'Conflicted' asks about career options.
"I'm about to graduate [in] computer science and applying for big companies is a thing."
"Open blockchains, to me, look exciting and promising, yet unstable as a career path."
"What would you say to a new graduate who sees his friends working for bigger and better paying companies,
who feels peer pressure to play the game, but sees this space as an important thing,
and yet is not sure he has enough experience to make a difference."
I don't think this is really a [matter of] blockchains, but more a question about following the very traditional...
career path with "bigger and better paying companies," versus building a career that...
has a degree of entrepreneurial independence and maybe a lot of risk built into it.
I think that, as time goes by, these two paths are not what they initially seemed.
It is very difficult, especially in some countries, to be an entrepreneur or freelancer, to work independently.
For example, in the U.S., the tax system is stacked against you from the [beginning].
You pay far more in taxes as a self-employed person...
than if you worked as a payroll employee for a corporation.
Healthcare is almost impossible as a self-employed person. You must handle that and take on all the risk.
In return, what you get is freedom. To me, that is priceless, but not everyone sees it that way.
A lot of people would much rather have job security instead of freedom.
To those people, I say, "Those who give up freedom in order to gain a sense of security, deserve neither."
Or, "will have neither." I'm paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin. Here is the thing...
The "bigger and better paying companies" that give you this degree of security? It is an illusion.
It's an illusion because none of them give a shit about you. There is no career path guarantees.
All jobs are at-will jobs, where you can usually get fired at any time.
There's no such thing as a career for life [anymore].
It's all about developing skills that are marketable and competitive.
As soon as you stop doing that, none of these "bigger and better paying companies" will be loyal to you.
If anything, working for "bigger and better paying companies" limits the skills you can develop.
You [will] develop skills in playing politics, jockeying for position, climbing the ladder,
backstabbing your colleagues, dealing with the sociopath in the cubicle next to you...
or your boss, who [may] also be a sociopath.
Trying to handle all of these internal politics.
Signing up for projects because they have good buzzwords, rather than a possibility of succeeding.
Trying to figure out what will generate the greatest opportunity for promotion and pay raise, rather than...
'what is a useful thing to do?'
Those are not really useful or creative skills.
At least for many people I know, you have a semblance of job security, but in return you are miserable...
[and feel] your life has no purpose within these "bigger and better paying companies."
As an entrepreneur who is fiercely independent, I will give you the worst advice that I possibly can.
That is: find a way to do your own thing, create your own job, develop entrepreneurial skills that are...
usable in multiple industries, countries, geographies, and languages.
Be ready to be flexible.
One of the reasons you should do that now is, later in life, you will not have the flexibility you have now.
The older you get, the more responsibilities and dependents you have, the less flexibility you have.
Now is the time to take risks, to do something exciting, to try a different track than every one of your peers.
Part of that means risking that it will fail.
That is okay, because you can fail gracefully when you are in your mid-20s with no dependents.
It is a lot harder to fail gracefully when...
you're in your mid-40s and have a family, a mortgage, a private school bill to pay at the end of each month.
At that point, you can't fail gracefully.
The "bigger and better paying companies," selling out to a corporate career of boredom, and playing politics...
will still be there [when you are older], so try something different.