I think that goes deeper than the &quot;story we want to tell&quot; - in other words, I don&#x27;t think everyone is faking it. Look at Maslow&#x27;s Hierarchy of Needs:<p>- Physiological 
- Safety
- Love&#x2F;Belonging
- Esteem
- Self-actualization<p>If you&#x27;re, say, a programmer in SF right now, the first two are definitely taken care of for you. Love&#x2F;Belonging <i>can</i> be present as a result of your job, but it&#x27;s also possible that you &quot;stop drinking the kool-aid&quot; at some point (as the author did), so it&#x27;s not a given. Esteem is really person-to-person, but it&#x27;s probably not coming from your work as much as what you get in exchange for your work.<p>Self-actualization is the one you&#x27;re referring to when you say &quot;what does this all mean, man?&quot;. In other words, am I doing what I should be doing? It&#x27;s definitely the hardest of the bunch, and it&#x27;s hard to work on that one if any of the others aren&#x27;t rock-solid (hence the pyramid shape). Only some people nail it down before they die.<p>Working in tech, I&#x27;ve never felt like I was doing what I should be doing. I&#x27;m just lucky enough to be able to make good money while figuring out what that is. I find that that approach to work (I&#x27;m trading my time for money) feels (to me) the most honest, and leaves me in the best headspace. It doesn&#x27;t exactly fit with the startup office culture we have here in SF, so I do consulting, which is a comical situation - I charge a higher hourly rate to interact with this culture less often.