> but not everyone is cut out for eating ramen for two years
We all know failure rate in startups is somewhere around 95%, so young folks are mostly being already smart to not listen that much to those few loud ones with survivor's bias. And even those who don't fail, owners often screw early employees out of any meaningful compensation as company grows.
Its fine to eat for 2 years ramens, but then if its still probable you will have nothing to show afterwards apart from worse health and wasted life for somebody else's success, that's fail right there. Even corporations are better proposition in such case - 2 years of solid effort under good manager can land you a nice senior job with adequate compensation (or just ask for it elsewhere, thats how to elevate one's salary a few times).
As for general topic - if folks want to retire, most of them will, either by assessing well their declining physical and mental health, or simply having other passions. Life can bring so much more beauty to those few remaining years compared to anything coming out of sitting in front of screen, but not everybody had the luxury of discovering this.
In general, the only decently paying job titles in the startup world are "Founder" and "Co-founder". Everyone else is probably better off working for a medium-sized boring tech company, outside of the unicorn startup outliers we've all heard of.
> Life can bring so much more beauty to those few remaining years compared to anything coming out of sitting in front of screen, but not everybody had the luxury of discovering this.
Being forced out of the workforce was one of the worst things to happen to me.
Being forced out of the workforce was one of the best things to happen to me.
I was quite angry, but, not having someone destroying my work, and blaming me for it, has been great.
But I am looking forward to spending the rest of my life, standing (not sitting) in front of a screen.
The difference is that I do it on my terms.
Maybe one of the more gratifying things that has come from this, is the realization that I was mostly right, and my bosses mostly wrong; even though they were constantly telling me that I was wrong.
We all know failure rate in startups is somewhere around 95%, so young folks are mostly being already smart to not listen that much to those few loud ones with survivor's bias. And even those who don't fail, owners often screw early employees out of any meaningful compensation as company grows.
Its fine to eat for 2 years ramens, but then if its still probable you will have nothing to show afterwards apart from worse health and wasted life for somebody else's success, that's fail right there. Even corporations are better proposition in such case - 2 years of solid effort under good manager can land you a nice senior job with adequate compensation (or just ask for it elsewhere, thats how to elevate one's salary a few times).
As for general topic - if folks want to retire, most of them will, either by assessing well their declining physical and mental health, or simply having other passions. Life can bring so much more beauty to those few remaining years compared to anything coming out of sitting in front of screen, but not everybody had the luxury of discovering this.