alt Hacker News> A common lament among founders, even successful ones, is: "Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my twenties".
Interesting perspective, I feel like I see this much more attributed to someone working on a meaningless problem for a paycheck at a large company. I guess it speaks to the difficulty in finding purpose in any endeavor in your twenties.
Nice conclusion on what to truly value.
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I have this crazy insatiable addiction to food and shelter. My paycheck supports my addiction.
Thought experiment: you have three sets of 10 recent college grads. One set works as enterprise devs in a tier 2 city, one set works at BigTech and another set works for a startup, which group do you think will have the highest median income after 10 years?
I would much rather work for a “meaningless paycheck” (and RSUs in a public company), than bust my ass at a startup for below market wages and “equity” that is illiquid and will statistically be worthless.
> "Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my twenties".
Is near universal to anyone in their twenties regardless of job type/sector. It's the start of most people's adult life, and without the lack of experience that age brings, it's natural to question if you're on the "right path" and/or be swayed by potential other opportunities you've not yet explored.
Hell, even with the experience of age, people still often ask themselves that very same question, and not just for their twenties either.
But wagies clock out at 5 and live that half of their lives, severance style.
Startups/entrepeneurs often don't even have that duality and live our single life entirely through work. I would identify with "wasting my twenties" in the sense that the life of the entrepeneur isn't really age specific, it would be quite similar to do business at 20 than to do it at 50. The only difference being experience. But there's not much use of my young body, or libido, strength, that is typical of youth experiences.
It's basically a tradeoff between wasting your personal life or wasting your professional life. If you get a job that is truly 9-5 (or maybe even a bit less), it leaves a lot of time for forging friendships and relationships and learning hobbies while you're still young, doing sports, seeing the world.
Founders usually feel they're missing out on all or most of these. And some of them probably feel like they don't really have a choice - maybe their specialty/resume is one that's difficult to get hired but skilled enough to make money on their own.
However, plenty of jobs take all your time and still feel meaningless. Many (most? - median personal income in USA is $42,000) don't pay enough for people to really socialize much anyways or do most of the hobbies they might enjoy or travel at all. Generally, having the choice of "HOW should I 'waste' my twenties?" is a fairly privileged one.