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Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

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Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#111

Post by rick888 »

hyperbovine wrote: post #102
rick888 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is that what freedom means? it sounds like you're condition of freedom is to have money, and its only freedom as long as you can pay for it. not really that free." I suppose I could live in a cardboard box on the side of the road and quit my job, but I don't think it would be a very nice existence. Having enough money to quit your job, buy a nice house, support a family, and travel is the ultimate freedom. You don't…

Having enough money to quit your job, buy a nice house, support a family, and travel is the ultimate freedom. You don't have to answer to anyone. Ahh, but there's the rub. What good is a nice house and a family if you live at the office and devote every waking moment to your startup? I think those things are nice too. My point is that there are a lot of people who have a house, a loving family, and travel, who are no…

"Ahh, but there's the rub. What good is a nice house and a family if you live at the office and devote every waking moment to your startup?"

You don't need to devote every waking moment to a startup to be successful. I devote lots of my time right now only because I am also working a day job. Once I am making enough money and I quit my job, I could easily run it during the day.

I value my free time more than anything. If I was just going to trade in one office slave job for another, I wouldn't even bother.

I would also rather spend my life working on my own projects than be forced to make someone else rich. Have you ever had to implement ridiculous features or work until 10 o'clock (unpaid) because your manager or boss decided at the last minute that something needed to be changed?

"I think those things are nice too. My point is that there are a lot of people who have a house, a loving family, and travel, who are not rich."

What is "rich" to you? It's a relative term.

"If that is really your goal, sacrificing your happiness, health and sanity in pursuit of FU startup money is a pretty circuitous way of attaining it."

When did sanity come into the discussion? I love working on my business. Programming is a passion of mine. I am also pretty healthy. I exercise every day (biking, jogging, and/or lifting weights). I also sleep around 8 hours a night and try to eat a healthy diet.

It's also not a permanent sacrifice. It's only until things get to a level where I can hire other people and or quit my job. School is a 4+ year sacrifice. What's the difference?

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#112

Post by natrius »

jongraehl wrote: post #81
natrius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deleting the comment made the thread harder to understand.

I like the deletion. More people should delete their comments (if they turn out to be inapplicable or unfair).

How is that better than adding to the comment or replying to let people know of your change of heart? Deleting comments that have replies is in no way a good thing.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#113

Post by dennisgorelik »

jimbokun wrote: post #96
tansey wrote: post #74

Imagine you're in a big slot machine tournament with 150 competitors. Each player gets to pull one of two machines. One machine pays $1 every time. The other machine pays an average of $0 but has a variance of $50. Everyone gets 1 pull, the scores are tallied, and the bottom half of the players are out, and a new group is brought in to replace them. Which machine would you pull? The evidence[1] is pretty clear that i…

Except, today, high levels of wealth is inversely correlated with the number of offspring.

Not really. It looks like there is weak or no correlation between wealth and number of offspring.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#114

Post by rick888 »

noodle wrote: post #105
jimbokun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to offer a better definition?

i honestly can't think of one that isn't constrained in some form. in modern society, that is. freedom seems to be constrained by the existence of other people.

"i honestly can't think of one that isn't constrained in some form. in modern society, that is. freedom seems to be constrained by the existence of other people."

When has it ever not been? In pre-modern society people still used some for of currency to obtain things. You could technically live a "free" life without money, but your existence would be even worse than it is now.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#115

Post by btilly »

timr wrote: post #52
HockeyPlayer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be silly. She wrote that her friend, "could easily bring in a low six-figure income" If you save wisely, you can retire just fine after a career at a tech company making 2-3x the US median salary. And most companies have good health coverage for the cancer. She is talking about the pressure to make $10M or more through a startup, not getting the money to retire comfortably.

"If you save wisely, you can retire just fine after a career at a tech company making 2-3x the US median salary." This is a theory at this point...and it's not a well-tested theory. I don't know many people who have actually retired from a lifetime (i.e. 30+ year) career in tech. Considering that the software industry (as we know it) is only about 30 years old, it's hard to draw long-term conclusions.

...the software industry (as we know it) is only about 30 years old...

Uh, what? The software industry is a lot older than that. The largest companies today by revenue are listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_global_soft... and it is instructive to go down the list. Of the 10 listed, 2 have been selling software since the 50s (in the case of Accenture admittedly as part of another company), 1 in the 60s, and 3 in the 70s. So over half are over 30 years old.

Wikipedia claims that the first company founded to provide software products and services was Computer Usage Company in 1955. The software industry expanded in the 1960s. Since then it seems to me to have been growing exponentially since. By the early 70s there was already enough accumulated experience for veterans to write classics like The Mythical Man-Month and The Psychology of Computer Programming.

Incidentally I know multiple people who have retired from a lifetime career in tech. They seem to be in a similar position to other retired professionals.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#116

Post by yummyfajitas »

jimbokun wrote: post #94
kscaldef wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And most companies have good health coverage for the cancer. Well... kinda. One of the dirty little secrets of employer-provided group health care is that when you have one person whose health care costs vastly exceed the average, there's enormous pressure to get that person out of the "group". I've know companies where someone got cancer and the premiums for the whole company doubled the next year.

This is a good economic explanation for why national health care systems should outperform employer based (or any other) systems. You can't get a larger pool of people to spread risk around, under a single legal framework, than an entire nation state.

Once you look at the numbers, you realize that beyond a certain size it doesn't matter much.

The standard deviation of health care costs for a company scales like 1/sqrt(# employees). Once (sigma cost) / sqrt(# of employees) << (mean cost), there is little advantage to having a bigger pool.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#117

Post by PawelDecowski »

hyperbovine wrote: post #46
pg wrote: post #13

In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people. That could be because we prefer startups whose founders include hackers. On the other hand, we don't just prefer that type because they're more fun to hang around with, but because in our opinion they're more likely to succeed.

It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so that you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness. Why not just take the direct route?

For people who don't know the story: http://pauldecowski.com/

I put it up on my domain a while ago because I liked it a lot. Maybe it will be useful for once.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#118

Post by potatolicious »

seldo wrote: post #80
clistctrl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak to myself, but I want to get rich not for a Lamborghini, but so I can start another company to truly make a difference. Personally I think the Gates foundation is going to have a longer lasting impact on the world then Microsoft has. Yes I realize how huge of an impact Microsoft has had.

Call me cynical, but I don't think 18-year-old Bill Gates had the Gates Foundation in mind when he started trampling over the competition in his rise to the top. He wanted to be rich and powerful (because frankly, with the looks and alleged personality of Bill Gates, how else was he going to get a date?). The Gates Foundation, worthy as it is, was something he only realized he wanted after he had achieved everything…

> "(because frankly, with the looks and alleged personality of Bill Gates, how else was he going to get a date?)"

Honestly, that's probably a better description of Zuck than it is Gates. If Bill Gates' goal was to get rich and fuck women, I doubt he'd have settled down so quickly with another coder who worked in his company.

You know, more like supermodels and actresses and such.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#119

Post by pg »

hyperbovine wrote: post #97
pg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that there is some more direct route to working on what one wants? Or that the direct route to happiness is to give up such aspirations?

If your aspiration is simply to code interesting software projects all day long, I see no reason why being rich should be a prerequisite. Your expenses are minimal; you have no need of an office and can live anywhere. Will you require some money? Yes, and acquiring that will distract you slightly from the things you'd rather be doing. But that is a much better proposition, to me, than gambling away a decade or two of…

You're talking theoretically about the life I actually lived for the second half of my twenties, living cheaply and supporting myself with occasional bursts of consulting. It was not as easy as you make it sound. I preferred it to a regular job (which leaves you too little time to work on your own stuff), but it was extremely stressful to keep running out of money. With kids it would have been impossible.

How remote the chances are of making money from a startup depend on the person. The probability ranges from a snowball's chance in hell to maybe 90% in the case of someone like Bill Gates. (He was not necessarily going to be the richest man of all, but the likelihood of him not even making enough to be independently wealthy was pretty small.) I can't tell what the chances would be in your case without meeting you, but certainly there are some people for whom starting a startup is a reasonable gamble.

It definitely wouldn't take decades to find out. When startups fail they usually fail in less than 2 years.

Re: Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

#120

Post by rick888 »

krobertson wrote: post #100
pedalpete wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with the Mexican fisherman story (search didn't return anything). Was the Mexican fisherman toiling away on a fishing boat so he could become rich so he could have the freedom to spend his days fishing?

This was one reference to the story I'd found: http://bluehaert.wordpress.com/2006/05/02/story-the-business... Basically, a businessman runs into a fisherman by the beach and is telling him how he should get a boat, a fleet, put in hard work to make a lot of money and then he can retire, take it easy, go fishing for a couple hours each day, etc. Then the fisherman says "Isn't that what I'm doing now?" Being successfu…

"Basically, a businessman runs into a fisherman by the beach and is telling him how he should get a boat, a fleet, put in hard work to make a lot of money and then he can retire, take it easy, go fishing for a couple hours each day, etc. Then the fisherman says "Isn't that what I'm doing now?"

If the fisherman is already fishing and selling his fish to earn a living..isn't he already in business for himself? If he can save enough for retirement, than I see his point. If not, it's going to be pretty rough for him when he gets to an age when he wants to quit. If he had enough money, he could also move onto something else if he ever got bored of fishing.

Fishing for fun is also different than fishing for a living.

Money doesn't make you happy. It opens many more doors that can lead to happiness.

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