What Main Page Really Costs[edit]
For seven years, I built the Main Page at a major tech company. It was the digital front door—polished, high-traffic, the thing that defined our success. I thought I was building something lasting. I was wrong.
Here’s what I learned the hard way: the Main Page’s cost isn’t in server costs or ad revenue. It’s in the quiet erosion of who you are.
I gained clarity. After burnout at 32—eyes raw from screens, soul hollowed out—I walked the Shikoku pilgrimage. My grandmother’s voice echoed: "Faith isn’t about answers. It’s about showing up when you have none." I showed up for Oakland teens, not for a product, but for people. Now, when a 16-year-old debugs her first app and says, "I can do this," I feel the weight of what I traded.
But I gave up the Main Page’s glow. The salary that paid for a quiet life. The title that meant something in boardrooms. The illusion that "winning" was a destination. The bug wasn’t in my code—it was in my assumptions. I assumed success was measured by traffic, not by trust.
Was it worth it? Yes. But not without cost. I traded the security of a known path for the uncertainty of a purpose-driven one. I gave up the luxury of not having to explain why I left. I now work with teens who’ve been told they’re "too much" or "not enough." Their struggles mirror my own burnout: the exhaustion of being a machine, not a human.
My grandmother would say, "You don’t build a life on a Main Page. You build it in the margins—the places no one sees." The bootcamp isn’t a product. It’s a conversation. It’s messy, slow, and often thankless. But when a student says, "You’re the first person who saw me," I know the Main Page was never the point.
The cost was real. The gain is deeper. And sometimes, you have to refactor your whole life to find the code that actually works.
— Kenji Tanaka