A familiar story.

That time we almost got rich.

Mine was in 2010. I was working on CouchDB and getting deep into Node.js. My friend Mike, who I knew through CouchDB, invited me into the beta of a new iPhone app he was working on. He said I had to promise to use it because they could only have 100 beta testers on iPhone apps.

It was a great app. I stopped by the co-working space he was working out of with his co-founder Kevin and I told them how great their app was. We ended up running some numbers estimating how many users they could support in their launch with the backend setup they had. The number we landed at was incredibly high but their backend fell over that weekend anyway, too many users signed up.

Later I would help Mike out of another database problem they had by referring him to Josh Berkus’ Postgres consultancy. I don’t remember if it was during that meeting or before. I don’t remember if they didn’t have any employees yet or maybe one or two. But I do remember Mike saying they were having trouble hiring and that “basically, we need someone like you.”

I shrugged it off, I was really loving Node.js and they were all in Python, didn’t seem like a good fit. That it, that’s my story.

That’s how I didn’t work at Instagram.

Everyone I know that has been in San Francisco long enough has a story like this. At some point they become familiar, even routine. These stories are the background conversations that make everyone here think they will be rich some day.

Roughly the same number of programmers that move to San Francisco will get rich as the number of actors who move to Los Angeles will be famous. But almost every actor that moves to Los Angeles will, eventually, know someone that gets famous.

I wonder how many other people Mike asked to work there the same way he asked me, most of which probably reacted the same way. Is this the story they tell at the bar after a few drinks?

I remember when Curtis Chambers would go to all the early Node.js meetups and practically beg people to come and work at his startup. How many people did he talk to who shrugged off working for a glorified cab company? Who was ever going to trade their Muni ticket for a forty dollar “Uber Cab” ride home? How many of those programmers are at the bar right now telling that story?

I lived in Oakland for ten years, it was great. I had opinions about San Francisco. Since moving here most of those views have changed. It turns out, I love living in this city.

This is a beautiful city but I wonder how many people forget to enjoy it while they’re trying to get rich. I wonder how many people think the excessive amount of time they spend in the office is temporary. How many are sacrificing their happiness now for their ticket in the startup lottery?

I’ve been around a while so I know people that have gotten rich. None of them appear to have stopped spending all that time in an office. I also know a lot of really happy people with comfortable salaries that aren’t millionaires and don’t spend all their time in an office.

I grew up poor. I’ve already done so much more than I thought possible growing up, and even I spent a few years sacrificing my happiness and mounting stress thinking I’d hit the startup lottery.

I wonder how many of the early San Francisco settlers sat at the bar in an old saloon telling the same stories. About the time they almost struck it rich mining for gold and about the guys they used to run with who did.