Well, who do you think PG's audience is?
A 45-yo welder? A school teacher who loves their job? Or even someone happy at their FAANG job?
This advice isn't meant for them. Like most PG essays, it's obviously meant for people who want to be founders (or already are).
You might think it's dumb. But given he's seen people go out and do this, what, 5,000 times now? (Not sure what the total YC company count is) with some median level of success? He's got something valuable to add.
Perhaps you'd like 10x more qualifiers, 10x more nuance, 10x more comprehensive treatment of ALL potential types of people in his essays.
But he'd be far less effective at reaching his real audience - founders and potential founders.
I also think it can be bad advice for founders too.
I tend to agree it's a part of a character which also can be developed.
(Naturally, this was not a publicly-held company, nor was it financially beholden to any venture capitalists. One rarely finds much equity in extractive economies, regardless of whether the thing being extracted is mineral resources or intellectual resources.)
There were a few peculiar social phenomena that might have been attributable to this setup. One was the natural culture of collaboration and relative lack of office politics.
A more interesting one, though, was that people rarely worked any overtime at all. My guess as to why is that more traditional pay structures encourage more ambitious people to overwork, because it sets up a situation where employees feel a lot of pressure to compete with each other for raises. (And it demotivates other people, because they understand that any level of productivity in between the minimum, and whatever it takes to get ahead in the rat race, is wasted effort.) If the rising tide really does, obviously, visibly lift all boats, though, then there's no particular need to treat your entire career like a Black Friday doorbuster.
Even if I care deeply about projects and software and even entrepreneurship in my own time - that should have precisely zero bearing on my work.
in my understanding, he argues that if you are the former, become the latter and thats the key tk a better life.
now he might not give precise instructions, but knowing PGs work, i assume that path goes through entrepreneurship. i think he even hints at it by writing: be(come) your own boss.
how do you read it?
second, it was on purpose. i wanted to trigger op to explain his position more. and it worked. he did.
so chill out. not everyones out to get ya
At least with a founder they capture more of the economic output of their overwork, but even then you hear so many stories of families that have been sacrificed at the altar of entrepreneurship that I can't even support this approach for most founders.