I'm a rare individual that has consistently made choices to earn less money in order to have more enjoyment. I would clock fewer hours than they wanted me to during college for my internships, I left a FAANG to go back to startups, I quit a startup to work on volunteer work and try to bootstrap a business.

At multiple jobs I've noted that I felt the pay should have been less. Not so that the employers could take a bigger slice of the pie (in fact, my preference is to be in an anarchist co-op, but I understand that's a wild take and might be terrible in practice). My hope was that we could filter for people that genuinely want to do the work and take on fewer people that were there for the money. At the same time more money is more better. And I like having money. It's complicated.

As I've said many times before, I didn't come to Silicon Valley to get paid. I came here to make computers do cool things alongside other people. I need income to do that, but I try to make sure I'm in a situation where the income isn't something I need to think about all of the time. If you're doing mercenary work that's not possible.