I Quit My Job

http://normalkid.com/2008/07/01/i-quit-my-job/

by arn • 18 years ago

32 21 18 years ago

thought people would be interested in hearing of a "success" story so to speak. If I had had a traditional 9-5 job, I probably would have quit in 2003-2004. but for various reasons it dragged out to 2008. I never really considered myself a "blogger", though it seems that's what I've become. My other projects will not necessarily be blogs in the traditional sense.

arn4• 18 years ago

babul• 18 years ago

I have just been reading your blog and macrumors (which I had never heard of). It is actually good to see you have done well especially as your success is based on the model I like best - organic growth based on delivering value to people.

wallflower2• 18 years ago

I love MacRumors because even though they are huge they are still are in some arenas an underdog (e.g. full-time staff of Gizmodo)... Like other blogs I am addicted to, I manually type in the site address at least once, if not twice a day.

> My other projects will not necessarily be blogs in the traditional sense.

Maybe we can look forward to some custom iPhone/iPod Touch apps that are a different way to read/change the way we read our news?

petercooper• 18 years ago

That's interesting. MacRumors.com is the only blog I manually visit every few days too. Almost everything else is in my RSS reader but for some reason I still visit MacRumors "by hand."

tptacek• 18 years ago

He's licensed to practice medicine. He doesn't need much luck. If everything fails, he has an enviable fallback.

icey• 18 years ago

True, but it's also informative that he's not replacing a career of telephone tech support with blogging.

ojbyrne• 18 years ago

How long can you not practice medicine before your skills deteriorate and your knowledge become obsolete? Probably just as fast as it happens to programmers.

Deadsunrise• 18 years ago

Yes, because humans change as fast a computer technologies , right? I think that next week they will be putting out Lungs 2.0

Come on, if you are a doctor you can always be a doctor, in a couple weeks you can get up-to-date with the discoveries made in your field in the last 10 years.

dcurtis4• 18 years ago

So after all that work and school, you're giving it up for MacRumors? What led to your decision? Did you have a passion for medicine?

arn4• 18 years ago

I probably don't have a "passion" for medicine, but few people do. I personally don't know any doctors that truly have a passion for it. (I doubt, for example, that many would continue to do it if they won the lotto.)

I felt like I was good at medicine and enjoyed it day to day, but given the choice of doing it vs being able to just do something I was doing for fun anyway and spending more time with my family, I think the choice became easy.

The flip side to that, is I do have a passion for what I'm doing now. If I won the lotto, I think I would continue to run MacRumors, and still try to launch some other web projects I've had in my mind.

dcurtis4• 18 years ago

Really? You think passion for medicine is that rare? I sit in biology classes with my mouth wide open, in absolute awe at the principles that guide the human body. Then, when I think about applications of that knowledge in clinical settings (especially relating to the brain, in the same way that V.S. Ramachandran practices and researches), it excites me.

When I think about practicing medicine and helping people by embarking on a journey of diagnosis every day, I get the same burning sensation of excitement in my chest that I get when I think about starting a company.

I don't know how someone can endure the torture of medical school, residency, and then a practice without being passionate and absolutely in love with what they do.

Most of the "I quit my job!" posts I read here are about people who code in a dead-end corporate job who are escaping for entrepreneurship (still coding). You had a completely different, successful career that you gave up. I find that interesting.

(Also, I read MacRumors every day. Thanks for that.)

rob• 18 years ago

"So after all that work and school, you're giving it up for MacRumors? What led to your decision?"

The insane amount of money that MacRumors makes?

wallflower2• 18 years ago

Based on CPM/monthly uniques, I'd hazard to say it might be a bit more than his physician salary. We might have to add Arn to that News.YC thread about notable people here. I'm still amazed he ran the site on auto-pilot part-time while holding down rotations/practicing. And he reads HackerNews!

noor420• 18 years ago

Yeah man, as long as you have fun doing this Mac blogging, its worth it.

I hate Mac personally, but am happy to see you are willing to give the community the fullest. Love what you do!

I Quit My Job

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