because mom and dad said I could convert the estate's 2500 sq ft carriage house into an in-law unit in case I don't become the next Andy Warhol" doesn't really sound inspirational and compelling.

What type of person throws his non-trivial money in his audience's face and gives an "Eat, Pray, Love" lecture? A clueless dolt. At least go the "Gospel of Wealth" route and tell us to found libraries and coding academies.

DVassallo9• 7 years ago

I described my finances in great detail in another blog post. I don’t think I’m risking anything consequential, because I can always go get a job again if this doesn’t work out for any reason. I definitely don’t think I’m doing anything irresponsible.

halfjoking• 7 years ago

Only if you want to stay married.

I wasn't interested in this post, but I'd like to see a follow-up a year later. Being an indie dev is a lot different than working at a publicly traded corporation. If I had one piece of advice it would be to get an office in a co-working space. Being in an environment where other people are running their businesses just gets you in the right mindset and helps form good habits.

kradroy3• 7 years ago

The title is "Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts"

This needs to be "Only Intrinsic Motivation Lasts if You're Not Expecting a Reward"[1]. His career at Amazon demonstrated that. Like another commenter stated: "His earnings peaked." He stopped getting rewarded, so his motivation went down.

A better solution: Keep your job, but stop caring about being rewarded at work. Get your rewards from your personal life (marriage, children, social groups, hobbies, etc).

[1] https://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how-rewards-can-backfire-a...

DVassallo9• 7 years ago

Author here. Maybe my earnings at Amazon had peaked (unlikely but possible). I realized that rewards hurt my long-term motivation rather than help. My income right now is about $0, and I’m not aiming at getting back to the same income level (if it happens, good, but I can have a good satisfied life with much less). This change had nothing to do with income maximization. I prefer taking more control over my lifestyle instead.

kradroy3• 7 years ago

"But what I was looking for was something that I could do for a living that was also driven by this type of motivation: the intrinsic kind."

Read the study I linked in my other response. Doing something "for a living" means you expect to be rewarded for it. According to the study, if you do something that intrinsically rewards you, you will eventually lose motivation to do it when you expect to be rewarded for it. You're setting yourself up for failure.

I experienced this same phenomena almost 15 years ago. About 2-3 years after I started programming professionally I hated it. I kept at it for 10 years, being miserable most of that time, then I changed to a management track.

I fucking hate management. It's a mix of babysitting adults and coping with regular disappointment. Nevertheless my life overall is much better. Don't, however, misconstrue my hatred of management to mean that I do my job poorly. The hatred actually makes me reflect on myself and my skills, and I constantly seek to improve them. Hatred is also a source of passion. Use it wisely.

I have zero expectations of my work and there is no reward that would make this work meaningful. I have removed my career's power to bring me into existential crisis. My advice: don't do something you love for a living, and/or learn to remove your occupation's ability to contribute to your self-worth.

user123456789a2• 7 years ago

Well, my friend - your earnings had peaked. You are not getting a dollar from was anymore - and now you will be clawing 200ph Max from army of younger guys, ready to work longer hours for half of that rate.

You did foolish mistake - because of ego.

Good luck and try not to stress too much.

chriselles• 7 years ago

Wow!

Compensation has changed dramatically since I worked at Amazon, although I worked in non technical Operations Management.

I can relate to leaving a LOT of money on the table(back in the days of BiG AMZN stock options and SMALL salaries).

Orgs and their cultures change, people and their motivations change.

We only get one life.

So best to be happy and/or challenged.

I wish the author well and will try to follow his updates.

SumYungGuy19• 7 years ago

To the folks claiming he's not taking a risk, he's taking more of a risk than most similar articles.

He's got two kids and a mortgage to worry about and he's assuming whatever he cooks up will be able to add $250/month in value in perpetuity while he has no PoC implemented.

His monthly budget and insurance setup were particularly fascinating.

https://danielvassallo.com/from-employee-to-bootstrapper/

DVassallo9• 7 years ago

Actually it depends on what risk it is. Sure, I’m risking a lot of money (my savings), time, and career growth opportunities. But I actually don’t think I’m risking anything consequential. If this doesn’t work out for whatever reason, I can always go get a job again that makes ends meet. It doesn’t have to be the same job with the same income. My family’s standard of living is not really at risk with this experiment I’m doing with my career. I’m quite risk averse, but I’m careful to separate what is really worth protecting aggressively from what I can be free to speculate with.

I Quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself

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