131–140 of 194 posts
Anyways, inspiring to see your success. It's a lot more elegant than my plans, which are to launch on here with the headline along the lines of "College Students: Earn $20"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“can be risky (see OP)” is vastly downplaying 1 in 10 odds of nominal success. Simply not failing doesn’t mean the bet paid off.
> “can be risky (see OP)” is vastly downplaying 1 in 10 odds of nominal success. Simply not failing doesn’t mean the bet paid off. We know this, yadda yadda "survivorship bias." It's just boring to have the same people making the same points about every startup that made it. It's like the old "correlation does not equal causation" trope you see repeated over and over again when someone links any dataset. We get it. A…
It’s only when your benchmark is becoming a billionaire that it starts to look like the best option.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem is you called it a "reliable" route to financial independence, when the variance is actually pretty high. Anyone who can get a job at a large tech company in SF/Seattle/NY has a much more reliable route to financial independence.
> I think the problem is you called it a "reliable" route to financial independence, when the variance is actually pretty high. Anyone who can get a job at a large tech company in SF/Seattle/NY has a much more reliable route to financial independence. I feel like I argue this ad nauseum here on HN. No, being engineer #3489 won't ever make you financially "independent" (and by that, I mean having FU money). Financial…
Plenty of engineers working at FAANG and investing in index funds have enough money to retire comfortably in their 30s. That’s what the GP means by financial independence, I believe.
Also “senior” engineers (>5 years of experience) at these companies make a lot more than 200k a year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
in sports at least the old saying was: "A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big leaguer. That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues. - Joe Dimaggio
I’m seeing quite a lot of athletes whose parents were athletes, or had the means to pay for elite training. I don’t expect the hungriest kids to have any chance in most pro sports unless they’re above average, at least in size for the major US sports.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> still one of the most reliable ways of [...] becoming financially independent (if not outright wealthy) There's just no way this is true. For people with the skills needed by SV startups, working at one of the startups is almost certainly financially worse than using those skills at a large company.
I was specifically talking about founders (but even early stage engineers can do extremely well if the startup takes off). The upside is much higher doing your own thing rather than working at BigCorp (the two aren't even remotely comparable, but neither is the risk). Not to mention the end goals/QOL of working on what you want, commanding your own ship, being financially independent, etc. Virtually all self-made mil…
The article you linked makes no sense related to your claim. Unless you're saying that millionaires+ (whatever the + means) don't exist outside of Forbes.
> There's really no other way to get there
Joining a startup as an early member? Working in finance or computer science or medicine with ridiculous salaries?
Here's a link[1] with thousands of jobs with an average income higher than $100k. If you have that kind of income, you can become a millionaire.
> QOL of working on what you want, commanding your own ship, being financially independent, etc.
How about the QOL of not knowing for a long time whether you'll succeed or fail? Or having to deal with investors, marketing, managing people, aka everything that you probably don't want to be working with? Not commanding your own ship because most of it is built with other people's money?
If you're talking QOL, I don't see how playing the lottery with your future (in your own words) is better than having a high-income job, then FIRE in your 30ies.
[1] https://www1.salary.com/Six-Figure-Income-Salaries.html?page...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Point of GP is that failing while hitting unexpected medical issues in the US will destroy your life with high probability. There is no prize for those who lost, just a feel-good stories for those like OP who “survived”.
This kind of mentality reminds me of solipsism. It's just not interesting to talk about, insightful, or productive, outside of being a contrarian edge-case you could write a paper about. Cool, you're a cynic. Yes, as we all know, most startups fail and the US healthcare system sucks. Anything else to add?
2013: Their reddit, digg, forum posts went nowhere, their hackernews post hit
2021: Their reddit, twitter, forum posts went nowhere, and neither did their hackernews
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was specifically talking about founders (but even early stage engineers can do extremely well if the startup takes off). The upside is much higher doing your own thing rather than working at BigCorp (the two aren't even remotely comparable, but neither is the risk). Not to mention the end goals/QOL of working on what you want, commanding your own ship, being financially independent, etc. Virtually all self-made mil…
> Virtually all self-made millionaires+ started companies[1] The article you linked makes no sense related to your claim. Unless you're saying that millionaires+ (whatever the + means) don't exist outside of Forbes. > There's really no other way to get there Joining a startup as an early member? Working in finance or computer science or medicine with ridiculous salaries? Here's a link[1] with thousands of jobs with a…
This is kind of silly to bring up. Obviously people starting a company are okay with managing people and dealing with investors (or if not, being bootstrapped). You're saying "being an elite athlete sucks because you have to deal with working out and eating healthy" like.. yeah, you kind of signed up for that. You can't be an NFL player and eat donuts all day.
> FIRE in your 30ies.
This is ironically very similar to doing a startup (but with less risk, and a lower upside). Are you forgetting that investing didn't go so well for people in 2008? I actually like the FIRE movement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think the problem is you called it a "reliable" route to financial independence, when the variance is actually pretty high. Anyone who can get a job at a large tech company in SF/Seattle/NY has a much more reliable route to financial independence. I feel like I argue this ad nauseum here on HN. No, being engineer #3489 won't ever make you financially "independent" (and by that, I mean having FU money). Financial…
Have you ever heard of the FIRE movement? Plenty of engineers working at FAANG and investing in index funds have enough money to retire comfortably in their 30s. That’s what the GP means by financial independence, I believe. Also “senior” engineers (>5 years of experience) at these companies make a lot more than 200k a year.
No they don't, look up the numbers. Average salary on most websites is around 180k. Principal engineers start making north of 300k (at FAANG, which is already a subset of a subset) but it's very difficult to snag one of those.
I like the FIRE movement, but ironically, I think it's pretty analogous to doing your own startup. Obviously, it's less risk (but also less upside).