Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#121

Post by mindcrime » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #26

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you…

Exactly. When you buy into the "everything is luck, blah, blah" mentality then you have a built-in excuse to let yourself off the hook. You can be as lazy as you want, and when you fail, you can explain it away as "well, I wasn't lucky enough, aww shucks."

Whereas if you believe that you can build yourself up through effort and exertion, and believe that those things are the primary factors in your success, you have no excuses if you fail. You might still fail, but at least it won't be for lack of even bothering to give a sincere effort.

And I don't know about you guys, but I'm OK with failing if I fail for reasons that are totally outside of my control. What I'm not OK with, is failing because I didn't make a sincere effort within the scope of the things that I can control.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#122

Post by danans » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #79

koolba wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. Bill Gate’s family clearly contributed to his and Microsoft’s success. His mother in particular had direct contact with the chairman of IBM which lead to a scrappy software company landing a life changing contract. I’m not saying that to discount the rest of his achievements or effort either. The greatest…

I totally agree. What I disagree with is the people that want to dismiss Gates success completely because his family had some money. Tens of thousands of kids have the same background that he did, but don't do anything half as incredible as starting Microsoft. While Gates should acknowledge the advantages he's had, I don't think it's unfair or unreasonable for him to feel pretty good about what he's accomplished.

> What I disagree with is the people that want to dismiss Gates success completely because his family had some money.

I don't know who you are talking to, but I've only heard his family's wealth discussed in the context of people discouraging young adults from attending or completing university, on the example of Gates. The point being that his family's wealth gave him exposure to technology and social networks that people of lesser means could only get through university.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#123

Post by refurb » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #26

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you…

Exactly. The logic of this argument seems to be: luck is involved in being successful, therefore personal effort plays no role at all. It makes no sense.

I like your measure relative to what you were born into. Didn’t get enough to eat when you were a child and are now a millionaire. Self-made!

Born into a millionaire family and turned that into a billion? Self-made!

I’m personally thankful the tall poppy syndrome isn’t that common in the US. I’d hate an environment where success is looked down up. No, being rich isn’t everything, but if that’s what you want, I’m happy you found it.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#124

Post by dragontamer » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

yunyu wrote: post #91

radmuzom wrote: post #22

Resonates strongly with me. Many of my school friends went to the best colleges in my country - all the time attributing their success solely to "hard work". However, they always seemed to ignore the fact that their parents paid a lot of money for them to attend the best tuition outside of school. I did not have that option and did not get admitted to any of the famous colleges (I am discounting the constant mental t…

I received much better financial aid offers from top schools than the local state university. While the ability to pay tuition definitely is a factor, keep in mind that many students do not pay even close to sticker price.

Different states have different amounts of financial aid. I fortunately have a state school that is highly ranked in Comp. Sci.

My family didn't get much financial aid, but I managed to put mostly on a loan and pay it back afterwards. I do realize that having a family rich enough to disqualify from financial aid is the "advantage" this article is probably talking about...

But still, it wasn't like it was easy to take the SAT like 5 or 6 times through practice regiments. Memorizing word-lists from 3 different "SAT-word list books" to master analogies / reading sections was incredibly rigorous, it was the hardest studying I ever did in my life. By the end of the program, I memorized well over 20,000 "difficult words" over a period of 6-months to improve my SAT score (and promptly forgot about them after the test). Its not easy to do.

There were plenty of other people in my SAT Prep classes who were unable to score as high as me... and there were plenty of people I know who worked harder than I did and scored higher than I. So there is certainly something to be said about "self-driven effort".

But I fully recognize that my family's values and money helped me achieve what others couldn't. I also know of friends who were unable to afford multiple test-prep classes year after-year during high school... multiple years of "Kumon Math", and other such extracurricular after-school academic classes. Only now as an Adult do I realize how expensive all those after-school test prep classes are.

------------

There's give and take for sure. The opportunity is money-driven, but the achievement is still personal. All the money and test-prep classes in the world won't help if the child is disinterested or lazy.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#125

Post by natalyarostova » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #108

darawk wrote: post #26

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you…

> First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirty poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. There are way more people who are born wealthy and continue being wealthy. There are way more people who go from poor to poor. Social mobility is piss poor right now in the US. If "having a nice family and a wonde…

> First of all, Bill Gates had a TON of opportunity and privilege funneled to him from his parents.

He absolutely did. And yet even conditional on that category, the probability of becoming a billionaire is extremely low. Therefore, according to the parent comment, that counts as self-made.

> You cannot POSSIBLY believe that there is no wealth disparity in the US? That there is not a disparity in opportunity between the wealthy and the middle class/poor?

You're not following the parent comment's argument, and as a result your response isn't targeted at their specific point. Their specific point is invariant to wealth mobility. Even if you give me an extremely extremely unequal society, their definition of self-made success persists: The ability to exceed the median expectation for your category.

If you're born dirt poor in a slum, and end up running a small laundromat, whereas most of your peers are still scavenging in the slum, you're self-made, because you beat your peers. If you're born as a privileged white kid to millionaires, but end up becoming a billionaire, you're self-made.

Having morally invariant definitions for words is useful, because it's nice to have terms to describe things, without having to stop using terms because they offend peoples moral sensibilities.

Your argument that self-made success literally doesn't exist in any facet, and all is deterministic, so we should never use that term or consider it a phenomena, strains credulity, and makes it hard to describe certain elements of reality.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#126

Post by plausibilities » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #73

I like that we keep talking about privilege, no matter how much it irks the hacker news elite. I have a previous comment about this[0], so I will not go into too much detail. Nobody thinks they are rich or privileged. Now, the Hendersons down the street? THOSE PEOPLE are rich! I feel that people underestimate the huge effect of having a safety net under them. It is the difference between going to the amazing state sc…

What if I told you it's possible to accept one's privilege while disputing the degree to which it has directly contributed to specific, positive life/professional outcomes?

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#127

Post by tzs » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

ataturk wrote: post #109

darawk wrote: post #26

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you…

Which billionaires came from "dirty poverty?" List them, please. Extra credit: I'm a lowly millionaire, how do I get a seat on a Board of Directors? I have a PhD, 20+ years in the technology field. Am more than qualified for any kind of corporate governance role, etc.

Rex Sinquefield comes to mind. Also Howard Schultz. Oprah Winfrey. Leonardo Del Vecchio.

Maybe Kenneth Langone, Sheldon Adelson, and John Paul DeJoria.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#128

Post by rchaud » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #26

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you…

> If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success.

A student from Senegal who attended my alma mater now works in Wall Street. In an alumni issue, he described what it was like to go from his tiny village to the capital city in Senegal for an interview for a scholarship at a prestigious international school (where his grades got him another scholarship for college). He described hitching multiple rides just to get to the city, and needed to borrow heavily to pay for the flights once he was admitted.

He named many families and community leaders from his village that he says were instrumental in helping him on that first major step. Where he is today wouldn't have happened without the trust and support of fellow community members. They made sacrifices so he could achieve a dream and eventually repay them.

"Self-made" means different things to different people.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#129

Post by EpicEng » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #111

latencyloser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of when I was working at Microsoft and a colleague said to me: "I don't know how anyone raises a family off less than $130k/year." I laughed and asked him if he'd ever been anywhere in the US outside of Seattle before. Turns out, he hadn't and assumed the insane cost of living we're subject to in this area also exists in the rest of the country. My point of reference is my family's house in a rural ar…

Between the cost of daycare, health care/insurance, pet care, car payments and maintenance, student loan payments, and then a mortgage (even a cheap mortgage) on top of that, not to mention saving something for retirement, forget the 10x your salary by the time you retire or whatever, and once every 2-3 years go on a vacation at least to the next state over, I do sometimes wonder how households can make ends meet on…

>Between the cost of daycare, health care/insurance, pet care, car payments and maintenance, student loan payments, and then a mortgage (even a cheap mortgage) on top of that, not to mention saving something for retirement, forget the 10x your salary by the time you retire or whatever, and once every 2-3 years go on a vacation at least to the next state over, I do sometimes wonder how households can make ends meet on less than $100k a year, and have no idea how a household can get by on the average $60k a year.

You list a bunch of optional things here as if they are some human right. Pet costs? Don't own a pet. Car payments? Do you think people struggling to make ends meet should be spending $250+ / month on a car? Buy a 20 year old Civic. Mortgage? Families making a combined $60k rent. Student loans? Why are they making so little with their degree? Poor choice? I doubt most families making $60k are paying off student loans.

>Not to mention get married (wedding costs are insane, going through that right now) or other life events.

Well that's just dumb. Families making $60k don't (shouldn't) kick things off with a lavish wedding.

>We make more than that, have no children, and we're still shuffling money around to make it all work.

I admit that I'm assuming a lot here, but if you two can't make things work on a six figure income I don't know, sounds like you're throwing away a lot of money on luxuries.

To me you come off as if you assume all of these luxuries are how everyone does/should live, and that's simply not the case.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#130

Post by natalyarostova » Tue, Feb 19, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #90

darawk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. What I disagree with is the people that want to dismiss Gates success completely because his family had some money. Tens of thousands of kids have the same background that he did, but don't do anything half as incredible as starting Microsoft. While Gates should acknowledge the advantages he's had, I don't think it's unfair or unreasonable for him to feel pretty good about what he's accomplished.

> Tens of thousands of kids have the same background that he did Or alternatively: statistics suggests that out of a big sample of people, a few of them are going to strike it really rich.

That statistical model holds if you assume that the pool Bill Gate's was in generally had the same properties, and his ambition of talent was non-extraordinary.