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The Art of Money Getting

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Re: The Art of Money Getting

#131

Post by a123b456c »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #125
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…

The funny thing is once I started working on what I actually cared about, my performance ratings went from average to amongst the highest in my org, and while I work a lot more now, I get a real sense of accomplishment at the end of day, and I'm a lot happier. (I always thought this was a cliche until I experienced it) People around you can "smell" your passion and sometimes it energizes your team. It makes people ar…

It's nice if you find something you previously care about. But it can go the other way too-- you can care more about what you work on. You can focus on the reasons it is good, or efficient, or honest, or solves real problems, or whatever other metavalue motivates you to care more.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#132

Post by oliculipolicula »

tim-projects wrote: post #76
jdw64 wrote: post #66

I believe modern capitalism operates quite differently from the methods preached in this book. There are clear limits to relying solely on a labor-intensive mindset without strategic leverage. I didn't have any special talents, outstanding skills, or privileges. In my twenties, I worked 69 hours a week for two straight years. Yet, I only made minimum wage and had nothing to show for it. I didn't develop any meaningfu…

It's not like this outside North America. Life is much more balanced.

PP is outside the Americas. It could be more balanced outside this purgatory (linearly, bardo) we call HN

makes me wonder: is 'journey is the goal' just about as linear as 'means are the ends'? Then one can't get nonlinear interpolating between ("balancing") them

This, however

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48183167

(Note, same author/brand)

It's arguable that more than a handful of world-influencers are being their most improbable selves right this moment.. we could try and measure those degrees of nonlinearity

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#133

Post by rrvsh »

roncesvalles wrote: post #93
Michelangelo11 wrote: post #14

> Barnum’s first rule: pick the work you’re built for, then aim to be the best at it. Edsger Dijkstra, in one of his letters, giving advice (IIRC) to a PhD student: "Do only what only you can do." Kind of funny to see one of the greatest computer scientists and one of the greatest public entertainers giving the same advice, but I guess that speaks strongly in its favor.

I've come to learn that "do only what only you can do" is not great advice at all. It's leagues better to be the 10,000th-best SWE at Meta than the world's best basketweaver. Often doing something super unique is an excuse for shying away from mainstream competition.

What? I would much rather be the world's best basketweaver than the 10,000th best SWE at Meta. Are you sure you aren't projecting your biases on what you think is more fulfilling?

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#134

Post by rrvsh »

pessimizer wrote: post #105
kingofmen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those artists successful at ? Making art, or marketing it? The New York art scene is a curious example in this context, because it is notoriously all about who you know rather than what you do, and that's not usually considered a good thing.

> What are those artists successful at? Making money in the profession that they enjoy, rather than having to take up one that they enjoy less.

Not everyone views success as making money.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#135

Post by UncleOxidant »

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.

LLMs have gotten so good at coding I often find it exhilarating. I'm mostly doing experiments in accelerating machine learning in hardware. I can do way more experiments now. As an example: Just this afternoon working with claude to experiment with using a GA to learn a non-uniform 1D CA rules to calculate the popcount function where the GA is running in an FPGA to speed it up. It's non-uniform in that each cell gets it's own 8-bit rule.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#136

Post by avmich »

> List your debts. Create a concrete plan to eliminate them, starting with the smallest. Avoid taking on any new debt this month.

This could be surprisingly hard. You can't get income at some point, and you still have obligations, e.g. a family. You have some things which are hard to reduce (e.g. monthly telecom payments) or have significant upfront costs (you can move far enough to reduce rental costs, but the move will only beneficial after months). It's so much easier to take some debt, at least initially. The author doesn't give good advises for how to avoid getting into debt.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#138

Post by MrDarcy »

underlipton wrote: post #130
MrDarcy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But how do you find a respectable one, in a gold rush? Look for those who are trying to serve established respectable professions, ideally have already done so for many years or decades. Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism (in the ideal sense). Then look at their own mission. Then look at their own work. Do they show their work? Are they open? Do they willingly allow their customers to audit their work produc…

>established respectable professions >Accounting, Legal, Healthcare, Journalism In America, in 2026, this is a particularly dark joke.

I think this is the comment that drives me off this site permanently. It’s been a good decade and a half.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#140

Post by canpan »

roncesvalles wrote: post #93
Michelangelo11 wrote: post #14

> Barnum’s first rule: pick the work you’re built for, then aim to be the best at it. Edsger Dijkstra, in one of his letters, giving advice (IIRC) to a PhD student: "Do only what only you can do." Kind of funny to see one of the greatest computer scientists and one of the greatest public entertainers giving the same advice, but I guess that speaks strongly in its favor.

I've come to learn that "do only what only you can do" is not great advice at all. It's leagues better to be the 10,000th-best SWE at Meta than the world's best basketweaver. Often doing something super unique is an excuse for shying away from mainstream competition.

I don't know about basket weaving, but..

I once had a talk with one of (the?) world's best bonsai gardener in Edogawa, Tokyo. Trees cut by him are worth millions and he has pictures of himself with FANG leaders. This guy wakes up every morning at 5 and works until it's dark outside even though he clearly does not need to work for money, but because he loves it.

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