Personal essay
Please Don’t Tell My Daughter I Don’t Actually Work for Polymarket
My daughter believes I work for Polymarket. I work for Palantir.
My daughter believes I work for Polymarket. I work for Palantir. If she asks, I would appreciate your respecting the considerable progress we have made as a family.
Until recently, she thought I did “computer stuff.” This was a beautiful arrangement. She would ask why the printer wasn’t working, I would say printers were different, and we would each retain a basic respect for the other’s field.
Then she turned fourteen.
“Which company?” she asked.
I was unloading the dishwasher. I had a glass in each hand. I said Polymarket because it started with the right letter and because, in that moment, I believed I could survive being the gambling dad.
She looked it up at the kitchen counter.
“Oh,” she said.
It was a bad “oh.” But she remained in the kitchen.
That evening she told me there was a difference between making something useful and making money because something happened. I said that was an important distinction. She asked which one I did.
“The second one,” I said, with a relief I hope she mistook for shame.
Since then, our conversations have become much more substantive. She sends me articles. I read them. Previously, when I asked what she was doing on her phone, she said “nothing.” Now she says “learning about your employer,” and turns the screen toward me. You cannot put a price on that.
On Thursday she sent me the story about the NFL asking the Supreme Court to take up prediction-market regulation.
“Even football thinks you need rules,” she wrote.
I responded with the thinking emoji, which she has asked me not to use during serious conversations. I apologized for the emoji. We were able to resolve that issue completely.
I have learned not to defend my supposed employer. Early on, I tried saying prediction markets could aggregate information. She asked whether I thought putting “information” after something made it good.
This was a line of inquiry I was especially eager to discourage.
“You’re right,” I said.
She was surprised. Then she asked me to pass the parmesan. It was a wonderful dinner.
There are practical difficulties. I cannot bring home company merchandise. I keep my badge in a sock. My wife has had to explain why a man who supposedly works at Polymarket received a package from Palantir.
“Networking,” she said.
My daughter said that was disgusting.
My wife said yes.
We have become very close.
The trouble began when my daughter stopped wanting me to feel bad and started wanting me to do something.
She made a spreadsheet of alternative employers. Actual research, not just names: salary ranges, locations, whether they were hiring. She put the public library first.
I explained that the library did not appear to need a senior solutions architect.
“They need someone to help people use the computers,” she said.
I said that was a different kind of computer work.
She looked at me the way she used to look at the printer.
I could have invented a gradual internal reform effort. I drafted several possible initiatives while she did her homework. But she had begun asking for specifics, a trait I have encouraged since she was small and would now like to discourage selectively.
Then she offered to stop taking cello lessons.
We were in the car. She said she had looked at library salaries and understood there would be adjustments.
I told her absolutely not.
“I don’t even practice that much,” she said, which was true, and somehow made it worse.
I drove past our house because I needed another minute. She assumed I was upset about my career. I let her comfort me about the difficulty of leaving Polymarket.
The following Monday, I resigned from Palantir. I had accepted an offer at Ticketmaster.
My daughter sat very still when I told her.
“Ticketmaster.”
“Yes.”
“The fees people.”
I nearly cried. Three words. She had described my entire moral problem in three words, and none of them required me to say “national security.”
She said she had meant the library.
I explained that you cannot make a change like that overnight. There are benefits to consider. Unvested stock. The psychological effect of telling another man at a barbecue where you work and having him simply nod.
“You have to taper,” I said.
She asked if I was comparing my career to an addiction.
I said I had already taken a reduction in total compensation and would appreciate her acknowledging that.
We have agreed on a plan. For now, I will work somewhere she can object to without opening several tabs. Eventually, I hope to work somewhere whose customers sometimes say they had a good experience. The library remains a long-term possibility. I’m not ready to help someone for forty minutes and then watch them leave without creating an account.
She still sends me job listings. I still pay for cello. We are both making an effort.
Last night she told a friend on the phone that her dad works at Ticketmaster.
There was a pause.
“I know,” she said. “We’re working on it.”
I stayed very quiet in the hallway. I didn’t want to interrupt the first time she had described my career using “we.”