Would you be keen to come on my podcast (https://www.raddadshow.com) to talk about this? IMO buying 10 years of freedom with 12 months of work is a pretty good deal! Many people that have money end up with less. It would be fun to explore your life, and maybe inspire future generations to reconfigure priorities.

I'm glad you found happiness and out of the rat race. how did you get ripped off?

I had no idea what percentage to ask for. I asked a few friends who had been in startups, and that convinced me that the 1% I was being offered (over 5 years) was a good deal. What I didn't realize till about a year later was that my friends had all joined their respective companies as, say, employee #20 or #30. I was coming into a company with zero employees, and it turns out that I should have been pushing for on the order of 5x was I was being offered.

OTOH, I did tell Jeff that I was having a daughter in several months and planned to go to a 3 day week after that happened. He agreed to that ("I knew when I met you that you'd think about work 24/7 anyway"), so there was a tradeoff there.

I'm not really complaining, but when I did find out what some other early hires had negotiated, it stuck in my throat for a bit.