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The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

chris-martin.org

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Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#141

Post by foobarian »

K0balt wrote: post #131
avg_dev wrote: post #25

I didn't agree with everything, but I did with a lot; in particular this: > As Julie says when someone repeats that Amazon was started in a garage: Ain't no garages in the trailer park. Not sure who Julie is, but I think she's spot on.

This is a sort of perplexing subject for me. I grew up pretty poor. We had a well, but not running water. We flushed with a bucket, bathed out of a trash can-cum-water barrel. We subsistence hunted. We had vehicles that mostly ran, most of the time. Yet I can see that I was , in fact, born into privilege. Not a privilege of money, but a privilege of priority, skills, and acceptance of risk. My parents prioritized one…

... I think I just found my new hobby! :-D

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#143

Post by indoordin0saur »

no_wizard wrote: post #51
avg_dev wrote: post #25

I didn't agree with everything, but I did with a lot; in particular this: > As Julie says when someone repeats that Amazon was started in a garage: Ain't no garages in the trailer park. Not sure who Julie is, but I think she's spot on.

would you mind giving a greater explanation of what they mean by this? I couldn't grok the meaning from context, other than the obvious its not really possible to simply startup half baked out of your house or something along those lines

These successes come from the middle-class, not the working classes. You could take it further and note that even just owning a home as a young person isn't really attainable for the middle-class anymore. Things were simply easier back then.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#144

Post by moondistance »

K0balt wrote: post #131
avg_dev wrote: post #25

I didn't agree with everything, but I did with a lot; in particular this: > As Julie says when someone repeats that Amazon was started in a garage: Ain't no garages in the trailer park. Not sure who Julie is, but I think she's spot on.

This is a sort of perplexing subject for me. I grew up pretty poor. We had a well, but not running water. We flushed with a bucket, bathed out of a trash can-cum-water barrel. We subsistence hunted. We had vehicles that mostly ran, most of the time. Yet I can see that I was , in fact, born into privilege. Not a privilege of money, but a privilege of priority, skills, and acceptance of risk. My parents prioritized one…

Where do you find/buy land? How do you vet purchases? Can you point to a few websites, etc.? Thanks!

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#145

Post by Nevermark »

throwaway-blaze wrote: post #137
jacobsenscott wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a garage isn't enough. A lot of people with garages need to work everyday to pay for their garage, and food, and everything else. Bezos and Jobs both had free garages and free time paid for by their parents. I would bet the others mentioned in the post had the same sort of freebies.

Is the contrapositive also true? If Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos had been dirt poor in childhood rather than solidly middle class, would they not have had success? I.e. how much weight should we put on the things out of their control vs within their control?

You need enough of both.

Few would suggest anyone having time, a place, necessities covered well enough, and few distractions is going to be ensured success.

But with those things, someone who also has ideas, insights, a strong work ethic (or often much better, a strong natural enthusiasm for something useful) has much better chances.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#146

Post by renewiltord »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #92
renewiltord wrote: post #62

When did this style of psychoanalysis become popular? Everyone now uses these terms and instead of coming off like an informed take it just sounds like "I'm just trying to insult other people". At some point, the online forum take of "all the successful guys are sad and I'm not as successful because I'm well-adjusted" has gotten boring. I get that people want to feel better about their lives but this is just embarras…

This comment kind of comes off as "I'm just trying to insult other people".

Hmm, fair enough. I was trying to insult the observed behaviour whereas he was trying to insult the implied behaviour and I would expect them to be different (because the latter is guesswork) but I suppose it seems the same way to you. Ah well.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#147

Post by bluefirebrand »

throwaway-blaze wrote: post #137
jacobsenscott wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a garage isn't enough. A lot of people with garages need to work everyday to pay for their garage, and food, and everything else. Bezos and Jobs both had free garages and free time paid for by their parents. I would bet the others mentioned in the post had the same sort of freebies.

Is the contrapositive also true? If Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos had been dirt poor in childhood rather than solidly middle class, would they not have had success? I.e. how much weight should we put on the things out of their control vs within their control?

It is impossible to know of course, but it is probably fair to say that if they had been born dirt poor they would have been much less likely to have the kind if incredible success that they did have

People like to say that success is right time, right place, but that's not all there is to it. You also need sufficient resources to take advantage of opportunity

Sitting on a gold mine does not matter if you don't have a shovel

Having a shovel doesn't matter if you don't know where to dig

And you need to have enough time ('runway' in startup speak) to actually try digging for gold in the first place

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#148

Post by dgfitz »

ryandrake wrote: post #106
mbrumlow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But I think the notion is that a huge group of people also had that same level funding and privilege, but did nothing with it. Like why did these guys neighbors not end up billionaire. Or the other people in their class or school. While they may have had some money it’s not like they took fathers 500 billion and turned it in to a nice 200 billion for them self. They clearly did something different out of the ve…

> They clearly did something different Survivorship bias that results from looking back at the winners. If we asked 1000 people to flip a coin 10 times, probability says one will end up flipping heads 10 times in a row. Looking only backwards after the fact, what did he do different? Is he just a better coin flipper? There is likely a person in their 20s right now who in 40 years we will look back on because they fou…

I think the point is, most people don't even flip the coin, you're making a false equivalence.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#149

Post by bluefirebrand »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #87
mbrumlow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But I think the notion is that a huge group of people also had that same level funding and privilege, but did nothing with it. Like why did these guys neighbors not end up billionaire. Or the other people in their class or school. While they may have had some money it’s not like they took fathers 500 billion and turned it in to a nice 200 billion for them self. They clearly did something different out of the ve…

Random chance, and maybe a little skill.

Don't forget connections

Having well connected parents and family is huge, and a big part of why a lot of these people are so wildly successful

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#150

Post by arnaudsm »

an0malous wrote: post #115
arnaudsm wrote: post #14

I partly disagree, software still sucks and it's a great time to build. The #1 OS is slow and crashes all the time. The #1 email client takes 10s to load on my mother's laptop. Most popular products are slow, buggy, filled with spam, & filled with dark patterns. Enshittification won. FAANGs are the new IBM. Let's build better stuff.

The previous startup waves were built on top of expanded Internet access, mobile phones, and virtualization. This allowed low capitalized startups to create 10x better software. What you’re describing is marginally better software, you’re not going to beat Gmail by making it 10s faster. No one really cares about dark patterns and spam. There will eventually be new waves that create opportunities for startups again, L…

You're correctly describing the most common mindset in tech entrepreneurs. Chasing the last shiny trend instead of caring about quality.

Apple is the best example that doing the opposite can be immensely successful.

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