421–430 of 463 posts
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This also assumes that one has already won the lottery of birth.
If you were born in the US, and are of sound mind and body, you won the lottery.
One thing that helped me is not to care so much about my employer's goals. It's almost heretical. But once you embrace this mindset, it does wonders. Or at least, it has for me so far. I think a lot of us want to be proud of the work we do, and we feel that if we slack off, then we shouldn't be proud. But it's the other way around. I think the slackers have it right. You're probably not going to get rich from working…
Just know that we see you. We understand that this is your mentality. That's why we don't promote you, that's why we don't hire you, etc. Saying yes to everything some random PM wants from you is of course not the way. But neither is "lying flat". Hard work is in many ways its own reward. After decades in the industry, those that have put in the time and effort far outshine their coasting peers. There are benefits fo…
I share OP's sentiment, and I can flat out say that I am truly fine that "[you] see [me]". The thing is, I don't want to work with you or for you, or for people who don't want to hire me. Jobs are a two-way street and I'm going to pick a place to work for that's a good fit for me time after time. And you know what? I've always busted my ass and I continue to be hired, given raises, etc. - but I will always push back for my own sanity whenever I feel necessary.
>Hard work is in many ways its own reward.
There's a difference between "hard work" and "too much work", and the latter looks different to each and every one of us.
>After decades in the industry, those that have put in the time and effort far outshine their coasting peers. There are benefits for your career should you choose to put in the effort and ascend.
There sure are! And just as there are people like you who want to continue that career ascent, there are those of us who are also completely content with prioritizing other things in our lives beyond our careers, while still putting in a solid day's work every day. I don't care if people outshine me and ascend faster than I do - for me, my career is just something that allows me to provide for my family and my hobbies, but it will never be "who I am". And you know what? I'm happy with my choices and where I'm at. Go on, buddy, and get that promotion! I'll still be over here doing my thing at my pace, not bothered by the fact that I might be standing in your dust.
You would really do well to understand that everyone wants something different out of life and are content to take the paths they want, even if they're not yours. :)
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That’s my main issue with the way our society is structured. There’s a class difference between those who own a property and those who don’t even if they do the exactly same job. I don’t even talk about the people who have not done single contribution to the society and live of on the rent of inherited properties. It’s like the peasants who work all day and have nothing when people from blue blood are having generati…
Ye. You need to own "the means of production", which in eg. New York or SV is the house you live in, since the house is the reason you can work close to the easy money. A friend is thinking about to open a restaurant in a very attractive location, but I said, if you don't own the property the restaurant is in, the land lord will just increase rent until the any profit is barely OK anyways. There is no money in that.
Of course the restaurant business is probably hit-and-miss and risky, and owning the premises might give you more stability, at least if you don't have a large amount of debt. It sounds to me like your stance might be quite cynical in the sense that almost nobody would try starting a restaurant if they considered owning their premises a necessity.
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I highly doubt most doctors' end goal is to get rich The world is cynical but not that depressing dude
I'm not inferring here that if we don't pay doctors a lot nobody would be doctors. But what else would drive people to work 36 hour shifts, low to no pay, and put up with that for 10+ years? It's definitely not their character of wanting to help people. Otherwise the medical profession for doctors would be full of women because that is the #1 reason why any of them go into child care or being a teacher. Which if we l…
"highly doubt anybody would put up with what you do for med school if you're prospects of earnings was similar to that of a business analyst." - I'm asserting that people do put up with that in many places around the world, where doctors' earnings actually are quite similar to that of a business analyst. And not because they're somehow different, homo sapiens think/work/behave pretty much the same everywhere. The only practical difference that comes to mind is that they don't go into immense debt during med school like in USA.
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Welcome to SV
If you think you can't live on 300k with a family in the bay area, then you need a serious reality check. On a $300k income, even with one earner, you can comfortably afford a $1m+ home (of which there are plenty of single family homes available in many parts of the bay area), and while yes the COL for things like groceries/eating out is higher than in Austin TX, it's not high enough to seriously claim that it's not…
One thing that helped me is not to care so much about my employer's goals. It's almost heretical. But once you embrace this mindset, it does wonders. Or at least, it has for me so far. I think a lot of us want to be proud of the work we do, and we feel that if we slack off, then we shouldn't be proud. But it's the other way around. I think the slackers have it right. You're probably not going to get rich from working…
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Invariably, comment threads like this, pop up when I provide some current thoughts about my career. A career that quite a few HN readers share apparently, but that's where the similarities end. Quite a lot of you didn't grow up in abject poverty and it shows. The hole this puts you in, 99% of people have a really, really difficult time climbing out of and describing what this process is like, is lost on a lot of peop…
You aren't alone brother. I grew up with rich and poor family, but chose the poor. People who have never had to wonder if they were going to have a meal or a place to sleep as a child can never know how it can permanently change your life. I'm glad you are making strides, I still struggle to, so that's quite the accomplishment and you should be proud. I don't think I will ever stop tallying my groceries as I put them…
Set your sites on what you want and don't waver for as long as you can. It will happen!
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I totally agree. Don't be "pro-active" be "re-active" - is my way of putting it. Frankly, most orgs will not reward pro-activity, in fact you can even be punished for it, since if a problem is not yet known by stakeholders then why are you solving it. There have been times in my career where I spotted issues from other teams on preview or staging servers and helped to fix it. Then I later got blamed (or dragged into…
Although this does make you sound a bit like Wally from Dilbert, but done in the right amount I think it does make sense as taking on too much is the quickest way to never getting anything 'done'.
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It's not that complicated. When we setup competition for infrastructure, we needlessly duplicate management, marketing, accounting, and everything else that does not directly result in the service being provided. The US is doubly idiotic by creating huge financial barriers for anyone who wants to enter healthcare. We make the problem even worse with a system that encourages people to delay treatment for problems that…
> It's not that complicated Just out of curiosity, what’s your proposed solution? There's been decades of very smart people working on this problem and its still a problem largely because of its complexity. If there was a simple solution, I have a feeling it would have been implemented already. The irony of your post that starts with "its not that complicated" ends with an anecdote about just how complicated the syst…
It is not complicated.
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.ht...
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I know of so many folks in fang and my current job who’d disagree that you can’t get rich from a day job. Most of them got there by not being cynical about their employer’s goals and working with the team to make those happen. I guess I’ve been incredibly lucky and probably am in a nice west coast dream bubble, but my bubble vision means I definitely don’t buy that am a rare unicorn. I don’t think I would feel happy…
I do hope that people who got rich by being Faang employees are cynical, because that would be a better option (in my eyes, at least) to being sociopaths. And "caring about your employer's" goals in this day and age while you're working at FB/Google/Amazon (I'm on the fence about Apple, don't have much of an opinion about Netflix) actually makes you look like a sociopath in my eyes. Again, imo being a cynic beats bei…
Google and Amazon are very large corporations. Someone who works in GCP or AWS is benefiting rest of us.
Another way of seeing this is acknowledging that anyone who owns S&P 500 technically owns these companies. So if you’re making money in stock market, it’s happening due to the very same people you’re condemning. In this day and age it’s very hard to draw a line for “us vs. them”.