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How to Work Hard

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Work Hard

#261

Post by papito »

EricE wrote: post #141
papito wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they enjoy it or do they THINK they enjoy it? Many people realize that they wasted their lives on being in the office after they retire. This TED talk can be a revelation: https://www.ted.com/talks/bj_miller_what_really_matters_at_t... And the Bill Gates thing? PLEASE. Yeah, I agree with the previous comment. A horrible example. Bill Gates was one of the most lucky sons of bitches in the history of the planet. Bor…

Isn't it funny that all these people with incredible luck - every single one - also work their asses off?

The Chinese say "luck is a combination of preparedness and opportunity". You have to be prepared for an opportunity - but it may never come.

Re: How to Work Hard

#262

Post by romanhn »

ryandrake wrote: post #199
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be millionaires or billionaires Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now. It doesn’t even require a FAANG job or living in a super expensive city any more, just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adhere…

> Working hard in the mailroom or stocking shelves at a grocery store isn’t going to translate into a successful software career Equally, working hard as a software engineer isn't going to translate into the "uncapped salary" class of employment like CEO/CTO, VP, Founder, etc. There's a class ceiling where only a certain type of person gains entry. You can hard-work yourself to the bone writing code, but that "VP of…

This has nothing to do with class, similar to how declining a junior engineer for an architect role is not classist. A VP Engineering role is a senior management position, and being a fantastic programmer is not a reasonable transition point. It's a lot more reasonable to either make a lateral hire or promote internally from a lower level (say, Director). Tiny startups take more chances with whom they place into these positions out of necessity. At the end of the day though, vast majority of coders don't have the right set of skills to be a successful VP right there and then, as their day-to-day responsibilities do not meaningfully overlap. Doesn't mean they can't get there, but there's a career progression aspect to it which is certainly within their grasp. Vast majority of Directors and VPs work their way up, just like everyone else.

Re: How to Work Hard

#263

Post by CPLX »

warent wrote: post #99
giantg2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there are many people like me who work a job they hate, still don't get much time to enjoy life, all just to pay the bills. Less time on the planet might actually something many of us look forward to as life is full of pain and misery.

I hope this doesn't come across as insensitive but this is something I've never understood. If life feels like this, that seems like an indicator that it's time for some massive change. Usually people give some vague abstract response about why massive change is just unrealistic, indicating some fragile house of cards, while in a simultaneous act of cognitive dissonance dreaming of the day it topples. Perhaps we coul…

> Perhaps we could: sell everything and move into a van to live on the road; or get a cheap house boat; or declare bankruptcy and move into a Buddhist monastery; quit jobs to transition into a more mindless one that allows more free time; find a nonprofit organization in a different country to throw oneself into; teach English in a foreign country; etc...

Name one of those things you can do when you have family members depending on you.

To ignore that element just telegraphs a complete lack of understanding of the basic premise that underpins human existence.

Re: How to Work Hard

#264

Post by cloverich »

the_jeremy wrote: post #178
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be millionaires or billionaires Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now. It doesn’t even require a FAANG job or living in a super expensive city any more, just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adhere…

> just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adherence, and a deliberate effort to work on your career path. None of that requires working 12+ hours a day. I am one employee out of x,000 at my company. The difference between me giving 75% and me giving 150% (hours) seems very unlikely to affect the stock price in any meaningful way.

Do you think your colleagues can distinguish between someone who excel's and someone who does not? Do you think when they find some lucky opportunity, they would be more likely to reach out to the harder working colleagues they know or the lazier ones? It doesn't require 12 hour work days and we could exagerate ad nauseum, but generally speaking working hard and working smart earns you more than just a marginal impact on your current business -- it earns you a reputation that you can leverage towards greater opportunity.

Re: How to Work Hard

#265

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

No mention of the near slave labor in our agriculture system. No mention of the parents working two custodial jobs to provide for their children. No mention of the vast quantity of individuals working hard every day who don't get to become billionaires.

Re: How to Work Hard

#266

Post by packetlost »

Sr_developer wrote: post #238
packetlost wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is. If you don't retire (at 65~) with 2+ million in the bank you did something wrong (or had a rare cataclysmic event that drains your financial resource). I have a modest salary in the Midwest and should retire with $3m+ making reasonable contributions to a 401k, and that's if I don't change anything.

Or you could be served divorce papers from your partner and lose a substantial fraction of your net-worth and future income. Or you ( or a member of your family) could have a debilitating/rare disease and your insurance does not cover all the treatments for it. Or you could have been fired and opened your own business and your partners fleeced you out (ask me how I know) Or you live in a country where salaries are be…

> Or you could be served divorce papers from your partner and lose a substantial fraction of your net-worth and future income.

This definitely implies a questionable decision.

> Or you ( or a member of your family) could have a debilitating/rare disease and your insurance does not cover all the treatments for it

Sure, there could be rare cataclysmic events that drain you of your financial resources. That's not really on-topic to what the discussion is about though.

> Or you could have been fired and opened your own business and your partners fleeced you out (ask me how I know)

This is 100% a bad decision. Do not take money out of your 401k to start a business.

> Or you live in a country where salaries are below 45 k /y.

Then you likely live in a country where the CoL is significantly lower than in the US and the dynamics of retirement are very different. I'm speaking 100% from an American-centric point of view.

> You have a very naive, simplistic and privileged worldview so I hope for your own sake you never have to leave that cocoon.

I'm sorry my short internet comment on a technology forum is not comprehensive enough to account for all potential scenarios and nuance. I grew up in poverty, and I'm going to do everything I can to prevent myself from ending back up in that situation.

Re: How to Work Hard

#267

Post by rmah »

When I was younger, for some odd reason I thought it was important to convince people that hard work was important. But today, the more people I see commenting that "hard work" is essentially a scam -- or something to that effect -- the happier I become. It just means that there is less competition. Feel free to do your own thing, relax, skate along and enjoy life.

Re: How to Work Hard

#268

Post by teorema »

xyzelement wrote: post #171
minikites wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The real world doesn't work that way and using statistical outliers like Gates is disingenuous to the discussion about hard work and how it applies to normal people. Exactly. This is the central lie that sustains capitalism. Wealthy C-level executives get rich when the rest of us work hard, which is why they harp on "working hard" so much. There's no reason to work hard when all the benefits go to the already-wealth…

// There's no reason to work hard when all the benefits go to the already-wealthy above you, which is why they try to obscure that fact in as many ways as possible I have always been an employee and yet I am thrilled and thankful for the financial returns. Looking around my neighborhood, the same is true for most folks around me. There are not guarantees in life but if you have the combination of luck, skill and hard…

The question isn't whether a good employer-employee relationship is possible. the question is whether a horrible employee-employer relationship, one that has significant butterfly effects, is possible. More pertinently, the question is whether it's possible for someone to be in such complex circumstances that finding a good employer, or even job opportunity, is possible for that person.

The incel community isn't the right comparison maybe? A more apt comparison might be domestic abuse worldwide.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the assumptions being made here and elsewhere that what applies to one person's life applies at large. It's not just survivorship bias, it's some kind of egocentrism (in a perceptual sense) bias.

You yourself say you consider yourself lucky. Do you really? What about the unlucky ones?

It's easy to say "well for two decades it's worked out for me and hundreds of neighbors" forgetting that there's many more decades in a life, and billions of people.

Re: How to Work Hard

#269

Post by lm28469 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #84
giantg2 wrote: post #44

Hard work can be good, but only if you own a substantial capital interest in the company/result. But if you can hire people to do it for you, then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living. If you are just part of the labor and not the capital, then there really isn't an incentive to work harder than necessary to keep you job or earn a measly raise. If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in…

> If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be millionaires or billionaires Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now. It doesn’t even require a FAANG job or living in a super expensive city any more, just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adhere…

> but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now.

lol, the world isn't limited to SF and FAANG.

Software developers are the new factory workers, becoming millionaire is far from "common"

Re: How to Work Hard

#270

Post by rdiddly »

antiterra wrote: post #156

Reading about Bill Gates not taking a day off in his 20s doesn’t inspire me to work harder at all. If anything, it’s a miscalculation on Gates’s part, assuming he’d actually enjoy a day off. Would he have been materially less successful if he took a single day off in his 20s? Probably not. How about a week, or a week a year? Two weeks?

Good point. Gates isn't really even a good example because luck and happenstance played a big role. Possibly it's the same to some degree for most "outliers." People seem to minimize the effect of chance when writing how-to's, probably because "be lucky" isn't helpful advice, luck isn't something you control, and in some cases they might want to believe they themselves had a bigger role in their success than they did. Although hard work seems to be table stakes nonetheless.
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