After The Buyout

An old professional friend of mine was recently bought out (there's a lot of that going on these days in the computer industry), and his package was big enough that he seriously doesn't have to work another day in his life. I wrote to ask what he's doing next. He wrote back saying a) he stopped in at Byte.com from time to time, b) he wasn't sure what to do next and c) what did I suggest? Here's my answer (with a few elisions to protect his identity:

Thanks for stopping in at Byte.com. In a few weeks, my hand should be visible at Winmag.com since management just asked me to run that site as well.

As for the question of kicking back, my friend [a reader of this newsletter] gave himself a year after he was bought out. Might not be a bad idea to experience the family in all seasons before putting your nose back to the grindstone.

If it were me deciding what to do next (and unless the IPO of our Internet properties goes very well, it never well be), I'd consider devoting my life to philanthropy, something I have been prevented from doing by the need to make a living. Schindlers, through history, have worked like dogs, stayed in the harness until the day they day and typically die in debt. It appears possible I will be the first one in history to break the pattern (and with two daughters, quite possibly the last).

Michael Pritchard, once a fast-rising comedian and now devoted full time to helping youth in trouble, put it well in the SF Sunday Examiner and Chronicle today: "You make a living from what you get from others, but you make a life by what you give to others.''

I am seriously considering high school teaching as my next career. I've already taken the CBEST test (and, I am proud to say, passed it handily), the minimum requirement for an emergency teaching credential in California. In a few years, the teacher shortage here will be an emergency.

Frankly, if the Byte (and now Winmag) jobs hadn't come along, I'd have probably considered bailing. I'm intrigued and committed enough now to stick around for a while and see if I really have what it takes to be an editor. But after 20 years of expecting to do this job for 40 years, that's no longer what I expect.