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I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

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Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#501
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are now terrified of putting down a screen and being left alone with their own thoughts for more than 30 seconds. It's horrifying what's bouncing around up in that dome, and having to process it. But this is exactly what we did before. We got bored , we were wasting time, we were experimenting, and that's how great ideas came around.

Meditation is also a great way to force yourself to be alone with your thoughts. However, speaking from experience, that can lead to some uncomfortable truths -- so it's good to be prepared.

Mind sharing what uncomfortable truths you discovered?

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty mind-blowing to realize that the less risky, more tortoise-like approach to a career would have been so vastly more profitable Isn't this the definition of risk? If it was a foregone conclusion that you'd make more money this way, it wouldn't be risky at all.

Sure, not so surprising that the high risk path is risky. What's surprising is the low risk path is so high reward.

Also, while it might be a lower risk path than the one you took, it certainly wasn't the lowest risk path available. The people who did really well had basically all their net worth tied up in one company's stock for many years.

That level of concentration risk is extremely ill-advised no matter how promising the company might be. Sure, it works out great when GOOG goes up 200%, but it could have just as easily gone the other way. And even if you want to gamble on it, you don't actually need to work there to make a lot more money than those employees did. Just load up on OOM LEAPs and relax on a beach somewhere until $100mm or more.

A really low risk option would have been to go to work for the Federal government or one of its contractors. Or maybe an established, traditional software firm like Oracle or Bloomberg.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just became the first GitHub profile I follow. Good luck bro! I’m still just 35 but I know I’ll face the same music in 20 years or less.

That’s the puzzling thing about the ageism. The folks practicing it are gonna get to be in this seat, before they know it. Hope that they are saving and investing, instead of splurging on Teslas and Mission District cribs.

No, see they are gonna be retired by 38. See, this line they drew extrapolating their stock and salary since starting work in 2012 will keep going up and up...

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#505
post #432

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> If you live in a city and want to live somewhere affordable, you're often looking at 1hr+ of commute each way. Reading your comment and others beneath you, I sense many of you have a weird idea of what a city is. What you describe is true only for a minority of cities. I live in a city with above median housing prices. I live a 10 minute drive from my work. My house is not expensive - in fact, the expensive neighbo…

You might be the one with a weird idea of what a city is. I'd wager most people think of something like the top 20 metropolitan statistical areas by population when they hear the term. In the U.S, at least, those generally all have terrible traffic and subpar transit.

You just made my case for me. The majority of people who live in cities in the US are not in the top 20 metropolitan areas, I think the majority will disagree with your idea of a city. Every city I've lived in was not in the top 20.

And frankly, even looking at some of the top 20 areas, some of them have pretty decent traffic. I know people who live in Phoenix (ranked 10th) whose commute is definitely under half an hour one way. And they live in nice areas.

Houston: Some of the major employers are in a crappy part of town. Very easy to find houses nearby, but few do so because they don't like the neighborhood. Still, the long commute is an active choice and not about affordability.

Take Manhattan. I got a call from a well known company to work there. I said "No way. Expensive and long commutes." The recruiter explained: No - just live in New Jersey. If you get the right neighborhood, the commute to work by public transit will be 30-40 minutes. I checked - he was right. Those New Jersey neighborhoods were decent ones, and the houses were about the same price as mine.

I haven't checked Chicago recently, but 10-15 years ago, you could easily find houses near enough the L-train such that your commute to downtown would be about 30 minutes.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#506
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you have babies? It gets easier!

Nope, but my siblings had their first and I witnessed how life altering of an experience it was for them where they had to put their careers on hold and nothing else mattered other than this new born (justifiably so), pregnancy was also rough for the wives so the husbands has double duty, taking care of newborn at all hours and recovering wives from c-section and complications. Not looking forward to the first year.…

Appreciate the pause from your career (you‘ll probably get a new outlook on things), maybe view it as a personal development sabbatical. Schedule less work if you can, so you can sleep a bit during the day. DON‘T hesitate to ask people for help, even if you don’t want to be a burden and all - People know that life is hard for new parents, and most want to be useful in some way - it makes them feel good about themselves.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#507
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be the one with a weird idea of what a city is. I'd wager most people think of something like the top 20 metropolitan statistical areas by population when they hear the term. In the U.S, at least, those generally all have terrible traffic and subpar transit.

You just made my case for me. The majority of people who live in cities in the US are not in the top 20 metropolitan areas, I think the majority will disagree with your idea of a city. Every city I've lived in was not in the top 20. And frankly, even looking at some of the top 20 areas, some of them have pretty decent traffic. I know people who live in Phoenix (ranked 10th) whose commute is definitely under half an h…

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Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#508
post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the puzzling thing about the ageism. The folks practicing it are gonna get to be in this seat, before they know it. Hope that they are saving and investing, instead of splurging on Teslas and Mission District cribs.

No, see they are gonna be retired by 38. See, this line they drew extrapolating their stock and salary since starting work in 2012 will keep going up and up...

Given the market over the past 100 years, that seems like a fairly reasonable assumption?

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the puzzling thing about the ageism. The folks practicing it are gonna get to be in this seat, before they know it. Hope that they are saving and investing, instead of splurging on Teslas and Mission District cribs.

What percentage of income do you think young people should be saving? Because from what I see, this is the age of freely available personal finance advice, and more people seem to be following it at whichever age they stumble into stable income. Sure, there would be splurges here and there, but as far as I can tell, people are saving well. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/why-young-people-are-saving-... https://www.vo…

I think it’s hard to save a percentage of your income when your income is low.

If I’d been saving 10% of my income until 4 years ago (some 16 years of work), I would have more than tripled the savings in the last 4 years. Instead, I saved a higher percentage for only the last 4 years, and have a substantially higher amount.

Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

#510
post #180
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk if it's just terrified, but I think we're addicted. This probably sounds ridiculous but I recently blocked some apps and sites on my phone and actually felt a little off for a day, like my sleep was weird. I think there was a slight withdrawal from the constant bombardment of stuff. It is helping kill my Facebook habit. I don't even really like the site, I just check it impulsively. It's weird. Reddit is another…

What information on reddit is useful?

Its helpful to get kind of organic opinions on things. See what people are saying if your shopping for something new. Its comes up in google searches a lot. At least there's no seo gaming on a reddit link.

Ive had some ok experiences on reddit too, meet ups, bought stuff, got free concert tickets once too. its hard to write the whole thing off. That might be a different era of reddit though. Its been a few years since I had something like that happen now that i think about it

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