He's so close to ycombinator, inside of it in fact, but I assume he isn't getting mega rich like everyone else associated with the outfit. Am I wrong?
Dang has an incredible pulse on the conversation & zeitgeist of Hacker News.
He has a keen sense of what the community's current group-think on various investment opportunities are, places a trade on the exact opposite outcome and has made hundreds of millions of dollars so far.
In all seriousness though, I'll bet he could quit HN and then spin up a consulting service helping companies get to the top of HN (what you should post, when to post, etc.) and make a tidy 7 figure income that way.
As far as moderating HN goes, from one point of view it's a perverse undertaking and the short answer is that the job matches my neuroses. From another point of view, it has been a growth opportunity—the options are either to let it drive you insane or grow. From a third point of view, I sometimes think that trying to assemble a large group on the internet into a curious organism is a worthwhile thing to try.
It also has some advantages which would be hard to give up. I don't think I could go back to a job where I didn't have creative control. I could imagine doing a startup again.
The ongoing thread remembering Bob Lee is filled with that quality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341.