OK, let me try; I really like computers back in the day when you typed in a terminal screen 1:Print "Hello World" or the first HTML page with the CSS or figuring out for the first time how object-oriented programming class inheritance working, or referencing and dereferencing C pointers or DirectX buffer-swap or socket multicasting, or reading a really profound novel for English class for that matter or catching a late night movie with sexy scenes and heavy themes that you can't put your finger when you're young but the excitement of lust and wanderlust lingers on ("Eyes Wide Shut"),

When real life happened was told by parents directly and peers implicitly to "pursue" passion and "be serious" at the same time lest you be judged, so I got a job feeling independent, hell even making six-figures for the first time, feeling a million bucks but initial euphoria eventually gave away to daily grind, fixing tickets after tickets to the tyranny of "agile," "daily standup," and "JIRA burndown chart/project tracker"; more importantly, I want to learn and dig further and further down into stack, get into Linux kernel, hardware circuit design, cryptography, Bioinformatics not to have some BS on my LinkedIn and collect trinkets, but have that rush of hacking at it, like a shot of cocaine straight into the brain blood-barrier; instead, I'm here cranking out tickets for an A/B test on how to make a button to have a single round bevel or double round bevel and seeing which one will boost 0.01% on the user conversion rate to add a product to a shopping cart or to keep user "as engaged" when I could hardly care less about social media, e-commerce and iOS apps about a product or infographics that I don't need but is shoved to my face; I feel cheated and robbed at the lies that the startup industry pumps out for "meaningful work," more importantly, I sacrificed my love for learning academic-oriented computing for a meaningless momentary compensation and the trendiness of startupdom because I watched some stupid video on Steve Jobs or Peter Thiel on some late lonely night and it filled up my emptiness in college,

Socially, was an awkward computer nerd and on the bottom of the sexual and social totem-pole in college. But had a few friends whom I can have late night conversations with, who listened to me, whom understood when I say something in Chinglish (English-Cinese combined) and understand instantly what it's like to grow up Chinese in suburban Maryland and going to a Chinese evangelical christian church in the late 90's, and debating what porn clip we saw on porn sites back then, whether it's sanitary or gay for the guys involved for the porn girl in a blowbang to suck one cock and then go off to suck on another cock and also discuss different movies, The Smashing Pumpkins, "Catcher in the Rye," "On the Road," the alienation and the exhilaration of being on the road or constantly searching and wandering and the explicit sexual yearnings,

So in my mid-twenties, got finally frustrated due to hormones and that fear of missing out and that parental pressure to "settle down". So I got an downtown apartment and stocked it up with IKEA furniture like Edward Norton did in "Fight Club," shopped at H&M and Brooks Brothers for "snug-fit" jeans, befriended and went out with a carefully curated group of "young professionals but yet boheme" and eventually went on dates that led to a steady girlfriend. At first I felt like a million bucks, felt like I finally made it with "meaningful such yuppie weekend activities" as rock-climbing, hiking and carousing with friends and SO but eventually gave to the daily grind of the socializations, to the pettiness of who's who in office politics, whose next great startup idea to apply to what accelerator and what band to see in which cool fresh new venue that's just opened in the city but that's just the same as the one that we just sat at discussing it, the decor, names and hair are different but the characters all the same, that obligatory feeling that I don't want to but I should,

I want to have a feeling of mastery, follow through with something tangible and tactile with my hands, like building a nice outdoors deck with a nice varnish finish, learn how to take a Eric-Clapton-esque solo with all of the chromatic tones and sixteenth notes at a blues jam, to pull off a cross-over and a spin-move to evade the first and second defender in a rec-league basketball and finish at the hoop. Instead I trivialized my personal goals as unrealistic and impractical and instead gave into the social pressure of "practical nest-building and social networking". Learned only later that all my "friends" in trendy yuppie network were more in love with the idea of themselves being involved in a trendy yuppie network than the other people (especially moi). I don't feel like a man, or specifically a human being with any agency, but was re-assured by everyone else that "[I was]. Because [I] had my own apartment and had a great job, a great social network." I rushed to relationships and friends to fill a void of personal inadequacy but found associating or possessing other people that I liked the idea of did not change me and if anything else made me more insecure and co-dependent on them.

I gave up everything to go pursue that goal. (It turned out that I was giving up much less than I had thought.) My new career didn't work out like I had hoped, but I was doing something that I felt was meaningful. I was about something.

I met my wife when I was about something. And she married me even though I was poor. But I was a hell of a lot happier and that was attractive.

I came back to tech but with a whole different outlook. What am I about now? I am a family guy, everything I do is for them. I don't think my adventures are over (sure hope not!) but they make even dealing with daily bullshit at work meaningful.

We are lucky that we can apply our field to other industries. We can choose nearly anything we want to go into. We have enormous privilege. Life is a fucking playground. Want to help cure cancer? I'm sure they need tech guys for something. Believe in libraries or helping poor or veteran's care or internet access for rural areas? It's a choose your own adventure game. Even those billionaires you mentioned didn't set out to make billions. They had a mission, computers in every home, connecting social graphs online, etc.

Finally, I would just say that those people that you feel are so shallow are probably trying to fill the same hole. They're not terrible people, they're just doing what they think will make them happy.

My email is in my profile if you want to chat. Just know that everything ends. Good things and especially bad things. This time you're going through will also end and something new will start.

Money doesn't really equal women as much as A) If you're destitute, dating can be more difficult (but not impossible, lots of homeless people get married.) and B) If you have a lot of money you can pay other people a lot of money to have sex with you.

If this sounds like you, I would start descalating your career, your yuppie lifestyle and start escalating your pursuit of things that really interest you and finding connection with other people.