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

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

#251
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definiton, there's very few people on top. Way fewer than people attempting to climb there.

Not really. There's a long tail of self-employed people in various capacities, who are happy with the freedom that comes with being a contractor, sole proprietor, or fiscally responsible low expense individual. The petit bourgeoisie were a thing long before tech startups.

That's not the top though, that's just a relatively comfortable niche somewhere in the middle of the ladder.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not according to the metrics I've seen. The total acreage of all desirable neighbourhoods in the US beyond the reasonable means of a couple with MANGA compensation is not even 1000 square miles. Unless you know of some source?

I live in New Zealand. The average house price is nearly NZ$900k, with the big cities being more. The median wage is about NZ$63k. Jobs, family etc are around the cities. There is a minimum deposit requirement before you can get a mortgage (at 20% or less it’s hard but possible. Below about 5% no one will lend). Houses are way overpriced and average quality is low (insulation, heating/cooling, water tightness etc). P…

Did you respond to the wrong comment? I mentioned 'means of a couple', explicitly not one wage.

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting! Any chance you have written more extensively about this somewhere? I am a consultant but it's hard to get my clients to leave me alone for more than a week.

Haven't written on this, but can give you the important details of my form of consulting: 1) I tend to work at medium to large companies (Stubhub, Atlassian...) from anywhere from 7 months to 1.5 years. The reason being, as mentioned, that it's tough to do two things at the highest level at the same time. So I prefer to completely commit to one thing at a time - seems like for you, you have a lot of longterm clients…

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Yes, you are right about my clients. And while the difference is subtle, it sounds like you are doing more of "contract jobs" than "consulting". But no matter what it is called, clearly it fits your goals, so that's great!

This year we're actually taking advantage of my work better than ever before with foreign travel and "make a schedule around weather/fun activities". I don't have any concrete plans to do what you're doing but maybe someday. It's a very interesting idea.

In any case, hooray for non-traditional work!

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't written on this, but can give you the important details of my form of consulting: 1) I tend to work at medium to large companies (Stubhub, Atlassian...) from anywhere from 7 months to 1.5 years. The reason being, as mentioned, that it's tough to do two things at the highest level at the same time. So I prefer to completely commit to one thing at a time - seems like for you, you have a lot of longterm clients…

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing! Yes, you are right about my clients. And while the difference is subtle, it sounds like you are doing more of "contract jobs" than "consulting". But no matter what it is called, clearly it fits your goals, so that's great! This year we're actually taking advantage of my work better than ever before with foreign travel and "make a schedule around weather/fun activities". I don't h…

agreed, non-traditional work is the way to go! (and glad it's allowing you to travel:)
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