I got fat and caused trouble. I think I’ve felt more pressure since leaving working at smaller companies where I’ve been way closer to the money side of things, and know how much the company depended on my work. At big companies, the metrics always felt disconnected from customer happiness or real dollars, and “success” was defined in very odd terms. It was weird juggling the ethical issues of working for a big company that didn’t always do the right thing, and how to deal with it. I think I thrived on the pressure, sometimes in an unhealthy way. I always felt like I was proving myself, because I was just the web guy without a degree who came from the call center… even when I was speaking at conferences and working on web standards stuff.