I feel like sharing something. It&#x27;s somewhat a tangent to this article (and isn&#x27;t special enough to really share as a separate submission or anything) but still related.<p>For a while, I was working 40+ hours per week at my dayjob and making far less than the median programmer salary in my city. I was paid hourly (so holidays were the worst; no paid time off but not allowed to work), had no benefits, etc.<p>A lot of articles I read on HN at the time made me feel worse about my situation, because their words of encouragement (&quot;value yourself! demand more! you can&#x27;t help the people you love if you die!&quot; etc) when filtered through my circumstances (&quot;plead guily to a federal felony&quot; -&gt; immediate permanent disadvantage with any salary or benefits negotiation; you&#x27;re lucky if <i>anyone, anywhere</i> will even believe they&#x27;re <i>legally allowed</i> to hire you) made me question whether or not I even valued myself.<p>I decided that, if the posts on HN and Reddit decrying impostor syndrome and investing time in one&#x27;s health were at all applicable to me, I clearly must not care if I live or die. So I started downing more and more energy drinks and spending more and more time on side-projects, hoping that one of them would finally become impressive enough to serve as a distraction to prospective employers.<p>That line of thinking only got derailed when I realized that employment is a sucker&#x27;s game and consulting is the way to go. None of the messages intended to change my mind had a positive effect, they just made me sad.<p>All of the &quot;take care of yourself&quot; styled articles made me feel bad but never prompted positive change. The title &quot;Dead Men Write No Code&quot; made me remember the older posts I read and I sort of rolled my eyes expecting the same spiel I&#x27;ve heard a thousand times. I was pleasantly surprised to see a well-written, concise, and on-point warning about symptoms and their possible consequences.<p>If anyone reading this is in the same sort of situation I was in (working 40+ thankless hours per week and spending all your off-time trying to work on building your own company to get out of your own personal hell), I&#x27;m sorry to say I don&#x27;t have any advice to offer. Every situation is different. Feel free to reach out to me, however, if you need someone to vent to. And if I do have any ideas, I&#x27;ll let you know.