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The Art of Money Getting

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Re: The Art of Money Getting

#51

Post by roncesvalles »

draftsman wrote: post #32
UncleOxidant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. Same. Claude/Gemini/DeepSeekV4/Qwen3.6 are enabling me to do way more experimentation than I could do on my own. 10X at least. Not getting paid for any of it, but that's OK, getting paid imposes limitations on what you can work on and imposes responsibilities that I don't care to have a…

Do you find joy in using LLMs to write software? I tried using Claude/Cursor/CodeX/etc. for personal projects and experimentation, and I found no joy in it. I learned nothing, and when my MVPs were complete, I only had a shallow understanding of how the code that powered them worked.

Depends on how you use them. I'm a detail-obsessed perfectionist. I believe these qualities are what have enabled me to produce better software than most people. I use LLMs the way I can without violating these principles.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#53

Post by t_mahmood »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #49
draftsman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find joy in using LLMs to write software? I tried using Claude/Cursor/CodeX/etc. for personal projects and experimentation, and I found no joy in it. I learned nothing, and when my MVPs were complete, I only had a shallow understanding of how the code that powered them worked.

I do, but I also use LLMs in a manner that seems drastically different, from most folks here. I use the standard $20/ChatGPT Pro sub, and run Thinking 5.5 as a chat interface. I use it like a "trusted personal advisor," as opposed to a "black box employee." I'm intimately involved in almost every step of the development process. Most of what I ask from the LLM, is function-length snippets. It's made a huge difference…

[flagged]

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#54

Post by deepfriedbits »

atoav wrote: post #7

Another one I'd like to add is: fuck prestige. Everybody wants to run a Café or a Bar, nobody wants to run a gutter cleaning service. Of the former ones most go out of business within a year. Transfer that to other things as well. Things looking good is not necessarily the same as things working out financially.

Said another way: "Pride is for the poor."

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#55

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

t_mahmood wrote: post #53
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, but I also use LLMs in a manner that seems drastically different, from most folks here. I use the standard $20/ChatGPT Pro sub, and run Thinking 5.5 as a chat interface. I use it like a "trusted personal advisor," as opposed to a "black box employee." I'm intimately involved in almost every step of the development process. Most of what I ask from the LLM, is function-length snippets. It's made a huge difference…

[flagged]

And...we have an attack...

I love this place, I really do, but this stuff gets a bit tiresome.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#56

Post by neilv »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #39
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #5

> They take whatever job pays and spend decades fighting upstream. I suspect that this affects a lot of folks in tech. There's a lot of money to be made, so people get into it. They don't really like what they do, so it's always a chore. Their work often shows it, too. I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. I like the Integrit…

> and that's pretty important to me The older I get, the more I realize what a critical component of personal and social relationships it is, and how deeply it reinforces virtually everything good in society. There's never a good reason to forgo it, and never a good reason to accept spending time with people who don't have it. It only leads to trouble. I started my career in ad tech and it was often such abject miser…

Like you, I've found that working with people of integrity (or some qualities closely related to that) is very important to me.

Not in a "new-grad or corporate PR appropriating meaningless platitudes" kind of way. But in a "I have seen multiple times how one untrustworthy person can easily wreck all the work of a team or organization, and make their lives miserable, so averting that is a high priority" kind of way.

Lately, in business context, I tend to characterize what I seek from people as "alignment". I think that many (not all) business people are still willing to buy in on that.

And it will just have to be a given that the company and team goals with which people are aligned are respectable.

What seems to be getting more difficult in the last few years is finding companies with respectable goals. Of course you knew to avoid any company in crypto. But now, with with a new VC gold rush of AI (often involving the same people who were happy to run crypto scams), there aren't a lot of startups that look respectable.

Not all AI companies, nor all companies doing AI, are bad. But how do you find a respectable one, in a gold rush?

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#57

Post by sireat »

I am paraphrasing but I think it was W. Buffett who said:

"Work at the job that you do not hate"

In other words, not all vocations that you are great at and talented and want to pursue are valued by current world.

I love playing chess way more and actually am reasonably good at it, but programming and teaching are valued more and I like those too.

As Jimmy O. Yang's father reportedly said: "Pursuing your dreams is how you become homeless"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO6ntvIwT2k&t=22s

At the same time you have to be out there in the world, increase your luck surface - if you sit in your cubicle/room/private chatroom all day you are less likely to make a mark on the world despite your brilliance.

Again I forgot which artist said it but that in New York art scene the most successful artists spent most of their working days socializing not painting/sculpting etc.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#58

Post by didgetmaster »

draftsman wrote: post #32
UncleOxidant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. Same. Claude/Gemini/DeepSeekV4/Qwen3.6 are enabling me to do way more experimentation than I could do on my own. 10X at least. Not getting paid for any of it, but that's OK, getting paid imposes limitations on what you can work on and imposes responsibilities that I don't care to have a…

Do you find joy in using LLMs to write software? I tried using Claude/Cursor/CodeX/etc. for personal projects and experimentation, and I found no joy in it. I learned nothing, and when my MVPs were complete, I only had a shallow understanding of how the code that powered them worked.

I guess some people only enjoy the destination and don't care how they got there. These people seem to enjoy AI more than the people who want to enjoy the journey along the way.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#59

Post by GarnetFloride »

amunozo wrote: post #2

The hardest thing is to know what's your best fit. Any advice?

Are you an extrovert or introvert? Look at how you spend your time. Do you have to spend time with people or have to be alone sometimes?

What do you do when you have nothing else to do? I know that's really hard these days with all the distractions we have. So maybe what do you watch or read about? What are your interests?

But the world changes. I started out as an engineer and that got shipped to China. I pivoted to IT, shipped to India. Pivoted to technical writing and now there's LLMs.

I figure things out and share to make it easier for others too. That works in a lot of industries.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#60

Post by didgetmaster »

an0malous wrote: post #36
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #5

> They take whatever job pays and spend decades fighting upstream. I suspect that this affects a lot of folks in tech. There's a lot of money to be made, so people get into it. They don't really like what they do, so it's always a chore. Their work often shows it, too. I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. I like the Integrit…

This is conflated by the fact that most people start to enjoy things that give them a lot of money and prestige. Otherwise everyone would be in playing sports and making art, the things kids do before they care about money and prestige

I don't think he meant that you should enjoy your vocation more than your vacation. But life is very different if you actually enjoy going to work each day, rather than dreading it.
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