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If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

sebastianmarshall.com

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Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#251

Post by hugh3 »

coryl wrote: post #14

I can sympathize and understand with what he's writing. I know it seems douchey and shallow to a lot of you, but when you work remote with a team of friends, things tend to get far too casual and eventually everything falls apart altogether. Suddenly everyone has an opinion on design decisions, or a meeting needs to be held on whether we should use Mongo or MySQL, and we should just think about it on our own time and…

Someone has to step up and lead, so maybe a motivational speech is just what the team needs. The points about partying and making money might matter to his team, maybe its why they're working on the project in the first place. (And none of us can say that the excitement of making money doesn't motivate us).

Maybe, but if this was intended as a motivational speech (and motivational speeches work a lot better than motivational emails) then it's a terrible one.

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#252

Post by hugh3 »

exit wrote: post #169
lionhearted wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple points - They're partners, not employees. Yes, I'll suffer at the printshop when I promised it. My colleague offered to do it, but he just had a baby and it would be ridiculous to keep him all night. No one else was available on Sunday night. > they tend to be neither very good businessmen nor good employers. My staff like me, I pay top of market (sometimes 10x market pay, if the person is worth it but short…

this doesn't sound like 10x to me "I got a top creative designer in there working for a fraction of his normal cost by being very fucking cool with him, and also working out a deal where we refer him business, and he can use our office space to hold client meetings during our off hours. ... The designer came with me, working for peanuts compared to his normal rates (he’s a top guy)"

I'm also not sure why a "top designer" wouldn't have his own office space.

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#253

Post by [deleted] »

hugh3 wrote: post #245
lionhearted wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple points - They're partners, not employees. Yes, I'll suffer at the printshop when I promised it. My colleague offered to do it, but he just had a baby and it would be ridiculous to keep him all night. No one else was available on Sunday night. > they tend to be neither very good businessmen nor good employers. My staff like me, I pay top of market (sometimes 10x market pay, if the person is worth it but short…

These guys are partners rather than employees? Wow. This is a bad way to talk to your employees, but a far worse way to talk to your partners. Your partners would be well advised to cut you out of the project... or perhaps to dump the project entirely since (a) it doesn't seem to be going too well, and (b) you're obviously not that committed to it yourself because you're working on something else right now. The real…

[deleted]

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#255

Post by matwood »

cellis wrote: post #106
ryan-allen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sooner I can buy a Ferrari the better. I want it now! EDIT: The answer to your question is sentiment of my above sentence. I don't really want a Ferrari personally. I'd prefer a Nissan GTR R35.

According to Car and Driver, the Corvette ZR1 can beat the Ferrari for a 3rd of the price. As for the GTR, too boxy. I want to drive a fast car and impress the ladies, not look like some chinzy wannabe extra from Tokyo Drift .

I'm more of an older Vette fan. If I were to get a new sports car today I'd go for a Porsche 911 (991). I just really like the design and look, and always have.

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#256

Post by jarin »

pi18n wrote: post #226
jarin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but I wonder how many of the folks bashing this guy thought it was brilliant how Steve Jobs pressured his engineers by saying “If it would save a person’s life, could you shave 10 seconds off the start up time?”

How is that relevant in a discussion about publicly shaming people working for you.

Well, Steve Jobs was pretty famous for that too. Don't get me wrong, I'm just as much of a Steve Jobs admirer as the next guy, but from what I've read he did shame a lot of people at Apple.

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#257

Post by hugh3 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #216
kahawe wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect your work and achievements and I agree, a lot of people who have accomplished something do NOT brag about it. Coincidentally, a LOT of people who have accomplished pretty much nothing do brag and write and blog a LOT about it... often to great success. So, it is just fair to ask what references, credits and medals this big-mouthed blogger has to show for all his very big words of "making a way" and being be…

OK, but, why? Of all the reasons to disagree with someone -- or, in the case of most of this particular thread, hate them -- "they haven't done something I've heard of" seems like a pretty weak one. If you found out that he had been behind some kind of huge success, would you agree with him more? Or, if you found out that he was born into money, would that make him more wrong? If he could fill a paper with things tha…

If you found out that he had been behind some kind of huge success, would you agree with him more? ... If he could fill a paper with things that he's done for people you've never heard of, would that make him more credible?

Honestly, yes. Because we have a thirtyish guy talking about "success" in the abstract, and promising that he knows how to achieve it, and yet he doesn't seem to have much in the way of concrete achievements to back it up.

"If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich" is usually a dickish sort of question, but when you're posing it to someone who is sitting there actively claiming "I'm gonna make us all rich by my awesome smarts" then it's a fair one. At one point he claims that the project will become profitable just because he wills it to, and therefore it will; if his force of will is truly that powerful then one wonders why he didn't will himself out of being not-rich way back in 2004.

It's only because he insists on talking about how awesome he is that we ask him to back that up with actual achievements.

Of course even if he were rich and successful, his attitude would still be dickish (you'll note that the truly rich and successful people who post here generally don't go on egotistical rants about their own awesomeness) but I'd have a little more tolerance of it under those circumstances.

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#258

Post by nikcub »

jarin wrote: post #197
bermanoid wrote: post #125

"Dear Sebastian, we quit, piss off. Best, Sam, Lee, and Jon." Seriously, this is just ridiculous. Is there anyone here that would actually put up with this ridiculous public shaming at all, let alone from a CEO that's off in Asia staying up "20 hours" to print flyers for one of his other companies, while he bitches that you're not reneging on your teaching commitments (which I would presume he knew about when he took…

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but I wonder how many of the folks bashing this guy thought it was brilliant how Steve Jobs pressured his engineers by saying “If it would save a person’s life, could you shave 10 seconds off the start up time?”

This guy is no Steve Jobs

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#259

Post by masterponomo »

I'm confused. I'm trying to get rich writing jokes, and you tell me to quit being a joker and just get it done. But "it" is being a joker. Seb, are you going meta on me? Am I supposed to consider my professional joking to be something else, in the same way bank IT workers in the 80's were told to think of themselves as bankers, not programmers? OK, man, BAM I'm not a joker. Welp, back to work!

Re: If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

#260

Post by gavingmiller »

As someone who is partnered with 2 other people in business, I can really appreciate what's being said by Seb: If you make a commitment - hold to it.

We had the same situation come up this week for us. A job went sideways that was worth a month of expenses and then some. The client gave us a deadline to fix it, and if it wasn't they weren't paying.

I told my partners I would do whatever it took to fix this issue because that's too much money to lose. Long story short, our team had it fixed in two days; including contingency plans B, C, and D lined up if our first solution didn't work.

Complete trust has to exist in a partnership, otherwise it doesn't work. And this means sticking to our commitments.

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