How People Get Rich Now • Hacker News Board

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#51

Post by john_moscow » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

internetslave wrote: post #23

I think there’s a different reason, companies just aren’t paying enough. Wages, even at 150-200k just really aren’t that much. 200k now is a lot less than 200k in 2010. The younger generation intuitively knows this. I don’t know anyone jockeying to climb the corporate ladder, and my social circle spans Stanford grads to no college degree at all. People are starting businesses because working for a corporation day in…

Because the corporations have discovered a way to give people a fake feeling of growth, meaning and belonging, while de-facto keeping them as lowest-bidder replaceable cogs. There are many stories of people feeling betrayed by the corporate machine when their interests stopped being aligned with the corporate ones. There are numerous people boasting about a new sexy title or a recognition certificate they got from their employer, who at the same time shrug if you ask them about their property ownership or retirement plans. A lot of "pro-employee" and "pro-feeling" agendas boil down to making people more comfortable owning less and getting paid less.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#52

Post by mortenjorck » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

> And there's a reason why: these are mostly companies that win by having better technology, rather than just a CEO who's really driven and good at making deals.

I'm not entirely sure how pg arrives at this point when he should know better than nearly any of us just how critical a factor the latter is, in support of (and sometimes in spite of, c.f. Neumann or Holmes) the former. Isn't the entire point of YC to build the networks of support, advisory, and dealmaking required to turn what would otherwise be good technology in isolation into a high-growth business?

Superior technology by itself is just potential energy. It still takes old-world business skills to harness that energy into something productive.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#53

Post by robjan » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #40

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #15

It's hard to take this article seriously. People get rich now from companies because multiples have been artificially pushed higher by low interest rates. If that weren't the case, the top 100 would still likely be dominated by heirs. All that's changed is the Fed is manipulating the market more now than before, and that's benefiting growth stocks and fund managers of growth stocks... among other things.

The games we've played with money have pushed valuations to a point of being nearly meaningless. There are people who own a billion dollars of stock/crypto, and then there are people who own multiple yachts, multiple mansions, sports teams, factories, etc. The thing that bothers me the most about paper wealth is that not all of it can be exited. The economy may say that there are 500 new billionaires, but if all 500…

Thing is you don't even need to liquidate in order to get that yacht. Many are taking low interest loans collateralised against these paper assets.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#54

Post by HarryHirsch » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

internetslave wrote: post #23

I think there’s a different reason, companies just aren’t paying enough. Wages, even at 150-200k just really aren’t that much. 200k now is a lot less than 200k in 2010. The younger generation intuitively knows this. I don’t know anyone jockeying to climb the corporate ladder, and my social circle spans Stanford grads to no college degree at all. People are starting businesses because working for a corporation day in…

People are getting rich from startups because they’re actually capturing the value of their labor

That's not a positive, isn't it? Back in the mid-1990s there were entry-level jobs with a career trajectory, you could drop out of college, join a school district as computer herder, move to a hosting company and get into systems programming and then go to work for Google and Facebook. (Hi Rachel!)

That doesn't exist any longer, nowadays everyone goes and grinds leetcode for months to prepare for interviews.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#55

Post by tpmx » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

_ZeD_ wrote: post #6

tpmx wrote: post #4

What this post looks like on a 40" 4k screen (which btw is an awesome investment for productivity): https://i.imgur.com/gPHT5hI.png

CTRL+mousewheel, my friend

That just means you have to move your chair away from the desk...

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#56

Post by motbob » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #15

It's hard to take this article seriously. People get rich now from companies because multiples have been artificially pushed higher by low interest rates. If that weren't the case, the top 100 would still likely be dominated by heirs. All that's changed is the Fed is manipulating the market more now than before, and that's benefiting growth stocks and fund managers of growth stocks... among other things.

If you look at nominal interest rates, yeah. Real interest rates haven't been particularly lower post-1980 than pre-1980. Sure, high interest rates pre-1980 built wealth passively, but periods of high inflation also destroyed wealth passively.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#57

Post by Certhas » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

It's an interesting read, and not entirely new information, but I find this leap pretty unconvincing:

> So it's not 2020 that's the anomaly here, but 1982. The real question is why so few people had gotten rich from starting companies in 1982.

It seems more likely to me that industrialization and mass-production in the late 19th century, and information technology in the late 20th century were inflection points at which the gradual progress of new technologies enabled revolutionary businesses across a wide spectrum of the economy. There is no reason to assume that this is always possible, or to extrapolate into the future.

> we should expect both the number and wealth of founders to grow, because every decade it gets easier to start a startup.

Non-sequitur. If the technology that there is is sufficiently well exploited by Google, Amazon, Facebook, then where is your supposed opening? We are not at the end of the IT tech revolution now, but we are also nowhere near the beginning. The best VR experience right now is engineered by Facebook, not by some plucky start up acquiring new customers.

It's easy to imagine that tech will enter a consolidation and comodization phase in the next decades, if it hasn't already.

In fact, if the forces that are claimed to be behind the resurgence of founders getting rich were really correct, we should see lots of new manufacturing start ups. Yet those are extremely rare, and not terribly disruptive in the grand scheme of things.

Edit:

The Gini coefficient bits are also pure ideology dressed up as data. Sweden has more billionares per capita than the US, has a better per capita start up rate than the US, and yet because it never followed the disastrous right turn on economic policy, it has far far far lower inequality (though rising somewhat recently it's still lower than France for example).

[1] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/no-coun... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=S...

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#58

Post by yao420 » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #36

internetslave wrote: post #23

I think there’s a different reason, companies just aren’t paying enough. Wages, even at 150-200k just really aren’t that much. 200k now is a lot less than 200k in 2010. The younger generation intuitively knows this. I don’t know anyone jockeying to climb the corporate ladder, and my social circle spans Stanford grads to no college degree at all. People are starting businesses because working for a corporation day in…

How many consultants & I-bankers do you know? You sound like you come from a remarkably entrepreneurial subset of the world. Where I come from, everyone wants to make MD/Partner, ether in law, finance, or consulting. More generally, MBA applications to top schools have been rising for years. Besides, if 10x the median individual income isn't enough outside of SF/NYC, you got bigger problems.

I was in consulting and yes everyone WANTS to become a partner but 90% quit before the first promotion due to the abusive lifestyle and workload.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#59

Post by internetslave » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #36

internetslave wrote: post #23

I think there’s a different reason, companies just aren’t paying enough. Wages, even at 150-200k just really aren’t that much. 200k now is a lot less than 200k in 2010. The younger generation intuitively knows this. I don’t know anyone jockeying to climb the corporate ladder, and my social circle spans Stanford grads to no college degree at all. People are starting businesses because working for a corporation day in…

How many consultants & I-bankers do you know? You sound like you come from a remarkably entrepreneurial subset of the world. Where I come from, everyone wants to make MD/Partner, ether in law, finance, or consulting. More generally, MBA applications to top schools have been rising for years. Besides, if 10x the median individual income isn't enough outside of SF/NYC, you got bigger problems.

I used to work in investment research in NYC. So I know those types, but the vibe was the same. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but a lot of people I know actually have had startup success. I know a few people that ended up making over 25 million by 30. None of them made it in law or finance, and none of them ever wanted to continue their finance career.

10x the median income just isn’t that much. If you have three kids, money is still tight. I’m arguing that we are all making less and that startups are making people rich because they’re actually getting paid what they produced.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#60

Post by john_moscow » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

harshaw wrote: post #39

internetslave wrote: post #23

I think there’s a different reason, companies just aren’t paying enough. Wages, even at 150-200k just really aren’t that much. 200k now is a lot less than 200k in 2010. The younger generation intuitively knows this. I don’t know anyone jockeying to climb the corporate ladder, and my social circle spans Stanford grads to no college degree at all. People are starting businesses because working for a corporation day in…

Inflation data: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2010?amount=1 . I don't think that a 20% difference means 200K is a lot less. It's a bit less.

Sure, rice, jeans and dollar store trinkets have only become 20% more expensive. The real estate, healthcare and education tell a completely different story though.