I moved back to New York City at the end of last year because of my wife’s work, and despite my love for my coworkers and the work they do. But the decision was made really easy by the fact that I was spending too much time with other people in the Bay Area and especially in Silicon Valley who apparently have different motivations from my friends and peers.

The New York Times gives us a depressingly close view of the emptiness of their world. I struggle to find a nice way to say this, but if your motivation isn’t to make something meaningful, if you don’t understand what it is to yearn for the creative impetus that is the core driver of interesting, meaningful, innovative work, or if your motivation is a big pile of money that won’t ever make your children happy, then I implore you, I beseech you: Get out now. Clear room again for those of us that do it because we love it, that did it when there was no money in it, that can’t not do it. Life’s too short to work on something so insufficiently world-changing. And you’re just getting in the way of those of us with work to do.