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A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

latimes.com

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Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#31

Post by gravypod »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

> Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early.

I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to the free software stack by rebuilding some foundational pieces of technology.

It is very hard to have the energy to do a full day of work, come home, and do a full night of work. Unfortunately, the market is not set up in a way where creative people (who can transform various verticals) can get funded to do good work.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#32

Post by Kamq »

mrtksn wrote: post #4

Wow, such a winner: Long, healthy life full of accomplishments within a community where he is liked and he likes them back. I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it, would he consider Rudy Marcus a "winner", maybe bigger one than himself? I recall something about Thiel looking down on the life choices and motivations of scientists.

> I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it

The people I know who look down on modern academics, tend to dislike a set of changes that started happening in the mid-late sixties and ramped up through at least the 2010s.

I'm not sure that's applicable to someone who got their PhD in 1946.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#33

Post by egwor »

gravypod wrote: post #31
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

> Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to the free software stack b…

I’ve been asking myself why I’m not already doing this now. Why not spend a bit of time on reading about it now?

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#34

Post by Alex3917 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #28
Alex3917 wrote: post #12

Apropos of Oppenheimer coming out, the guy who invented the H-bomb currently works as a covid researcher. (Or at least an amateur one, not sure what he’s actually doing.)

Not sure who you are referring to since Teller and Ulam both died a while ago.

Dick Garwin: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/science/who-built-the-h-b...

https://rlg.fas.org/2020.htm

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#35

Post by armchairhacker »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

I like some form of “work” but I like to work on my own terms. The more money I have up to a certain amount, the less I have to worry about taking a job I don’t want.

I’m currently in academia, so I don’t make that much money but fortunately do make enough. And I get to work on stuff which isn’t quite what I’d like, but close enough; and the job isn’t very demanding and I have free time, so I can also do the kind of work that I want. I do want more stability though, better income means I can save money and academia is opaque and uncertain

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#36

Post by losteric »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

The older folks typically also benefited from getting into housing when it was less scarce, riding one or more waves of progress, at a time where healthcare ROI was much higher.

My generation faces a different economic situation. I know people in academia that love what they do and dreamed of living a life like Rudy's. In practice, they're stuck - huge debts, dismally low post-grad wages, stuck renting, just hoping for a stable position (luck over merit). K-12 teachers, lifetime musicians, social services, even nurses in similar positions.

Is meaning worth that kind of struggle?

Not for me. I want to bake as a craft in an owned place of business, then go home to sleep in a bedroom I own. Big Tech is the means to that end. Wake up, Clock in, autopilot, clock out, live. Within ethical reason, I will take any boring meaningless job if it pays well enough.

Locals complain about Big Tech killing the quirky unique culture my city used to have... and I agree! But what was the alternative? Pursuing the baking craft on debt and leases, paycheck to paycheck, barely treading water without any savings? That sounds like living a dream, getting sucked dry by parasites. There are public policies that could bring back the vibrancy, but no one wants density or lower property values (a prerequisite for housing the people that seed a vibrant culture)...

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#38

Post by Zircom »

egwor wrote: post #33
gravypod wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to the free software stack b…

I’ve been asking myself why I’m not already doing this now. Why not spend a bit of time on reading about it now?

I don't know about you but I'm mentally exhausted at the end of most days once I'm off work. It's relatively uncommon for me to even have energy to invest in my normal hobbies, let alone self-improvement/ learning new skills.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#39

Post by atrettel »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #2

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world chan…

I would think that the "obsession" your peer group has with retiring early comes more from the realization that they can retire early (they have the ability to if they want) more than anything else. Your observations of your peer group may have some selection bias present. Cast a wider net and you may come to the opposite conclusion.

I agree that many people do not find much meaning in their work, but most people also do not make as much money as software engineers do. Most people cannot fathom retiring early. It simply is impossible. A lot of software engineers are going to realize that, hey, if I save up and invest money aggressively for roughly 10 to 15 years, I will have enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life without having to do work that I do not like. However, most professions do not make nearly enough money to achieve the goal of retiring early, so they really have no reason to discuss or even ponder early retirement. It's never gonna come up.

Re: A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets back to work

#40

Post by ngai_aku »

egwor wrote: post #33
gravypod wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to the free software stack b…

I’ve been asking myself why I’m not already doing this now. Why not spend a bit of time on reading about it now?

Probably because most of us have feelings similar to what was expressed by the parent:

> It is very hard to have the energy to do a full day of work, come home, and do a full night of work.

I really enjoyed school, and I always thought I’d be the type to continue education via MOOCs, self-guided study, what have you. But it’s hard to fit it in after a full day of work and family time!

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