You would enjoy a Bentley if you liked Bentleys or certain kind of cars and enjoyed driving them. You would love a big house in Majorca if you were from the area and had a big family -or plans for it- and you would love to be with the person you'd love to be. Those are just examples. There may be a thousand more reasons why you'd love those.
The fact that you don't like Bentleys, big houses in Majorca or a specific lady does not make them vacuous or meaningless; not to mention it would be 100% rewarding if those were your dreams and you've accomplished them.
That guy may or may not like those, but appeals to people that would love -or they think they would- those. The same goes for any other dreams we have.
If anything, these kind of issues we see popping up here and there are proof of the high availability of the Internet and specifically how protocols such as BGP helped on making it what it is today.
It is not that we have built the Internet despite BGP. We have built it thanks to BGP. If we didn't have BGP we would have to invent it :)
Isn’t the point that BGP is great in the same way as the Model T was great? No one is saying it wasn’t needed or - to a certain extent - doesn’t do the job, but given recent (and not so recent) improvements to technology and security standards, maybe we need a BGP 2.0?
This makes total sense because humans are inherently lazy. Hurd would be out in production in 199x if not for Linux. But it's still being worked on in 2020.
> Hurd would be out in production in 199x if not for Linux.
I think Hurd is not a good example of this. Hurd being sidelined seems to me to be a result of bikeshedding (which microkernel to use) and realizing that Linux (as a kernel) had more effort being poured into it because it had more mindshare.
> But it's still being worked on in 2020.
At more or less a leisurely pace as a passion project more than the end goal being production, precisely because the social goal that it was trying to achieve has been mostly achieved by the Linux kernel.
That's generally a good way of thinking about whether to hold an investment, but don't forget about capital gains taxes and state taxes. For example, if you expect to move residency from CA to WA in a year, that alone could be a big bump in your expected cash proceeds and a reason to hold on.
A single data point, but a company I held equity in went public 4 months after a liquidity event in which shareholders were allowed to participate. The IPO went at ~50% above the price of the private transaction. If I were you, I wouldn't sell all of my shares now, especially if you think there's a good chance the company will go public very soon. Selling some fraction makes sense, as others have said--take some money off the table, depending on how much of your total net worth is in this equity stake.
As you might have noticed, the tech sector is in very high demand by investors right now; I wouldn't at all be surprised if VCs and anyone within the company is rushing to IPO, and it doesn't surprise me that investors would want to buy some extra shares at pre-IPO prices. This can all come crumbling down, as some stipulate on HN and elsewhere. Just to mention it as an option: you could partially reduce the risk of holding all or fraction of your shares by shorting a small amount QQQ. If the IPO gets postponed/canceled, it will probably be correlated with the tech sector dropping, so you'll make a modest amount of money on that.
This assumes OP gets a fair price for their stock. Often that doesn't happen on private markets, especially if the company doesn't provide enough information to allow outsiders to make an informed decision
> It's called "paying your dues" and exists in all industries. You need to earn respect of your new colleagues by doing some of that shitty work and doing it well. If all goes well, in a couple of months you'll be a part of the in-group and will get the interesting tasks.
"Pay one's dues"
"Earn respect"
"Part of the in-group"
I am sorry but this is not my experience at all. What you've described is how gangs work, not companies.
I am hired to work on certain areas due to my skills and knowledge. Shitty tasks are everyone's (in the team) responsibility. I am not hired to "pay my dues" and "earn respect" to become "part of the in-group". I'd leave that initiation ritual to other, uh, industries.
The fact that you don't like Bentleys, big houses in Majorca or a specific lady does not make them vacuous or meaningless; not to mention it would be 100% rewarding if those were your dreams and you've accomplished them.
That guy may or may not like those, but appeals to people that would love -or they think they would- those. The same goes for any other dreams we have.