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The Art of Money Getting

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Re: The Art of Money Getting

#221

Post by brailsafe »

amelius wrote: post #179

> Debt eats self-respect. Barnum says young people, especially, should avoid it. The moment you owe somebody money, you’ve handed them a piece of your freedom. The whole game is keeping income above outgo. So don't buy a house, I suppose. But this goes against popular financial advice.

> So don't buy a house, I suppose. But this goes against popular financial advice.

Absolutely don't buy a house. I'm very happy I looked at that decision critically when the first opportunity arose and conventional advice encouraged it. I'd never have left my hometown, and my whole life henceforth would have been in service of debt. Pass. Much happier renting forever with every aspect of life being better.

Now I look at prices in places I live and think "Why in the hell would I commit this much money to a tiny shitty condo, people are delusional", but might consider it these days if the price to own vs rent comes into better balance now that I've established a new overall home.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#222

Post by KellyCriterion »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #168
sireat wrote: post #57

I am paraphrasing but I think it was W. Buffett who said: "Work at the job that you do not hate" In other words, not all vocations that you are great at and talented and want to pursue are valued by current world. I love playing chess way more and actually am reasonably good at it, but programming and teaching are valued more and I like those too. As Jimmy O. Yang's father reportedly said: "Pursuing your dreams is ho…

>> In other words, not all vocations that you are great at and talented and want to pursue are valued by current world. Good one! Im so glad I could built my current system with AI, because without it I wouldnt have started because of the amount of work. I went into SWE because I liked programming at home with my school friends but I had no real understanding of the "commercial environment" I would end up - turning o…

WOW getting downvoted for appreciating what the OP experiences and what covers my experience as well - and people do not like this? Thanks :-))

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#223

Post by KellyCriterion »

galangalalgol wrote: post #192
KellyCriterion wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before 2000 The salary expectations exploded when the VC/PE-bobos went into the space and started "build-and-sell-high". Sure there were Billionairs made before tech & internet, but public was not aware of most such transactions.

And that never changed salaries nearly as much in games, embedded, or outside the us. I never worked in any software position adjacent to the online economy, so I never saw any of those wacky salaries.

> to the online economy, so I n

that term is great, thanks! because: Outside of the "online community", a SWE salary is just a normal salary, all these superhigh salaries only came around the corner when it started to be about "international!" and "global scale!" and "disruption!" (of course LOL) and other things like these.

In the 90s, a "SWE" was just a normal employee doing some IT dev stuf & co, but after DotCom-boom SWE et. al. became the heroes, esp. for scaling and selling companies quickly because they had their MBA-colleagues in mind :-D

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#224

Post by galangalalgol »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #223
galangalalgol wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that never changed salaries nearly as much in games, embedded, or outside the us. I never worked in any software position adjacent to the online economy, so I never saw any of those wacky salaries.

> to the online economy, so I n that term is great, thanks! because: Outside of the "online community", a SWE salary is just a normal salary, all these superhigh salaries only came around the corner when it started to be about "international!" and "global scale!" and "disruption!" (of course LOL) and other things like these. In the 90s, a "SWE" was just a normal employee doing some IT dev stuf & co, but after DotCom-…

Yeah, I work in dsp and embedded typically. If you hit principal or fellow you aren't leaving that much on the table vs anything but a faang, but there is a mid career point where you are making half what you could elsewhere. I don't fully understand the dynamics that resulted in those salaries.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#225

Post by userulluipeste »

photochemsyn wrote: post #35

Barnum’s pamphlet was published in 1880, squarely between two major financial panics linked to stock bubbles. 1873 wiped out thousands of businesses and triggered the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, crushed by federal troops. The Panic of 1893 would come a few years later. In both cases, the likes of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, etc. used the chaos to consolidate monopolies, buying distressed assets at rock-bottom p…

To me, the rules stated by Phineas Taylor Barnum help one navigate in life while nonetheless contributing positively to society, whereas these "private rules for the Robber Barons" are just a pamphlet aimed to (politically) cast a bad light on the ruthless money making. The later, if taken literally, are more akin to stating how crime (as in practice detrimental to society) and abuse can be profitable.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#226

Post by sebastiennight »

coliveira wrote: post #217
sebastiennight wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say many fathers are pretty happy "having kids given to them by a woman" (to use your terminology). It seems you wouldn't give them credit for it, but most of them appear to feel quite a bit of responsibility for bringing those to life.

A woman is a human being. An AI is a machine.

Which makes your point make less sense?

I plant a seed, a human being carries it to fruition for 9 months through her determination, love and literal life blood, and I can claim I brought the seed to life.

He plants an idea and patiently coaxes a machine to spit out the code that matches it, you're giving the machine the credit.

I don't get it.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#227

Post by esseph »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #220
esseph wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more to me like an acknowledgement of the realities on the ground, which is the first step to actually fixing things. To be very clear, one of the things from the original Trump platform was to "drain the swamp", right? Now, clearly that's not what he meant... or maybe he did from different terms maybe from you and I. But for supporters? They saw a government that they felt was corrupt, wasteful, and out of…

The first profession listed was "accounting", yet you don't seem to have any concerns about accounting or accountants. I think the first step towards rebuilding trust in the institutions that have been destroyed is to be specific about the problems and their solutions, rather than laughing at the idea that anyone in any industry could be good in 2026 America. Indeed, as you touched on, this whole thing is Trump's sch…

> supporters are so willing to excuse his misdeeds because they've come to believe that everything everywhere in the US is corrupt and unworthy of respect.

Yes, and his WHOLE THING that got him elected was that he was going to "fix it".

He got a lot of independents too.

The problem, or perceived problem, predates Trump and will not end when he is gone.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#228

Post by greyface- »

amelius wrote: post #179

> Debt eats self-respect. Barnum says young people, especially, should avoid it. The moment you owe somebody money, you’ve handed them a piece of your freedom. The whole game is keeping income above outgo. So don't buy a house, I suppose. But this goes against popular financial advice.

Pay cash, and don't buy a house before you can afford one.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#229

Post by theteapot »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #24
Michelangelo11 wrote: post #14

> Barnum’s first rule: pick the work you’re built for, then aim to be the best at it. Edsger Dijkstra, in one of his letters, giving advice (IIRC) to a PhD student: "Do only what only you can do." Kind of funny to see one of the greatest computer scientists and one of the greatest public entertainers giving the same advice, but I guess that speaks strongly in its favor.

I could never do anything, I could talk fancy and bullshit and could come up with all kinds of great ideas as an ideas guy. Nothing useful. So I became a developer and data engineer, and I became really good at it even though, like the protagonist in Gattica (with whom I share other similarities), I had to work twice as hard and spend all my off hours obsessed with it because my nature worked against me. While others…

> I could talk fancy and bullshit ... I became a developer and data engineer, and I became really good at it

That's a formidable combination.

> I found myself becoming an executive at long last on the strength of my technical abilities, and it turns out executives don't actually need to do much of anything and really ...

You probably think that because talking fancy and bullshitting come naturally to you.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#230

Post by qingcharles »

draftsman wrote: post #32
UncleOxidant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. Same. Claude/Gemini/DeepSeekV4/Qwen3.6 are enabling me to do way more experimentation than I could do on my own. 10X at least. Not getting paid for any of it, but that's OK, getting paid imposes limitations on what you can work on and imposes responsibilities that I don't care to have a…

Do you find joy in using LLMs to write software? I tried using Claude/Cursor/CodeX/etc. for personal projects and experimentation, and I found no joy in it. I learned nothing, and when my MVPs were complete, I only had a shallow understanding of how the code that powered them worked.

Absolute joy. It took away all the grind from programming and left only the good bits. For me, at least.
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