My ticket in the startup lottery

The startup I worked for got purchased a year or two ago. Our untradeable stock (or options on untradeable stock) got turned into REAL stock (or options on real stock) at a price that was high and rising. We were all giddy. We had dreams of being millionaires some day. Some of us were millionaires on paper.

Naturally, before the documents even arrived from the transfer agent, it was all worth much less.

Now that most of mine is vested, it's worth about a twentieth of its high... and, frankly, it is still overvalued. Unless my company (I am carefully not naming my employer here) lays off about two thirds of its people (including me) and concentrates on its core, to reflect the new reality of the high tech industry, I wouldn't want to buy their stock at any price.

I'm giving up. Everything I hadn't already sold, I'm going to cash out. What I thought would let me retire someday will be just enough to buy me a car... a small car... maybe used.

I still believe I chose wisely among the fledgling companies; ours had smart people, good ideas, savvy marketers, and enough wisdom to go hire some decent and experienced leadership. We were not a bunch of dot-com morons. (Unfortunately, I realized later, our customers' customers WERE.) I suppose it could have worked out... at just about any other time in the past decade, it may well have bought me a lovely airplane if not let me retire. I know thirty-year-old retirees. But I missed my chance by trying so late in the game. I don't think that sort of thing is likely to happen any more.

And the purchasing company has destroyed my startup. Good people are leaving at a steady rate. The people I most want to keep in touch with are working elsewhere. There's nothing worth doing around here any more.

Four years. [insert sound of flushing here.]

What color IS my parachute?

In my last post, I grumped a bit about what happened to the startup I joined years ago. Stock's dead, people gone. At least it's not the other way round. Okay. What next?

Software, the only thing I'm trained for, is just not going to create any breakthroughs any time soon. (Frankly, software sucks. People generally agree that the vast majority of software is bloated, buggy, unreliable, hard to use, etc etc. I have my own theories on why this is the case.) So anyhow. The paradigm shifts have shifted. We've come up with some good concepts over the history of computers. Operating systems, compilers, databases, computer games, graphical user interfaces, network protocols... the invention of each of these things has significantly changed the way computers are used. Java could have been, but wasn't. What's the next fundamental change coming from software? I don't see a lot.

If I want to do something interesting, new, different... if I want to help create something that will significantly help someone... if I want to make someone's job significantly easier or make it possible to do something a person basically couldn't do before, then I shouldn't be in software.

(Well, not completely true. There are still some jobs left undone in that arena.)

What, then? Where should I be?

I have the advantage of intelligence and willingness to learn. I have the disadvantage of laziness, though I have the occasional cleverness to turn laziness into a plus. I am a logical thinker saddled with ethics and with a caring nature. Where should I be?

Just in case you're trying to reach me

...my personal e-mail has been horked all afternoon.