How People Get Rich Now • Hacker News Board

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#101

Post by strikelaserclaw » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #68

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

undoubtedly, unless we have a new revolution like the personal computing/internet revolution that makes the pie bigger and accessible for people, and those types of revolution are things that you can hardly for-see.

The internet isn't a revolution, but a meta-revolution. It seems to me we will be harvesting the value of the second order revolutions from the Internet for a long time.

you are right but will those harvesting the value be individuals or corporations. Gone are those days when u can build a billion dollar company over a weekend, and i suspect the trend towards increasing technological complexity will continue, at some point any field where advances are to be made will be untouchable except by very few individuals with highly specialized knowledge and corporations.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#102

Post by geofft » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

> But at the moment at least, there is definitely something they share in common that distinguishes them. What retailer starts AWS? What car maker is run by someone who also has a rocket company?

If you went back a century and tried to figure out who would be running both a car company and a rocket company, the answer would almost certainly be the guy running Standard Oil.

And abstracting "AWS" a bit, if you went back a century and looked for a company that was both a giant logistics business as well as a giant provider of stuff you need to run a business, you'd find Andrew Carnegie, who owned the trains that ran on railroads as well as the factories that built the steel for the railroads.

Amazon and Tesla and SpaceX are "tech" companies in the sense that they make effective use of new technologies just as US Steel and Standard Oil did. But history does not remember those as tech companies; history remembers them as industrial consolidations, as vertically-integrated conglomerates, as trusts.

I think you need a little more data than 1982 to make this comparison meaningful. I suspect there was a time during the last century in which trusts were much harder to build, when there was effective competition, and where the economy was working well for everyone, and during that time, the people with unnatural amounts of wealth only had it because it was previously accumulated and made available to them as an inheritance. I suspect we are now back to the economic/political conditions that made trusts and robber barons possible.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#103

Post by alberth » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

harshaw wrote: post #32

I don't want to derail this too much with personal anecdotes, but I suspect you are much more likely to build wealth with the more established tech companies - and that wealth is "rich enough". Maybe I am just unlucky or unskilled, but I spent roughly 20 years working at startups or innovation labs. I was "close" to some big events where I could have made big $$ but made 0. Both at my own startup and being at early s…

Rich != Wealth

I think where PG and others are conflating two topics is being Rich vs being Wealthy.

You can certainly become Rich working at FAANG (top 1% earner + appreciating stock ... and it's way less risky than other jobs).

Where you can become Wealthy starting your own company (super high risk, most likely won't even become "rich" doing it, but you have the potential to create limitless wealth)

EDIT:

If you're going to downvote, can you at least comment why you disagree ... so that we can have a productive conversation to hear a differing opinion.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#104

Post by amznbyebyebye » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #71

It's a classic PG article. Many true facts in there, lots of good analysis with just a few questionable claims thrown in here and there. At the end, there's a massive claim that isn't fully stated but implied. "Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing" translated means "income inequality is not a problem". Firstly, Gini coefficient is based on income, not wealth. That isn't stated clearly. Secondly, there's absol…

It’s probably rich man guilt, plus some attempt at rationalization through cherry picked facts and data.. Also why I think bill gates >>> pg

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#105

Post by _k3n_ » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

decebalus1 wrote: post #47

> You would think, after having been on the side of labor in its fight with capital for almost two centuries, that the far left would be happy that labor has finally prevailed. But none of them seem to be. You can almost hear them saying "No, no, not that way." As always, completely removed from reality, ivory tower bullcrap. Only a subset of the workforce has the luxury to be able to start a company. It is cheaper n…

These late period Paul Graham essays are so wildly out of touch. It's like he hasn't had a conversation with a normal person in 15 years. He seems obsessed with pointing out that it's slightly easier to get rich now, while ignoring the fact that it's drastically easier to become poor.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#106

Post by gonehome » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

harshaw wrote: post #32

I don't want to derail this too much with personal anecdotes, but I suspect you are much more likely to build wealth with the more established tech companies - and that wealth is "rich enough". Maybe I am just unlucky or unskilled, but I spent roughly 20 years working at startups or innovation labs. I was "close" to some big events where I could have made big $$ but made 0. Both at my own startup and being at early s…

Yeah living in SF (or just the bay area) is pretty key.

AirBnB, Uber, Tesla, FB, SnapChat (LA based, but a lot of friends moved there to join friends from the peninsula and knew about it because of being here/near Stanford), Lyft, Snowflake, Stripe, eventually Robinhood, Roblox, Palantir, etc.

I'm not saying luck isn't a factor - but the equation changes dramatically when you're in the bay area. A lot of people I know have been through exit events of some sort, many clear $1-5M via that (which is about enough to buy a house if you're closer to the $3-5M side). Fewer clear $20M+.

That said, you could also have just worked at a FAANG and probably have saved $1-2M if you just stayed there over the last ten years (and obviously if you were at FB pre IPO in 2012). There's also a lot of opportunity to grow in that environment which can lead to higher incomes (particularly at a place like Netflix that just pays a lot up front).

Doing a non-bay area startup seems riskier to me than working at a FAANG. If you live in the bay area for a bit - it's easier to learn which startups are likely to succeed.

There's a reason YC moved from Boston.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#107

Post by WJW » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #12

I wonder if it really is easier than ever for the bottom 95% of US citizens (or bottom 95% of the developed western countries) to become rich by starting a business these days.

The majority of rich people being tech entrepreneurs does not imply that being a tech entrepreneur will make you rich. It is entirely possible to start a company and not make any money. In fact, greater ease of starting a business would increase the number of companies, thus the amount of competition would also increase and therefore the odds that any individual company makes large profits is smaller.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#108

Post by anonu » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

> Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing. With more people starting more valuable companies, how could it not be?

The conclusion in the last 2 sentences feels like a non-sequitur. The article forms a cogent idea of how we're back in the age of startups like we were 100+ years ago - and then ends in "yes this is why we have inequality".

Inequality is a lot more complicated concept than "people are starting tech companies and theyre highly valued". A lot of it has to do with government policy, education, etc...

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#109

Post by kevinqi » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

harshaw wrote: post #32

I don't want to derail this too much with personal anecdotes, but I suspect you are much more likely to build wealth with the more established tech companies - and that wealth is "rich enough". Maybe I am just unlucky or unskilled, but I spent roughly 20 years working at startups or innovation labs. I was "close" to some big events where I could have made big $$ but made 0. Both at my own startup and being at early s…

yeah having lived in both cities, I think the likelihood of success in the bay area is going to be higher than in boston for sure.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#110

Post by junippor » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #71

It's a classic PG article. Many true facts in there, lots of good analysis with just a few questionable claims thrown in here and there. At the end, there's a massive claim that isn't fully stated but implied. "Of course the Gini coefficient is increasing" translated means "income inequality is not a problem". Firstly, Gini coefficient is based on income, not wealth. That isn't stated clearly. Secondly, there's absol…

Sloppy thinking too.

> But at the moment at least, there is definitely something they share in common that distinguishes them. What retailer starts AWS? What car maker is run by someone who also has a rocket company?

So your justification for how you're classify Amazon is something the company does (good) but your justification for how you're classifying Tesla is other things the CEO owns? Very sloppy, Paul. Very lazy.