A while ago, I read an article about an employer who lost a star developer over a few thousand dollars.
The article framed it as a lesson for employers: don't lose your best people over money.
I came away thinking about the opposite side of that equation.
Developers should be careful about losing the right opportunity over money, too.
Everybody has bills. Everybody has responsibilities. Everybody has different circumstances, and there are absolutely situations where compensation has to be the deciding factor.
But I believe one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself is build your life so that money is not the only factor capable of making your decisions for you.
Early in my career, I made decisions primarily based on compensation. Some of those decisions were lucrative.
But they were still reactive.
I was still allowing the economic system around me to determine the direction of my life.
I was still food for the machine.
Why I Sometimes Ask Recruiters to Recommend My Rate
These days, when appropriate, I sometimes ask recruiters what rate they believe makes sense.
There are two reasons.
First, the recruiter usually understands the client's budget, project requirements, internal constraints, and market better than I do at the beginning of the relationship.
Second, recruiters often have an incentive to negotiate a competitive rate because their own compensation can be connected to successfully placing qualified candidates.
So instead of beginning every conversation with:
What is the maximum amount of money I can extract from this?
I can begin with:
Is this something worth doing?
That changes the entire relationship.
It tells the recruiter that I am searching for the right opportunity, not simply the highest number.
And strangely enough, taking a less aggressive position in the negotiation can sometimes produce greater opportunity value because you are allowing more information to enter the equation before deciding.
Your Worth Is Not Your Hourly Rate
Your worth as a human being is not reflected by a dollar amount.
Ever.
Markets assign prices to labor.
Companies assign budgets to positions.
Recruiters negotiate rates.
None of those things determine your value as a person.
Your individual potential is much larger than whatever number appears on a paycheck.
Over the last several years, some of the periods where I experienced the greatest growth as a software developer were not necessarily the periods where I earned the most money.
That creates a difficult tradeoff between immediate financial return and long-term development.
But I think there are two perspectives worth considering.
1. Sustained effort requires belief before evidence arrives.
Many successful entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, engineers, and builders worked for long periods before their effort produced meaningful financial returns.
That is incredibly difficult.
You are essentially saying:
I believe in what I am building even though the outside world has not validated it yet.
That requires an enormous amount of internal conviction.
2. You cannot calculate the full value of an opportunity when it begins.
A small company might change your life.
A giant company might become a footnote.
A low-paying project might introduce you to the person who becomes your future business partner.
A high-paying opportunity might lead nowhere except another paycheck.
You simply do not know.
Most of the meaning of our decisions becomes apparent only in hindsight.
And that is why I believe the vibe matters.
The Signal Beneath the Noise
I believe there is a small inner voice inside each of us.
Some people call it intuition.
Some call it instinct.
Some call it conscience.
Some call it God.
Whatever language you use, there are moments when something inside you quietly says:
Go.
Or:
Don't go.
And you still have the free will to listen—or ignore it.
Over time, I have come to believe that success has a great deal to do with learning how to recognize that signal.
Every decision comes surrounded by noise:
But underneath all of that is your own internal response.
Leadership often requires learning how to hear it.
Great leaders do not simply possess information. They develop judgment.
They can gather external evidence, listen to constructive criticism, analyze risk—and still ultimately make a decision.
There is an enormous difference between refusing feedback and refusing to listen to yourself.
- Money. Status. Fear. Family expectations. Career expectations. Social approval. Prestige. Security. Algorithms. Forecasts. Opinions.
Would I Ever Work for Free?
For the right person, with the right mission, on the right opportunity?
Absolutely.
That does not mean everybody should work for free.
It means I want enough freedom in my life that money does not automatically get veto power over purpose.
That is a very different objective.
A person earning millions of dollars can become completely imprisoned by lifestyle, obligations, reputation, debt, or expectations.
Meanwhile, someone with almost nothing can occasionally possess extraordinary freedom.
Neither condition is inherently better.
The point is that wealth and freedom are not always the same thing.
The Butcher and the Best Piece of Meat
There is an old Zen story about Banzan walking through a marketplace.
A customer asks a butcher for the best piece of meat.
The butcher replies that everything in his shop is the best; there is no piece that is not the best.
At those words, Banzan becomes enlightened.
I love that story because it challenges the endless hierarchy we impose on reality.
But what if meaning isn't contained inside those things?
What if meaning is something consciousness brings to them?
- Best job. Best salary. Best company. Best title. Best house. Best life.
Meaning Is Something We Participate In
Hermetic philosophy famously begins with the principle that "The All is Mind."
Whether you interpret that metaphysically or psychologically, there is something valuable in the idea that our experience of reality is inseparable from the meaning we assign to it.
Humans choose what matters.
We choose love.
We choose loyalty.
We choose sacrifice.
We choose courage.
We choose creation.
That choice is what gives values their power.
The Gospel of John opens with the imagery of light shining in darkness, with the darkness unable to overcome it.
That idea resonates deeply with me.
Human beings continually choose to create meaning in circumstances that sometimes appear meaningless.
We decide that something is worth protecting.
Something is worth building.
Something is worth loving.
Something is worth fighting for.
That is the human spirit.
AI Is Going to Force Us to Ask a Bigger Question
Technology is accelerating this conversation.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the relationship between humans, labor, creativity, and economic productivity.
Entire categories of work will change.
New categories will emerge.
Automation may eventually give more people freedom from certain kinds of repetitive labor.
Ideas such as universal basic income, once considered fringe economic experiments, increasingly appear in mainstream conversations about automation.
And if technology eventually gives people more freedom, humanity will face an uncomfortable question:
What do you actually want?
That question is much harder than it sounds.
Many people spend their entire lives responding to external instructions.
Remove some of those external instructions and suddenly you have to confront yourself.
That can produce creation.
It can also produce chaos.
The future of AI therefore isn't only a technological question.
It is a human one.
- Go to school. Get the job. Get promoted. Buy the house. Earn more. Repeat.
Fear or Creation
Some people look at artificial intelligence and imagine apocalypse.
Others imagine abundance.
Both futures probably contain pieces of truth.
But I believe one of the greatest dangers would be allowing fear to dominate our collective imagination.
Technological revolutions always destabilize existing structures.
The question is what humanity chooses to build afterward.
Fear can produce paralysis.
Courage can produce experimentation.
And experimentation produces new possibilities.
The awakening happening around technology is therefore not merely technological.
People have access to more knowledge, more communication, more creative tools, and more computational power than almost any generation before them.
We are increasingly capable of asking:
Who am I when the old limitations disappear?
Will, Intention, and Becoming
Carlos Castaneda's writings frequently explore ideas involving intention, perception, internal silence, and the relationship between consciousness and experienced reality.
Hermetic traditions explore similar territory through concepts of mind, correspondence, vibration, and will.
You don't have to accept every metaphysical interpretation to recognize something useful:
What you consistently direct your attention toward begins shaping who you become.
Call it manifestation.
Call it visualization.
Call it neuroplasticity.
Call it prayer.
Call it intention.
Call it discipline.
When you repeatedly orient yourself toward something, you begin noticing opportunities, developing skills, building relationships, and making decisions that move in that direction.
You will something internally, and then your life begins shaping you into someone capable of receiving—or creating—it.
Following your internal compass can make that process far more coherent.
But What Happens When Everyone Thinks You're Wrong?
This is where leadership becomes lonely.
Sometimes the thing you believe you should do will receive resistance from friends, family, coworkers, or society.
That does not automatically mean you are right.
External criticism can contain extremely important information.
But neither does disagreement automatically mean you are wrong.
Leadership requires developing enough independence to consider criticism without surrendering your judgment.
I have become increasingly comfortable being alone in certain decisions.
Not because I believe other people have nothing to teach me.
Quite the opposite.
I want feedback.
I want disagreement.
I want evidence.
But eventually every person has to make their own decision.
Nobody else lives inside your consequences.
Nobody else possesses your exact history.
Nobody else experiences your intuition.
Nobody else can completely understand the path unfolding in front of you.
At some point, you decide.
Build Enough Freedom to Listen
So my advice to developers—and really to anyone—is simple:
Do everything reasonably possible to reduce the amount of control money has over your decisions.
Not because money is evil.
Money is useful.
Money creates options.
But the purpose of money should be to increase your freedom—not gradually eliminate it.
Get yourself into a position where you can occasionally say:
- Reduce unnecessary obligations. Build skills. Build multiple income possibilities. Build things you own. Learn constantly. Experiment. Create. Protect your independence.
The money isn't the deciding factor. I want to know whether this feels like the right direction.
That is an extraordinary form of wealth.
Listen to constructive criticism.
Study reality carefully.
Respect your responsibilities.
Then listen to yourself.
And when that quiet voice points toward something meaningful, have the courage to move.
That philosophy is a major part of what Scarlet Beast represents.
We build technology around the belief that technology should increase human agency—not replace it.
Technology should give people more room to create.
More room to experiment.
More room to discover themselves.
More room to follow the signal beneath the noise.
Because perhaps the greatest thing technology can ultimately give humanity isn't automation.
It's freedom.
And then the responsibility becomes ours to decide what we do with it.