It's that simple.

And a good business person is worth their fair share of equity in a SU environment

And even still, sometimes things get built and never turn into a real business precisely because of this hubris. And 99.9% of the time, the ones that DO grow over time would have grown much much faster if "the business guy" had been there all along.

In my (extensive) experience, I find that there IS a way out and it is rarely found in encouraging message board platitudes. Here is how I extract myself from work situations, good, bad, and otherwise.

- Form a plan. Well, duh. But the truth is that every "I hate my job" situation is born of decisions you made and can be solved by decisions you get to make. In your case it sounds like the reasons you took the job are now gone. That's GREAT news! You no longer have to satisfy those things and can start doing what's best for you.

The next part of the plan is having a plan. If my cases (as with most), the only thing keeping me in the job was the financial commitments I had in life. I have a wife, an ex-wife, child support, houses, health insurance, etc. It addds up so simply quitting is never an option. I find that the way to return my fire, my energy after work (and even before work) when my job has taken away my will to live is to build something new. I don't know what you do for work but it doesn't matter: everyone has SOMETHING they can teach, share, do perform to make more money than they make at work. Everyone. For me it's consulting (fractional CRO) and writing (blogs, case studies, whitepapers, ebooks). In the age of AI any skill you have can be polished up and marketed with a $20 ChatGPT subscription, a WebFlow site (skip WordPress because Matt is a baby) and a weekend of focus. Uber driver, dog walker, fence painter, driveway pressure-washer, there is so much money out there for people willing to TRY that it isn't funny. "I can't replace my income" is a myth and those of us not scared to try live in a different world than the rest of you.

Next, and this is crucial, you need a Burn the Boats deadline. Without a deadline you will never leave your job. Absent any other forcing function, you HAVE to put a date on the calendar and tell yourself constantly "I am quitting on this day." You'd be surprised how much a deadline will enforce behavior.

Now, every day when you wake up WRITE DOWN with pen and paper, not on your iphone or as a mental note, the ONE thing you are going to do today that has the highest amount of leverage in executing your plan. Every day, weekends included. There is no time to waste. Even if you feel you don't know exactly what to do, pick what you THINK is the most important thing and do that.

Finaly, draft your resignation letter and keep it in your pocket, make it the screensaver on your phone, tape it to the bathroom mirror.

good luck, you can do it and you'll be thankful you did. Because once you've done it once you know you can do it again...and you'll never ever go to work at a job you hate another day in your life.

Life IS infinitely more convenient and A biproduct of that is missing out on things that are (or used to be) authentic experiences.

Is it a guarantee that going to the grocery store is certain to be a thrilling adventure whereas Instacart is ceratain not to be? Of course not. There is a non-zero chance you meet the love of your life at the Grocery store just as there is a non-zero chance you meet the love of your life dropping off your Instacart order. (We can argue about the relative percentages of each but that's not the point)

The point is not that convenience is bad but rather that the ubiquity of phones (on-demand apps, social media) in daily life removes a wide range of potential emotional outcomes from daily life as a result of the fact that nothing is rare anymore. Nothing.

That part is hard to argue.

All of these decisions were really hard right up until I did them. In reflection I don't miss the food (yes Ozembic, best decision I've made for myself as an adult). I don't miss booze - which is incredible. I haven't yet missed social media.

To replace SM I keep the kindle app on the home screen of my phone. I read a couple pages of a book then go back to something else. To replace drinking a bottle of wine while watching a movie I go for more walks outside than I used to (10k steps instead of 6k a day kind of thing).

Long way to go, but I'm hopeful. I realized I was doing things that were bad for me (food, drink, phone time) and it was impacting me in increasingly negative ways.

I think this can be true while also further enforcing the point. I was a child in the 80's and would ride my bike all over town just doing stuff. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. Yes, I know that sounds like older guy nostalgia.

But the idea that a full work day is the only reason that adults aren't "bored" seems absurd to me. The world is full of low-cost wonder. We have allowed ourselves to be captured by low agency tasks like watching TV and scrolling through phones.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759299

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

Companies hiring the wrong team members may well be the bigger problem. Plenty of companies succeed by building great teams. Plenty fail by hiring the grifter class.

I do agree that CEO/founders need to learn that being "in" the business is required longer than expected.

And neither does anyone else on this forum.

The Monday morning quarterbacking is hysterical.

Suggesting that some inarguably brilliant technologists and business people would invite a moron to crash their party makes you look petty (at best) and like an idiot (at worst)

Lol

Good luck.

So start by solving that problem.

P.S. the "90% of startups fail" is inaccurate and moronic. It gives no context on the type of business or the outcome. Starting a 1 million dollar / year lifestyle business is incredibly simple (not easy, but simple). Starting a fifty billion dollar pharma company is incredible difficult. Anyone saying "well I want to start the latter, not the former!" has never had a 1 million / year lifestyle business.

The first problem is a lot of refurbs are poorly done. I've had parts that were literally something else with a different print on them. Entire controllers that were marked as X but were Y in reality.

The second problem is the buy side. Government especially has regulations for quality control and counts on suppliers to do their part. Check out MVP Micro for a company a decade or so ago where the owners were profiteering off refurbs and wound up in prison.