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Sergey Brin's Unretirement

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Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#201

Post by stinkbeetle »

lanthissa wrote: post #158
lionkor wrote: post #149

Do you think he can still spend time on his $450 million yacht or is he too busy writing prompts? Snark aside, good for him. Absolute non-news though, as is any extraordinary individual action during and contributing to a bubble. It'll be interesting to see what stays when, or if, the bubble ever pops.

i never really understood the billionaire yacht hate. Once you buy a yacht 450 million dollars of ownership in a company you had goes to people who built a beautiful thing that exists in the real world and you're on the hook for employing a lot of people to maintain it. I take a lot more issue with accumulation and hoarding of wealth than the spending of it.

Holding shares in a company (or dollar bills) is not depriving others of something. The fisherman will go catch fish tomorrow, the wheat in the fields will keep growing, the builder will build a house.

If someone starts paying the fisherman, farmer, builder, more to stop doing what they are doing and start building mega yachts, then there will be less fish, bread, and houses for others.

That said, I assume it's much simpler than that and it's just about the hypocrisy of the climate change billionaires to be bellowing out carbon while demanding the selfish greedy commoners cut our emissions.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#202

Post by weinzierl »

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…

> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " [..]

Risking a stereotype. In my experience from traveling the world it's a tell-tale sign for being from a culture heavily influenced by the Protestant work ethic. Introduce yourself like that in Spain, Italy, or Brazil and you'll get strange looks.

On the flip side, I've found that people who do not define themselves through their work primarily often do so through family. My younger self is certainly guilty of giving someone a strange look when within the first five minutes of meeting them, they told me whose cousin they were.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#203

Post by falloutx »

> The tech founder’s return to full-time work is a reminder that even billions can’t guarantee a happy retirement if you don’t also do this.

Is this generated by AI? English is all over the place in the article.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#204

Post by abracos »

vander_elst wrote: post #46

If I could I'd retire tomorrow, I have so many projects I would like to take on, I have the feeling I could fill 3 lives with them: gardening, learning math, system programming, wine tasting, carpentry, sport, traveling etc... There are *so* many interesting things to do and so little time. I guess time will tell but at the moment I have a hard time imagining myself getting bored.

It's about scale, when you built something as grand as google you don't want to spend time building a garden

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#205

Post by jama211 »

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.

The attitude that we should all have access to more freedoms and that inequality has reached extreme levels is suppression? Then sign me up to be suppressed.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#206

Post by blitzar »

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…

> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of "

Tech bros would mock Finance bros who would open a conversation with anyone who would listen with "Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Goldman Sachs" and yet here we are now ...

"Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Google"

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#207

Post by SXX »

alex1138 wrote: post #148
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…

Not just links, either Youtube comments are completely censored in real time with some sort of AI, it's horrible

Yet Google cant remove porn bots with 99% similar usernames or avatars.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#208

Post by rcxdude »

alex1138 wrote: post #162
lovich wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very frustrating for the bot’s reinforcement function. This is another account created after widespread access to LLM was available to the public that is pushing a political view that is somewhat coherent until pressed and then it falls apart like all chat bots Maybe it’s a real person and I’m being an asshole here, but it’s hard to tell. The fact that is hard to tell if they are real or not means we need to com…

[flagged]

Maybe, but someone engaged with you and your response showed it was utterly unproductive to do so. COVID may have been mishandled but it does nothing to justify the administrations decisions regarding healthcare. If that's the reason you think positively of the man then you should evaluate the rest of what he's said and done.

If you have the time, two podcasts from this doctor which I think kind of highlight what's going on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OF6vP-SkGA (where they have a frank discussion about what was done badly during COVID, including government lies)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBllzAb_vAk (where they have a discussion with one of the leading researchers on nutrition, who has come into direct conflict with RFK Jr. because he doesn't say exactly what RFK Jr. believes to be the case, and has had papers censored and funding cut as a result)

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#210

Post by [deleted] »

aatd86 wrote: post #168
mattlondon wrote: post #117

I too would very happily do just the bits of my job that I like, when and how I want, and have any requests or comments or complaints I make get immediate attention and responses. All in the knowledge that no one is going to be time-tracking me or doing performance reviews, and I can just not do work at any moment I don't feel like it or have something better to do that day, like go to my private island or take my pr…

He was in your spot at some point I've heard. Nothing is impossible.

[deleted]
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