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Comment by ValentineC | Hacker News Reader

> As shown by the many posts on ‘FIRE’ or investing Reddit communities of salaried people making millions–it is indeed possible to get rich working for someone else. These are young and middle-aged people on Reddit who have homes, nest eggs, a good work-life balance, and a high standard of living despite working for someone else, yet are somehow ‘doing it wrong’ or are struggling or miserable according to the Twitter or hustle-culture narrative. Hell, even Steve Balmer became richer than Bill Gates despite working for him.

The last sentence in this paragraph doesn't make sense.

Isn't Bill Gates less rich because he's actively giving it away through philanthropy?

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From someone who currently has seven figure TC and is about to FIRE into the sunset by EOY in order to downshift (leaving millions in unvested stock grants on the table): such comp and work life balance are basically incompatible. When you’re young and poor, that’s fine, but I’m neither. Any claims to the contrary would need some serious evidence. This is so for rather fundamental reasons: comp like this requires serious results, and serious results are very difficult to achieve in large organizations. And only large companies are willing to pay this much.

> such comp and work life balance are basically incompatible. > comp like this requires serious results

there is diminishing return in results once you shift from good work/life balance schedule. Say you work 8h/d and deliver results with value of 500K/y. You won't be able to bump delivered value to 1M if work 12h/d, you will burn faster. At this level of compensation you are selling your skills and talent, and not overtime.

You usually don’t have the option to modulate this. It’s my second such position and neither one had the option of anything other than high stress, and near-burnout work intensity on highly ambiguous, organizationally and technically complex problems. If they could hire someone for less to do what I do, they would. On the positive side I no longer want to climb the ladder. The higher up you go the worse this gets, and I don’t think it’s worth it, not even for a “life changing” amount of money.

stress is your internal state, and is optional.

Work intensity is result of you not saying no. I still believe if your employer pays you 7 digits for 12h/d, he will pay you about the same for 8h/d which will bring total -20% delivered value reduction (reduced work time, but improved burnout damage).

What's your TC? :-)

not 7 digits. But I observe some 7 digit people. They do well pretending being busy though, but it is not relevant to value they deliver.

Good luck! If you are anything like me, it may take six months just to feel human again.

There is very little I miss about working, and that is mainly getting to talk to really smart people. There is also a sense of loss for the person that you used to be --a high achiever--, and a growing acceptance of the person you are now --a retiree--.

I’m 18 months into my FIRE and I STILL struggle with not being that high achiever and taking it easy.

No, not really. Gates is less rich because he sold his MSFT, while Ballmer kept it. This had much more significant impact than all of his philanthropy.

i.e. a classic case of forgoing potential returns in exchange for portfolio diversity and reduced risk.

He sold his MSFT to spend the money on philantrophy.

He didn't, he donated much less than he had msft stock

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