I agree that no one should waste 10 years of his life-- that seems obvious-- but the article itself is a mix of pseudoscience and anecdote.

In fact, the people who seem least to be "wasting" their 20s-- the ones in IBD analyst programs and MBA programs-- are the ones losing their creativity the fastest. If you play the corporate game, creative atrophy sets in, and it's a rapid process.

"To all of the people who say that the best thing to do is get a good job, buy a nice house, and to put the max into a 401k that the company will match: Fuck you. It’s not what I want. Mediocrity is worse than failure."

Mediocrity is not worse than failure. Try being homeless. Except when you say 'failure' you mean "maybe I'll have to move back in with my parents". You have an enormous safety net allowing you to be so disdainful of "mediocrity", don't take it for granted.

Stop romanticising driving yourself into the ground. Stop thinking you are better than your peers that have "sold out" by taking (gasp) jobs. It sounds like you've lived life very much on your own terms until now, but life doesn't work that way indefinitely. At some point you have to make compromises in order to achieve what you want. Deal with it.

Take a job as a developer. You'll make good money. Make sure it isn't for a demanding startup. Something that guarantees exiting the office at 5pm every day. Then go home and work on your startup. Plough your free time into your startup, and when you have enough of a ramp you can quit your day job and transition to the startup full time.

You are not a unique butterfly that is owed the opportunity to only ever do exactly what you want.

If you don't get it when you're 30, then you're not going to get it at 35 or 40. Age without progress decreases opportunities. He's 29 and has shown no progress, and you seem to be surprised that he's expecting progress.

We can mock his douchey goals, and perhaps we should, but the fact is that a whole generation was bred for executive positions that are no longer available (and shouldn't exist).

What he probably needed to do, in order to pursue his douchey vision of a cushy cigar-smoking executive job, was get an investment banking or management consulting job. Those aren't my favorite industries, but a few years of time in them will open the kinds of doors he wants. The BMW and the fatal heart attack at 45 could be his, if he had made the right moves years ago. However, it's too late for him now. With an empty resume, he can't compete against 22-year-old college grads. That's just how it works.

In the Mad Men era, a college degree got you a junior executive job. You became an "account executive" or a marketing person. Sure, you were still someone's bitch-- being at the bottom of the executive-track totem pole-- and you probably had no direct reports, but you were on a track toward something better.

Those junior executive jobs are gone. Why? After 3 decades of downsizing, the corporate "fat" has been trimmed. That's probably a good thing, but what it means is that all those junior-executive jobs have been filled by people who used to be senior executives. Companies don't have the slots to take on 22-year-old proteges anymore. Again, it's probably good for the world that we're not generating all these supernumerary "executives" who do nothing but annoy the people doing the actual work, but it's not good for people who were bred (through parental expectations and undergraduate education and, in some cases, graduate degrees) for these positions.

Undergraduate college is the liberal arts. (Sciences are liberal arts.) "Liberal" in this sense has nothing to do with political ideology, but rather means "for the free". The contrast is servile arts.

It makes me angry when self-righteous Baby Boomers complain about "entitled" Millennials. On Sunday, they write on the Internet about these supposedly entitled schmucks who won't settle for anything less than a career-track job. Then on Monday, they turn down the 27-year-old barista who did take one of those crummy jobs and now has "no relevant work experience". They made and supported this world and they can fucking eat it.

The real problem is that the whole concept of "management", in the traditional sense, has become pointless.

College breeds you to be one of three things: (A) an academic or researcher, (B) a highly-skilled professional with high autonomy, or (C) a manager. Class A is dying out. Class B is losing autonomy, as the professions are eroded and traditionally intellectual fields (e.g. software engineering) are commoditized in an idiotic lurch toward a manage-or-be-managed corporate world, and class C is becoming obsolete enough that these junior executive jobs don't make sense and have been cut.

I don't know how old you are but I'll assume/pretend you are in the age range he talks about (22-23 apparently). I'm 42 now so I have ~20 years on you. The things you say, the way you think, and the ideas you have at 22-23 are so different from those you'll have as a 25yo, 30y, 35yo, and 40yo. Life events will change your perspectives 10-20 times in the next 20 years, causing you to change passions once or twice (or lessen/augment your current passions). It is, quite simply, arrogance to think that, at 22-23, you know yourself. You don't. You won't know yourself for 15-20 years, I bet. I'm sure when I'm 50 that I'll think 42yo me was an arrogant fool for thinking I was qualified to give advice to a 22-23yo haha.

All in all, your comments come across as abrasive and "cock sure". Relax. You don't know what you don't know yet. How you approach this "problem" today is not how you will approach it years from now.

Example: let's say at 26yo you develop a product that becomes fairly popular quickly - enough to make you $150,000 in six months. And you did it by yourself with no help. What's next? Will you raise money and try to make $150,000,000 with it? Or will you try to keep it yourself and maybe have a lifestyle business? Whatever you say today is not what you will say in 3-4 years - you will have learned so much by then that there's no point in even speculating what you think to do then.

I'm rambling now so I'm done. Final point is "You aren't as smart as you think you are so back off the rhetoric."

The message I'd like to convey to the OP is that he could have an adventure for 4-5 years, or even 10 years, and then worry about what career he wants to go into.

I can tell you that there are probably a hundred things I could've done better with my time in my twenties. However there was no way that I would have known then what I would be like today and what makes me happy now. Back then I thought I would keep gigging in bands and I'd scrape together a record label and have a long career in music. That's what made me happy at the time and what I sought out to do. How could I have known that I would change? I have a wife now and a daughter on the way, I've become a mild-mannered programmer who enjoys mathematics and literature, and rather than getting pissed on a Friday night and making a lot of noise I like to hang out with my friends and play board games. But if I was wiser I might have went to university and worked on getting a PhD then I'd probably be better off now, today. Hindsight...

What I'm saying is that humans are terrible planners. We're good at adapting and adjusting but we can never seem to be able to accurately predict outcomes. I think that we glorify those people who seem to far surpass the status quo and bend their stories into myth. It's romantic to think that Einstein or Steve Jobs had set out to change the world when they were young but if we're honest about their history it's more likely that they drifted towards those things and all the right pieces were in place at the right time to make great things happen.

And it doesn't end when you hit thirty. I'm still as ambitious as ever and I see new currents that I'd like to follow that I would never have thought possible before. You don't just become a dumb, boring, cantankerous old person over night. Quite the contrary; I find that my tastes are far more refined, I can see dead-ends before going down the path, and I am more adverse to wasting my time. You start to see patterns in the ocean and can navigate the seas with ease.

So plan all you want but be prepared to fight the current and the winds!

I don't know anyone who's ever said, "Well, why don't you just work at Starbucks for a decade? It'll be fun and you can get a real job when you're 30!"

What's actually said is more like, "Take a few months and a backpack and go travel somewhere" or "start a company with no idea if it'll pan out". Party. Start a band. Chase some girls [or guys]. Read a lot.

It doesn't mean "throw away a decade" -- it means "do the important things that it'll be harder for you to get away with if 10 years from now you have a family and mortgage."

I visited over 30 countries in my 20s. Even if that would have kept me from advancing my career (it didn't), I wouldn't trade that for being a year closer to a promotion in an IT job.

A lot of the things we're blessed with today did not exist 10 years ago (especially in the IT world.)

There are people out there with no money, no degree and are older than you that have a better outlook on this stuff than OP likely ever will.

People change careers all the time as they want or as is needed. OP has been an 'adult' for all of 8 years and fears he's getting 'too old...'

Come back to me when you’ve been at it for 30 years. At year 5 or 6 of working FT professionally, which came after ten years of working through college, I started getting jaded, same thing, same stupid “mistakes” (choices really), etc. Towards the end of my sixth year, I ended up getting a full, unfiltered view of inequity and the brutal sausage making that is all sizable organizations.

30 years in you realize that sitting all day and killing it to 2am takes a huge toll on your body and even 8 hour stunts may not be all that good, standing desk or no.

By the time you lose your youthful bliss, it’s too late to start saving. You need to take it on faith that future you has seen more of the operational realities of the world and this has not improved their existence.

The whole FIRE thing is a way to package and sell stuff; the dominant bloggers In the community who are “retired” are doing between 40k and 500k a year in web ad revenue. They mostly do not actually live the life they are suggesting: they have not retired, they’ve changed to a higher risk career. (Exception: earlyretirementnow.com ).

That said, like sites dedicated to exercise or eating well, the basic message is a good one and not a new one (see The Richest Man In Babylon, Your Mobey Or Your Life, etc.). So in that sense, anything that sells the mindset is a net good.

I have years of experience, not 1/5th your savings, have not traveled and now I am actually too old for "big company" to hire me. This is not said for you to fell for me, go feel good about yourself. It sounds like you did a lot. Figure out now what makes you _feel_ good inside and pursue that (you know, unless its spending all of your savings on vices). Time is running out? Come back here and say that twenty years from now. I think life was just starting for a lot of people when they hit 35.

I'm not sure what you want to achieve but in general the real world is not that strict. You are stuffing your ambitions into a tiny box and for no good reason. I would advice you figure out where you want to be in the next 20 years. This will give you a far larger scope for your thoughts.

Old people are not junk, if they keep their mental and physical faculties.

But I don't think many people would deny that one's 20's are a key decade. In fact, if I had to pick a most important decade, that would be it. In your 20's, you're expected to start a career, and to do something valuable for society. You're going to meet the people who, 20 years later, will be willing to work with you because "I've known him for decades." 20-somethings have more energy than older people, but more direction than younger people.

Nobody seriously thinks people "suddenly" can't build cool things at a particular age. But I know very few people who would think that someone's intellectual output or energy keeps growing past their 20's. Of course, very few people expect a 25-year-old to be as wise or well-connected as a 45-year-old; if I were betting on who would start a better law firm or hedge fund, I'd bet on the older guy.

- A 30 year old guy who lives at his mothers house. He's a part time videographer. For the last 5 years, hasn't proactively built any other skillset. Currently he says he'll work on getting into the construction industry. The irony is that he studied through calculus recently at a community college, but isn't enthused by the non-social work of a IT professional. Like other gig workers I know, he's only recently wised up to the fact that maybe he can't support himself on gig work, and that lacking business skills/knowledge he's unlikely to be a entrepreneur. Reality is beginning to dawn on him: he's getting older, and women will be less and less likely to see him as an adequate provider.

- a 32 year old guy who has a family trust he lives off of. Dropped out of college around age 19 or 20 to spend the next decade smoking marijuana and playing video games nearly as though it's a full time job. Fortunately he recently returned to finish college and will soon have a science degree. He'll be about 33-34 and start working at a career level of a typical 22-23 year old. The difference though is that he lacks common sense developed by resource scarcity & the existential need to become a professional. So, at 33, he'll be a less mature version of a 23 year old. It's sad to see. (I firmly believe young adults shouldn't be given free money-- they'll end up without a proper incentive structure. It's a bit like getting cheat codes to a game: there's no longer a reason to work at it.)

A lot of people seem to be pointing out that I'm still young and that there are lots people in similar positions to me who have been failing for a long time.

I know I'm still young, and I know it's not easy to build a successful startup, but I think that's missing the point. I am still relatively young, but I won't be as young in 10 years. And what if I keep failing for another 10 years? Or even another 10 after that? Do I really want to spend 20, or 30, years of my life in a job I don't enjoy that much for a dream that may never happen?

Don't get me wrong. All I really want from life is to build something I'm proud of. I don't care much for cars, houses and holidays. They're nice, but I'd give up any chance of having them if I could build something that fills me with passion everyday I wake up. It's just, I can't guarantee that the time I put into having those things will actually get me anywhere. I mean, I've already gambled 10 years unsuccessfully so far.

I really relate to what nacrikt said:

> I'm thinking about leaving tech, as a profession, because professionally it turns everything I love into a thing to loath. And going back to the slower pace of living, without fear of failure or success, just living intentionally and taking every day and every moment for what it is.

After 10 years of nothing, I feel like cutting my loses and living life a little slower for a while might not be so bad.

after about 4 years of that 10 year long stretch you're going to lose motivation/track of the grand plan and wonder what the hell you are doing with your life. if you ever get out of that depression you'll regret every moment you wasted on a plan that amounts to serving a decade of your best years in prison, so that you can come out the other end having forgotten what you were going to do, or if you do remember having lost all the enthusiasm and will to do it. not to mention you're likely to go through significant life events like meeting your significant other, breakdowns, etc.

humans are not timeless fixtures of character and personality. this fact is exacerbated by the accelerated rate of change in the world. you're not who you were last year, and 5 years from now the difference a year makes is only going to only grow larger.

do what you really want to do. do it now. do not ever compromise.

first shouldn't you take every discrete chunk of your life seriously?

to the degree to which this is true, its true because we tell ourselves its true, most people don't reinvent themselves past their 20s because they choose not to, not because the obsticles standing in their way are insurmountable

> When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels.

That's the exact line I've been telling myself.

My wife and I want to travel for a couple years before we have kids (and it's getting to the point where we have to stop delaying that.) We've set a year from now as the hard deadline to start. Because otherwise we'll just keep pushing it back until we're too old to enjoy it or something happens and the dream becomes impossible.