Quit your job and start something and holy shit you will come to realize the lotus is even more extreme than you thought. The worst is finding out how many, or probably most, raise their pre-seed entirely on connections, the ones you don't end up building at the companies you work for. So you end up an actually broke start up founder, realize the meritocracy is only for the poor souls who have to succeed based on their own merits, and that you might not stand a chance braving the startup seas. Talking to your friends who are employees will dial up the dissonance to 11...the myths they believe about founding startups and fundraising, what they've 'learned' from podcasts and blog posts about startups; anything less than over the top enthusiasm for the risk you take will shock you to your core. It's fucking hard.
The weird thing for me is how trapped I felt by my vest dates before leaving the comfort of a well-funded business. I could afford vacations and clothes I wanted, if I waited long enough and kept getting promoted I could eventually buy an overpriced but lovely home in the Bay Area somewhere but I'd never have enough money to really live free.
Do I regret leaving to start a company and ultimately fail? No. I used to be poor and I got used to being poor again. Leaving the island was awful however: paying for food and healthcare again, an inability to enjoy the myriad distractions of the bay. I might never be able to afford a home of my own but I'm lucky that my wife is an artist and is happy to entertain the struggle as well. I'm actually on company number two but this time with some funding.
It's a hero's journey, like the odyssey or wandering the desert. I somehow have found peace with all this; the debt, the fear, the stress. The journey itself is the reward even if it is a bitter one.
What I'm saying is, if you get the sense you don't want to be a lotus eater in Silicon Valley, say fuck it and pull the plug. You'll grow some scars, it will absolutely suck (even my peers who did YC feel this way), but you'll feel some kind of cosmic satisfaction with your path like Odysseus.
And if you don't gain that peace, you can always get another job :)
It's kind of strange that he takes pride in avoiding free company meals calling them lotus eating. If you were really a practical person wouldn't you just eat the free meal and go back to work? Instead he avoids the free meal and would have to do some other option like making and packing lunch in the morning which takes time, going hungry until he gets home and possibly being hangry toward a coworker, or going outside the building to eat which takes longer and costs more. Instead he turns up his nose to free food so he can brag? How is that helping anyone...
I think his purpose, in his head at least, was to say "don't get comfortable here." That's why he means by "lotus" the entire time -- the perks and luxuries that make you comfortable and unwilling to leave what you've got.
I don't personally agree with his version of Ithaca, and certainly not his condescension towards others, but this part at least seemed self-consistent.
It cannot be to feed their starving employees. If that was the case they would just stop catering and pay their employees more. They're certainly not feeding homeless people in their office.
This food is not a necessity, most certainly not the snacks. These are creature comforts, pieces of corporate flair for recruiters to lure recruits. They're lotuses, to help you feel more comfortable in a place that is not innately comfortable.
Starting your own company is hard and you need industry experience first. Here, the work-life balance is good, the pay is good, the culture is good. What more could you ask for? Plus, have you tried the queijo?
- employees stay on site and so they take shorter lunch breaks
- they are likely to eat with other employees and talk shop
- it does help recruit and keep good employees. If the firm you are thinking of moving to doesn't provide lunch, that's one more friction point: new commute, possibly new schedule, now you have to figure out what you will do for lunch after you have grown accustomed to such an easy solution.
Note how that last point seems to resonate closely with the author's point since his Ithaca is apparently about leaving your job and starting a startup... or something? It's not clear what his Ithaca is.
His skipping lunch is an exercise in asceticism that I think he is hoping will serve some higher purpose later. But at the end of the day I think he's just not satisfied where he is and would rather work somewhere else. Other than "moving to San Francisco" he doesn't mention any job changes. So I think that's his problem. And if you're not happy somewhere, free lunch is not going to stop you from leaving.
I think he intends for you to think he’s a fool for turning down the meals. I think part of the point of the article is that some people think that by avoiding “vices” they are avoiding complacency, when really avoiding those everyday things is a way of telling yourself that you’re perusing a higher goal even though you’re not.
It helps I suppose because we are complex beings that function based on juxtapositions. Anytime a new convenience is added, it eventually stops being a convenience and starts to become a necessity. Free lunches now are just another thing to miss when/if he does launch his own company.
Here’s the thing. You can spend your whole life searching the world for Ithaca and you will never find it, you will always have the feeling that something is missing, that you have not yet reached your true destination. All the while, the true Ithaca always was and is within you. When and if a person finally stopped running around and sits down quietly then this Ithaca becomes clear and the lotus eating can be paused or stopped.
This is what so many people miss. You need to be internally motivated to reach your Ithaca. Being externally motivated will make you forever unrequited, forever wondering if what you have reached truly is Ithaca.
"Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean."
I’m surprised so many people are taking this at face value. It’s satire, right? This bit leans into it hard:
> If it was raining, obviously, I couldn’t reasonably be expected to ride my bike. Or in the winter months when it’s a bit dark in the mornings, or when it got too cold, or when I was just a bit too tired. Let’s be reasonable here.
I guess it’s satirizing people who carve out tiny pockets of differentiation from others then mentally inflate it into some kind of deep uniqueness.
To be fair we are reaching a point where the lines between satire and reality are starting to blur a bit. I hope this is satire, but I'm not 100% sure.
It's a truly interesting quirk of humanity how so many of us (maybe all of us) go through the, "I'm not like the others, I'm different" experience. Maybe that's a lotus he was eating all along.
Well it is pretty common for Millenials as we were literally raised on the "everyone is special, do your passion for work, never work a day in your life, blah de blah" message.
The reality is some people actually are just special. I watched an interview with David Foster Wallace and two other authors recently and it was blatantly obvious within a few minutes that he was just better than them. All three were professional published authors but it was clear who was gifted and who wasn't. I don't know if that means the other two were wasting their time, but it is definitely discouraging to watch as a fairly average person.
Learn how to use the phrase before you use the phrase.
For my part, a lifetime of contemptuous outrage at being part of a privileged class sounds exhausting, unfulfilling, and miserable.
Yeah, it touched a goddamn nerve. Listening to entitled people complain about how easy they have it, and then subsequently making a pithy attempt at virtue-signaling by trying to put themselves on a pedestal for surface-level attempts at austerity - and then projecting those values onto others as if they're flaws of character - has a habit of doing that.
The protestations are because it reads like the author only half-paid attention in Greek Mythology class and the writing is inane. Odysseus had left home to dutifully go to war (the Iliad) and was trying to get home (the Odyssey). Odysseus' goal in the Odyssey was to get home to reunite with his family and have one of his own. Any notions of a future career after he got home aren't central to the epic. The author sounds more like Jason, searching for the Golden Fleece, or perhaps on the quest for their Holy Grail than someone simply trying to return home.
Also, the examples used were not chosen or described by a sympathetic narrator so the writer comes off as the sanctimonious coworker who's silently judging everyone as being dumber or less-pious than he for daring to enjoy a company offsite. Don't accept a free $350 jacket if you don't want it, but if it's because you're too good for it and that anyone who accepts one is a "lotus-eater", don't be too surprised when that attitude doesn't win you any friends. It's not the (rejected) entitlement that's tone-deaf coming from the author, its the condemnation that we're all sheeple.
It's extremely fair to point out that life at a FAANG is lavish and certainly, there are some that have chosen to stay and enjoy a comfortable life there, rather than push themselves harder (elsewhere or while there). That the phrase "rest and vest" exists says that this practice is quite common. Fight against it (if you want), but this is not the piece I would use to try an poach someone away from Google, trying to convince them to join my start-up.
I actually just reject the premise that our lives need to be defined by work - I am quite able to find fulfillment in my life outside of the labour I do for others and think it's a bit grandiose and self-harming to strive for this sort of work.
Yes. I wanted to make enough money that I'd be able to buy a place to live, have meaningful connections with people I cared about, and have enough so I can follow my hobbies and passions in my off-time. I actually do get a great degree of personal fulfillment that results from having a stable, high-paying job.
The lotus-eaters spent the rest of their days in happiness where Odysseus saw all of his friends die to return to a rock full of goats.
Somerset Maugham wrote a great short story - "The Lotus Eater" about a bank manager who earned a lot of money, then retired to an island of Capri to live comfortably off his savings - become a "lotus-eater". The kicker is when after 25 years his money runs out, and his life of comfort has deprived him of the will to work again.
Perhaps here the author is talking of a different type of "lotus-eater" - one who has become comfortable not taking risks, and live in the comfort of their company perks and just coast along without striving hard. Their day of reckoning may come if they get fired and suddenly find they have lost the knack of living in a world without these perks and strewn with risks.
I think this should be read as a person's own story of what compels them to live as they do, and not as a judgement on other people who choose to make different life choices.
Can you really work a 9-5 and still claim that you aren't a lotus eater? Lotus eating isn't endulging in company meals or taking their Ubers, lotus eating is being lured into a sense of security and letting yourself be surrounded by walls of safety to strong for you to break.
I think this is a pretty twisted definition of lotus-eating - in the Odyssey lotus-eating isn't never equated to toiling endlessly on the open sea reaching for a thing that might not be attainable, it's giving up a will to move, eat and simply bask in idle hedonistic pleasure.
So the modern day lotus eater isn't a 9-5 worker, those are the folks on the ships struggling to help fulfill this one dude's hope while being beaten, tempted and killed - and being entirely ignored in the epilogue as if they never even existed... The modern lotus eater is those that sink into depression and drug abuse, able to survive in society but just eeking by while trying to escape reality - And it is certainly good to avoid falling into it.
Same goes the other way, the idea of getting superb freedom and empowerment by running your own company is equally self-delusional. There's cons and pros to both, and they depend on many variables, especially the age and a particular moment in one's life.
That's the vibe I get too since the author is also the submitter of the article but isn't engaging in the comments that I see.
And being able to mooch off your friends' apartment and crash on their couch so you don't need to worry about finding a place to live seems pretty lotusee-eater to me, but what do I know.
This smells like projecting values on others. Just because the author's Ithaca includes building an independent company doesn't mean that others are lotus eaters. If the author's co-workers had explicit goals of contributing to a large company, having a happy, stable family and good work-life balance, etc. then perhaps they already found their Ithaca.
I agree building a company just for the sake of building a company is as arbitrary and meaningless of an Ithaca as it is to want to work for say Google. However contributing in a meaningful way to improving the world is a noble pursuit and we need more people doing that not less. Whether we are already at max-capacity of useful contributing people is another question. Maybe the type of person who can build frontends for Google AdWords doesn't have the skills necessary to do something better and should be content providing a service and taking care of their family.
Everybody has to find their own path I guess. Also 99.99% of people don't care about improving the world and the world gets by just fine on its own. Or does it (global warming, war, etc.)? Who knows, who cares.
“the type of person who can build frontends for Google AdWords doesn’t have the skills necessary to do something better and should be content providing a service and taking care of their family” is one of the most condescending things I’ve read in a long time. Even for hacker news.
You ever watch that South Park episode where they make fun of Hollywood where all the actors love the smell of their own farts? These days I feel that this is a pretty apt of a criticism of SV and Bay Area culture..
How is that condescending? sub "frontend for Google AdWords" with "plumber, truck driver, etc." Not everybody has the skills, motivation, luck, to be working on problems that push the human race forward. So what? People should still be content. I would argue that we programmers are some of the most delusional about what our jobs really accomplish, and who they really help. The person making 500k at Twitter thinks they have the skills to make the world a better place, but do they? Probably not. And who cares?
> Maybe the type of person who can build frontends for Google AdWords doesn't have the skills necessary to do something better and should be content providing a service and taking care of their family.
Whose definition of "better" are we required to use? I strongly suspect yours, mine, and the person building front ends for Google AdWords will be different definitions.
Exactly my point. Curing cancer is a more noble pursuit and a hell of a lot harder work and higher skilled than javascript programming. Somehow we programmers think knowing how to reverse a linkedlist and get hired by a FAANG automatically puts us in the upper echelons of engineers. Just because you make a lot of money in software doesn't mean you know how to actually build things that help people.
I think that some primal instinct gets triggered when you are building your own thing.
Hundreds of thousands of people use the product I helped build at my current workplace and I don't feel a thing. Yet having even a 100 daily users show up at the website I used to run felt exhilarating.
The article is essentially the author's reflection on how they difficult it is to retain their drive in a context where the perks of their success can easily sap it away. I call that pretty clear eyed. It is much harder to step off that island than ever to get on to it. On the other hand, the illusions of Ithaca, can be equally pernicious. You may find, in the end, that no matter what, the Ithaca you desired is always out of reach, and was never real anyway, and fill your heart with regret and bitterness.
Big D said it: The dreams of youth are the regrets of maturity. (;
I am not sure why a lot of the comments here are very negative. At least for me this was a well-written post that was very introspective and made me think about my own choices and if I was a lotus-eater or a pursuer of Ithaca!
But I think the point being made is that eating the free-lunch makes you "weak" (weakens your resolve) on your journey towards your Ithaca -- illustrating exactly the point being made about being a "lotus-eater".
And my point is that doesn't have to be the case. You can eat a free lunch at your current job without being weakened or distracted in any way.
It's good to keep your end goals in mind and make sure you aren't deviating from a course that will get you there, but a logical conclusion of taking this blog post literally (which many people are doing, because there's no obvious reason not to do so) is that the author is severely misguided at best.
For what it's worth, Odysseus is the only one to make it back to Ithaca. All of his men end up devoured by Polyphemus or other monsters, drowned or worse..
So maybe becoming a lotus-eater would not have been that bad after all.
Odysseus sounds like an ego tripping founder who refuses a generous buyout that would grant his employees comfortable exits after years of loyal service.
I don't know if this is just a satire or just someone who sees themself as a mastermind just expecting some taps on the back for their supposed enlightenment. Pure bs.
"When rats were tested in Skinner boxes where they could stimulate the reward system by pressing a lever, the rats pressed for hours."
I guess the author's definition of lotus-eaters is similar to the rat experiment mentioned above. There is something about the satisficing and infantilizing nature of tech companies that seems engineered to keep employees complacent about work that's just okay but maybe not challenging or rewarding.
The story is a good analogy but the tone of the article is weird and condescending.
> The story is a good analogy but the tone of the article is weird and condescending.
In think that's part of the point. And at the end he realizes that maybe he's not any different than the lotus-eaters; or, that the lotus-eaters are more like him than he thinks.
Interestingly, the rat park experiments have been reinterpreted. I am not an expert, but I believe one acceptable interpretation is that rats with a sense of connection and socialization don't press the levers as much.
We are all lotus eaters - it is defined to be "the things I think makes others soft or vulnerable". The author's value of austerity comes across to me like Mother Teresa's belief that suffering is noble and brings you closer to god. I don't share that belief, but certainly have my own lotus behaviors.
I think the question to be asked is why you wanted to start a company in the first place. It's obviously not an end unto itself. Maybe you think of it as a way to get rich. In that case, I think you could justify staying at whichever company on the grounds that you have the things you want to be rich for, and therefore don't need to get richer. Also, staying at a company promises much more secure wealth. Maybe you wanted to start a company as a status thing, because you thought of it as the thing that cool people did. In that case, it makes perfect sense that the status boost you feel at your current company steals from your desire to start a company, since they both achieve the sans goal. Ditto if your goal was to contribute to the world by making things. I'm straining to think of decent goals that can only be achieved at your own company. I think those were the major goals, and staying could be described as settling for a lesser prize, not changing goals altogether.
What a weird headline. I think he is thinking harder than he should. He goes into metaphysical.
My take on it. I'm very happy being able to work for in a level headed workplace that doesn't resembles a religious cult. And I am very happy to do a non-joke job, unlike programmers working in cat video site startups with unlimited funds for buffoonery.
Our work is almost anonymous in the West, and most of our clients prefer it be that way. We don't mind, and I actually like it this way.
When I finally closed the door on the West, it was a relief. A red pill as people say nowadays.
The West needs a correction. A culture of unlimited money in Silicon Valley assures that they will never get an incentive to get serious, until they really need it, and then they croak.
As I know it lotus is a real interesting snack but it tastes awful.
You can eat a lot of the parts of the lotus but the pods are a common quick eat.
It's like a bag of individually wrapped candy. Except when you doubly unwrap and eat them the fun stops and you realise it's pretty bland.
But it's something to do to pass the time and probably pretty healthy.
I tried to see if any lotus (many breeds out there) is a narcotic but most people mix it (blue lotus) with opiates and other drugs to actually get high so it seems like mostly a mythical dream.
>I soon discovered that San Francisco is positively packed with lotus-eaters.
Well, of course. You need a crew for the ship to reach Ithaca. And you can't have a crew of only captains :)
This proposition that somehow everybody can reach Ithaca, is simply a faith based pyramid scheme. You may end up being the captain or you may end up being in the crew. If you do the numbers I think it's quite clear which one is more probable.
But couldn't things always be harder? What's the difference between rejecting a free meal in favor of buying your own, vs. rejecting a meal that costs you $5 when you could pay $10? Or rejecting a $10 for a $100? Some might say that any nonzero price is qualitatively different than 0, but that ignores the fact that other things will not be free.
That way lies madness.
Maybe if your search for Ithaca can be detailed by eating a meal, then you're looking for the wrong Ithaca.
I actually love this blog layout. Anyone know anything more about it? Or is this bespoke made by the author.
As for the content, I enjoyed it. It is, however, highly personal and full of self-satire. I'd urge people to read it less as the author thumbing their nose at us 9-5ers and more of a conscious examination of a narcissistic view they hold deep down that they ultimately know at a higher level is absurd.
Thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy, the auditorium scene sounded like an effort to impart a religious experience. But “change the world,” at your current employer or your startup, does not qualify on its own as Meaning. It is just ambition’s projection of power. One can imagine all sorts of powerful, malevolent, Meaningless ways to change the world.
Some people here seem to think that running a company is a true Ithaca. It seems to me like the narrators problem is that he doesn’t really know what his Ithaca is, and is instead perusing lotus eating (wealth, whether as a worker or an owner). The narrator’s folly is that he believes that being a owner is Ithaca.
If you know you're a lotus eater and you're comfortable with it, that's when you can live life peacefully.
To keep searching for Ithaca is to put to much emphasis on your professional life. A great professional life is not a sufficient condition for a happy life, but an acceptable/ok professional life is a neccessary condition.
When deciding whether to join a company, it may be a good idea to ask to see a video of their annual all hands. Was it an event that you would have enjoyed? Did the people participating appear to have values and attitudes you would like to work with?
have you ever even to an all-hands that wasn't largely vacuous cheerleading? engineering reports great progress. sales reports great traction. admin gives an update of benefits selection and announces training for the new espresso machine. hockey sticks are waved around. new disconnected strategies are unveiled. competitors maligned.
The author uses "the lotus" to refer to everyone who is working in tech that isn't running their own start up. By suggestion such people are incapable of introspection, at best you are using that as shortcut to dismiss anyone who isn't a founder as just a sheep.
That's not introspective. That's shallow and condescending, like the author is doing.
I think you've only taken the first level interpretation of what the author wrote and let it hit too close to home.
It's absolutely true that large tech companies throw massive amounts of compensation and perks to lull workers into a sense of security. How do you think people go into Facebook day after day while new stories about their abuses come out?
If you're just passively going into work year by year without thinking about whether or not the thing you're striving for actually fulfills you, you are absolutely exhibiting sheep-like behavior. For that matter, if you go off and start a company and throw yourself into it without some introspection, you're also exhibiting sheep-like behavior. In fact, there are posts about this that reach the top of HN every once in a while. There was one just the other week.
If you haven't met many people or yourself been someone who has fallen prey to this in tech, I'd say you're either exceptionally focused/self-aware, or you might be snacking on some lotus in your spare time. Either way, whether or not you're a lotus eater, or simply someone who is content with achieving the goals they've set in front of themselves is something that only you can know.
You say I'm missing the point, but then you go in to literally just agree with me that you are calling everyone in tech a sheep and a drug user. That's intellectually lazy.
> If you're just passively going into work year by year without thinking about whether or not the thing you're striving for actually fulfills you, you are absolutely exhibiting sheep-like behavior. For that matter, if you go off and start a company and throw yourself into it without some introspection, you're also exhibiting sheep-like behavior. In fact, there are posts about this that reach the top of HN every once in a while. There was one just the other week. If you haven't met many people or yourself been someone who has fallen prey to this in tech, I'd say you're either exceptionally focused/self-aware, or you might be snacking on some lotus in your spare time. Either way, whether or not you're a lotus eater, or simply someone who is content with achieving the goals they've set in front of themselves is something that only you can know.
the opportunity to be lulled into a false sense of achievement is possible for anyone. keep your own goals in mind and you'll avoid it! I couldn't possibly know about the inner lives of every person in tech, I haven't met and had good conversations with all of them. :)
I’ve met plenty of folks who didn’t routinely reflect on where they were, how they felt about it, etc. juxtaposed against their larger goals. I think setting that regular check in is important I think. Having free will is a burden heh.
Interesting read (didn't read it like an essay about the complains of the privileged). It reminded me about a book: One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse), but adjusted into a more contemporary tech scene. Also, the idea of building a new company from scratch as the _real_ goal, seems to me like if the objective is the garden of lotus, not the lotus itself.
>I can hear you, dear reader, muttering to yourself. You think I’m some entitled brat, some tone-deaf pampered prick looking for some way to complain about my incredible good fortune.
Well, yeah, when you act like everyone else is a sheep because they like gasp hot food or dear lord a free sweater, you might come across as a masochistic weirdo. Reminds me a lot of Bottle Rocket or The Comedy.
Is it more entitled to mindlessly indulge in your good fortune and sink into the luxuries that birth have afforded you, or to remain restless and shun easy luxuries as a trap? You could argue that people who are born into situations of privilege have a responsibility to reject an easy life and leverage their security to take the risks that others cannot afford too.
When spurning the luxuries of your birth are you giving them to others? Or are you just spending all those advantages toward a combination of being miserable in your hair shirt while striving for the ultimate entitlement, earning a place in future memory?
I dunno, the guy basically says that several million people are all nothing more than drug users just because they don't want to work in a startup. If that resonates with you, good luck...
The weird thing for me is how trapped I felt by my vest dates before leaving the comfort of a well-funded business. I could afford vacations and clothes I wanted, if I waited long enough and kept getting promoted I could eventually buy an overpriced but lovely home in the Bay Area somewhere but I'd never have enough money to really live free.
Do I regret leaving to start a company and ultimately fail? No. I used to be poor and I got used to being poor again. Leaving the island was awful however: paying for food and healthcare again, an inability to enjoy the myriad distractions of the bay. I might never be able to afford a home of my own but I'm lucky that my wife is an artist and is happy to entertain the struggle as well. I'm actually on company number two but this time with some funding.
It's a hero's journey, like the odyssey or wandering the desert. I somehow have found peace with all this; the debt, the fear, the stress. The journey itself is the reward even if it is a bitter one.
What I'm saying is, if you get the sense you don't want to be a lotus eater in Silicon Valley, say fuck it and pull the plug. You'll grow some scars, it will absolutely suck (even my peers who did YC feel this way), but you'll feel some kind of cosmic satisfaction with your path like Odysseus.
And if you don't gain that peace, you can always get another job :)