Money and happiness

`5:53:03`

— As the king of the Rails kingdom, has the power gotten to your head over the years? — I'm sure it has. I mean, who wouldn't? — Do you pace around in your chamber angry? — I do occasionally. And I do marvel at both what's been built, what's been possible. Over a million applications have been made with Ruby on Rails by one estimate that I've seen, businesses like Shopify and GitHub and a million others have been built on top of something that I started. That's very gratifying. But you really have to be careful not to smell your own exhaust too much. And you have to be just as careful not to listen too much to the haters and not to listen too much to the super fans either that you assess the value and the sort of principles of what you're working towards on its own merits, on your own scoreboard. I try to block that out and then just go, well I'm working on Rails because I love to write Ruby.

`5:54:06`

I love to use Ruby to make web applications. That's my north star. And I'll continue to do that and I'll continue to share all of the open source gifts that I uncover along the ways, and that's it. That's enough too. I don't have to get all of it out of it. This is sometimes just as with the guy who thought I'd given up on being Jira or something, instead of doing Basecamp, there are people over the years who've asked like, why didn't you charge for Rails? Like, don't you know how much money have been made off Rails? If we just look at something like Shopify, it's worth billions of dollars. I'm not a billionaire and so freaking what? I got more than enough. I got plenty of my share. I will say though, I'm also introspective enough to realize that if it hadn't panned out as well as it did for me on my own business, maybe I would've been more tempted. Maybe if you see other people build huge successful companies off the back of your work

`5:55:07`

and you really don't have a pot to pissed in, you might be tempted to get a little upset about that. I've seen that in the Rails world as well, where there are people who contributed substantial bodies of work and then got really miffed when they didn't feel like they got enough back. I was fortunate enough that the business that Jason and I built with Ruby on Rails was as successful as it was. And I made the money I needed to make that I didn't need to chase the rest of it. — But we should also just make explicit that many people in your position chase the money. It's not that difficult to chase. Basically you turned away money. You made a lot of decisions that just turned away money. — Maybe, I also think of this example with Matt. He probably thought there was easy money for the taking. And it wasn't so easy, was it? It looked like low hanging dollar bills and they turned out to be some really sour grapes.

`5:56:07`

It turned out he probably destroyed vast sums of money by undermining the whole WordPress trust and the ecosystem and putting question marks in the heads of folks who would choose to use WordPress or something else going forward. So I often think when people think like, you left money on the table. First of all, so what? I don't have to have all the money. But second of all, maybe the money wasn't on the table at all. — And maybe the cost. Even if you got the money, maybe the cost in other ways, like we've talked about, would outweigh all the money that you could have possibly gotten. Meaning like I think you said that the thing that makes you happy is flow and tranquility. Those two things. Beautifully, really beautifully put. And it, you know, gaining money might assign to you responsibility of running a larger thing that takes away the flow that you gain from being... fundamentally for you

`5:57:07`

what flow means is programming. And then tranquility is like, I think you also have a beautiful post of like Nirvana is an empty schedule. — When I look at a upcoming week and I see that I have no scheduled meetings at all, which is quite common, or maybe I just have one thing for one hour on one day. I think to myself, do you know what? This could very easily have been very different. We could have been running a company of hundreds of people or thousands of people and my entire calendar would've been packed solid with little Tetris blocks of other people's demands on my attention and time, and I would've been miserable as fuck. And I look at that and go like that, what more can I ask for? Which is a really nice state of being I'd actually say. I didn't have this always. I did have early on in my career some sense of like, I need a little more. A little more security. And I remember this really interesting study where a bunch of researchers asked people

`5:58:09`

who would made certain amounts of money, how much money would it take for you to feel secure? They'd ask people who had a million dollars network? How much money do you need? Probably need 2 million. 2 million then I'd be good. Then they'd ask people with a net worth of 5 million, how much do you need? Ah, 10, I need 10. Ask people with 10 million, what do you need? 20. Every single time people would need double of what they did. I did that for a couple of doublings until I realized, you know what? This is silly. I am already where I wished I would be and a million times over. So what less is there to pursue? Now that doesn't mean that if more money is coming my way, I'm gonna say no to it. Of course not. But it does mean that I'm free to set other things higher. And I also do think you realize, as Jim Carrey would say, I wish everyone would get all the money they wished for and they'd realize it wasn't the answer. That money solves a whole host of problems and anxieties, and then it creates a bunch of new ones. And then it also doesn't touch

`5:59:10`

a huge swath of the human experience at all. The world is full of miserable, anxious, hurt, rich people. It's also full of miserable, anxious, poor people and I'd rather be a miserable, anxious, rich person than a poor person. But it isn't this magic wand that make everything go away. And that's again, one of those insights just like having children that you cannot communicate in words. I've never been able to persuade a person who's not wealthy that wealth wasn't gonna solve all their problems. — One quote you've returned to often that I enjoy a lot is the Coco Chanel quote of the best things in life are free. And the second best things are very, very expensive. And I guess the task is to focus on surrounding yourself with the best things in life like family and all of this and not caring about the other stuff. — I would easily say you can care about the other stuff. Just know the order of priority.

`6:00:11`

If you are blessed with a partner that you love, some children that you adore, you've already won the greatest prize that most humans are able to achieve. Most humans in this world, if they are of marital age and they have children, if you ask them what's the most important thing, they would all say that. They would all say that. No matter whether they're rich or poor. It's easy to lose sight of that when you're chasing the second best things. Because do you know what? They're also very nice. I really like that Pagani Zonda. It was a very expensive car and I would have no chance of acquiring it if I hadn't become rather successful in business. So I don't wanna dismiss it either. It's great fun to have money. It's just not as fun for quite as long or as deep as you think it is. And these other things, having an occupation

`6:01:12`

and a pursuit that you enjoy, being able to carry burdens with a stiff up of a lip and with, again, a sense of meaning is incredible. To have family, to have friends, to have hobbies, to have all these things that are actually available to most people around the world, that's winning. And it doesn't mean you have to discount your ambitions, it doesn't mean you can't reach for more, but it does mean it's pretty dumb if you don't realize that it's not gonna complete you in some hocus-pocus woo sense to make more. It really isn't. — What gives you hope about the future of this whole thing we have going on here? Human civilization. — I find it easier to be optimistic than pessimistic, because I don't know either way.