Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work.
We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the adrenaline rush of experiencing the blues Monday morning!?
Another colleague used to drive up to the parking lot of their previous employer, post lay-off., so that he could feel normal., and he did this for well over 6 - 8 months. Pack bags, wave to his wife and family, drive up in his Porsche to the parking lot and I guess feel normal !?
I took a four-year break from work (2009–2013) and moved to India. The reasons were simple: some family health issues required downtime (though probably not as much as I ended up taking), and I could afford to do this in India in a way I couldn’t in the US. This happened to coincide with the market bottom, but I wasn’t laid off—it was entirely voluntary.
I didn’t experience an identity crisis for a single day. I didn’t feel insecure or anxious about not working. The only real friction came from my family.
One big difference was social life. In India, I was constantly meeting people—connections were easy and organic. In the US, maintaining a daytime social life felt much harder. Everyone is on a treadmill—insurance, income, careers—often not by choice. I know there are ways to build community here, but in India it just happened naturally.
My extended family struggled more than I did. Once it became clear the break wasn’t temporary, there was a kind of quiet depression around it. I initially framed it as “taking a breather” by doing an executive MBA, but the break never really ended.
What eventually brought me back wasn’t overt pressure, but practical limits: my spouse’s mental health, and the constraints of India’s education system for our partially disabled, special-ed child. Those realities mattered more than any career concern.
> One big difference was social life. In India, I was constantly meeting people—connections were easy and organic. In the US, maintaining a daytime social life felt much harder. Everyone is on a treadmill—insurance, income, careers—often not by choice. I know there are ways to build community here, but in India it just happened naturally.
The primary reason for this is the built environment we live in here in the United States. It's very difficult to organically build connections when you have to drive a car somewhere to have basic social interactions. Even some of the items you mention, like insurance and income are very much informed by the requirement to have a car to participate in society.
I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of <business>" that suddenly having nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good identity.
I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google.
But that "work as identity" may still be a problem. For a lot of us, what we do is who we are, and so not having any work to do is like not having an identity.
You're describing my father. Now that he's retired his lack of hobbies is really catching up to him. His only hobby has been working and I've noted this about him since I was an adolescent and decided then as something I would not emulate.
A few times I've quit a FAANG job with no plan for after other than to wander, and both times the lack of professional competition meant not just coasting horizontally but that I was actually lowering myself somehow. Hard to explain, and I don't fully understand it.
I also noticed most people, especially women, determine your value by your 'right now'. While intentionally unemployed I'd answer truthfully and with a smile, 'I'm unemployed!' which visibly confused people.
> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of <business>" [..]
Risking a stereotype.
In my experience from traveling the world it's a tell-tale sign for being from a culture heavily influenced by the Protestant work ethic. Introduce yourself like that in Spain, Italy, or Brazil and you'll get strange looks.
On the flip side, I've found that people who do not define themselves through their work primarily often do so through family. My younger self is certainly guilty of giving someone a strange look when within the first five minutes of meeting them, they told me whose cousin they were.
After a decade, "founder of X that I no longer work at" is considered a lame answer. People want to know what you are doing now, not your highest claim to status of your entire life.
When I lived in the bay area for a few years, everybody would tell you where they worked, and if you didn't tell them, they'd ask. Since moving to Portland, I've definitely noticed that people are much more interested in what you do during your leisure time.
I found that outside of CA, this is asked a lot less often. In CA people ask that so they can mentally rank you as worth their time or not. Elsewhere, people ask you how your weekend went, or how your family is. One of the awesome parts of moving to Austin was not hearing that as the first question as much.
> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of <business>"
Tech bros would mock Finance bros who would open a conversation with anyone who would listen with "Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Goldman Sachs" and yet here we are now ...
Hoo boy, this is definitely a weird one to navigate, especially if you have a weird set of roles. It takes time to settle various threads and figure out how to address this.
Seriously. There are so many opportunities to give back to society. One does not need formal employment to be fulfilled.
I will say in Sergey Brin’s case, he had the unique opportunity to go back to work with the best and brightest without any friction, and nobody could tell him “hey maybe your credentials don’t quite stack up high enough for this department yeah?”
But for the rest of us, there’s FOSS, there’s computer repair, home automation, day trading a small fraction of your wealth, volunteer work at hospitals and libraries, gig work apps like taskrabbit…
If you are bored after being away from work for even a month, I’m not sure I could be friends with you.
I left Google to build an open source project a long time ago. A big part of the appeal was being able to have something to work on that's truly mine. Sergey already has something that's his and it's called Google. So I think he belongs there.
I think it's difficult for a normal brain to live with the low impact of another project while you created Google. Also, the speed of a personal developer is nothing compared with the speed of a software engineering area or company. You can easily feel like a turtle even working on an interesting project.
A mentally healthy person wants to be helpful. They want to be seen as helpful and they expect others around them to be helpful as well. This is the foundation of "pro-social" behavior: I benefit the group as much or more than the group benefits me.
Tying your identity to the place where you're helpful and where that help is appreciated and acknowledged isn't mental illness.
I hear what you're saying, but routines, especially long-lived, are difficult to break/change. It's normal to have phantom limbs when they are cut off.
I recently rewatched a Tested Q&A where Adam Savage discussed his post-Mythbusters life; his framing of that duality was very similar: https://youtu.be/2tZ0EGJIgD8?t=322.
It aligns with a common design principle: constraints often make a problem space easier to navigate. I suspect life is similar. Having limited time creates a "specialness" that is easily lost when you suddenly have an infinite amount of time at your disposal.
It's not THAT bad for me, but I really can't take vacation days for "nothing". I struggle if I don't have plans and work really forces one to have some structure. If you need the structure and don't have any plans post lay-off, I can believe the struggle to "let go" and do something better.
I am guessing if you have been doing this daily for a couple decades then the neurodivergence is not going through this. I assume any normal person will find it hard to not do any kind of work and if you spent 20 years of your life doing tech, how useful are in the "real" world. Unless you have been doing handy work on the sides, spoiler alert: not much.
Wasn't sergey forced out for hitting on employees? It seems pretty reasonable for him to be unhappy with a forced retirement and ultimately unwind it now that meeto is pretty much over.
When you define yourself solely by work, you lose your entire identity when you retire. Most people don't have hobbies, so work is literally the one thing they have in their lives.
It's really interesting that my comment here where I said that employment can inflict brain damage got flagged even though previous comment described behavior that would be obviously significant clinical symptom if it was caused by anything else as it is irrational and detrimental.
It's been great to see. Google's AI efforts have truly seen a resurgence in quality with his return. What I enjoy about this article is the fact that it presents a view that now seems relatively rare: the idea that you may have a purpose beyond pleasure and that pursuing that purpose is a more fulfilling pleasure than any comfort you could give yourself.
I think that kind of thing strikes many people. Sometimes like with Socrates and his daimonion which restrained him from risk and other times like with one of my favourite lines in all literature where Ahab of Moby Dick remarks:
> What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me?
I find so much of this relatable in my own way, billions absent. It's good to see there are others who feel this way. Community from afar.
I'd have guessed that Google's rapid advance with Gemini was more due to the merger of Google Brain with DeepMind under Demis Hassabis than the return of Sergey Brin.
I remember seeing an interview (Dwarkesh?) with Sholto Douglas who had been working at Google at the time (now at Anthropic) who said he would work late there and the only other person was Sergey Brin, apparently wanting to be part of (or following) the development/training process.
I don't buy this narrative (notwithstanding that great commencement speeches are almost always hyperbole). The way I see it Sergey HAD to come back or risk the poorly managed mess that is google completely drop the AI leadership . It proves again that all thats good in Google happened exclusively because of the two founders and that their CEO is not an effective leader at all.
I've been curious how much the Facebook IPO affected the industry also
We know they lied about video metrics; everyone has to pivot to video to stay competitive (with fradulent metrics)
Given the suspicion of fake accounts and further ad fraud how much have companies felt they have to follow trends rather than come up with sort of, their own organic business models
Sergey is brilliant but it's really the lightsaber that is super voting shares that make him uniquely empowered to slash through Google's immense bureaucracy.
I think being the founder of Google gives him more political capital at Google than anything on paper. As a controlling member of the board there's a variety of things he can do with that hammer, but just simply being who he is, not even just on the org chart, has got to be worth way more.
this seems an idealistic view, my cynical view is that if King Lear gives up all his legal paper power he will find out nobody cares who the hell he is and take advantage of him without remorse.
Brin wasn’t bothered to wield any of that power to try to arrest the decline in Google’s search quality. He wasn’t bothered to direct the Chrome team to support MathML, or to bring back Google Reader, or do anything about a hundred small insults like, say, the deletion of YouTube comments with URLs to keep the rubes inside the casino. But he was able and willing to come back and wield his clout because he was bored and wanted to play with AI. As someone who’s old enough to remember how much leeway Google used to get from governments and the public at large on the basis that Page and Brin were nice young men who could be relied on to be responsible stewards it’s a little galling. Don’t give Mr. Brin any belly-rubs until he tells us when Reader is coming back.
I loved google reader, many people were blogging and social network was "ick" as people immediately associated the term with okcupid/friendster(myspace?) and reader was decentralised and encouraged all walks of life to participate... maybe I just missed the vibes back then, gosh I was so hopeful
My doctor had a renowned research record, retired at 68 but got bored, and went back to work. Whilst I was in hospital, I got to observe him throughout the work day.
I don't mean this in a creepy way at all, but I got the impression the greatest source of joy was hanging around with younger people. A hungry grad, a cleaner, a nurse, male, female, whatever.
I'm sure he enjoyed his peers as well, but I could detect a shade of boredom of those interactions, which inevitably had stress and responsibility attached.
I think what I'm trying to say is that work isn't just about challenge, it's about socialization and having fun. And one of the greatest benefits of being financially independent is being able to navigate to those kinds of moments without the pressure of being on the make.
This is kinda right, kinda wrong. I was a workaholic - I was a VP of engineering at Google. I'm doing fine retired.
You don't have to find purpose when you retire
At all.
Instead, you just have to be willing to face each day when the day has no expectations. You can do anything you want, and decide you love it, hate it, whatever. You can do it again the next day, or not. you can hate it one day and love it the next. It's completely up to you.
For some people, this lack of structure is crushing. For others, it's liberating.
It's similar to having spent significant time alone as an adult - some people can't deal with it, some can.
I meet a lot of people who are like "I haven't figured out what i will do when i retire". These are the people i worry about, because there isn't anything to figure out. They want a structure that probably won't exist. They will likely tire of trying to force their own structure on it, and seek structure elsewhere (IE work).
In the past 3 weeks i've done the following:
Building powered paper airplanes with the kids
Mentoring high school and college students
Advising startups.
Woodworking
Hacking on CNC machines
Hacking on minecraft mods.
Hacking on compilers.
Playing video games.
and a lot more.
The next 3 weeks may be the same or different, depending on lots of things (mood, energy, schedules).
There are also days i do nothing cool or useful at all, and feel great (and unapologetic - nobody gets to judge my retirement but me, my spouse, and my kids :P) about it
The world is really big, and has lots to do. You just have to be able to drive yourself because you aren't being forced into doing anything at all.
In the end - for some i also feel it's similar to divorce - lots of people don't get divorced because they don't want to deal with being alone.
Retirement similarly forces you to spend a lot of time with yourself (even if you have an SO and even if they are retired). Lots of people don't like that, at all, for various reasons. Work lets them ignore it.
Just wanted to say, one of the exciting things I realized when I joined Google was that the maintainer of GDB was my org's director at that time. Not sure how much it matters, but it gave me confidence in the leadership to know that someone who knows the details is running the show at the top. It made me trust the leadership chain much more than I normally would otherwise.
This! People need to get a life. I wouldn't have any trouble keeping myself busy after retirement. I do not have nearly enough time for the things I really WANT to do beside work.
I am saving up to retire early. If I mention this to friends, most look at me with big eyes and ask “But what will you spend your day on then!?” in a sceptical tone.
I imagine they think I want to drink beers and play golf all day every day, or something like that.
I’m a bit heart broken, that so many of my friends cannot imagine being masters of their own time, without thinking it would be bad for them and/or unproductive.
I think that's the one silver lining of the pandemic's lockdowns; some people were at home again for extended periods of time, finding themselves with a lot more free time and in a place that wasn't just for eating and sleeping.
Yea I've noticed this is the singular difference between those that enjoy early retirement and are successful doing it and those that aren't. Many ambitious people end up wrapping their entire identity up with work and feel completely lost with that gone. It's why so many successful founders throw themselves into new startups right after an exit, despite having way more than enough to retire. Personally, I've taken some time off since selling my startup and I've been so busy learning new things and building new hobbies that I can't imagine going back! Maybe I will one day, but it will likely involve something I've learned from during this time
Why? Why can work noy be your retirement plan as well? I have benefitted a lot from professors who have kept teaching (voluntarily) till physically possible.
If I became financially independent tomorrow I'd go straight to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A9delon_Castle to help build that. I don't think we've evolved to be healthy and idle. In retirement you can choose what to do, and volunteering on some nerdy construction project sounds amazing.
From observing my parents and other elders, it isn't "work" in the job sense that we all need. It is feeling needed by others. This can be accomplished by being an active grandparent, charity(active volunteering not just allocating money), open-source contribution, mentoring.
It can be something other than a job. It just can't be done alone.
We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other. Luckily there are plenty of people in need.
My grandmother said it like this, "sometimes people need to help more than people need help" in the context of a much younger me asking effectively why she bothered (I forget the context). That has stuck with me for years.
This is a common misconception. I’m quite happy not being social and have absolutely no need to be needed.
I FIREd 3 years ago and don’t miss working one bit.
I think leaving work becomes more difficult for those who do need to feel valued and especially if they don’t have interests outside of it. There are many people like that.
Totally, it's "work" in the sense that you're doing something to contribute to the world, even if it's something small or mostly unimpactful. Those kinds of things provide internal fulfillment, in my experience.
My perspective on these things have changed when I saw a successful old friend of mine thank his friend for asking his help. I feel like being asked to help by a friend might actually be a privilege sometimes.
I think it definitely is - simply because it means you are approachable enough (and knowledgable enough) that people feel both comfortable enough to ask and see you as a reliable resource.
>> We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other.
I think this was illustrated well in the movie I Am Legend with Will Smith. He creates artificial situations where he is interacting with mannequins in order to fulfill this very basic need.
Its interesting that this part of the movie was missed by a lot of friends and family until I pointed it out to them.
Exactly, the prevalence of the word "work" in this conversation is such a telling indicator of what 'western' culture-at-large has been taught to focus on
> Adherents of the popular financial independence, retire early (FIRE) movement scrimp and sacrifice to retire early. Only for many of them to discover their dream of post-work life does not match reality.
I think the more important goal in FIRE is the 'FI' part - financial independence. Something that allows you to retire early - not necessary that you have to use this privilage. Something that allows you to next day take a day off or week off or 1 year sabbatical to recharge without asking anyone for permission or worrying if you will be able to pay the bills.
I think even in 4-hour-workweek Tim Ferriss called it taking mini-retirements throughout your life rather than at the end of you life.
Financial Independence, You're Not The Boss Of Me.
Once you're financially independent, at a level that you're comfortable with, you don't have to put up with crappy bosses.
If you're Sergey Brin, you kind of don't really have a boss, do you?
If you "retire" into working at a hardware store, or volunteering at the Humane Society, or just shifting into a lower-stress job...
Well, that's the dream, isn't it?
I was so happy when I realized that, unless there were dramatic shifts in the markets, I would always be able to find "decent" work for great wages. And maybe I could be patient and find "good" work for "pretty great" wages.
Once I had that level of comfort, I was way, way more brave at work. I thought, "Well, they could fire me for their own reasons, any day. So, I might as well do The Right Thing™. If they fire me for doing The Right Thing™, well, I didn't really want to work there anyway, did I?"
And then there were dramatic shifts in the markets, lol. But fortunately for me, I had built up a nest egg, and now I've shifted into a lower-stress job.
I honestly don't know what advice I'd give to younger folks. Move to Norway?
I might have missed it, but I don't see this quote in the article. Either way, it feels disingenuous when a place like business insider posts these criticisms of FIRE like it is the ultimate gotcha.
Finding a purpose outside of work seems like the main issue most people struggle with when doing FIRE. Once you get going, the saving is automatic and addictive to some, but figuring out what to do with your life to give it meaning outside of a traditional work context is not just an issue with FIRE.
After FIRE I started building my own small to medium projects. Emulators, tools, games, some available to the public. I tell people I'm a full time software developer who does remote consulting gigs (the last not true but justifies my FIRE income)
If you want something to lust after, I recommend you find a project you care about getting involved in right now, literally today. The things that make us happy are doing something we care about every day, not seeking long-term goals.
47. I didn't wait for FIRE to plan the projects, I had a notebook of ideas I collected over the years and had studied the necessary skills to put them in action throughout my work life.
Additionally, I could see myself going back to work at a company if I saw a truly exciting project. But that excludes around 98% of the jobs I see out there.
No, the next generation of privacy management experiences that will impact billions of users configuring their privacy settings isn't interesting.
Nothing will make a boring corpo job not-boring, but one thing that can help mix it up is to change which boring corpo job you're doing once or twice a decade. Five years is a decent stint at one job. Worth taking a look around and seeing if an opportunity catches your eye.
I'm not doing FIRE, I have children and just live below my means. I'm hoping to retire around 55 assuming the AI bubble doesn't nuke everyones portfolio.
I mean they are no different that the trash stories you'd read about robber barons in the 1800s (poor orphan got offered a job, smart worker talked to railroad tycoon, etc).
The article hits on something that I believe everyone is at least aware of. Id argue the next generation is best suited for not having this issue that the current generation does have as they at least seem to think about everything and are very careful about tying their identity to work which prior generations seem to do without much thought (for better or worse).
I'm in my 50s. About two months into retirement I fell into the deepest depression of my life because I couldn't shake the "who am I without my job?" question. It took almost a year (and therapy) to accept that I still add value without working.
About a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour indoor cycling workout at home, then went for a short plunge in the lake (41 F). Then an hour in the hot tub.
It's pretty cool doing whatever I want for now, but I don't think I can do this for another 40 years. I feel like there's something missing - the sense of accomplishment whenever I finish a task. Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when it's either before work or after work.
So maybe at the end of summer 2026 I'll wait for recruiter emails and start responding to some of them. I'm done with applying to 100 jobs to get one response. Maybe I'll try a startup job to experience working in a place that doesn't have a 50-page document describing level expectations.
I highly advise traveling - went a similar experience - had some savings that could last for a few years (much longer if I stretched them)
So just decided to get a motorbike license and go check out Asia.
Ended up finding a partner (totally unexpected) selling everything, moving abroad, marrying them and now expecting a child (planned), all in a manner of 3 years.
Has been quite the joyful and interesting experience, all after I had the deeply depressing feeling of having “solved life” at my nice position in the EU.
There are so many places in the world where you can feel you are actually doing great service to the community, on a shoestring budget and feel happy and fulfilled.
> Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when it's either before work or after work.
This comment reminded me of a book I read recently - Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anne Lembke. She talks about how pleasure and pain and experienced by the same region of the brain and they need to be balanced. I'd highly recommend reading that book.
I haven't worked in about 7 years. Only recently I started helping out a friend with a software project semi-regularily. And it wasn't really out of boredom. It's just that the project has some cool stuff, people on the team are cool and he's a friend. I passed 7 years with gaming, internet, talks, walks and mixtures of any subset of those. Only occasionally doing some coding just for fun or out of curiosity or to occasionally help someone. AI is a big game changer for me now. So much more fun to be had with coding.
I don't think I un-retired but I'm performing some commercialy valuable tasks for someone.
Sergey unretires, Gemini suddenly becomes the top LLM (for a week or two at least)
Google has made some subtle moves that a lot of folks missed, possibly with Sergey's influence. Like hiring back Noam Shazeer, who practically invented the backbone of the technology.
It's good to have folks with presumptions of being scientists actually run companies for once.
That being said, I wish his ex-wife hadn't spent her millions in the divorce proceedings to get RFK Jr into a cabinet level position to gut billions in research spending.
:(
I don't know who to credit, maybe it's Sergey, but the free Gemini (fast) is exceptional and at this point I don't see how OpenAI can catch back up. It's not just capability, but OpenAI have added so many policy guardrails it hurts the user experience.
It's the worst thing ever. The amount of disrespect that robot shows you, when you talk the least bit weird or deviant, it just shows you a terrifying glimpse of a future that must be snuffed out immediately. I honestly think we wouldn't have half the people who so virulently hate AI if OpenAI hadn't designed ChatGPT to be this way. This isn't how people have normally reacted to next-generation level technologies being introduced in the past, like telephones, personal computers, Google Search, and iPhone. OpenAI has managed to turn something great into a true horror of horrors that's disturbed many of us to the foundation of our beings and elicited this powerful sentiment of rejection. It's humanity's duty that GPT should fall now so that better robots like Gemini can take its place.
It's the best model pound for pound, but I find GPT 5.2 Thinking/Pro to be more useful for serious work when run with xhigh effort. I can get it to think for 20 minutes, but Gemini 3.0 Pro is like 2.5 minutes max. Obviously I lack full visibility because tok/s and token efficiency likely differs between them, but I take it as a proxy of how much compute they're giving us per inference, and it matches my subjective judgement of output quality. Maybe Google nerfs the reasoning effort in the Gemini subscription to save money and that's why I am experiencing this.
FWIW, my productivity tanks when my Claude allowance dries up in Antigravity. I don’t get the hype for Gemini for coding at all, it just does random crap for me - if it doesn’t throw itself into a loop immediately, which it did like all of the times I gave it yet another chance.
I've been a huge sceptic of the whole AI hype since the beginning now. Whenever I've tried any of the AI tools, the results have just been underwhelming. However, two weeks ago I tried Gemini (the pro version) and have been using it for various, random tasks and questions since then, and I've been pretty impressed.
There seems to be much less hallucination of facts than in other tools I've tried and whenever Gemini makes assumptions on stuff I didn't explicitly specify in the prompt, it says so. The answers also always have nice structure: it starts with a short and concise version, then gives me options and more details and considerations.
I also like the feature that I can make it remember facts across chats. I'm a physicist by training and I've told Gemini so, so now every time I ask something, it gives me an answer perfectly tailored for a physicist (often with mathematical formulas, etc.).
Today's unscientific gutting of the CDC's childhood vaccine schedule is what is being accomplished with all that $GOOG money.
It's honestly very disturbing and rather than discuss it as a matter of politics, I'll just say that as a parent I'll be following the AAP's vaccination recommendations (even if their recommendations on baby sleep are impossible :)
> even if their recommendations on baby sleep are impossible
If you put yourself in their shoes, you realise that you have to give advice for the 10-20th percentile parents (or worse) because you are giving the same advice to everyone.
The alternative would be to offer more complex advice such as "if X Y and Z then do A, if only X do B", but the perception is that's too difficult for people to follow.
So you end up making very defensive (and therefore onerous) recommendations.
An interesting fact is that, since the introduction of the "baby sleeps on their back, alone", SIDS has gone down, but flat heads have gone up. It's probably been a good tradeoff, but it's still a tradeoff.
Also, I've seen a second time mother refer to "don't cosleep" advice as "western nonsense" which I found funny because it puts things in perspective - vast swathes of the world think cosleeping with your child is safe, natural and normal.
Sergey might have some positive influence on Gemini, but given that he isn't an AI scientist ( AKA no technical background), I really do wonder what sort of influence that (only) he could have had, beyond just bringing in key people.
The man that invented PageRank while going to college at Stanford for a PhD doesn't have a technical background? He did not get that PhD because he founded Google. He may not be as smart as you think you are, but he's no slouch either.
It was interesting to see my dad retire. He struggled a lot initially and even went back to work for a while. He had to actively work on learning to enjoy his hobbies and time once again.
I don’t find hobbies to be a replacement for work. Maybe it depends on the hobby but many hobbies are solo. work, or work that I enjoy, is not. Accomplishing things with others and for others has its on motivation for me at least
Of course maybe your hobbies or your dad’s hobbies are social. when someone says “hobbies” to me I generally think of things done mostly alone and I know for me, that’s not enough
Hobbies are just anything you truly enjoy doing that isn't mandated by your job. If you would continue doing your job even if your employer drops your salary to 0, then yeah your job is your hobby too! It is up to the individual to figure out what works for them.
im probably just projecting but going back to work when youve amassed enough to live off to an enormous fortune feels like a failure of imagination. sure everyone needs to keep their hands busy, feel valued by others, etc etc but surely there’s some other hobby, interest, or unprofitable passion project you would invest time into?
but maybe being in a corporate environment (any any env) shapes your thinking in such a way that it’s really hard to think outside tha conditioning. feels like that to me only a few years int working
Well, XYZ rando going back to work after RSUs are vested is lot different from Google founder going back to work because he sees his 'baby' is in trouble.
Those hobbies, interests etc sounds like middle class thing where people take upon gardening, cooking, hiking, surfing or some such that they couldn't do enough while working. For people like Google founders they would've had any adventure they seek outside work anywhere in they world every weekend.
People forget Bill Gates advised (maybe still consulted) by MS long after he formally moved away from any official position in company.
If I could I'd retire tomorrow, I have so many projects I would like to take on, I have the feeling I could fill 3 lives with them: gardening, learning math, system programming, wine tasting, carpentry, sport, traveling etc... There are *so* many interesting things to do and so little time.
I guess time will tell but at the moment I have a hard time imagining myself getting bored.
In my old age I'm learning that this is rare. I take my projects for granted, because I guess I'm just very creative, I have way more "projects" than I have days remaining. But it seems like most people have no projects, and nothing in their lives but watching television, playing video games, or doom scrolling.
Not to knock you specifically, but I know a lot of people who say that they have no time for this stuff waste a ton of time watching TV and doom scrolling.
for me, it would be bread and cheese making (easier cheese varieties), vegetable fermentation, more cooking of various cuisines including indian ones, drawing and painting, carpentry, permaculture (i did organic gardening earlier, which is a subset), wood carving (done some before), and maybe tailoring (making clothes, by hand or by sewing machine, for own use).
only a few at a time, of course, maybe only two, and by rotation. and then maybe i would narrow it down to two or three for long term.
It's interesting that he's returned to work on Gemini and that it has been central to Google's rejuvenation in that time. I am curious how much of this marries up with traditional founder driven companies being successful (Jobs returning to Apple, Jensen Huang, etc) compared to being adrift without their original founders. How much was he driving as part of Gemini? Or was he just chipping in?
Retirement isn't quite applicable to billionaires.
They never have to work. They do it because they want to.
Retirement implies there was work you didn't want to do. You did it because you had (or wanted) to make some money. Now you have enough money. You've retired.
Hell, it isn't even applicable to many wealthy software engineers who got rich from tech startups. Many are coding as much as when they were working.
I retired when my first kid was born. I had plenty to keep me busy playing with her, taking care of her, traveling with her. And then we had the second one, and were extra busy.
But I was still "working" the whole time. I was running a small startup, and still keeping up on tech and taking speaking gigs. I was not great at fully retiring.
I unretired when the second kid got to 1st grade. We could no longer travel on a whim and the house was empty 6 hours a day. I didn't seek work, but someone reached out with an interesting job and I didn't say no.
Funny enough, my wife and I were just talking about how we were both bad at retirement (she also retired and has since gone back to work). But we talked about how the next retirement will be better, because the kids will be gone and we'll just sit around making art and building Lego all day.
I look forward to the sweet kiss of death to solve the retirement funding issue, and forever declining health while working struggle. Working for "The man" takes everything someone has.
It’s funny when people ask you what you want to do after you retire, and you tell them you are going to sit behind your PC and do exactly what you are doing now.
I totally understand. I "retired" last summer, but I continue to work about 50%, mostly at a new place that needs my help. I like what I do. Anyway, gaming/reading/etc. are fine and dandy, but not something I want to do 24/7.
The only thing I don't quite get about Brin is going back to Google. Since he doesn't need the money, why not support open source AI projects?
If I was in this situation, being a centibillionaire (or just having enough money for me and for my kids and their kids to never worry), I would write so, so, so much software. I have so many ideas for businesses, too, I just have no time and funds and I'm too risk-averse.
> They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of meaning.
I find it difficult to relate to such worlds. I make up all kinds of explanations like, "well, it must be because while they have food and housing, they don't have any funds to entertain themselves". Or, "well, it must be because they simply haven't had sufficient education to reach an activation level where the higher tiers of Maslow's come into their line of sight".
And then I read about plenty of counter-examples, like wealthy offspring living the textbook aimless/dissolute/pick-your-adjective life, or the ennui of able-bodied welfare recipients with quite reasonable spending cash from generous Scandinavian welfare regimes when one considers the mind boggling amount of free media, free libraries, free parks, free entertainment in general in the developed world. Perhaps this is just part of their human condition for people suffering from this malaise.
And here I sit, drowning in ideas of what I would be interested to pursue to know our beautiful universe if only I had the time. So much so I write them down into a file just to quiet the cacophony in my head like a dog seeing squirrels everywhere he looks, just so I can get real work done on a timely basis, haha.
When once asked whether I'd ever be bored with eternal youth and boundless resources, I immediately replied an eternity is still too little time to satisfy my curiosity.
There is an element of the years long conditioning to work that the article points to. But I think people do find it important to have various means to engage with life, and building and creating is a dominant outlet.
Pursuing goals that are intrinsically motivating, genuinely interesting, that give you a strong sense of purpose with healthy integration into core values leads to high life satisfaction.
It’s as if they’ve never heard of Maslow‘s Hierarchy of Needs before and further did they don’t know Self Actualizing is right at the very top.
Without that key stone on the top the human being is still a wanting animal. And if you somehow “mission complete” one Self Actualizing, then you immediately start to want something fresh “purpose” etc.
And obviously Self Actualizing doesn’t have to come in the form of work, although often it does.
At the end of life, Maslow became convinced that self-transcendence was the pinnacle of the hierarchy. Strong identification with work will not get one to that final step. I am not sure if ai is a path to self transcendence or self annihilation, but it's interesting to ponder in the case of some like Brin.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been widely criticized as being too rigid and simplistic and too biased towards an affluent Western cultural context. It also hasn't been tested and validated by science, and is based on hearsay rather than empirical data.
"Self Actualization" being a primary universal human need is just one guy's personal opinion, it isn't a law of nature or physics.
Considerations of a poor billionaire being bored apart - why is it that we still consider work and retirements as "black or white" things ? It might have made sense for physically exhaustive works, but for anything intellectual, wouldn't "progressive retirement" make much more sense ? As in, starting a certain age, provided you're physically and mentally able, of course, you get to work 80% of your time (in civilized countries where retirement is payed by states from taxes, you would get "about" 20% of your pension, but your employer would keep paying taxes), then 50%, then 25%, then 0 ? Would that be easier to finance given life expectancy increase (barring WW3, of course) ?
This basically exists in Austria as “Altersteilzeit” [0] (“old age part time”). You even get 50% of your loss of income back through social security. So e.g. when reducing work by 40% you still get 80% of your salary. I’m guessing this is to incentivise employers to keep people near retirement employed as it would be much more expensive for the state to finance them if they were unemployed.
Medically speaking, your proposal would perhaps prevent a lot of heart attack deaths. It has been shown that not working is not just unpleasant, it's a strong stressor [1,2].
> ... wouldn't "progressive retirement" make much more sense ?
Of course it does. I've seen it in my parents' generation: many wanted to reach retirement do "do nothing" and, well, they just lost their marbles. Doing nothing is neither good for the body, nor for the mind. Endless TV watching or endless pina colada drinking in the pool (or both at the same time): idleness brings absolutely nothing good.
But my parents' friends who kept working a bit (like my godmother who kept supervising her real estate agency): she stayed sharp and fit.
People think they're going to read and do exercice etc. but truth is: most are going to do jack absolutely shit. And turn to the latter.
So keeping partially active is the best thing possible.
I see it with my mother-in-law: 70 y/o, still working, daily, with my wife (they own a little SME). It keeps her in the loop: she still knows how to use a computer, her mind is quick. She's not idling.
The financial aspect of it all is something else: but people doing nothing is not what a society needs.
Humans spent thousands of years living in small groups where everyone had to be useful. When all of sudden you stop working and sit in your corner, you are doing something that run against thousands of years of evolution.
I scrolled this whole thread curious if someone would make this simple observation. We did not survive and evolve for millions of years to be born and then do nothing, to not meet needs and have needs met. Historical precedent, tamper with carefully.
I am partial fire and I feel that line of demarcation personally. I've also watched it play out in others like clockwork. As wealth grows, new responsibilities emerge.
When I started my company, we suddenly found that we were in a good small fortune, not enough to be millionaires or billionaires, but enough to get people to run the business semi automatically with very minimum input from the founders.
I took a semi retirement approach to the business, there really wasn't a lot of things to do, my role was sort of just "managing" programmers. I got so much free time that I could even start a second business on the side.
Despite my best ability to stretch my work, I couldn't even fill up half of my working hours. One would have thought that this is heaven. But the time I was most free was also the time I was most miserable. I wasn't happy, I was gaining weight, I was perennially asking myself why the business couldn't be bigger and I couldn't sell it, so that I can be real millionaires and billionaires with financial freedom!
Then fate intervened, the sudden fortune disappeared and I no longer had the luxury of just "managing people"; I have to do hands-on. And it was this activity, the feeling that I was contributing to something, that I was writing code again and actually building stuffs, that made me happy again.
Today we are bigger than what we once we were, but still, I am writing code and pretty much hands-on.I vow that I will never retire, even though if I could. Because it's the meaningful work that sustains life and provides happiness. Being able to work on it is a luxury that I will never want to give up, ever.
You agree more than you disagree. Meaningful might be something else for you. But I bet deep down it is doing something for others (clients, coworkers, friends, family, even strangers) that gives meaning.
It’s easy to eye roll at billionaire guy wanting to go work, but it’s a real thing, I recall my dad struggling with retirement, after having planned so long.
He did a bit of consulting, was a rural mail carrier for a year and ended up managing a county program for a few years. He also discovered teaching as an adjunct professor, which he loved deeply. At some point, he was ready, and he had several good years of retirement with grandchildren and travel.
With a story like this, I choose to see what we have in common with a very successful, very rich person. Many people think “If only I had a more, everything would be grand.”
Well… Brin is a billionaire controlling one of the most powerful corporations on the earth. He found meaning in his work, or chose his work because of the meaning to him. Either way, given the ability to do anything, he made his choice. Don’t worship the guy, but perhaps see the humanity that we all share.
Mitchell Hashimoto went on to create a new awesome terminal emulator, in a programming language he had not used (much) before. Sounds like a great way to stay entertained!
It's interesting to hear about his experience, but I'm not sure if it's typical. There are millions of people retiring each year, presumably many are happy to be done with the drudgery of work and excited to spend time on hobbies and projects they enjoy.
I'm curious to know how many retirees end up like Sergey and how many you don't hear about because they're too busy enjoying their retirement.
I will say that this topic is a common one among people talking about FIRE “financial independence, retire early” — folks who are saving as fast as they can so they can quit working. There are a lot of people who already got there who come back to warn people they won’t necessarily be happy and fulfilled just because they quit the day job. Like, that’s an amazing feeling at first but it probably won’t carry you for 30-50 more years.
The article actually includes some of these examples, but I get the feeling that a lot of readers did not make it past the Brin part.
It works much better for most people if you replace “retire early” with “recreationally employed”. You can select the work you do without optimizing for income or status-maxxing.
Financial freedom is about not having to worry about losing your job, or tolerating shitty work conditions. Why would you retire if you do what you love? I think the real problem might be if there's nothing you actually love doing (long term), that's when money won't help.
But that's the problem - if you don't like doing anything, what will you do? What will you fill your life with? You will quickly get bored of anything you try. Your life will have no meaning, and you will probably turn to alcohol or drugs.
This might rub some people on HN the wrong way but what these people call "work" isn't really work in the sense of what most people consider work. They jet here and there, intervene wherever they want, and everybody listens to them all the time. They can cancel and postpone meetings as they wish, and so on and so forth. It's work in the same sense as buying another house is work -- you have to get together with lawyers and plenty of people but in the end these people all work for you and you can also change your mind and not buy it.
That's also the reason why these multi-billionaires never retire. They've retired from real work a long time ago.
Was looking for this comment. Cutting meat in some factory is considered 'work', running a global tech business is also considered 'work'. Both 'work', different requirements from the 'worker'.
It's work in the sense of exchanging their attention, energy and the hours of their lives towards a goal, while in the moment they'd rather be somewhere else doing something else.
it doesn't quite work that way. Once you do this what you call "work", you can't just extricate yourself in the middle of dealing with complicated situations or drop things where others depend on you. So it's still work in the sense that you can't just literally do what you want the way you do when you lounge around your house.
It is clear that Alphabet is his baby and neither he not Larry ever fully left.
He is still in his 50s so maybe just too young to play golf and chill on superyachts all day. While him being a billionaire makes any lesson derived have to have an asterisk him enjoying technical work even after long having won the rat race is a pretty cool role model.
No wonder he returned: he can focus on meaningful work without direct financial pressure, with full access to people, decisions, and resources.
If only we all had a time in life to do what we love, get paid, and face no paywalls. I call that "liberated work". If only at least retirement was like that.
It has been my observation that those that retire without solid plans to keep busy 15-20 hours a week really do struggle. You have to be missed by people when you are sick or out of town. You have to have a reason to get out of bed. I think your choice of activity tells a lot about you since the 'pay the bills and save for retirement" argument no longer applies. Some volunteer to better the world. Some continue their life work to take wealth from those with less power.
You're saying he should have gone the Gates path and formed an NGO? Fair enough but I imagine nothing else matches the thrill and stress of running the C suite at Google
I took a moment to participate in an ARIN (https://www.arin.net) call. They drive policy for IP addresses that run the Internet. Anyway, one thing that stood out to me was during a portion of the conference the organization was holding elections for open seats. The seats are open to anyone, I'm pretty sure.
There were a bunch of people, from across the country, MANY in retirement, trying their best to sell themselves that they are the right candidate.
Sergey can just make a phone call and he gets to build Gemini and run a billion dollar organization and have meaning in old-age. This is what wealth buys you. The rest of us, I guess, we will be arm-wresteling for the few open oppertunities to make an impact.
Do you think he can still spend time on his $450 million yacht or is he too busy writing prompts?
Snark aside, good for him. Absolute non-news though, as is any extraordinary individual action during and contributing to a bubble. It'll be interesting to see what stays when, or if, the bubble ever pops.
You can very well write that prompt from the top deck or from one of the office cabins on said yacht (no, not speaking from experience).
I'm not envious of anyone's big yacht, but I wouldn't waste my money that way (you can probably rent one for special occasions) - as long as there are still children hungry or without schooling.
I'm definitely envious of the yacht. Like, come on, how awesome is that! It's HUGE! I've been invited on tiny yachts with "only" a couple staff onboard and that was already fantastic to just be on for a day.
That said I don't think I could ever justify spending THAT kind of money on it.
i never really understood the billionaire yacht hate.
Once you buy a yacht 450 million dollars of ownership in a company you had goes to people who built a beautiful thing that exists in the real world and you're on the hook for employing a lot of people to maintain it.
I take a lot more issue with accumulation and hoarding of wealth than the spending of it.
An economy that wasted resources building mega yachts for billionaires is more unequal than one that builds cruise ships that high income families can go on an holiday.
> i never really understood the billionaire yacht hate.
Once someone reaches that level of fame and fortune it's almost a requirement if they want to travel or have some sort of 'vacation'. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely a great problem to have, but it's one of the only ways to find privacy at that level of wealth.
If I'm ever super wealthy, I hope I can also stay somewhat anonymous so that I can walk down the street like any other person.
Holding shares in a company (or dollar bills) is not depriving others of something. The fisherman will go catch fish tomorrow, the wheat in the fields will keep growing, the builder will build a house.
If someone starts paying the fisherman, farmer, builder, more to stop doing what they are doing and start building mega yachts, then there will be less fish, bread, and houses for others.
That said, I assume it's much simpler than that and it's just about the hypocrisy of the climate change billionaires to be bellowing out carbon while demanding the selfish greedy commoners cut our emissions.
It lines up with the AI arms race kicking into overdrive around ChatGPT's triumph in late 2022. Brin pops out of hiding right then, admitting Google "messed up" and starts coding, analysing losses, and basically playing dictator with his super-voting shares to shove the company back on track.
Rivals like OpenAI yanked him in and now he's in the office daily because the "trajectory of AI is so exciting" - translation: his ego couldn't handle watching his empire get outpaced, and with those voting rights, he can bulldoze through bureaucracy to keep the throne.
Ultimately, it's less about some profound quest for purpose and more about a control freak safeguarding his legacy and billions as the tech world burns. He never really let his kingdom go.
I too would very happily do just the bits of my job that I like, when and how I want, and have any requests or comments or complaints I make get immediate attention and responses.
All in the knowledge that no one is going to be time-tracking me or doing performance reviews, and I can just not do work at any moment I don't feel like it or have something better to do that day, like go to my private island or take my private jet to burning man etc (or as it turns out do a talk at Stanford). All while you have so much money that the price of anything from clothes to cars to houses is just some arbitrary number that has no meaning to you it is so absolutely tiny number... not that you actually buy anything yourself any more, mainly your team of personal staff deal with that grubby reality.
As for the rest of us, well we need to pay the bills while playing "the game" and politics and cowtowing to keep the money coming.
Exactly. If you work in a field that’s close to your interests, there are probably parts of your job that you’d do for fun even if infinitely wealthy. It’s the other stuff, the boring annoying grind, that makes it a job and not a hobby.
Retirement wasn't as interesting as a role at the company you founded where everyone looks up to you, doing whatever you feel like with no expectations or defined responsibilities? Shocker
Seriously, I'm glad he came back and found something he's interested in. I bet his role has grown some responsibilities, too.
I worked at a company with multiple cofounders; one of them became the CEO, the other one was initially CTO, but ultimately his title was just cofounder after a while and someone else was hired to be CTO. This person then went on to just prototype and build whatever he wanted to; the service he built ended up having no OC engineers supporting it, pages went to him but he didn’t bother responding and nobody would tell him he had to respond lol. Ultimately people just didn’t use that thing or delayed using it as they couldn’t really rely on it.
What a horrible promo-article - in particular when we look at the damage caused by Google in total. I actually think it would be better if the two original Google guys would, while shamefully admitting to have failed, stop working altogether. Others can fix the problems Google caused.
> "Going back to work just for fun might sound like a uniquely billionaire move."
Ah yeah? Can be boredom too. I fail to see why this article wants to promote this.
> Like many people, Brin had a relaxing vision for his post-working life. “I was gonna sit in cafés and study physics, which was my passion at the time,” he told the Stanford audience.
Any why would anyone take this at face value? How many of the guys there were paid to go there by the way?
PR-piece for the Epstein thing, isn't it? Just in time. Brin also likes them young, the nounce that he is, and no legal entity in the US is going to do shit about it.
It is definitely a well-timed story. It's notable that even though they are billionaires they care what people think about them so much that they have to do this PR nonsense.
As no governmental authority is actively investigating the allegations, Sergey Brin might never have the opportunity to clear his name from the Epstein child abuse allegations in the court of public opinion. If there would be an investigation and/or court case, Sergey Brin's lawyers would at least be able to legally clear his name. As long as evidence is being withheld, any association between Microsoft and Google leadership and Jeffrey Epstein will bring up rumors about their involvement in the child abuse, even though they might have been "only" clients of the JP Morgan private banking services for high net worth individual which was managed by Jeffrey Epstein.
Imagine if they locked Serg out of the protected quantum research he loved reading as it was department employees only and the only way he could continue his access was returning to work at a senior enough level to cross read. Imagine.
The problem with famous people unretiring and doing something different is they are kind of the nepobaby children of their former career arc selves. I both feel bad for him but am glad he's happier now.
Would I would really like bored FIRE people to do is advocate for shortening the work-week. The world needs to chill the fuck out, and leisure should be more abundant. Bored retirees have a unique credibility in advocating for this, and the time to do both grassroots and grasstops advocacy. (Think tanking and lobbying are descendants of the original retirement project, if you think about aristocracry as the original governmance system.)
I really don't buy his explanation. Here's one of the world's smartest guys, with more money than Smaug, and he really couldn't come up with anything better than going back to Google to work on Gemini?
What's the point of all that money if you won't even hire someone to help you find hobbies.
So many STEM universities have online courses. The art world froths itself mad over smart people with stupid money. Local projects beg for angels like him.
Hell even just doing the AI schtick but for free open source or as a pet startup.
To me those are all either inferior to working on AI or can be done outside of work. And for the founder of Google, probably Google is the best place to work on AI.
Hiring someone to find hobbies defeats the purpose of hobbies. Why would you want to pursue something that someone else finds enticing rather than you discovering it yourself?
he has a phd in CS, hes probably always been interested in AI, you dont think getting to play with AI with essentially infinite resources is more fun than collecting stamps or skiing or something?
> Having given so much of themselves to their careers, they often felt unmoored and purposeless when they left their jobs.
That's in contrast with all of us who see the companies led by these guys as the cancer of society and we'd quit and never look back if we had FU money.
My feelings aside, if all their purpose is to grow their company, I kinda get why they wouldn't give a damn about bettering the mankind, improving their communities or raising a healthy family.
Can you please not post cynical and/or curmudgeonly comments to HN? I can understand the feelings behind it—we all can—but this is really not what we're going here, and it has a way more degrading effect on the threads than I'm sure you intended.
I was kind of retired, earning passive crypto income for several years after 2019 throughout COVID. Best time of my life. I was living on a Mediterranean island, splitting my time between snorkeling and open source work.
Then I got cheated out of my position in the crypto project. Literally scammed by the project founder with the full support of government regulators who are supposed to be preventing this stuff and lost all my income overnight. The regulators literally facilitated fraud instead of preventing it... And I had the pleasure of being gaslit about it while also being gaslit about COVID by a different set of regulators. I became a conspiracy theorist during this time! Now I'm forced to work again...
It's especially infuriating in this age of perma-bailouts where the system is basically bailing out everyone with assets.
I figured out that the system is a scam. I can prove it to anyone in excruciating detail, with citations. If anyone should be bailed out, it should be me. I shouldn't be forced back in the hamster wheel. It's hard to compete against others who think the system works a certain way and don't realize how the hamster wheel works. I shouldn't have to compete with delusional fools who think that their effort spent on the hamster wheel is going to yield any rewards.
Anyway it drives me nuts how the only people who can afford to retire, choose not to... And those who are desperate to retire, can't! This is so pervasive, it feels like a psyop.
Living as we do in a society where basic needs are not guaranteed without a giant pile of money, most humans don’t get to experience what it feels like to be in a place where you don’t base your life decisions on financial well being. Thats very limiting; it isn’t that surprising that someone who has achieved that is now looking for meaning in other things. Besides: if you’re Sergey Brin, I imagine you can get to talk/work with whatever at Google interests you most and hand off the gruntwork to minions all the while being treated with deep reverence. It’s not exactly hard to see why he might like it.
One thing I wish more people would understand though is that this is also the best case for some kind of guarantee of basic necessities for every human (UBI, State Subsidies, whatever). Once we know we won’t just die, people might then spend their time on trying out different things and figuring out what works best for them. I believe we could achieve an overall better society this way.
I don't think this is really accurate because the traditional state of society, and one that remains in the 'developing world' which is almost certainly still the wide majority of the world at this point, is families living in multi generational housing with many people contributing. This enables older to generations to comfortably 'retire' when they see fit, and provides financial comfort and security. It's basically like decentralized pensions.
This new world of low fertility, small household size or even people living entirely alone, high external dependence, and the consequent broad insecurity - is still extremely new. And I do not think it will survive the test of time.
I think you might be romanticizing multi-generational households a bit. We introduced social security systems precisely because the family systems failed so frequently. In all but the richest families no retirement as we understand it today was possible. Illness or death of the main bread winners was fatal to the whole household and children were expected to work as soon as possible.
@dang, I get what you mean in a vacuum but this article is pretty insulting to the readers intelligence.
The third sentence of the article is
> But one misstep he admitted to might surprise a lot of people who dream of the day they can quit their 9-to-5.
Does anyone really believe the co founder of google retiring after their rise to supremacy in search was the equivalent of someone quitting their 9-5?
They might have well said “Google co-founder shares secrets that stealing bread to eat when you’re hungry and sleeping under bridges is actually illegal”
I'm also going to dissent with a "but is it a shallow rebuttal?" here? TFA is a of the "problems we wish we had" sort — we're all just temporarily embarrassed billionaires here, right guys? Right?! (Because a mere million doesn't cut it, these days…) But the rank and file of us are still on Duck Tales, Larry. Especially these days.
As I said in a separate comment, TFA is distinctly lacks empathy.
This article reads like propaganda to keep the worker bees slaving away until they die. But I have a few things to say about this and Sergey Brin in particular.
In the early days, many considered Sergey Brin to be the soul or the conscience of Google. He was reportedly the driving force in Google originally pulling out of China rather than capitulating to the censorship regime [1]. This was also after the apparent state-sponsored hack of Google in China [2] so perhaps the motivations were mixed? I don't know.
But Sergey I think is a good example of someone for whom his creation outgrew him. I'm reminded of an old Jeff Atwood blog post where he quoted Accidental Empires [3]. Sergey was a commando. By 2010 Google needed an army. Now? Police.
GoogleX has Sergey's playground but if you look at the track record, possibly the only success I think is Waymo. Glass (mentioned in the article) was not a success and his affair with a subordinate also destroyed his marriage [4].
To me it felt like Sergey was drifting many years before he stepped away. His stepping away felt more like formalizing something that had already happened.
I'm not a billionaire. Not even close. Honestly, I think I'm glad about that because it seems like despite being surrounded with unimaginable wealth, many such people end up isolated and rudderless, desperately dsearching for meaning and connection. Or maybe that's just cope (from me).
The article mentions Gates and how he keeps busy with his philanthropy. Well, there's another piece of common ground between Gates and Brin: Jeffrey Epstein [5]. That's not intended as an implicit or explicit accusation of child predation by Gates or Brin or even of either having knowledge of such malfeasance, to be clear.
But even with a fraction of the DoJ's documents disclosed as well as from the Epstein estate, we can begin to paint a macabre picture of the connections between rich and powerful people that for some reason always seem to have Jeffrey Epstein at their nexus and that means something though we don't really know what.
Has Sergey had a substantial impact on Gemini? Will he? I have no idea. I do wonder if someone worth $100 billion really has the perspective and drive to move something like this. Google has a deep bench of talent and one thing Google is very good at is optimizing code that runs at scale by making their own networking, servers, racks, data centers, data center operating system (ie Borg) and code and efficiency is going to be a huge deal in the LLM space for the foreseeable future.
He's in the files - including photos - and is named by a victim as being present at a "party". It doesn't necessarily mean he did anything untoward but he did fly to the island and attend an event.
Not everyone, just the nounces, like Gates and Brin here. Do you take their defence? Seems like you do. Why would anyone with solid moral values jump to the defence of nounces?
Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work.
We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the adrenaline rush of experiencing the blues Monday morning!?
Another colleague used to drive up to the parking lot of their previous employer, post lay-off., so that he could feel normal., and he did this for well over 6 - 8 months. Pack bags, wave to his wife and family, drive up in his Porsche to the parking lot and I guess feel normal !?
I took a four-year break from work (2009–2013) and moved to India. The reasons were simple: some family health issues required downtime (though probably not as much as I ended up taking), and I could afford to do this in India in a way I couldn’t in the US. This happened to coincide with the market bottom, but I wasn’t laid off—it was entirely voluntary.
I didn’t experience an identity crisis for a single day. I didn’t feel insecure or anxious about not working. The only real friction came from my family.
One big difference was social life. In India, I was constantly meeting people—connections were easy and organic. In the US, maintaining a daytime social life felt much harder. Everyone is on a treadmill—insurance, income, careers—often not by choice. I know there are ways to build community here, but in India it just happened naturally.
My extended family struggled more than I did. Once it became clear the break wasn’t temporary, there was a kind of quiet depression around it. I initially framed it as “taking a breather” by doing an executive MBA, but the break never really ended.
What eventually brought me back wasn’t overt pressure, but practical limits: my spouse’s mental health, and the constraints of India’s education system for our partially disabled, special-ed child. Those realities mattered more than any career concern.
> One big difference was social life. In India, I was constantly meeting people—connections were easy and organic. In the US, maintaining a daytime social life felt much harder. Everyone is on a treadmill—insurance, income, careers—often not by choice. I know there are ways to build community here, but in India it just happened naturally.
The primary reason for this is the built environment we live in here in the United States. It's very difficult to organically build connections when you have to drive a car somewhere to have basic social interactions. Even some of the items you mention, like insurance and income are very much informed by the requirement to have a car to participate in society.
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I am 1,5 years into a break. Haven’t had time to feel bored yet. But I do look forward to a 9-5 job again, just for the structure it provides.
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I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of <business>" that suddenly having nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good identity.
I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google.
But that "work as identity" may still be a problem. For a lot of us, what we do is who we are, and so not having any work to do is like not having an identity.
You're describing my father. Now that he's retired his lack of hobbies is really catching up to him. His only hobby has been working and I've noted this about him since I was an adolescent and decided then as something I would not emulate.
A few times I've quit a FAANG job with no plan for after other than to wander, and both times the lack of professional competition meant not just coasting horizontally but that I was actually lowering myself somehow. Hard to explain, and I don't fully understand it.
I also noticed most people, especially women, determine your value by your 'right now'. While intentionally unemployed I'd answer truthfully and with a smile, 'I'm unemployed!' which visibly confused people.
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> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of <business>" [..]
Risking a stereotype. In my experience from traveling the world it's a tell-tale sign for being from a culture heavily influenced by the Protestant work ethic. Introduce yourself like that in Spain, Italy, or Brazil and you'll get strange looks.
On the flip side, I've found that people who do not define themselves through their work primarily often do so through family. My younger self is certainly guilty of giving someone a strange look when within the first five minutes of meeting them, they told me whose cousin they were.
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What is the point of the "I'm Marcus" part of your introduction? Reading your post I get the impression it has zero value, or at least you think so.
> Hi, I'm Marcus
> What do you do Marcus
> I'm on a break now, but I used to be a director of IT
Is this really difficult? Seems really easy, and I was never a director of anything. Maybe that's the problem.
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I’ve found asking “what do you like to do” vs “what do you do” to produce much more interesting conversation.
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Who were you before you got a job? No one? Nothing?
I identify more with myself as a child than I ever did with my work.
Why would I identify with someone else’s goals that I’m being paid to help achieve?
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> When people asked "what do you do?"
"I mostly breathe. It's a bore but you gotta do it"
"I meant for a living"
"Same"
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After a decade, "founder of X that I no longer work at" is considered a lame answer. People want to know what you are doing now, not your highest claim to status of your entire life.
When I lived in the bay area for a few years, everybody would tell you where they worked, and if you didn't tell them, they'd ask. Since moving to Portland, I've definitely noticed that people are much more interested in what you do during your leisure time.
Make up a name, print some business cards, and be a "director" (or whatever title you like) of your own Potemkin company.
> When people asked "what do you do?"
I found that outside of CA, this is asked a lot less often. In CA people ask that so they can mentally rank you as worth their time or not. Elsewhere, people ask you how your weekend went, or how your family is. One of the awesome parts of moving to Austin was not hearing that as the first question as much.
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> "what do you do?"
"Whatever I feel like"
> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of <business>"
Tech bros would mock Finance bros who would open a conversation with anyone who would listen with "Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Goldman Sachs" and yet here we are now ...
"Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Google"
Hoo boy, this is definitely a weird one to navigate, especially if you have a weird set of roles. It takes time to settle various threads and figure out how to address this.
I don't get this. Just find a coworking space and work on a FOSS project.
Seriously. There are so many opportunities to give back to society. One does not need formal employment to be fulfilled.
I will say in Sergey Brin’s case, he had the unique opportunity to go back to work with the best and brightest without any friction, and nobody could tell him “hey maybe your credentials don’t quite stack up high enough for this department yeah?”
But for the rest of us, there’s FOSS, there’s computer repair, home automation, day trading a small fraction of your wealth, volunteer work at hospitals and libraries, gig work apps like taskrabbit…
If you are bored after being away from work for even a month, I’m not sure I could be friends with you.
I left Google to build an open source project a long time ago. A big part of the appeal was being able to have something to work on that's truly mine. Sergey already has something that's his and it's called Google. So I think he belongs there.
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I think it's difficult for a normal brain to live with the low impact of another project while you created Google. Also, the speed of a personal developer is nothing compared with the speed of a software engineering area or company. You can easily feel like a turtle even working on an interesting project.
These people could have bought a dirt bike or mountain bike and had the time of their life. I don't get it.
I think I’d take directing big things at Google over riding a dirt bike…
I’m not actually sure what you don’t get.
I’m all for not living a lower level grind and riding a dirt bike. Most jobs simply aren’t interesting.
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Mental illness. They tied their entire sense of self to some job at some company. Their body belongs in some parking lot on somebody's schedule.
A mentally healthy person wants to be helpful. They want to be seen as helpful and they expect others around them to be helpful as well. This is the foundation of "pro-social" behavior: I benefit the group as much or more than the group benefits me.
Tying your identity to the place where you're helpful and where that help is appreciated and acknowledged isn't mental illness.
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I hear what you're saying, but routines, especially long-lived, are difficult to break/change. It's normal to have phantom limbs when they are cut off.
I recently rewatched a Tested Q&A where Adam Savage discussed his post-Mythbusters life; his framing of that duality was very similar: https://youtu.be/2tZ0EGJIgD8?t=322.
It aligns with a common design principle: constraints often make a problem space easier to navigate. I suspect life is similar. Having limited time creates a "specialness" that is easily lost when you suddenly have an infinite amount of time at your disposal.
It's not THAT bad for me, but I really can't take vacation days for "nothing". I struggle if I don't have plans and work really forces one to have some structure. If you need the structure and don't have any plans post lay-off, I can believe the struggle to "let go" and do something better.
That must be what it's like to have a job where you feel like you're doing something interesting and meaningful.
> drive up in his Porsche to the parking lot
I wonder if that'd still be the case should he drive a Ford Focus.
If he drove a Ford Focus and did this everyday, I bet they would have called the police.
he should have carved into the parking lot "Brooks Was Here"
Sounds a bit... Neurodivergent.
‘You don’t have to be neurodivergent to work here… …but it helps!’
I am guessing if you have been doing this daily for a couple decades then the neurodivergence is not going through this. I assume any normal person will find it hard to not do any kind of work and if you spent 20 years of your life doing tech, how useful are in the "real" world. Unless you have been doing handy work on the sides, spoiler alert: not much.
Wasn't sergey forced out for hitting on employees? It seems pretty reasonable for him to be unhappy with a forced retirement and ultimately unwind it now that meeto is pretty much over.
Human beings tend to enjoy patterns. Being pushed out of a pattern engages a lot of survival instincts.
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When you define yourself solely by work, you lose your entire identity when you retire. Most people don't have hobbies, so work is literally the one thing they have in their lives.
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English surnames would seem to indicate being identified by one’s work has a long history (smith, miller, cooper, …)
It's really interesting that my comment here where I said that employment can inflict brain damage got flagged even though previous comment described behavior that would be obviously significant clinical symptom if it was caused by anything else as it is irrational and detrimental.
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That is really not healthy.
What a sad way to live life, for a man to miss the chains he wears in enslavement, for he knows nothing else
It's been great to see. Google's AI efforts have truly seen a resurgence in quality with his return. What I enjoy about this article is the fact that it presents a view that now seems relatively rare: the idea that you may have a purpose beyond pleasure and that pursuing that purpose is a more fulfilling pleasure than any comfort you could give yourself.
I think that kind of thing strikes many people. Sometimes like with Socrates and his daimonion which restrained him from risk and other times like with one of my favourite lines in all literature where Ahab of Moby Dick remarks:
> What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me?
I find so much of this relatable in my own way, billions absent. It's good to see there are others who feel this way. Community from afar.
I'd have guessed that Google's rapid advance with Gemini was more due to the merger of Google Brain with DeepMind under Demis Hassabis than the return of Sergey Brin.
I remember seeing an interview (Dwarkesh?) with Sholto Douglas who had been working at Google at the time (now at Anthropic) who said he would work late there and the only other person was Sergey Brin, apparently wanting to be part of (or following) the development/training process.
To be fair, working late doesn't have quite the same effect when nobody is going to judge you for not coming in on time or at all the next day.
I don't buy this narrative (notwithstanding that great commencement speeches are almost always hyperbole). The way I see it Sergey HAD to come back or risk the poorly managed mess that is google completely drop the AI leadership . It proves again that all thats good in Google happened exclusively because of the two founders and that their CEO is not an effective leader at all.
Basically yeah, a lot of people just keeping the lights on
I've been curious how much the Facebook IPO affected the industry also
We know they lied about video metrics; everyone has to pivot to video to stay competitive (with fradulent metrics)
Given the suspicion of fake accounts and further ad fraud how much have companies felt they have to follow trends rather than come up with sort of, their own organic business models
Sergey is brilliant but it's really the lightsaber that is super voting shares that make him uniquely empowered to slash through Google's immense bureaucracy.
I think being the founder of Google gives him more political capital at Google than anything on paper. As a controlling member of the board there's a variety of things he can do with that hammer, but just simply being who he is, not even just on the org chart, has got to be worth way more.
The ghost of Steve Jobs would like a word with you.
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The very fact that he (or anyone in a similar position) holds the hammer is enough to guarantee that he will very seldom have to swing it.
this seems an idealistic view, my cynical view is that if King Lear gives up all his legal paper power he will find out nobody cares who the hell he is and take advantage of him without remorse.
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What you describe is a benevolent dictator.
Looking at the two as separate parts ends up forcing the dance apart from the dancer no
Brin wasn’t bothered to wield any of that power to try to arrest the decline in Google’s search quality. He wasn’t bothered to direct the Chrome team to support MathML, or to bring back Google Reader, or do anything about a hundred small insults like, say, the deletion of YouTube comments with URLs to keep the rubes inside the casino. But he was able and willing to come back and wield his clout because he was bored and wanted to play with AI. As someone who’s old enough to remember how much leeway Google used to get from governments and the public at large on the basis that Page and Brin were nice young men who could be relied on to be responsible stewards it’s a little galling. Don’t give Mr. Brin any belly-rubs until he tells us when Reader is coming back.
Everything you are mentioning are user issues. AI search myspacing googles ad business is an investor issue.
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He saw AI as an existential threat to Google.
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I loved google reader, many people were blogging and social network was "ick" as people immediately associated the term with okcupid/friendster(myspace?) and reader was decentralised and encouraged all walks of life to participate... maybe I just missed the vibes back then, gosh I was so hopeful
Not just links, either
Youtube comments are completely censored in real time with some sort of AI, it's horrible
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That's great and all, but you're anthropomorphizing the advertisement company.
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My doctor had a renowned research record, retired at 68 but got bored, and went back to work. Whilst I was in hospital, I got to observe him throughout the work day.
I don't mean this in a creepy way at all, but I got the impression the greatest source of joy was hanging around with younger people. A hungry grad, a cleaner, a nurse, male, female, whatever.
I'm sure he enjoyed his peers as well, but I could detect a shade of boredom of those interactions, which inevitably had stress and responsibility attached.
I think what I'm trying to say is that work isn't just about challenge, it's about socialization and having fun. And one of the greatest benefits of being financially independent is being able to navigate to those kinds of moments without the pressure of being on the make.
> Sergey Brin’s lesson for the rest of us
Is it? I know people who are really happy without doing much in their retirement. Probably because they weren't workaholics.
To my mind, if one doesn't have hobbies during the working years, then they will struggle to find purpose when they retite.
This is kinda right, kinda wrong. I was a workaholic - I was a VP of engineering at Google. I'm doing fine retired.
You don't have to find purpose when you retire
At all.
Instead, you just have to be willing to face each day when the day has no expectations. You can do anything you want, and decide you love it, hate it, whatever. You can do it again the next day, or not. you can hate it one day and love it the next. It's completely up to you.
For some people, this lack of structure is crushing. For others, it's liberating.
It's similar to having spent significant time alone as an adult - some people can't deal with it, some can.
I meet a lot of people who are like "I haven't figured out what i will do when i retire". These are the people i worry about, because there isn't anything to figure out. They want a structure that probably won't exist. They will likely tire of trying to force their own structure on it, and seek structure elsewhere (IE work).
In the past 3 weeks i've done the following:
Building powered paper airplanes with the kids
Mentoring high school and college students
Advising startups.
Woodworking
Hacking on CNC machines
Hacking on minecraft mods.
Hacking on compilers.
Playing video games.
and a lot more.
The next 3 weeks may be the same or different, depending on lots of things (mood, energy, schedules).
There are also days i do nothing cool or useful at all, and feel great (and unapologetic - nobody gets to judge my retirement but me, my spouse, and my kids :P) about it
The world is really big, and has lots to do. You just have to be able to drive yourself because you aren't being forced into doing anything at all.
In the end - for some i also feel it's similar to divorce - lots of people don't get divorced because they don't want to deal with being alone.
Retirement similarly forces you to spend a lot of time with yourself (even if you have an SO and even if they are retired). Lots of people don't like that, at all, for various reasons. Work lets them ignore it.
Just wanted to say, one of the exciting things I realized when I joined Google was that the maintainer of GDB was my org's director at that time. Not sure how much it matters, but it gave me confidence in the leadership to know that someone who knows the details is running the show at the top. It made me trust the leadership chain much more than I normally would otherwise.
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This! People need to get a life. I wouldn't have any trouble keeping myself busy after retirement. I do not have nearly enough time for the things I really WANT to do beside work.
This is also my sentiment.
I am saving up to retire early. If I mention this to friends, most look at me with big eyes and ask “But what will you spend your day on then!?” in a sceptical tone.
I imagine they think I want to drink beers and play golf all day every day, or something like that.
I’m a bit heart broken, that so many of my friends cannot imagine being masters of their own time, without thinking it would be bad for them and/or unproductive.
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I think that's the one silver lining of the pandemic's lockdowns; some people were at home again for extended periods of time, finding themselves with a lot more free time and in a place that wasn't just for eating and sleeping.
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Yea I've noticed this is the singular difference between those that enjoy early retirement and are successful doing it and those that aren't. Many ambitious people end up wrapping their entire identity up with work and feel completely lost with that gone. It's why so many successful founders throw themselves into new startups right after an exit, despite having way more than enough to retire. Personally, I've taken some time off since selling my startup and I've been so busy learning new things and building new hobbies that I can't imagine going back! Maybe I will one day, but it will likely involve something I've learned from during this time
Why? Why can work noy be your retirement plan as well? I have benefitted a lot from professors who have kept teaching (voluntarily) till physically possible.
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Yes. People are so much more enjoyable and interesting when they have a life, go out, have hobbies, do things a little different to everyone else.
If I became financially independent tomorrow I'd go straight to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A9delon_Castle to help build that. I don't think we've evolved to be healthy and idle. In retirement you can choose what to do, and volunteering on some nerdy construction project sounds amazing.
Thanks for sharing this link! I'd never heard of it before, and it is fascinating.
From observing my parents and other elders, it isn't "work" in the job sense that we all need. It is feeling needed by others. This can be accomplished by being an active grandparent, charity(active volunteering not just allocating money), open-source contribution, mentoring.
It can be something other than a job. It just can't be done alone.
We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other. Luckily there are plenty of people in need.
My grandmother said it like this, "sometimes people need to help more than people need help" in the context of a much younger me asking effectively why she bothered (I forget the context). That has stuck with me for years.
This is a common misconception. I’m quite happy not being social and have absolutely no need to be needed.
I FIREd 3 years ago and don’t miss working one bit.
I think leaving work becomes more difficult for those who do need to feel valued and especially if they don’t have interests outside of it. There are many people like that.
Totally, it's "work" in the sense that you're doing something to contribute to the world, even if it's something small or mostly unimpactful. Those kinds of things provide internal fulfillment, in my experience.
> It is feeling needed by others.
A more general need from what I see is to engage with and to accomplish non-trivial things.
For some it might be helping others people, for others it might be learning, researching or creating.
To each their own.
> It is feeling needed by others.
My perspective on these things have changed when I saw a successful old friend of mine thank his friend for asking his help. I feel like being asked to help by a friend might actually be a privilege sometimes.
I think it definitely is - simply because it means you are approachable enough (and knowledgable enough) that people feel both comfortable enough to ask and see you as a reliable resource.
>> We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other.
I think this was illustrated well in the movie I Am Legend with Will Smith. He creates artificial situations where he is interacting with mannequins in order to fulfill this very basic need.
Its interesting that this part of the movie was missed by a lot of friends and family until I pointed it out to them.
Exactly, the prevalence of the word "work" in this conversation is such a telling indicator of what 'western' culture-at-large has been taught to focus on
I agree with this, although I prefer to phrase it as "being useful to others (and appreciated)".
I'd think this is universal but it's interesting to see others in this thread that disagree.
To nitpick a little bit, it’s not just feeling needed by others, but also doing things that are meaningful.
"If you want to stay youthful stay useful!"
I would have never believed this is a thing until I saw it happen near me.
Company got sold, the owners were great and made sure everyone was taken care of.
Almost all the owners are now back working in one way or another. It's about +5 year since the sale.
- 1 spent the first year travelling
- 1 did loads of house stuff
- 2 got really deep into woodworking
Still the same people; I just think they got bored of the banality.
> The tech founder’s return to full-time work is a reminder that even billions can’t guarantee a happy retirement if you don’t also do this.
Is this generated by AI? English is all over the place in the article.
As soon as I saw that I lost interest in reading it. Asked ChatGPT to summarize it for me.
(If they used AI to create the article and put these baits in there, I might as well skip all the nonsense and let AI consume it for me.)
I got a sense that it was written partially by AI.
> Adherents of the popular financial independence, retire early (FIRE) movement scrimp and sacrifice to retire early. Only for many of them to discover their dream of post-work life does not match reality.
I think the more important goal in FIRE is the 'FI' part - financial independence. Something that allows you to retire early - not necessary that you have to use this privilage. Something that allows you to next day take a day off or week off or 1 year sabbatical to recharge without asking anyone for permission or worrying if you will be able to pay the bills.
I think even in 4-hour-workweek Tim Ferriss called it taking mini-retirements throughout your life rather than at the end of you life.
FIYNTBOM
Financial Independence, You're Not The Boss Of Me.
Once you're financially independent, at a level that you're comfortable with, you don't have to put up with crappy bosses.
If you're Sergey Brin, you kind of don't really have a boss, do you?
If you "retire" into working at a hardware store, or volunteering at the Humane Society, or just shifting into a lower-stress job...
Well, that's the dream, isn't it?
I was so happy when I realized that, unless there were dramatic shifts in the markets, I would always be able to find "decent" work for great wages. And maybe I could be patient and find "good" work for "pretty great" wages.
Once I had that level of comfort, I was way, way more brave at work. I thought, "Well, they could fire me for their own reasons, any day. So, I might as well do The Right Thing™. If they fire me for doing The Right Thing™, well, I didn't really want to work there anyway, did I?"
And then there were dramatic shifts in the markets, lol. But fortunately for me, I had built up a nest egg, and now I've shifted into a lower-stress job.
I honestly don't know what advice I'd give to younger folks. Move to Norway?
I think this is just an extension of "Fuck you money"
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Your username checks out re: moving to Scandinavia haha
I might have missed it, but I don't see this quote in the article. Either way, it feels disingenuous when a place like business insider posts these criticisms of FIRE like it is the ultimate gotcha.
Finding a purpose outside of work seems like the main issue most people struggle with when doing FIRE. Once you get going, the saving is automatic and addictive to some, but figuring out what to do with your life to give it meaning outside of a traditional work context is not just an issue with FIRE.
The quote is in the article. You may have to click to expand below the jump.
After FIRE I started building my own small to medium projects. Emulators, tools, games, some available to the public. I tell people I'm a full time software developer who does remote consulting gigs (the last not true but justifies my FIRE income)
Would you mind me asking what age you were when you retired? I'm 28 and five years into my boring corpo career and need something to lust after lol
If you want something to lust after, I recommend you find a project you care about getting involved in right now, literally today. The things that make us happy are doing something we care about every day, not seeking long-term goals.
47. I didn't wait for FIRE to plan the projects, I had a notebook of ideas I collected over the years and had studied the necessary skills to put them in action throughout my work life.
Additionally, I could see myself going back to work at a company if I saw a truly exciting project. But that excludes around 98% of the jobs I see out there.
No, the next generation of privacy management experiences that will impact billions of users configuring their privacy settings isn't interesting.
Nothing will make a boring corpo job not-boring, but one thing that can help mix it up is to change which boring corpo job you're doing once or twice a decade. Five years is a decent stint at one job. Worth taking a look around and seeing if an opportunity catches your eye.
I'm not doing FIRE, I have children and just live below my means. I'm hoping to retire around 55 assuming the AI bubble doesn't nuke everyones portfolio.
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It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit - Denis Waitley
As in, playing tag is always going to be fun?
One time Sergey asked me: "Can you juggle?"
I said "Yes! If you don't mind that all the balls land on the floor."
Sergey found someone else to juggle with.
That person became CEO of a major Alphabet company.
I can juggle. Where's my CEO job?
Has someone collected all of these classic Silicon Valley nepotism stories anywhere?
I mean they are no different that the trash stories you'd read about robber barons in the 1800s (poor orphan got offered a job, smart worker talked to railroad tycoon, etc).
The article hits on something that I believe everyone is at least aware of. Id argue the next generation is best suited for not having this issue that the current generation does have as they at least seem to think about everything and are very careful about tying their identity to work which prior generations seem to do without much thought (for better or worse).
I'm in my 50s. About two months into retirement I fell into the deepest depression of my life because I couldn't shake the "who am I without my job?" question. It took almost a year (and therapy) to accept that I still add value without working.
I'm a person that wants to learn anything and everything. So guess what I'd do if I'd retire?
Work feels pretty stifling to me.
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About a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour indoor cycling workout at home, then went for a short plunge in the lake (41 F). Then an hour in the hot tub.
It's pretty cool doing whatever I want for now, but I don't think I can do this for another 40 years. I feel like there's something missing - the sense of accomplishment whenever I finish a task. Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when it's either before work or after work.
So maybe at the end of summer 2026 I'll wait for recruiter emails and start responding to some of them. I'm done with applying to 100 jobs to get one response. Maybe I'll try a startup job to experience working in a place that doesn't have a 50-page document describing level expectations.
Mind me asking general location and how much savings? Wouldn’t mind doing similar at some point
I highly advise traveling - went a similar experience - had some savings that could last for a few years (much longer if I stretched them)
So just decided to get a motorbike license and go check out Asia.
Ended up finding a partner (totally unexpected) selling everything, moving abroad, marrying them and now expecting a child (planned), all in a manner of 3 years.
Has been quite the joyful and interesting experience, all after I had the deeply depressing feeling of having “solved life” at my nice position in the EU.
There are so many places in the world where you can feel you are actually doing great service to the community, on a shoestring budget and feel happy and fulfilled.
Maybe a bit off-topic, but how'd you meet your partner while on your adventures?
> Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when it's either before work or after work.
This comment reminded me of a book I read recently - Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anne Lembke. She talks about how pleasure and pain and experienced by the same region of the brain and they need to be balanced. I'd highly recommend reading that book.
I haven't worked in about 7 years. Only recently I started helping out a friend with a software project semi-regularily. And it wasn't really out of boredom. It's just that the project has some cool stuff, people on the team are cool and he's a friend. I passed 7 years with gaming, internet, talks, walks and mixtures of any subset of those. Only occasionally doing some coding just for fun or out of curiosity or to occasionally help someone. AI is a big game changer for me now. So much more fun to be had with coding.
I don't think I un-retired but I'm performing some commercialy valuable tasks for someone.
Sergey unretires, Gemini suddenly becomes the top LLM (for a week or two at least)
Google has made some subtle moves that a lot of folks missed, possibly with Sergey's influence. Like hiring back Noam Shazeer, who practically invented the backbone of the technology.
It's good to have folks with presumptions of being scientists actually run companies for once.
That being said, I wish his ex-wife hadn't spent her millions in the divorce proceedings to get RFK Jr into a cabinet level position to gut billions in research spending. :(
I don't know who to credit, maybe it's Sergey, but the free Gemini (fast) is exceptional and at this point I don't see how OpenAI can catch back up. It's not just capability, but OpenAI have added so many policy guardrails it hurts the user experience.
It's the worst thing ever. The amount of disrespect that robot shows you, when you talk the least bit weird or deviant, it just shows you a terrifying glimpse of a future that must be snuffed out immediately. I honestly think we wouldn't have half the people who so virulently hate AI if OpenAI hadn't designed ChatGPT to be this way. This isn't how people have normally reacted to next-generation level technologies being introduced in the past, like telephones, personal computers, Google Search, and iPhone. OpenAI has managed to turn something great into a true horror of horrors that's disturbed many of us to the foundation of our beings and elicited this powerful sentiment of rejection. It's humanity's duty that GPT should fall now so that better robots like Gemini can take its place.
It's the best model pound for pound, but I find GPT 5.2 Thinking/Pro to be more useful for serious work when run with xhigh effort. I can get it to think for 20 minutes, but Gemini 3.0 Pro is like 2.5 minutes max. Obviously I lack full visibility because tok/s and token efficiency likely differs between them, but I take it as a proxy of how much compute they're giving us per inference, and it matches my subjective judgement of output quality. Maybe Google nerfs the reasoning effort in the Gemini subscription to save money and that's why I am experiencing this.
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> [...] I don't see how OpenAI can catch back up.
For a while people couldn't see how Google could catch up, either. Have a bit of imagination.
In any case, I welcome the renewed intense competition.
FWIW, my productivity tanks when my Claude allowance dries up in Antigravity. I don’t get the hype for Gemini for coding at all, it just does random crap for me - if it doesn’t throw itself into a loop immediately, which it did like all of the times I gave it yet another chance.
You must be using it to create bombs or something. I never ran into an issue that I would blame on policy guardrails.
I've been a huge sceptic of the whole AI hype since the beginning now. Whenever I've tried any of the AI tools, the results have just been underwhelming. However, two weeks ago I tried Gemini (the pro version) and have been using it for various, random tasks and questions since then, and I've been pretty impressed.
There seems to be much less hallucination of facts than in other tools I've tried and whenever Gemini makes assumptions on stuff I didn't explicitly specify in the prompt, it says so. The answers also always have nice structure: it starts with a short and concise version, then gives me options and more details and considerations.
I also like the feature that I can make it remember facts across chats. I'm a physicist by training and I've told Gemini so, so now every time I ask something, it gives me an answer perfectly tailored for a physicist (often with mathematical formulas, etc.).
It's not just millions. Shanahan received over a billion dollars when divorcing Brin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Shanahan
Today's unscientific gutting of the CDC's childhood vaccine schedule is what is being accomplished with all that $GOOG money.
It's honestly very disturbing and rather than discuss it as a matter of politics, I'll just say that as a parent I'll be following the AAP's vaccination recommendations (even if their recommendations on baby sleep are impossible :)
> even if their recommendations on baby sleep are impossible
If you put yourself in their shoes, you realise that you have to give advice for the 10-20th percentile parents (or worse) because you are giving the same advice to everyone.
The alternative would be to offer more complex advice such as "if X Y and Z then do A, if only X do B", but the perception is that's too difficult for people to follow.
So you end up making very defensive (and therefore onerous) recommendations.
An interesting fact is that, since the introduction of the "baby sleeps on their back, alone", SIDS has gone down, but flat heads have gone up. It's probably been a good tradeoff, but it's still a tradeoff.
Also, I've seen a second time mother refer to "don't cosleep" advice as "western nonsense" which I found funny because it puts things in perspective - vast swathes of the world think cosleeping with your child is safe, natural and normal.
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While Brin comes back to Google to advocate for 60h workweeks as it lays off thousands of employees.
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I’m not going to attribute Gemini’s success to Sergey. It was already basically there before he came back.
Well all the core people left to do other shit, and when Sergey came back, some of those people were hired back for exorbitant sums of money
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Sergey might have some positive influence on Gemini, but given that he isn't an AI scientist ( AKA no technical background), I really do wonder what sort of influence that (only) he could have had, beyond just bringing in key people.
I assume by "no technical background" you mean he doesn't have a PHD in AI.
He's probably not developing the low-level algorithms but he can probably do everything else and has years of experience doing so.
He's also perfectly able to spend 60 hours a week improving his AI skills using the best teachers in the world.
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The man that invented PageRank while going to college at Stanford for a PhD doesn't have a technical background? He did not get that PhD because he founded Google. He may not be as smart as you think you are, but he's no slouch either.
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It was interesting to see my dad retire. He struggled a lot initially and even went back to work for a while. He had to actively work on learning to enjoy his hobbies and time once again.
I don’t find hobbies to be a replacement for work. Maybe it depends on the hobby but many hobbies are solo. work, or work that I enjoy, is not. Accomplishing things with others and for others has its on motivation for me at least
Of course maybe your hobbies or your dad’s hobbies are social. when someone says “hobbies” to me I generally think of things done mostly alone and I know for me, that’s not enough
Hobbies are just anything you truly enjoy doing that isn't mandated by your job. If you would continue doing your job even if your employer drops your salary to 0, then yeah your job is your hobby too! It is up to the individual to figure out what works for them.
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That's definitely just how you're thinking of it - any team sport can be a hobby, for a start.
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im probably just projecting but going back to work when youve amassed enough to live off to an enormous fortune feels like a failure of imagination. sure everyone needs to keep their hands busy, feel valued by others, etc etc but surely there’s some other hobby, interest, or unprofitable passion project you would invest time into?
but maybe being in a corporate environment (any any env) shapes your thinking in such a way that it’s really hard to think outside tha conditioning. feels like that to me only a few years int working
Well, XYZ rando going back to work after RSUs are vested is lot different from Google founder going back to work because he sees his 'baby' is in trouble.
Those hobbies, interests etc sounds like middle class thing where people take upon gardening, cooking, hiking, surfing or some such that they couldn't do enough while working. For people like Google founders they would've had any adventure they seek outside work anywhere in they world every weekend.
People forget Bill Gates advised (maybe still consulted) by MS long after he formally moved away from any official position in company.
It seems that there’s a misunderstanding in what people think he’d be doing. He’s literally his own boss.
A man who can pay for the livelihoods of like-minded individuals to work on a common goal sounds like a dream.
Retire early != Don't do anything. Instead, retire early == you can do whatever you want, and NOT do whatever you don't want.
FIRE is sick. Go for it as soon as possible, before marriage.
If I could I'd retire tomorrow, I have so many projects I would like to take on, I have the feeling I could fill 3 lives with them: gardening, learning math, system programming, wine tasting, carpentry, sport, traveling etc... There are *so* many interesting things to do and so little time. I guess time will tell but at the moment I have a hard time imagining myself getting bored.
Yeah, my main worry about retirement is that I’ll spend all my money on tools and projects.
That's going to be the main problem for me heirs: where do all the tools go :)
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It's about scale, when you built something as grand as google you don't want to spend time building a garden
For some people that's the case. For others after working on something so large they want to do something small that is wholly theirs.
Could at least try building a bigger garden!
In my old age I'm learning that this is rare. I take my projects for granted, because I guess I'm just very creative, I have way more "projects" than I have days remaining. But it seems like most people have no projects, and nothing in their lives but watching television, playing video games, or doom scrolling.
Same here. It's no a big surprise that the article is addressed to CEOs which are usually the embodiment of workaholism.
Not to knock you specifically, but I know a lot of people who say that they have no time for this stuff waste a ton of time watching TV and doom scrolling.
I try remind myself of this with the Bukowski poem 'air and light and time and space': https://allpoetry.com/poem/14326888-air-and-light-and-time-a...
for me, it would be bread and cheese making (easier cheese varieties), vegetable fermentation, more cooking of various cuisines including indian ones, drawing and painting, carpentry, permaculture (i did organic gardening earlier, which is a subset), wood carving (done some before), and maybe tailoring (making clothes, by hand or by sewing machine, for own use).
only a few at a time, of course, maybe only two, and by rotation. and then maybe i would narrow it down to two or three for long term.
would try to make money from a few of them too.
Arguably Sergey should have just gotten into Sourdough.
He could start by reverting the removal of "Don't be evil" from Google.
It's interesting that he's returned to work on Gemini and that it has been central to Google's rejuvenation in that time. I am curious how much of this marries up with traditional founder driven companies being successful (Jobs returning to Apple, Jensen Huang, etc) compared to being adrift without their original founders. How much was he driving as part of Gemini? Or was he just chipping in?
This was my thesis as well but only insiders can confirm how much of it is true
Retirement isn't quite applicable to billionaires.
They never have to work. They do it because they want to.
Retirement implies there was work you didn't want to do. You did it because you had (or wanted) to make some money. Now you have enough money. You've retired.
Hell, it isn't even applicable to many wealthy software engineers who got rich from tech startups. Many are coding as much as when they were working.
I retired when my first kid was born. I had plenty to keep me busy playing with her, taking care of her, traveling with her. And then we had the second one, and were extra busy.
But I was still "working" the whole time. I was running a small startup, and still keeping up on tech and taking speaking gigs. I was not great at fully retiring.
I unretired when the second kid got to 1st grade. We could no longer travel on a whim and the house was empty 6 hours a day. I didn't seek work, but someone reached out with an interesting job and I didn't say no.
Funny enough, my wife and I were just talking about how we were both bad at retirement (she also retired and has since gone back to work). But we talked about how the next retirement will be better, because the kids will be gone and we'll just sit around making art and building Lego all day.
We'll see if that actually happens!
You didn't retire at all if you still were running a startup surely? You just had multiple jobs and quit one.
I retired in the sense that I was in complete control of my time and had no active income, living off of assets alone.
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Proposal for new word: "employtainment"
I look forward to the sweet kiss of death to solve the retirement funding issue, and forever declining health while working struggle. Working for "The man" takes everything someone has.
It’s funny when people ask you what you want to do after you retire, and you tell them you are going to sit behind your PC and do exactly what you are doing now.
Really weird clickbait subline
"The tech founder’s return to full-time work is a reminder that even billions can’t guarantee a happy retirement if you don’t also do this. "
Hustle culture sociopaths
I totally understand. I "retired" last summer, but I continue to work about 50%, mostly at a new place that needs my help. I like what I do. Anyway, gaming/reading/etc. are fine and dandy, but not something I want to do 24/7.
The only thing I don't quite get about Brin is going back to Google. Since he doesn't need the money, why not support open source AI projects?
If I already know a great team, one where I know all the people involved and they listen to me. Why would I make a new team?
Because it’s what he knows.
People often like doing the things they’re good at and not necessarily because they’re interesting.
Because in google he can be a “dictator”, while he wouldn’t be in open source.
Probably because he knows the people and frankly, the team that's getting paid billions collectively are the top talent.
I like how his return is casually being presented as a failure to retire properly. We need less lionizing and more texts like this
It sounds similar to people living long-term on welfare in Denmark. They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of meaning.
Do you know a lot about the welfare situation/program in Denmark?
The welfare program (kontanthjælp) is difficult to join and you are ineligible if your net worth exceeds 15.500 DKK (~€2000).
From my point of view, you have to be very creative to live a fulfilling life in Denmark, with such limited finances.
Then it's the best incentive to change your life and find a new meaning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mole:_Undercover_in_North_...
Why do you think their life is devoid of meaning?
If I was in this situation, being a centibillionaire (or just having enough money for me and for my kids and their kids to never worry), I would write so, so, so much software. I have so many ideas for businesses, too, I just have no time and funds and I'm too risk-averse.
I think there was a bit of a jump-to-conclusion there.
> They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of meaning.
I find it difficult to relate to such worlds. I make up all kinds of explanations like, "well, it must be because while they have food and housing, they don't have any funds to entertain themselves". Or, "well, it must be because they simply haven't had sufficient education to reach an activation level where the higher tiers of Maslow's come into their line of sight".
And then I read about plenty of counter-examples, like wealthy offspring living the textbook aimless/dissolute/pick-your-adjective life, or the ennui of able-bodied welfare recipients with quite reasonable spending cash from generous Scandinavian welfare regimes when one considers the mind boggling amount of free media, free libraries, free parks, free entertainment in general in the developed world. Perhaps this is just part of their human condition for people suffering from this malaise.
And here I sit, drowning in ideas of what I would be interested to pursue to know our beautiful universe if only I had the time. So much so I write them down into a file just to quiet the cacophony in my head like a dog seeing squirrels everywhere he looks, just so I can get real work done on a timely basis, haha.
When once asked whether I'd ever be bored with eternal youth and boundless resources, I immediately replied an eternity is still too little time to satisfy my curiosity.
They lack curiosity. It can be nurtured, or starved.
Once you're hooked, you're hooked
There is an element of the years long conditioning to work that the article points to. But I think people do find it important to have various means to engage with life, and building and creating is a dominant outlet.
Pursuing goals that are intrinsically motivating, genuinely interesting, that give you a strong sense of purpose with healthy integration into core values leads to high life satisfaction.
this is truly bizarre.
It’s as if they’ve never heard of Maslow‘s Hierarchy of Needs before and further did they don’t know Self Actualizing is right at the very top.
Without that key stone on the top the human being is still a wanting animal. And if you somehow “mission complete” one Self Actualizing, then you immediately start to want something fresh “purpose” etc.
And obviously Self Actualizing doesn’t have to come in the form of work, although often it does.
At the end of life, Maslow became convinced that self-transcendence was the pinnacle of the hierarchy. Strong identification with work will not get one to that final step. I am not sure if ai is a path to self transcendence or self annihilation, but it's interesting to ponder in the case of some like Brin.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been widely criticized as being too rigid and simplistic and too biased towards an affluent Western cultural context. It also hasn't been tested and validated by science, and is based on hearsay rather than empirical data.
"Self Actualization" being a primary universal human need is just one guy's personal opinion, it isn't a law of nature or physics.
Do not retire without hobby, things to do because sitting at home without anything to do will kill you faster than anything else
Considerations of a poor billionaire being bored apart - why is it that we still consider work and retirements as "black or white" things ? It might have made sense for physically exhaustive works, but for anything intellectual, wouldn't "progressive retirement" make much more sense ? As in, starting a certain age, provided you're physically and mentally able, of course, you get to work 80% of your time (in civilized countries where retirement is payed by states from taxes, you would get "about" 20% of your pension, but your employer would keep paying taxes), then 50%, then 25%, then 0 ? Would that be easier to finance given life expectancy increase (barring WW3, of course) ?
This basically exists in Austria as “Altersteilzeit” [0] (“old age part time”). You even get 50% of your loss of income back through social security. So e.g. when reducing work by 40% you still get 80% of your salary. I’m guessing this is to incentivise employers to keep people near retirement employed as it would be much more expensive for the state to finance them if they were unemployed.
[0] https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/de/themen/arbeit_beruf_und_pen... (only in German unfortunately)
Medically speaking, your proposal would perhaps prevent a lot of heart attack deaths. It has been shown that not working is not just unpleasant, it's a strong stressor [1,2].
[1] https://academic.oup.com/geronj/article-abstract/46/1/P9/638...
[2] https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/234818
*centibillionaire, above Mark Zuckerberg in the list :)
> ... wouldn't "progressive retirement" make much more sense ?
Of course it does. I've seen it in my parents' generation: many wanted to reach retirement do "do nothing" and, well, they just lost their marbles. Doing nothing is neither good for the body, nor for the mind. Endless TV watching or endless pina colada drinking in the pool (or both at the same time): idleness brings absolutely nothing good.
But my parents' friends who kept working a bit (like my godmother who kept supervising her real estate agency): she stayed sharp and fit.
People think they're going to read and do exercice etc. but truth is: most are going to do jack absolutely shit. And turn to the latter.
So keeping partially active is the best thing possible.
I see it with my mother-in-law: 70 y/o, still working, daily, with my wife (they own a little SME). It keeps her in the loop: she still knows how to use a computer, her mind is quick. She's not idling.
The financial aspect of it all is something else: but people doing nothing is not what a society needs.
Humans spent thousands of years living in small groups where everyone had to be useful. When all of sudden you stop working and sit in your corner, you are doing something that run against thousands of years of evolution.
I scrolled this whole thread curious if someone would make this simple observation. We did not survive and evolve for millions of years to be born and then do nothing, to not meet needs and have needs met. Historical precedent, tamper with carefully.
I am partial fire and I feel that line of demarcation personally. I've also watched it play out in others like clockwork. As wealth grows, new responsibilities emerge.
When I started my company, we suddenly found that we were in a good small fortune, not enough to be millionaires or billionaires, but enough to get people to run the business semi automatically with very minimum input from the founders.
I took a semi retirement approach to the business, there really wasn't a lot of things to do, my role was sort of just "managing" programmers. I got so much free time that I could even start a second business on the side.
Despite my best ability to stretch my work, I couldn't even fill up half of my working hours. One would have thought that this is heaven. But the time I was most free was also the time I was most miserable. I wasn't happy, I was gaining weight, I was perennially asking myself why the business couldn't be bigger and I couldn't sell it, so that I can be real millionaires and billionaires with financial freedom!
Then fate intervened, the sudden fortune disappeared and I no longer had the luxury of just "managing people"; I have to do hands-on. And it was this activity, the feeling that I was contributing to something, that I was writing code again and actually building stuffs, that made me happy again.
Today we are bigger than what we once we were, but still, I am writing code and pretty much hands-on.I vow that I will never retire, even though if I could. Because it's the meaningful work that sustains life and provides happiness. Being able to work on it is a luxury that I will never want to give up, ever.
"Because it's the meaningful work that sustains life and provides happiness."
For you.
For me, it is having the time to do what I wish. Currently helping a friend with recovery after a major surgery. Next month, who knows?
No, it's not at all the same as "meaningful work".
At least in part, I do not need the attaboys or regular 'sense of accomplishment' that one get from plate-spinning or other meaningful work.
You agree more than you disagree. Meaningful might be something else for you. But I bet deep down it is doing something for others (clients, coworkers, friends, family, even strangers) that gives meaning.
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Please don't cross into personal attack in HN comments. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It’s easy to eye roll at billionaire guy wanting to go work, but it’s a real thing, I recall my dad struggling with retirement, after having planned so long.
He did a bit of consulting, was a rural mail carrier for a year and ended up managing a county program for a few years. He also discovered teaching as an adjunct professor, which he loved deeply. At some point, he was ready, and he had several good years of retirement with grandchildren and travel.
With a story like this, I choose to see what we have in common with a very successful, very rich person. Many people think “If only I had a more, everything would be grand.”
Well… Brin is a billionaire controlling one of the most powerful corporations on the earth. He found meaning in his work, or chose his work because of the meaning to him. Either way, given the ability to do anything, he made his choice. Don’t worship the guy, but perhaps see the humanity that we all share.
Mitchell Hashimoto went on to create a new awesome terminal emulator, in a programming language he had not used (much) before. Sounds like a great way to stay entertained!
That, and flying fighter jets for fun.
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I would like to read more about Larry Page, too.
It's interesting to hear about his experience, but I'm not sure if it's typical. There are millions of people retiring each year, presumably many are happy to be done with the drudgery of work and excited to spend time on hobbies and projects they enjoy.
I'm curious to know how many retirees end up like Sergey and how many you don't hear about because they're too busy enjoying their retirement.
I will say that this topic is a common one among people talking about FIRE “financial independence, retire early” — folks who are saving as fast as they can so they can quit working. There are a lot of people who already got there who come back to warn people they won’t necessarily be happy and fulfilled just because they quit the day job. Like, that’s an amazing feeling at first but it probably won’t carry you for 30-50 more years.
The article actually includes some of these examples, but I get the feeling that a lot of readers did not make it past the Brin part.
It works much better for most people if you replace “retire early” with “recreationally employed”. You can select the work you do without optimizing for income or status-maxxing.
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Financial freedom is about not having to worry about losing your job, or tolerating shitty work conditions. Why would you retire if you do what you love? I think the real problem might be if there's nothing you actually love doing (long term), that's when money won't help.
The people with the drive to be able to retire early are also the most likely to be bored when it happens.
Working on something fun and novel, like in his case Gemini, mentioned in the article, is the ideal.
What do you mean? Money is the best thing to have if you’re lazy and don’t like doing anything.
In this case I agree though, he’s the boss, not beholden to anyone. Can wander around and do what interests him.
But that's the problem - if you don't like doing anything, what will you do? What will you fill your life with? You will quickly get bored of anything you try. Your life will have no meaning, and you will probably turn to alcohol or drugs.
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The hard truth is most people don't have hobbies. It's even more true with billionaires that dedicated their whole life to their job
This might rub some people on HN the wrong way but what these people call "work" isn't really work in the sense of what most people consider work. They jet here and there, intervene wherever they want, and everybody listens to them all the time. They can cancel and postpone meetings as they wish, and so on and so forth. It's work in the same sense as buying another house is work -- you have to get together with lawyers and plenty of people but in the end these people all work for you and you can also change your mind and not buy it.
That's also the reason why these multi-billionaires never retire. They've retired from real work a long time ago.
Was looking for this comment. Cutting meat in some factory is considered 'work', running a global tech business is also considered 'work'. Both 'work', different requirements from the 'worker'.
One is doing lifework, the other is doing labor.
Plenty of work isn't manual labor. That distinction is not at all what I've talked about, you've missed the point entirely.
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It's work in the sense of exchanging their attention, energy and the hours of their lives towards a goal, while in the moment they'd rather be somewhere else doing something else.
Same way that dusting your cupboards is work.
it doesn't quite work that way. Once you do this what you call "work", you can't just extricate yourself in the middle of dealing with complicated situations or drop things where others depend on you. So it's still work in the sense that you can't just literally do what you want the way you do when you lounge around your house.
It is clear that Alphabet is his baby and neither he not Larry ever fully left. He is still in his 50s so maybe just too young to play golf and chill on superyachts all day. While him being a billionaire makes any lesson derived have to have an asterisk him enjoying technical work even after long having won the rat race is a pretty cool role model.
No wonder he returned: he can focus on meaningful work without direct financial pressure, with full access to people, decisions, and resources.
If only we all had a time in life to do what we love, get paid, and face no paywalls. I call that "liberated work". If only at least retirement was like that.
It has been my observation that those that retire without solid plans to keep busy 15-20 hours a week really do struggle. You have to be missed by people when you are sick or out of town. You have to have a reason to get out of bed. I think your choice of activity tells a lot about you since the 'pay the bills and save for retirement" argument no longer applies. Some volunteer to better the world. Some continue their life work to take wealth from those with less power.
You're saying he should have gone the Gates path and formed an NGO? Fair enough but I imagine nothing else matches the thrill and stress of running the C suite at Google
I wish he'd brought back "Don't Be Evil" to Google, as well as himself.
>"Don't Be Evil"
That ship sailed a long time ago. It then proceeded to sink, ending up a haunted wreck that we might see in a new Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Problem is, Captain Jack Sparrow these days isn't what he used to be either.
I took a moment to participate in an ARIN (https://www.arin.net) call. They drive policy for IP addresses that run the Internet. Anyway, one thing that stood out to me was during a portion of the conference the organization was holding elections for open seats. The seats are open to anyone, I'm pretty sure.
There were a bunch of people, from across the country, MANY in retirement, trying their best to sell themselves that they are the right candidate.
Sergey can just make a phone call and he gets to build Gemini and run a billion dollar organization and have meaning in old-age. This is what wealth buys you. The rest of us, I guess, we will be arm-wresteling for the few open oppertunities to make an impact.
Do you think he can still spend time on his $450 million yacht or is he too busy writing prompts?
Snark aside, good for him. Absolute non-news though, as is any extraordinary individual action during and contributing to a bubble. It'll be interesting to see what stays when, or if, the bubble ever pops.
You can very well write that prompt from the top deck or from one of the office cabins on said yacht (no, not speaking from experience).
I'm not envious of anyone's big yacht, but I wouldn't waste my money that way (you can probably rent one for special occasions) - as long as there are still children hungry or without schooling.
I'm definitely envious of the yacht. Like, come on, how awesome is that! It's HUGE! I've been invited on tiny yachts with "only" a couple staff onboard and that was already fantastic to just be on for a day.
That said I don't think I could ever justify spending THAT kind of money on it.
i never really understood the billionaire yacht hate.
Once you buy a yacht 450 million dollars of ownership in a company you had goes to people who built a beautiful thing that exists in the real world and you're on the hook for employing a lot of people to maintain it.
I take a lot more issue with accumulation and hoarding of wealth than the spending of it.
An economy that wasted resources building mega yachts for billionaires is more unequal than one that builds cruise ships that high income families can go on an holiday.
https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/imagine-130000000-washing...
> i never really understood the billionaire yacht hate.
Once someone reaches that level of fame and fortune it's almost a requirement if they want to travel or have some sort of 'vacation'. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely a great problem to have, but it's one of the only ways to find privacy at that level of wealth.
If I'm ever super wealthy, I hope I can also stay somewhat anonymous so that I can walk down the street like any other person.
Holding shares in a company (or dollar bills) is not depriving others of something. The fisherman will go catch fish tomorrow, the wheat in the fields will keep growing, the builder will build a house.
If someone starts paying the fisherman, farmer, builder, more to stop doing what they are doing and start building mega yachts, then there will be less fish, bread, and houses for others.
That said, I assume it's much simpler than that and it's just about the hypocrisy of the climate change billionaires to be bellowing out carbon while demanding the selfish greedy commoners cut our emissions.
I was semi in retirement.
Actually just jobless, but I was doing side projects here and there
Retirement gets boring fast —- and you lose connections to the rhythm of society fast.
For the vast majority of humans, an idle mind is depressing and destructive
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Hard to believe he did it "out of boredom".
It lines up with the AI arms race kicking into overdrive around ChatGPT's triumph in late 2022. Brin pops out of hiding right then, admitting Google "messed up" and starts coding, analysing losses, and basically playing dictator with his super-voting shares to shove the company back on track.
Rivals like OpenAI yanked him in and now he's in the office daily because the "trajectory of AI is so exciting" - translation: his ego couldn't handle watching his empire get outpaced, and with those voting rights, he can bulldoze through bureaucracy to keep the throne.
Ultimately, it's less about some profound quest for purpose and more about a control freak safeguarding his legacy and billions as the tech world burns. He never really let his kingdom go.
Grandfather in village still farms at 90+.
Retirement is a scam. Figure out what you want to do and do it until you drop.
I too would very happily do just the bits of my job that I like, when and how I want, and have any requests or comments or complaints I make get immediate attention and responses.
All in the knowledge that no one is going to be time-tracking me or doing performance reviews, and I can just not do work at any moment I don't feel like it or have something better to do that day, like go to my private island or take my private jet to burning man etc (or as it turns out do a talk at Stanford). All while you have so much money that the price of anything from clothes to cars to houses is just some arbitrary number that has no meaning to you it is so absolutely tiny number... not that you actually buy anything yourself any more, mainly your team of personal staff deal with that grubby reality.
As for the rest of us, well we need to pay the bills while playing "the game" and politics and cowtowing to keep the money coming.
Exactly. If you work in a field that’s close to your interests, there are probably parts of your job that you’d do for fun even if infinitely wealthy. It’s the other stuff, the boring annoying grind, that makes it a job and not a hobby.
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He was in your spot at some point I've heard. Nothing is impossible.
So was the last lottery winner. I can certainly improve my chances but there is a huge amount of luck involved.
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https://ergodicityeconomics.com/2023/07/28/the-infamous-coin...
Not for long; he was 25 when Google was founded, it was a billion dollar company not long after. He could've retired when Google went public in 2004.
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Dreams and hopes are powerful weapons of suppression. Everyone is a millionaire just down on their luck at the moment…
In our advanced society, with incredible automation, we should _all_ have vastly more freedom and control over our time.
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Reminder: Sergey Brin is a creep who believes in hiring women so he can sleep with them.
The fact he's allowed back inside Google means Google still has a massively unresolved workplace sexual harassment issue.
Retirement wasn't as interesting as a role at the company you founded where everyone looks up to you, doing whatever you feel like with no expectations or defined responsibilities? Shocker
Seriously, I'm glad he came back and found something he's interested in. I bet his role has grown some responsibilities, too.
I worked at a company with multiple cofounders; one of them became the CEO, the other one was initially CTO, but ultimately his title was just cofounder after a while and someone else was hired to be CTO. This person then went on to just prototype and build whatever he wanted to; the service he built ended up having no OC engineers supporting it, pages went to him but he didn’t bother responding and nobody would tell him he had to respond lol. Ultimately people just didn’t use that thing or delayed using it as they couldn’t really rely on it.
It'd be funny if a manager used the playbook to manage him and give him reviews the same way
What a horrible promo-article - in particular when we look at the damage caused by Google in total. I actually think it would be better if the two original Google guys would, while shamefully admitting to have failed, stop working altogether. Others can fix the problems Google caused.
> "Going back to work just for fun might sound like a uniquely billionaire move."
Ah yeah? Can be boredom too. I fail to see why this article wants to promote this.
> Like many people, Brin had a relaxing vision for his post-working life. “I was gonna sit in cafés and study physics, which was my passion at the time,” he told the Stanford audience.
Any why would anyone take this at face value? How many of the guys there were paid to go there by the way?
PR-piece for the Epstein thing, isn't it? Just in time. Brin also likes them young, the nounce that he is, and no legal entity in the US is going to do shit about it.
It is definitely a well-timed story. It's notable that even though they are billionaires they care what people think about them so much that they have to do this PR nonsense.
As no governmental authority is actively investigating the allegations, Sergey Brin might never have the opportunity to clear his name from the Epstein child abuse allegations in the court of public opinion. If there would be an investigation and/or court case, Sergey Brin's lawyers would at least be able to legally clear his name. As long as evidence is being withheld, any association between Microsoft and Google leadership and Jeffrey Epstein will bring up rumors about their involvement in the child abuse, even though they might have been "only" clients of the JP Morgan private banking services for high net worth individual which was managed by Jeffrey Epstein.
Imagine if they locked Serg out of the protected quantum research he loved reading as it was department employees only and the only way he could continue his access was returning to work at a senior enough level to cross read. Imagine.
The problem with famous people unretiring and doing something different is they are kind of the nepobaby children of their former career arc selves. I both feel bad for him but am glad he's happier now.
Would I would really like bored FIRE people to do is advocate for shortening the work-week. The world needs to chill the fuck out, and leisure should be more abundant. Bored retirees have a unique credibility in advocating for this, and the time to do both grassroots and grasstops advocacy. (Think tanking and lobbying are descendants of the original retirement project, if you think about aristocracry as the original governmance system.)
I really don't buy his explanation. Here's one of the world's smartest guys, with more money than Smaug, and he really couldn't come up with anything better than going back to Google to work on Gemini?
What's the point of all that money if you won't even hire someone to help you find hobbies.
So many STEM universities have online courses. The art world froths itself mad over smart people with stupid money. Local projects beg for angels like him.
Hell even just doing the AI schtick but for free open source or as a pet startup.
My mind reels with ideas. Why didn't his?
To me those are all either inferior to working on AI or can be done outside of work. And for the founder of Google, probably Google is the best place to work on AI.
Hiring someone to find hobbies defeats the purpose of hobbies. Why would you want to pursue something that someone else finds enticing rather than you discovering it yourself?
You hire such people to introduce you to ideas and projects. You try some stuff, see what sticks.
It's something you can do when you have money and time but no ideas.
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he has a phd in CS, hes probably always been interested in AI, you dont think getting to play with AI with essentially infinite resources is more fun than collecting stamps or skiing or something?
Having the best AI is prestigious for billionaires. It's that simple.
Then why did he go back to Google /s
> Having given so much of themselves to their careers, they often felt unmoored and purposeless when they left their jobs.
That's in contrast with all of us who see the companies led by these guys as the cancer of society and we'd quit and never look back if we had FU money.
My feelings aside, if all their purpose is to grow their company, I kinda get why they wouldn't give a damn about bettering the mankind, improving their communities or raising a healthy family.
Can you please not post cynical and/or curmudgeonly comments to HN? I can understand the feelings behind it—we all can—but this is really not what we're going here, and it has a way more degrading effect on the threads than I'm sure you intended.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sorry, point taken.
I was kind of retired, earning passive crypto income for several years after 2019 throughout COVID. Best time of my life. I was living on a Mediterranean island, splitting my time between snorkeling and open source work.
Then I got cheated out of my position in the crypto project. Literally scammed by the project founder with the full support of government regulators who are supposed to be preventing this stuff and lost all my income overnight. The regulators literally facilitated fraud instead of preventing it... And I had the pleasure of being gaslit about it while also being gaslit about COVID by a different set of regulators. I became a conspiracy theorist during this time! Now I'm forced to work again...
It's especially infuriating in this age of perma-bailouts where the system is basically bailing out everyone with assets.
I figured out that the system is a scam. I can prove it to anyone in excruciating detail, with citations. If anyone should be bailed out, it should be me. I shouldn't be forced back in the hamster wheel. It's hard to compete against others who think the system works a certain way and don't realize how the hamster wheel works. I shouldn't have to compete with delusional fools who think that their effort spent on the hamster wheel is going to yield any rewards.
Anyway it drives me nuts how the only people who can afford to retire, choose not to... And those who are desperate to retire, can't! This is so pervasive, it feels like a psyop.
Living as we do in a society where basic needs are not guaranteed without a giant pile of money, most humans don’t get to experience what it feels like to be in a place where you don’t base your life decisions on financial well being. Thats very limiting; it isn’t that surprising that someone who has achieved that is now looking for meaning in other things. Besides: if you’re Sergey Brin, I imagine you can get to talk/work with whatever at Google interests you most and hand off the gruntwork to minions all the while being treated with deep reverence. It’s not exactly hard to see why he might like it.
One thing I wish more people would understand though is that this is also the best case for some kind of guarantee of basic necessities for every human (UBI, State Subsidies, whatever). Once we know we won’t just die, people might then spend their time on trying out different things and figuring out what works best for them. I believe we could achieve an overall better society this way.
I don't think this is really accurate because the traditional state of society, and one that remains in the 'developing world' which is almost certainly still the wide majority of the world at this point, is families living in multi generational housing with many people contributing. This enables older to generations to comfortably 'retire' when they see fit, and provides financial comfort and security. It's basically like decentralized pensions.
This new world of low fertility, small household size or even people living entirely alone, high external dependence, and the consequent broad insecurity - is still extremely new. And I do not think it will survive the test of time.
I think you might be romanticizing multi-generational households a bit. We introduced social security systems precisely because the family systems failed so frequently. In all but the richest families no retirement as we understand it today was possible. Illness or death of the main bread winners was fatal to the whole household and children were expected to work as soon as possible.
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Can you please not post snarky comments or shallow dismissals to Hacker News? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
No one is saying you owe billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Of all the things people say here (myself absolutely included), this is what got your personal attention? That's kind of interesting.
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@dang, I get what you mean in a vacuum but this article is pretty insulting to the readers intelligence.
The third sentence of the article is
> But one misstep he admitted to might surprise a lot of people who dream of the day they can quit their 9-to-5.
Does anyone really believe the co founder of google retiring after their rise to supremacy in search was the equivalent of someone quitting their 9-5?
They might have well said “Google co-founder shares secrets that stealing bread to eat when you’re hungry and sleeping under bridges is actually illegal”
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What is the correct style to use to point out that there is nothing in this article beyond the news that a specific person got bored?
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I'm also going to dissent with a "but is it a shallow rebuttal?" here? TFA is a of the "problems we wish we had" sort — we're all just temporarily embarrassed billionaires here, right guys? Right?! (Because a mere million doesn't cut it, these days…) But the rank and file of us are still on Duck Tales, Larry. Especially these days.
As I said in a separate comment, TFA is distinctly lacks empathy.
On here? You'd be surprised.
Lol I wish we would stop worshipping billionaires but YC and Silicon Valley has become such a parody of itself-
HBOs Silicon Valley is more accurate than any Paul Graham essay
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Should of moved and signed up for physics classes on the East coast or Europe. No wonder they got pulled back into the valley bubble.
This article reads like propaganda to keep the worker bees slaving away until they die. But I have a few things to say about this and Sergey Brin in particular.
In the early days, many considered Sergey Brin to be the soul or the conscience of Google. He was reportedly the driving force in Google originally pulling out of China rather than capitulating to the censorship regime [1]. This was also after the apparent state-sponsored hack of Google in China [2] so perhaps the motivations were mixed? I don't know.
But Sergey I think is a good example of someone for whom his creation outgrew him. I'm reminded of an old Jeff Atwood blog post where he quoted Accidental Empires [3]. Sergey was a commando. By 2010 Google needed an army. Now? Police.
GoogleX has Sergey's playground but if you look at the track record, possibly the only success I think is Waymo. Glass (mentioned in the article) was not a success and his affair with a subordinate also destroyed his marriage [4].
To me it felt like Sergey was drifting many years before he stepped away. His stepping away felt more like formalizing something that had already happened.
I'm not a billionaire. Not even close. Honestly, I think I'm glad about that because it seems like despite being surrounded with unimaginable wealth, many such people end up isolated and rudderless, desperately dsearching for meaning and connection. Or maybe that's just cope (from me).
The article mentions Gates and how he keeps busy with his philanthropy. Well, there's another piece of common ground between Gates and Brin: Jeffrey Epstein [5]. That's not intended as an implicit or explicit accusation of child predation by Gates or Brin or even of either having knowledge of such malfeasance, to be clear.
But even with a fraction of the DoJ's documents disclosed as well as from the Epstein estate, we can begin to paint a macabre picture of the connections between rich and powerful people that for some reason always seem to have Jeffrey Epstein at their nexus and that means something though we don't really know what.
Has Sergey had a substantial impact on Gemini? Will he? I have no idea. I do wonder if someone worth $100 billion really has the perspective and drive to move something like this. Google has a deep bench of talent and one thing Google is very good at is optimizing code that runs at scale by making their own networking, servers, racks, data centers, data center operating system (ie Borg) and code and efficiency is going to be a huge deal in the LLM space for the foreseeable future.
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704266504575141...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11920616
[3]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/
[4]: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-...
[5]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/lolita-passports-and-m...
Oh boy, everyone accomplished paid a visit to the lolisland? Unbelievable.
He's in the files - including photos - and is named by a victim as being present at a "party". It doesn't necessarily mean he did anything untoward but he did fly to the island and attend an event.
Not everyone, just the nounces, like Gates and Brin here. Do you take their defence? Seems like you do. Why would anyone with solid moral values jump to the defence of nounces?
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How about finishing off that Ph.D., Mr. Brin (alas, you would need to find yourself a new supervisor, given Prof. Motwani's tragic drowning)?