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The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#91

Post by Kurtz79 »

LargeCompanies wrote: post #26
MCRed wrote: post #2

Look ma, that's me! Free of a soul crushing corporate job, back to doing a "startup", I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in! I think there are a lot of people out there like me. I have some money coming from side projects, several opportunities to grow that, and several opportunities for new side projects. And quite a long personal runway before I have to…

I've lived with a parent (it's a big house they'd alone otherwise here) for I guess too many years then I've should. Also I'm old and my g/f who is similar age of five years also lives with a parent. Though she is getting antsy and wants kids and she only has a few years left. I want a family too but have been holding off for that big moment when my team and I start generating money and or sell our work. Ugh will tha…

I might be naive, but I don't see having to choose self-employment or salaried work as a all-or-nothing, no-going-back decision.

You could easily secure a well paid job for a few years, and save enough to support working on a start-up or starting a consulting business.

If things do not go as planned, I can see no problems in going back to being employed, since your skills won´t have withered in the meantime, and possibily learned new ones.

It seems to me that the startup culture is seen sometimes as a "get rich quick" scheme, where the goal is to retire at 25.

A normal career in most professions lasts 30/40 years...

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#92

Post by jokoon »

I live in france, am 29, I worked 2 months in my life.

"what they do instead"

Trying to go back to school, I learned programming for 2 years in some technician school program, did not get the degree, after that I expanded my programming skills by myself, but it has been pretty bleak. I'm quite ashamed of myself. I have many ideas of projects, but they really seems to be out of my reach in terms of skill, experience, motivation and networking. I took anti depressants for 4 years but am not so unhealthy in term of mental health...

I'm back at school again, for some equivalent degree, but on 1 year, I have an internship starting wednesday, I really hope it will hook me to some job opportunities.

If I don't get the degree nor a job, well I could really try to start some crowdfunded game project or social network, but I don't feel the industry really needs that many programmers. Maybe I'm really incompetent.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#93

Post by pbhjpbhj »

venomsnake wrote: post #33
barry-cotter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard this sentiment many times but I've wondered if there's an economic fallacy there. There is, it's a confusion between money and capacity. That money is an option, the possibility of getting people to do things for you. Unused money is paper. > Would the economy be better off if lots of companies stopped hoarding cash and hired lots of new employees? The economy is an abstraction. It can't be better off. B…

But we cannot produce more, because the unemployed don't consume. So we lay of people. It is a death spiral.

If your future economic prospects require ever increasing consumption then surely there's a problem; resources are finite.

If we need more people consuming more and more stuff (that mostly gets put in landfill within a couple of years) then we're completely screwed. We need to start restructuring our way of life to accommodate the need to conserve resources, for one, and the need to support a basic standard of living for all people (across the world) for another.

Instead of encouraging increased consumption we need to be levying massive taxes against disposable items, requiring all goods to be largely recyclable, requiring the ability to repair before production can be licensed.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#94

Post by Kurtz79 »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #13
MCRed wrote: post #2

Look ma, that's me! Free of a soul crushing corporate job, back to doing a "startup", I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in! I think there are a lot of people out there like me. I have some money coming from side projects, several opportunities to grow that, and several opportunities for new side projects. And quite a long personal runway before I have to…

> I may not have the cash rolling in, but at least I'm in control of my destiny. Hey Ma, I'm moving in! How are people who don't have a meaningful source of income and who are dependent on their parents for shelter any more in control of their destinies than corporate worker bees?

Not all corporate jobs are soulless, mind crushing Orwellian nightmares, and nothing prevents you from looking for a fulfilling job if you are unhappy with your present one, especially in our field.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#95

Post by the_real_bto »

jokoon wrote: post #92

I live in france, am 29, I worked 2 months in my life. "what they do instead" Trying to go back to school, I learned programming for 2 years in some technician school program, did not get the degree, after that I expanded my programming skills by myself, but it has been pretty bleak. I'm quite ashamed of myself. I have many ideas of projects, but they really seems to be out of my reach in terms of skill, experience,…

I'm really sorry to hear about your struggles. One wonderful thing about software development, is that credentials and pedigree are not required. If you can make software, you can get a job. Even if you can't write software, there are lots of related jobs. I've been writing software professionally for about 15 years or so. Before that I had flunked out of an electrical engineering program a couple times, and was waiting tables to get by. I considered myself a failure. There is always hope.

Writing software isn't really about intelligence, although it probably helps. It isn't really about knowing the "one right way to develop software." It is more about being willing to admit you are wrong. Learn from your mistakes. Also a good dose of stubbornness is needed to deal with tools that don't work properly. Sometimes the documentation will lie to you. It helps to not take the little failures too personally.

Best of luck to you.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#96

Post by adventured »

jokoon wrote: post #92

I live in france, am 29, I worked 2 months in my life. "what they do instead" Trying to go back to school, I learned programming for 2 years in some technician school program, did not get the degree, after that I expanded my programming skills by myself, but it has been pretty bleak. I'm quite ashamed of myself. I have many ideas of projects, but they really seems to be out of my reach in terms of skill, experience,…

My suggestion for where you're at, is to start smaller projects. Completing them feels really great. You can then open source them if you care to, or shut them down if they don't go any further.

Take one of your ideas, scale it down to nothing more than its essence, and build the simplest form of it you can imagine to get it to work, so people can use it. Then add on to it if or when you care to.

Whatever you do, build within your means to complete; as otherwise, you'll never actually get anywhere. As you launch things successfully, your ability to build to a larger vision will likely expand.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#97

Post by icantthinkofone »

One of my neighbors is 62 and brilliant. He's worked at Pixar and Silicon Graphics. He cranked out web sites for sites you probably go to. He lost his last job when the company went under. He now applies for jobs all over town and never gets a reply.

If age is the reason, these places don't know what they're missing.

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#98

Post by yen223 »

morganvachon wrote: post #70
yen223 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing, you need savings. If you absolutely need a paycheck this month to make it through to next month, you simply cannot afford the risks involved in doing the whole startup thing. Another thing, you need skills. But it's very difficult to get a decent education (formal or otherwise) if your family isn't able to support you during your formative learning years. It's not easy to learn programming if your fami…

> Basically, if you want to do a startup, you had better not be poor or uneducated. Robert Herjavec would disagree with you, as would Sam Walton, Andrew Carnegie, Li Ka-shing, and dozens more who overcame poverty and a lack of education via hard work and common sense (and yes, a bit of luck in some cases) to become successful businessmen.

The single best advice I ever received is "Think probabilities, not possibilities."

I'm not denying that it is possible that an illiterate girl from a low-income family in Mali could overcome every obstacle and build a successful start-up. But how much would you bet on that happening? Do you also think that her success will negate the hardships that other folks in her position face?

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#99

Post by ceallen »

bluedino wrote: post #86
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74

The silent yet steady substitution of unemployment benefits with federal disability insurance is well covered in an episode of This American Life [1]. We, as a country, have a shoddy system for re-training low-skills workers facing technological obsolescence. We have also set up a system under which unemployment benefits are largely a state liability. Disability, on the other hand, is federally funded. The intersecti…

The disability rate of 20-30 year olds really jumped in the last few years.

Possible result of Iraq/Afghanistan wars? The army's reported 1 million injured, but I'm not sure how many of them transitioned to disability.

Would disabled veterans be reflected in these numbers?

Re: The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work – And What They Do Instead

#100

Post by lstyls »

hyperpape wrote: post #80
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74

The silent yet steady substitution of unemployment benefits with federal disability insurance is well covered in an episode of This American Life [1]. We, as a country, have a shoddy system for re-training low-skills workers facing technological obsolescence. We have also set up a system under which unemployment benefits are largely a state liability. Disability, on the other hand, is federally funded. The intersecti…

There is also an issue with disability benefits where they are structured with disincentives to work. The motivation to not pay disability to people who can work is understandable, but for people who can work some but whose disability hinders their ability to get a full-time job or one that's not highly paid, it's a disaster. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/07/aid... This is a point that's not f…

Totally agree, it should be obvious no matter your politics that the way disability benefits are currently structured incentivize people to not work, and serve as a de facto welfare system.

The problem is that it's going the be impossible to get an agreement on the solution. Conservatives would take this as an opportunity to slash disability benefits and walk away. Liberals would look toward new government programs.

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