I got extremely lucky. I got dragged kicking and screaming into being an early hire at Google.
> What did it feel like when you first realised it was going to be true that you would never have to work again if you didn't want to?
Kind of surreal. On the day of the IPO, one minute I was still a working stiff, and the next minute I was suddenly looking at an account with my name on it with more digits than I had ever seen before.
> How old were you?
39
> What was it specifically that made the cash that ended up in your pocket?
Not sure what you mean here. The IPO obviously, but that was set up by the work I did at Google, which in turn was set up by the work I'd done prior to that, which in turn was set up by going to college, which in turn was set up by doing geeky things in high school that college admissions committees liked.
> Do you feel happy in your life?
Yes, but it took a while to get here. Having money is certainly nicer than not having it, but it's no panacea. It comes with its own set of problems, and it has taken me a while to figure out how to deal with them (still working on that actually). Nice problems to have to be sure, I wouldn't trade my life for anyone else's. But even nice problems to have are still problems.
It's also important to realize that money is only useful as a lever to accomplish some other goal, and if you don't know what you want out of life, money is not going to help much in figuring it out. A lot of people who make money without first getting to know themselves well enough to know what they really want out of life end up being miserable because they discover that having money in and of itself doesn't make them happy and then they are lost.
BTW, one of the things I found that I really want out of life is to be productive. So even though I don't have to work any more, I still do. I'm actually busier now than I was when I had to work to pay the rent.
I haven't QA'ed this beyond a quick eyeball of the results. Obviously it could delete a lot of stuff unintentionally if comments further down the page are of a different format, but the html converted word doc doesn't give you a whole lot to work with.
I initially turned down their offer (I had a cushy gig at JPL) but Urs Hoelzle just kept pushing me to change my mind, so finally I said, OK, I'll do it for a year. How bad could it be? (Turns out it was pretty bad, but it worked out OK :-)
I got extremely lucky. I got dragged kicking and screaming into being an early hire at Google.
> What did it feel like when you first realised it was going to be true that you would never have to work again if you didn't want to?
Kind of surreal. On the day of the IPO, one minute I was still a working stiff, and the next minute I was suddenly looking at an account with my name on it with more digits than I had ever seen before.
> How old were you?
39
> What was it specifically that made the cash that ended up in your pocket?
Not sure what you mean here. The IPO obviously, but that was set up by the work I did at Google, which in turn was set up by the work I'd done prior to that, which in turn was set up by going to college, which in turn was set up by doing geeky things in high school that college admissions committees liked.
> Do you feel happy in your life?
Yes, but it took a while to get here. Having money is certainly nicer than not having it, but it's no panacea. It comes with its own set of problems, and it has taken me a while to figure out how to deal with them (still working on that actually). Nice problems to have to be sure, I wouldn't trade my life for anyone else's. But even nice problems to have are still problems.
It's also important to realize that money is only useful as a lever to accomplish some other goal, and if you don't know what you want out of life, money is not going to help much in figuring it out. A lot of people who make money without first getting to know themselves well enough to know what they really want out of life end up being miserable because they discover that having money in and of itself doesn't make them happy and then they are lost.
BTW, one of the things I found that I really want out of life is to be productive. So even though I don't have to work any more, I still do. I'm actually busier now than I was when I had to work to pay the rent.