The Prodigal Techbro

Maria Farrell puts a pulse on a feeling I’ve wrestled with:

why would anyone do the right thing from the beginning when they can take the money, have their fun, and then, when the wind changes, convert their status and relative wealth into…a whole new career?

Of course, the story of “the prodigal son” is as much, if not more, about the other son who never left.

She continues:

The only thing more fungible than cold, hard cash is privilege. The prodigal tech bro doesn’t so much take an off-ramp from the relatively high status and well-paid job he left when the scales fell from his eyes, as zoom up an on-ramp into a new sector that accepts the reputational currency he has accumulated. He’s not joining the resistance. He’s launching a new kind of start-up using his industry contacts for seed-funding in return for some reputation-laundering.

Since she’s making a biblical reference, I will too: those folks have their reward.