But that's how all posts like these go, HN loves to upvote them for some reason but they all boil down to "I'm quitting because I have enough money to do it".
I agree that the author of this post is a nice position to quit because he has enough money to do so.
I think the reason these posts get upvoted is more because the things that the author talked about are things many of us deal with. I've definitely had times when I stayed awake later than I should have just because I knew that if I went to sleep, the only thing waiting for me was work. I guess sometimes I feel like there just isn't enough time in the day and I don't even get to relax before it's over.
I like to believe that posts like these where the author isn't actually quitting would be upvoted as well. Of course, the issue is that those posts don't exist likely out of fear that the employers would find out.. So then we are left only with the people who have the luxury of leaving writing about these topics.
That's what it looks like from the outside doesn't it? His pain is real certainly, and like all experience relative to his situation. When you look at it from a perspective of responsibility without an option to stop working, or the fear of not finding work with which you can fulfill your responsibilities his position is a lot tougher to identify with.
I hope I can work hard enough to someday be able to have the luxury of that choice and that I'll remember my current perspective at that time.
So go get it. A number of growth businesses - Uber, AirBnB, Stripe, Lyft, Zenefits, Slack - are hiring aggressively. Join one of them and in 4-5 years of slaving away at the computer you'll probably have the cash (and desire) to throw this kind of tantrum.
Too late. Each of your example companies are beyond the point where becoming the next employee has a high likelihood of returning a windfall in 4 years. Life-changing equity tends to go to early (single digit) employees.
If you're a fairly experienced developer or manager, you can join a company 18 months or so prior to an IPO and make out like a bandit. There's still plenty of money to be made by joining most of the companies the grandparent mentions.
Single-digit employees more often than not get screwed when considering the greater risk they take (risk not too much lower than the founders, who usually keep several tens of percent ownership). 1% of a company post-seed dilutes a lot after a few VC rounds, so you end up with a great strike price, but not much more %-wise (what really matters) compared to later hires.
Also I think you (as many do, and as I used to) vastly overestimate what retirement money is. In general you can take your yearly expenses (not income), multiply that by around 25, and that's all you really need to retire on, and keep the same lifestyle. (Sure, if you want to increase the cost of your lifestyle, add a couple kids, etc., you need to take that into account.)
"Pay off the mortgage" equity, however, continues long after that. Yelp started in 2004, I really doubt that Eevee was a single-digit employee there. I know folks who started at Google as employee ~20,000 in 2008-2009 and ended up with "pay off the mortgage" equity, particularly if you're living in Las Vegas instead of Silicon Valley.
Agreed there's a big difference between "Pay off the $100K Las Vegas McMansion" equity and "Pay off the $1M Palo Alto starter home" equity. My guess is that the former is do-able if you find the right company (who will also let you work from your cheaper remote location). For the latter, I still don't believe you're going to see that without a gamble on a very early stage company.
And, since this is HN, of course I always need to preface with "Yes, I know you can point to a handful of outlier counter-examples, but they don't disprove the general case".
You're both right of course, and then some of them turn around and say "it isn't about money" or "don't make it about money". Sigh, it isn't unique to tech at all by the way.
Everyone quits because they have the opportunity to do it. If he didn't have enough cash to be unemployed on an indefinite basis, or the willingness to start his own tech gig, maybe he would have become a farm hand in Wyoming just to get away from it all. Then someone would have yelled Hipster!!! in the comments section. Or You don't know how easy you had it! You'll be back soon once you can't take the blisters and sore knees!.
