Quit Your Job
I know it&#x27;s bad form to move so quickly into meta-discussion on here, but I feel a lot of the comments in the thread right now are endemic of a certain closed-mindedness that has, to me, come to define in part the Hacker News zeitgeist, which stands in something of a contrast to the site&#x27;s supposed founding principle of intellectual curiosity.<p>There is plenty of prior art in Western (and other traditions of) philosophy in the spirit of this essay. Nietzsche and Bataille talked about work in a similar way. Cioran pretty explicitly embraced failure (or the risk of failure) as virtue, as this work does. This essay seems to be saying something like: take a big risk, quite possibly fail, live your principles even if it means being an &quot;outcast&quot;, commit to it, and who cares what other people think, because in doing so you will find your people. The response in here seems to be &quot;look at this guy taking big risks and failing, what an outcast.&quot; Of course, that is surely the point.<p>I have, as I&#x27;m sure many on here have, found success in grinding away at boring problems, suppressing any kind of &quot;call of God&quot; or desire to do something larger, so we could build a nest egg and stable future for ourselves with MAGMA money. This essay is sort of a direct assault on the aesthetics of that approach. As for me, I have grown quite tired of it, so this piece does resonate with me.