I have a very close group of 3 friends that I have known for at least 6 years each. We all come from immigrant families, went to a competitive, top 100 high school and all did well and went to good schools. We're all 24 now and two of them are busy hopping from job to job to find the biggest paycheck, bragging about their $160k base salaries (consulting/private equity) not including bonuses and how they quadrupled their savings with margins trading. Then there's me and my other friend in this group.

I've only ever done startups and the closest I've been to a BigCorp job was a yahoo internship. The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. The other friend is on his 7th year of college. He picked majors because they were highly regarded and he saw that we were doing similar things, but did not interest him. Over the years he looked at our relative career success, did not think he possessed any real skills for the workforce and became suicidal, attempting to kill himself twice. Saved the first time because of a malfunctioning old handgun and the second because of a goodbye email he sent to the 3 of us. I check my email way too often and saw the email first and called 911 and then kept him on the phone.

I'm not quite sure what the moral is, but it seemed relevant and I wanted to share. I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. None of them love what they do.