Ask HN: How do I stop being used?
by flying_colours on Hacker News.
Hey everyone! This is kinda my first post so hi. Not sure if HN is the correct place to ask this.
This is a bit personal, but throughout my life, I’ve been helping companies, big and small, my friend’s startups, other people, even random people on algorithms, programming, maths etc. I’m happy they come and ask me for help, but it feels like I’m a doormat. I’m now trying to run a startup, so it gets worse. I don’t mind helping my close friends though. I feel used when companies or people use my work and profit from it. The worse is when they advertise that they did it. I get 0 pay, and ironically I sometimes have to travel to THEM on my own expense? Yikes I feel so dumb. My family have told me I’m stupid, so I’m trying to set boundaries. Some kind fellow startup founders also told me to be more aggressive. The worst is when people can see me contribute to my hobby projects (open source), or I teach people for free, but that’s because I like doing these things. The people then make me feel bad by constantly asking for help, especially for profit generation. I’m still in my twenties, but I feel like this can’t go on forever. Does anyone have any suggestions what I should do? Like I don’t wanna reject them, but if I can somewhow ask them to pay that would be great.