Everyone said I was insane. For 8 years straight.
- Got into top-tier consulting. Knew what I was signing up for: under 4 hours of sleep, no life outside work. Friends partied. I grinded. Funny in retrospect: everyone who lectured me about work-life balance back then built nothing. Everyone who built something worked just as hard, they just didn't call it sacrifice. They called it fun. First time I heard "you've lost it."
- Sold the business, quit consulting. Took a sharp downshift from a six-figure income to a $300/month scholarship to go back to school. $120 of that went straight to a therapist. In the classroom I was the weakest person in the room, surrounded by future Harvard PhDs while I was learning calculus from scratch. When I left, I was leaving as a star: fast promotions, youngest SBA in the firm. But somewhere I'd caught myself getting dumber. Rising through grades while understanding less and less. I wanted to be someone who sets the frame, not someone who executes better than others. "Completely lost it," they said. Second time.
- Grad student at NES, classmates writing papers and prepping for PhDs. I was also quietly joining SberMarket, a 100-person startup nobody had heard of, no meaningful equity, no clear strategy. "Why trade academia for this random company?" Third time.
- That startup became the #1 e-grocery in Russia. My team grew to 60 people. But I saw the ceiling: AI products only, one market. I'd always done algorithms and never seriously thought about UX. Walked away from options and a clear trajectory. "Why the fuck would you do that?" Fourth time.
- Relocation. Alibaba, Barcelona. Spent a full year doing what I'd never done: building user interfaces. Days with designers, endless user interviews. Had to downgrade my title to get the experience I was missing. "You threw away basically everything and started from scratch." Fifth time.
- Leading 300+ people, building one of the larger AI pipelines in the region. Still get told I'm doing everything wrong.
8 years. Every decision. Same reaction.
I used to feel a flicker of doubt after each one. What if they're right? What if I'm missing something obvious?
But then I noticed the pattern: the people saying it had never made a bet like that themselves. They were optimizing for safety. Which is fine — until safety becomes the only thing you think about.
Stay tuned
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