I find her story fascinating as many glimpses into big corporates are for me.
I've spent my 20s constantly oscillating between going broke trying to build a scalable startup and earning good money by working freelance. I was breaking my back getting things off the ground but also managing the freelancing projects, the effort left little place for holidays/friends or parties. I basically never went to conferences as it was either way to expensive or time that could be potentially billable.
After realising how toxic my lifestyle focused on "making it" had become I decided to join a profitable SaaS company that needed my skills to build a future proof software platform out of their legacy system.
Now at 31 I've got a good position in that company with a good chunk of stock options, I'm awaiting my second son.
Reading her story to me makes me wonder how much I've missed, just finishing University and applying to a large tech company might have been equally backbreaking, but at least I would have seen more of the world, networked more and maybe ended up with some usable savings to show for it. Typical greener-grass situation I guess.
> I've spent my 20s constantly oscillating between going broke trying to build a scalable startup and earning good money by working freelance.
I think the "scalable startup" fixation is the worst legacy of our industry.
There has always been an enormous professional world of people in many fields start either a solo consultancy or an agency/firm/practice and by their 40s they are paying themselves somewhere in the six figures.
"Will it scale" in the VC sense is not one of their concerns. They still get rich.
I've spent my 20s constantly oscillating between going broke trying to build a scalable startup and earning good money by working freelance. I was breaking my back getting things off the ground but also managing the freelancing projects, the effort left little place for holidays/friends or parties. I basically never went to conferences as it was either way to expensive or time that could be potentially billable.
After realising how toxic my lifestyle focused on "making it" had become I decided to join a profitable SaaS company that needed my skills to build a future proof software platform out of their legacy system.
Now at 31 I've got a good position in that company with a good chunk of stock options, I'm awaiting my second son.
Reading her story to me makes me wonder how much I've missed, just finishing University and applying to a large tech company might have been equally backbreaking, but at least I would have seen more of the world, networked more and maybe ended up with some usable savings to show for it. Typical greener-grass situation I guess.