Ben Werdmuller

Every so often I see a thread from an engineer worried about their career prospects now that they’re over 40. It’s always confronting to me: it forces me to remember that I’m over 40, for one thing. But I also don’t feel old; objectively speaking, I don’t think it is particularly old. It’s all a matter of perspective.

In January, I’ll be 43. It’s been a particularly strange decade: ten years ago I moved to California, not to work on a fancy startup or engage in the tech industry, but to be with my mother because I thought she was going to die. In the end, she had a double lung transplant, and we had many bonus years with her. As tumultuous as they were, I’m very grateful for that time.

We also figured out a lot more about her disease during that time, and I was able to take a DNA test to determine that I didn’t have the same genetic variant. The science isn’t completely settled, and I plan to take regular telomere length tests to make sure I’m as healthy as I hope I am. (I haven’t because, honestly, I’m a bit scared to, but I’ve decided that’s not a good enough reason.)

At the same time, I was the cofounder of an open source startup, worked at a heavily-funded VC-backed company, was a mission-driven investor, and worked in crypto. I went to the pub with Chelsea Manning and got to teach journalists from all over the world. I’ve met so many people who I feel lucky are part of my life.

But the decade was always about the health of my immediate family more than it was about any of those things, as grateful as I am for them. Perhaps that’s why I feel so confronted by these over-40 threads: the last time I really felt in control of my time and my destiny, I was 30. And I still feel like I have a huge amount of my life ahead of me. Hopefully, I do. Hopefully, so does everyone who posts those kinds of thoughts.

The biggest thing to have changed for me is that I’m much more comfortable with my position in my working life. I don’t feel the need to make millions of dollars; I don’t feel the need to prove my worth to anyone. I created a bunch of value and discovered it didn’t really matter. I built platforms used by formidable organizations and discovered it didn’t really matter. I’m lucky to be comfortable.

These days, I just want to do meaningful, ethical work and enjoy the journey as I building a good life. That’s it. That’s all there needs to be. And that’s great.

May everyone worrying about their age with so much ahead of them find the same peace.

I’m posting Fairness Fridays: a new community social justice organization each week. I donate to each featured organization. If you feel so inclined, please join me.

This week, I’m donating to the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. Based in Scandia, MN, NAFSA supports Native communities nationally with advocacy, education, and networking as they revitalize their indigenous food systems.

It describes its mission as follows:

Through our efforts and programs, we bring stakeholders and communities together to advocate and support best practices and policies that enhance dynamic Native food systems, sustainable economic development, education, trade routes, stewardship, and multi-generational empowerment.

We work to put the farmers, wild-crafters, fishers, hunters, ranchers, and eaters at the center of decision-making on policies, strategies and natural resource management.

Its work includes collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants (vital work when many seeds are protected by intellectual property legislation that favors corporations) and culinary mentorship.

I donated. If you have the means, please join me here.

As an adult in the UK whose immediate family lived thousands of miles away in California, I sometimes threw Thanksgiving dinner parties. I think my friends were confused about why I did this on a Thursday night, but whatever; we had fun.

When I joined my parents in California, we had a traditional meal: turkey and its vegetarian equivalent, the various sides, and most importantly, us being together. Like many families, we went around the table, taking turns to explain what we were thankful for. My mother, who depending on the year was in various states of supplementary oxygen use, post-transplant care, tube-feeding, and overall discomfort, would always tear up and say she was thankful for us. We’d all come together - my sister and I both uprooting and moving to California - because she was sick, and we were a unit, getting through this together.

This is the first year we’re doing it without her. Today is the first major holiday without her. Next week will mark six months without her.

Like most holidays, Thanksgiving is complicated. The traditional story, of course, is based on a harmful lie. Even the post-Lincoln history of its celebration in the US is complicated, although a story I can get much more behind. But I choose to think of it as a time to reflect and be thankful, and hopefully be in the company of people I’m thankful for.

This has been the worst year of my life, bar none. I’m grieving; I still have regular nightmares about that last week in the hospital; the pandemic still rages; even outside of the black hole at the center of my life, it was hard in other ways that in any other year would have been challenging by themselves. And all of this makes gratitude that much more important.

I’m thankful for my family: immediate, extended, and found. I get to have so many incredible people in my life. Community and connectedness are what make life meaningful, and I couldn’t have made it through this year without any of them. So many people have gone out of their way to help us.

This has been an exceptionally tough year for my immediate family, and I’m particularly thankful for them. My mother: everything she was, everything she taught us, everything she still is through us. My sister: the smartest, funniest, best person I know. My father: who gave so much of himself, and gives so much of himself, and cares so deeply about fairness.

This year I’ve also driven across the full breadth of the United States - twice. I visited 38 states. I saw how racist monuments were still enshrined. I saw the proprietors of a Black-owned restaurant in New Orleans (we deliberately only ate at Black-owned establishments in the South) be racially abused by a visitor. I paid my respects at the Greenwood District in Tulsa, the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and learned about the difficulties the community still endured. I paid my respects at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis. I saw entire neighborhoods condemned by racist city planning.

There’s a lot of work to do, and across the country, the hardest work of building a future that supports all of us seems to be mostly done by the most oppressed. I’m thankful for these communities, activists, neighborhood groups, and families who, despite it all, and often despite the rest of us, are doing the most to overcome this country’s violent nature and brutal past. They are who will make America great, and the world great. Building a world with systems that support inclusion, equality, and a better life for everyone is the work of building the future.

Finally, we’re still in this pandemic. Like many of us, I’ve known people who died, and I’ve known people who came close to it. I’ve also had cause to know people who refused vaccinations, fought against the simple, kind act of wearing a mask in public, and mocked the idea of coming together collectively for the better good. While traveling around the country, I saw many signs imploring store visitors to not assault people who asked them to wear a mask or social distance. I’m thankful for all the people who did the right thing, and who were decent in the face of a global catastrophe.

I hope you’re safe and well. I’m grateful that I am. Today will be hard, but I’m glad to be with my family. On we go.

I’m posting Fairness Fridays: a new community social justice organization each week. I donate to each featured organization. If you feel so inclined, please join me.

This week I’m donating to Justice for Greenwood. Based in Tulsa, OK, Justice for Greenwood “aims to revitalize the Greenwood Community and Diaspora through education, advocacy and direct services to lift the community out of poverty and to address the major areas of inequality and injustice directly caused by the Massacre such as: Health, Education, Real Estate, and Generational Wealth.”

I had the privilege of visiting the Greenwood District in Tulsa yesterday, including its historical center, Greenwood Rising. It was a profoundly affecting experience. The Tulsa Race Massacre was an act of violence against the Black community and Black success in 1921, but the violence continues today. The community rebounded after the massacre, but the city actively sought to destroy it through deliberate planning and eminent domain. Even today, the Black businesses present in the neighborhood are forced to rent from the city.

Justice for Greenwood’s work includes direct legal advocacy and support for descendants of the massacre, as well as the important work of capturing the oral history and genealogy. Mass graves have been uncovered around the city, and the known death toll keeps rising. Documenting this history is important, and the city resisted any effort here for decades. It wouldn’t have happened without strong advocacy.

I donated. If you have the means, please join me here.

I also donated to Greenwood Rising. It's an incredibly well-executed exercise in telling an important story that ends with a powerful call to action. You should visit if you can.

Thoughts

1. There is no reason for a startup to be in the San Francisco Bay Area anymore, and lots of reasons to not.
2. That’s not to say that the Bay Area isn’t great. For me, it’s one of the places in the US with saner politics, better weather, and despite soaring prices, a really beautiful independent culture of artists, writers, and musicians.
3. But it’s incredibly, prohibitively expensive.
4. A small two bedroom home will easily set you back over a million dollars to buy. To rent a two bedroom apartment, you’re likely talking three or four thousand dollars a month.
5. The “low income” threshold for a family of four in San Francisco is an annual take-home of $117,400.
6. The result is that even though tech salaries are so high as to be a cause of inequality throughout the area, it’s non-trivial for someone earning a quarter of a million dollars a year to own their own home.
7. Which means families either need to earn astronomically more, or move out to somewhere cheaper.
8. It also means that creative technologists who aren’t independently wealthy and don’t want to work for a larger company need to move out somewhere cheaper.
9. Which also means that if you want to hire people who have families or have built a non-traditional career, you probably need to cast your net further afield.
10. The good news is that investors are casting their nets further afield. There’s no need to live in San Francisco or Silicon Valley to raise money anymore.
11. The Silicon Valley community is becoming more diffuse. I know of people moving all over the country. It’s no longer about being where everyone else is, because there is no one place.
12. Everyone’s used to remote working after the pandemic.
13. Paying Silicon Valley salaries to everyone at your company, regardless of location, is the right thing to do - but a startup can still reduce costs in other ways, like office space, and hire a greater diversity of people.
14. So why not live in a place where you can afford a home with a garden, and give your company a greater chance of success in the process?

Actions

1. I’ve been helping to clean out the house we’ve been staying in since the summer. There’s a lot still to do, but we’ve made good progress. I’ve got a lot of scrubbing and packing ahead of me.
2. I’ve been working on a huge project, and the social aspects are proving harder than the technical ones. I need to spend time consciously researching tactics to make some of these interactions more productive.
3. On a similar note, I want to do more internal blogging this week. I find it to be a really good way to asynchronously share thinking.