Apa yang akan anda lakukan jika mendapat tawaran gaji 3 ribu dolar plus 300 ribu dolar untuk kontrak 3 tahun?
Menerima? Atau malah menolak?
Apa yang dilakukan oleh Tom Preston-Werner, mantan karyawan PowerSet yang diakuisisi oleh Microsoft, sungguh luar biasa. Dia menolak ketika mendapat tawaran gaji 3 ribu dolar plus 300 ribu dolar untuk kontrak 3 tahun oleh Microsoft:
To muddy the waters of decision even more, the Microsoft employment offer was juicy. Salary + $300k over three years juicy. That’s enough money to make anybody think twice about anything. So I was faced with this: a safe job with lots of guaranteed money as a Microsoft man –or– a risky job with unknown amounts of money as an entrepreneur.
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If you want a recipe for restless sleep, I can give you one. Add one part “what will my wife think” with 3,000 parts Benjamin Franklin;
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Alasan yang diberikan oleh Tom pun cukup santai. Dia ingin membuat sesuatu yang lebih keren:
I’ve become pretty good at giving my employers the bad news that I’m leaving the company to go do something cooler.
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Alasan yang sama yang dikemukakan oleh James Gosling, bapak JAVA, ketika keluar dari Google:
I've surprised myself and made another career change. I had a great time at Google, met lots of interesting people, but I met some folks outside doing something completely outrageous.
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Ternyata banyak orang di Sillicon Valley yang tidak mata duitan. Mereka lebih memilih menjadi petualang dibanding menjadi orang kantoran yang aman secara finansial. Seperti yang dikatakan Tom Preston-Werner dalam blognya berjudul How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub, lebih enak jadi Indiana Jones daripada jadi orang biasa:
In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”
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