Sergey Brin's Unretirement (inc.com)

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> 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.

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.

Once you're hooked, you're hooked

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.

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.

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.

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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. :(

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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 !?

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.

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.

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 wish he'd brought back "Don't Be Evil" to Google, as well as himself.

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.