In some of the more exclusive advertising creative departments, writers and art diectors are envious of colleagues with a Lion or a Pencil to their credit, knowing they might have been just as lucky if it weren’t for that idiot client/creative director/account guy/director.
According to The New York Times there’s a different kind of envy at work just south of San Francisco.
Almost anywhere else, Reid Hoffman would be considered a major success. As an early executive of PayPal, he was in the money when the company was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. These days, he runs a new start-up company of his own while investing in others.
But when greater fortunes are made — as happened recently to three former PayPal colleagues when YouTube was sold to Google for $1.65 billion — Mr. Hoffman said he could not avoid a twinge of envy.
“It’s kind of embarrassing,” said Mr. Hoffman, 39, whose start-up, a business-oriented social-networking site called LinkedIn, is almost four years old. “You started a year or two earlier, and they start after you and then this thing zips right past you and gets the golden results.”
When you live and breathe your work, it’s easy to get lost in it. From the sound of things, Hoffman may have diverted into a bog. He’s rich, famous in industry circles and his own boss. Yet, he lacks. It’s a common story, sadly.
