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“It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

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Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#231

Post by zepto »

michaelmcmillan wrote: post #203
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think someone's ending point as an adult is largely limited to their "brains"? Like, how are you going to completely exclude the upbringing environment and the scarcity and struggle for resources that some folks face.

It's not "what I think", it's what we know. One of the most well established facts in sociology is that IQ is the best predictor for life success: Firkowska-Mankiewicz, Anna, and Jerzyna Słomczyńska. Intelligence (IQ) as a Predictor of Life Success. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656 You reiterate my question in the second sentence: How do we weight these different privileges?

You are misinterpreting that research.

It’s the best individual predictor when compared against other predictors, but not very predictive on its own.

I.e. Iq is more predictive than inherited wealth, but iq + inherited wealth is more predictive than either individual factor.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#232

Post by noelsusman »

zpeti wrote: post #175
mattxxx wrote: post #171

The reality is that money lets you "take risks," and money gives you options (in this world). To be honest, I don't think that starting your company with the "risk" that you might move back in with your parents if it fails... is at all a meaningful risk.

Psychologically this is not true at all. It's much easier to take risks when you have nothing to lose. How many 18-30 year olds do you see having a swing at it and trying something, vs 30+ people with families and savings to burn?

Having nothing to lose is an advantage, but you also need to consider what the worst case scenario is. That's where the safety net comes in. A lot of people don't have anywhere to go if things truly go south.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#233

Post by Kye »

bko wrote: post #40
KaiserPro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only data I can get is this: https://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2009/04/educati... 93% had a degree, with 30% having a masters, That would suggest to me that you'd need a decent wedge of cash. Now, what is interesting, is that in 2016 at least, the US created gross 960k new companies (there is some smoothing here, so +- 100k) The UK created 460k. Seeing as how the UK is 60 million, versus 300 million pe…

Why do you need "a decent wedge of cash" to have a degree? There are plenty of universities that are affordable. For instance, City University of New York (CUNY) offers four year undergrad degrees for $6,730 a year [0]. You can get a room share in an outer borough for maybe 500 - 1.5k a month or Jersey for even less [1]. And this is one of the most expensive cities in the world. If you're smart, avoid unnecessary exp…

I don't know what kind of life you've lived where you think $6,730 a year is affordable, but it's a lot. Most people I know would have greatly improved prospects if they had that much money to spare. Education would be low on the list. First would be fixing their failing cars/homes.

$560/month to spare would change my life. I already got a good STEM degree on Georgia's HOPE Scholarship (traditional job prospects wiped out by SaaS), so it would go to a good used car, a proper studio computer, and some clothes that aren't years old and falling apart. Plenty of people I know found themselves in debt with degrees no one would hire them for without experience. Not even stereotypically useless degrees. They were pushed into it by everyone they were supposed to be able to trust, sometimes even outright manipulated and lied to by family.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#234

Post by jasonkester »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #221
jasonkester wrote: post #213

Silly Twitter fight aside, the key piece of advice that us regular non-rich folk should take away is this: "Your first goal after university should be to build yourself a safety net." Once you have $10k in the bank, you can start taking risks just like those privileged kids that are starting all the startups with their unfair advantages. Best of all for us, we work in software, where socking away your first ten thous…

$10k is hardly a safety net.

Feel free to adjust your numbers if you like. Personally, I have a hard time spending that much in a year.

The idea, though, is to save up enough that you don't need to think about losing your job as an existential threat. That's an easily attainable goal for a software guy, and it puts you in a nice position in a lot of ways.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#235

Post by vostok »

radcon wrote: post #218
jasonkester wrote: post #213

Silly Twitter fight aside, the key piece of advice that us regular non-rich folk should take away is this: "Your first goal after university should be to build yourself a safety net." Once you have $10k in the bank, you can start taking risks just like those privileged kids that are starting all the startups with their unfair advantages. Best of all for us, we work in software, where socking away your first ten thous…

> we work in software, where socking away your first ten thousand dollars happens automatically after landing an entry level dev gig, provided you don't go out of your way to blow your entire outlandish salary on silly possessions. This is shockingly out of touch with reality, just like PG's original tweet. There are plenty of people with CS degrees who can't find a job, and plenty more who have jobs that barely pay…

> There are plenty of people with CS degrees who can't find a job, and plenty more who have jobs that barely pay enough to cover their expenses.

If anything, this comment is out of touch with reality as it stands for most software developers in the US.

The median salary for a software developer in the US is over $100k. In Silicon Valley MSAs it's even higher of course.

The median income for similar careers like computer programmer is also very high even if it's less than $100k and those careers cover far fewer people anyway.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#236

Post by zepto »

bubblewrap wrote: post #53
PandaRider wrote: post #8

I'm shaking my head right now because I can't believe people at the top is still susceptible to sampling/survivorship bias. I've tried searching but cannot find a good empirical study of privilege and entrepreneurship correlation. However, I've found an essay paper [0] that exactly predicted this twitter drama; that entrepreneurs simultaneously present and erase this conversation about class and entrepreneurship. The…

Class may also mean you have no examples of entrepreneurship in your environment. I don't think PG claimed that poor people are as likely as rich people to become successful founders. That's not the same thing. He says you don't have to be rich to succeed.

Sure but he’s making a category error, and it’s so obvious as to be irresponsible coming from a person in his position.

All it takes is one person who succeeds who is not defined as rich for his statement to be technically true, even if every other poor founder fails and dies in poverty.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#237

Post by Frost1x »

bko wrote: post #160
cbanek wrote: post #108

Pretty disappointed in PG's response: "I would ordinarily just let your bullshit go, but this myth that you have to be a rich kid to start a startup is terribly dangerous, because it discourages people who aren't from trying it. Brian Chesky's parents were social workers. That is not a rich kid." As if having two parents with stable jobs isn't considered a safety net. I agree, you don't need to be rich, but I also ag…

This is a kind of No True Scotsman fallacy. Anyone that is successful was 'advantaged' because her family was rich, or she had two parents, or she had a parent, or she was born in America, or she was born with the right number of chromosomes... The whole conversation strikes me as just snarky and reductive. I don't see the point. Why not try to promote a conversation to lift people up and empower them rather than wri…

I think it's an important conversation to have. What if the story of success is a complex sum of contributing factors but it turns out, certain factors have significantly higher weights than the others. If you don't explore all of the cases, you may perpetuate a narrative that does many a disservice by promoting factors that don't empower but ultimately suppress.

Many may think their chosen set of contributing factors will make them successful and it turns out, those factors might not be all that useful. By ignoring that information and falsely giving equal weight to all factors, you might empower them down a path far more likely of failure than of success. That path could be a good portion of their lives so I think stepping on a few toes in conversation is well worth trying to resolve those problems instead of only speaking in the positive.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#238

Post by wnevets »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #221
jasonkester wrote: post #213

Silly Twitter fight aside, the key piece of advice that us regular non-rich folk should take away is this: "Your first goal after university should be to build yourself a safety net." Once you have $10k in the bank, you can start taking risks just like those privileged kids that are starting all the startups with their unfair advantages. Best of all for us, we work in software, where socking away your first ten thous…

$10k is hardly a safety net.

It's certainly better than 0

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#239

Post by altaccount1 »

_Microft wrote: post #211
idlewords wrote: post #170

Let's not forget that Graham has also publicly written he would be loath to choose any woman as a startup founder "who had small children, or was likely to have them soon." The man has a type, and the demographics of YC reflect it.

Do you maybe have a source for it?

Footnote 2 of this Paul Graham essay:

http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#240

Post by michaelmcmillan »

zepto wrote: post #231
michaelmcmillan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "what I think", it's what we know. One of the most well established facts in sociology is that IQ is the best predictor for life success: Firkowska-Mankiewicz, Anna, and Jerzyna Słomczyńska. Intelligence (IQ) as a Predictor of Life Success. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656 You reiterate my question in the second sentence: How do we weight these different privileges?

You are misinterpreting that research. It’s the best individual predictor when compared against other predictors, but not very predictive on its own. I.e. Iq is more predictive than inherited wealth, but iq + inherited wealth is more predictive than either individual factor.

And again we're back at my original question... This is just a never ending loop. My whole point is this: How do we separate our inherited traits from the privilege brought on by our "class"?
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