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Sergey Brin's Unretirement

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Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#191

Post by piva00 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #87
snowwrestler wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say that this topic is a common one among people talking about FIRE “financial independence, retire early” — folks who are saving as fast as they can so they can quit working. There are a lot of people who already got there who come back to warn people they won’t necessarily be happy and fulfilled just because they quit the day job. Like, that’s an amazing feeling at first but it probably won’t carry you for 3…

It works much better for most people if you replace “retire early” with “recreationally employed”. You can select the work you do without optimizing for income or status-maxxing.

The few cases I know of people who retired in their early 30s they really didn't want to even be "recreationally employed", they diverted their efforts to causes they believe are bigger than usual work. They help communities, they started projects in their free time that enhances others' lives in direct and meaningful ways which had nothing to do with their past day job.

I believe I'd do the same, forget about coding yet another little project/library, and go into the real world dedicate part of my time to causes that can't pay much but have meaning to others.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#192

Post by siamese_puff »

chihuahua wrote: post #97

About a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour indoor cycling workout at home…

Mind me asking general location and how much savings? Wouldn’t mind doing similar at some point

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#193

Post by jonathanstrange »

This might rub some people on HN the wrong way but what these people call "work" isn't really work in the sense of what most people consider work. They jet here and there, intervene wherever they want, and everybody listens to them all the time. They can cancel and postpone meetings as they wish, and so on and so forth. It's work in the same sense as buying another house is work -- you have to get together with lawyers and plenty of people but in the end these people all work for you and you can also change your mind and not buy it.

That's also the reason why these multi-billionaires never retire. They've retired from real work a long time ago.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#194

Post by stavros »

scotty79 wrote: post #183
cuttothechase wrote: post #47

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

[flagged]

When you define yourself solely by work, you lose your entire identity when you retire. Most people don't have hobbies, so work is literally the one thing they have in their lives.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#195

Post by blitzar »

scotty79 wrote: post #188
marcus_holmes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " that suddenly having nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good identity. I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google. But…

> When people asked "what do you do?" "I mostly breathe. It's a bore but you gotta do it" "I meant for a living" "Same"

"waste management"

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#196

Post by scotty79 »

chihuahua wrote: post #97

About a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour indoor cycling workout at home…

I haven't worked in about 7 years. Only recently I started helping out a friend with a software project semi-regularily. And it wasn't really out of boredom. It's just that the project has some cool stuff, people on the team are cool and he's a friend. I passed 7 years with gaming, internet, talks, walks and mixtures of any subset of those. Only occasionally doing some coding just for fun or out of curiosity or to occasionally help someone. AI is a big game changer for me now. So much more fun to be had with coding.

I don't think I un-retired but I'm performing some commercialy valuable tasks for someone.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#197

Post by stavros »

mckn1ght wrote: post #142
marcus_holmes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " that suddenly having nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good identity. I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google. But…

I’ve found asking “what do you like to do” vs “what do you do” to produce much more interesting conversation.

I really don't like getting asked what I do for a living. I exchange labour for money somewhere out of necessity, what's at all interesting about that? What I do in my free time is who I am, and that's much more interesting to talk about, to me.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#198

Post by lucianbr »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #94
cuttothechase wrote: post #47

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " that suddenly having nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good identity. I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google. But…

What is the point of the "I'm Marcus" part of your introduction? Reading your post I get the impression it has zero value, or at least you think so.

> Hi, I'm Marcus

> What do you do Marcus

> I'm on a break now, but I used to be a director of IT

Is this really difficult? Seems really easy, and I was never a director of anything. Maybe that's the problem.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#199

Post by dv_dt »

skibidithink wrote: post #133
leoc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brin wasn’t bothered to wield any of that power to try to arrest the decline in Google’s search quality. He wasn’t bothered to direct the Chrome team to support MathML, or to bring back Google Reader, or do anything about a hundred small insults like, say, the deletion of YouTube comments with URLs to keep the rubes inside the casino. But he was able and willing to come back and wield his clout because he was bored a…

He saw AI as an existential threat to Google.

Enshittification of existing money making activities of Google independently of AI is also an existential threat. Parts of the threat are codependent on AI, but there is little reason to open the door wider as they have.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#200

Post by vidarh »

tempestn wrote: post #179
black_knight wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dreams and hopes are powerful weapons of suppression. Everyone is a millionaire just down on their luck at the moment… In our advanced society, with incredible automation, we should _all_ have vastly more freedom and control over our time.

That attitude is the weapon of suppression. Yes, it's true that life isn't fair. But it's also true that people have agency and can make material improvements to their own quality of life through smart decisions and dedication. Of course most of us won't start the next Google, but that doesn't mean dreams and hope are bad in general.

We have no evidence that people have meanginful agency, or even agency at all. It is an assumption that to start with requires that the universe is not largely or entirely deterministic beyond what we can measure, but even in the case of some "hidden variable" that provides agency (try to even define it in a way that doesn't make it either deterministic, random, or a combination that implies no actual control) we have plenty of evidence that events outside our control ("life isn't fair") means that the vast majority of people, while they may make decisions - with or without agency - that will make material improvements - still are not able to get anywhere near a position that makes it meaningful in this context.

Dreams and hopes are great - I believe we have zero actual agency, but that doesn't mean I lie in bed despairing, because not doing the work and trying will still have negative effects whether I have agency over that decision or not.

But the point is that dreams and hopes are also often used to play up the idea that "anyone" can achieve something everyone clearly can't, and so for most people, their most ambitious dreams will never be reached, and so a better gamble for most people would be to work for a society that improves everyones odds at reaching at least some of them.

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