“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary."
Startups in my portfolio at CRV (we're the guys that funded Twitter, Yammer, Millennial Media...) have plenty of cash and I think you'll make more money working in a startup and enjoy life more.
There is no risk, because if the startup fails, you move to the next one. Silicon Valley is like working in a big company with multiple divisions: you may change 'departments', but you're still working for something where everything loosely aligns as the same goal.
Startups can be huge successes personally and financially, but there’s definitely risk.
Nothing wrong with entrepreneurship. I just find it grating when the benefits are expounded by people who take the exact opposite deal, in terms of asymmetric risk.
My response was in the context of being an employee. I was an employee at a 5,000 person consulting firm in Australia when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and I had more fear losing my job then then when I moved to recession-plagued America in 2009 to work at a search-engine startup (and Australia has been one of the strongest economies in that period since). In fact, I was paid more (in salary, not counting options), given more responsibility, and enjoyed life more.
buzzkill
That you would consider it a ledge, means you made the right choice, for yourself. On the other hand, many people see the chance to create or work at a start-up a positive opportunity that they can benefit from regardless of the outcome.
What I was trying to convey, was that even someone like myself (pretty much without an entrepreneurial bone in my body) was so enraptured by the thought of it after reading the book that I almost did it. The book is powerful mojo.
It's not rocket science- just time consuming.
About a year and a half ago, I was stuck for a week away from home traveling for work. Searching for something to read while I was gone, I popped into an Atlanta Barnes and Noble and futilely tried to find some books which were on my Amazon wish list. Of the five or six I looked for, they didn't seem to have any, save for "Hackers and Painters" (which required a storewide manhunt to track down where exactly they had decided to shelve it).
I read it in my hotel room that night and spent the rest of the week enthralled by the thought of quitting my job and working at a startup (either my own, or someone else's). When I got home, I told my girlfriend that I was possibly in the middle of something, and would need to take the next few weeks to decide if I was about to upend my (our) life. She was understandably nonplussed by this discussion.
Fast-forward a few weeks and I managed to come back down from the ledge. It may have just been the comfort of home, or the general inertia of a content over-priviledged life; but I reverted back to my previous plans, and set aside the fanciful notion of slaying dragons and working at a startup.
So by all means, you should read it. Just be careful about your mindset when you do, lest you also be swept away by notions of ramen dinners and liquidity events. Like a call to the sea, it has the potential to plant itself in your mind and than drive you mad if unheeded. You've been warned.