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People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

bennettnotes.com

281–290 of 375 posts

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#281
post #48

> She would say, “Dave, you only got one award this year. Remember when you won seven last year?” > If it wasn’t that, maybe it was also because I am gay. My mother was never really happy about this Ah, the absolute pinnacle of neurosis parenting. That's a solid one-two punch to the child's psyche, which gives them a drive to please while at the same time ensuring it can never be met. Well done; you ensured your chil…

The author is very deliberate about blaming his mother for negative outcomes in his life. Despite the likely case (guessing here) of the mom loving him unconditionally, but wanting to imbibe ambition in him. The phenomenon of disliking one's parents for being too harh is much more prevalent in the West. And yet, parents in China and India are harder on their kids, while those kids are growing up to loving their paren…

> The phenomenon of disliking one's parents for being too harh is much more prevalent in the West

Citation needed.

If you look a few comments up you'll see some people not from the West discussing harsh parents. They're also affected negatively.

Your idea that people complaining about how they weren't parented is them simply disliking their loving parents is not well thought out.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#282
post #168

From David Brooks: "I’ve been thinking about the difference between the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being — whether you are kind, brave,…

The eulogy virtue is what we need to make the society a better place. A resume virtue is what we need to sustain ourselves. One is closer to ideal, one is closer to reality. Balance is the only thing we need for a healthy and happy life.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#283
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 350k is a safe "lower end" baseline from which to build a rainy day fund, though.

Is this a joke? $350k annual income puts you in the top 1% of earners in the US. Surely you don't believe less than 1% of people in the US can live comfortably and have a safety net, do you?

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Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#284
post #282
post #168

From David Brooks: "I’ve been thinking about the difference between the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being — whether you are kind, brave,…

The eulogy virtue is what we need to make the society a better place. A resume virtue is what we need to sustain ourselves. One is closer to ideal, one is closer to reality. Balance is the only thing we need for a healthy and happy life.

Mr Money Mustache said in his YC interview, “don’t start a blog, start a cult.” This sounds like the sort of (positive) cult to found. Using peer support and reinforcement to better enable success in living a virtuous life.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#285
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scholarships are a thing?

Nah, I didn't even need scholarships. The financial aid was really good for Stanford undergrad. My brother went to a state school undergrad, then got grad degrees from Harvard and Georgetown. He's almost done paying off an assload of debt, but it's meant he's had to work as a consultant these last ten years.

I think everybody thought you were talking about "fancy private" elementary/high schools, which is definitely not a middle class thing. Private college/university is a totally different matter.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, there are still some places to work without such drawbacks but shhhh - they're a secret.

Can you tell me? Asking for a friend

My friend would also like to know

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#287

This post also resonated with me, especially the quote from /r/cscareerquestions > Got an awesome internship at an interesting company? Well, it wasn’t FAANG, so who cares? Got a FAANG internship? Well it wasn’t one of the good FAANGs, so if you really think about it, you really didn’t accomplish anything. Got into a “Good FAANG”? Well, the other intern works on his own startup idea when he goes home. Why aren’t you…

I've noticed something about subreddits that focus on lifestyle design and center around advice: they all start to converge on fairly narrow groupthink. /r/personalfinance is all about super frugal living and passive investing. In /r/backpacking, the general advice is to go as light as possible and spend money reducing weight. /r/cscareerquestions is about the leetcode grind and getting into FAANG. /r/malefashionadvi…

>I've noticed something about subreddits that focus on lifestyle design and center around advice: they all start to converge on fairly narrow groupthink.

To me, this is a novel insight, thanks :) I have been wondering what has been causing my frustration towards these kind of subreddits. But this makes it clear that the problem is a lack of actual discussion and no challenges made against the assumptions of the in-group.

I have noticed this is a broad trend on a lot of the internet; the internet has a lot of data, but most of that data is repeated a lot. If you want new and interesting information you often have to look elsewhere (e.g. books).

A particularly annoying example to me is the ausfinance subreddit which is obsessed with a housing market crash that they seem to think will definitely happen tomorrow. Anything pointing in that direction immediately gets extrapolated as the horseman of the Australian housing market apocalypse, nevermind the fact it was trending the opposite direction yesterday.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#288
post #184

“People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.” Marcus Aurelius "19. You may be unconquerable, if you enter into no combat in which it is not in your own control to conquer. When, therefore, you see anyone eminent in honors, or power, or in hig…

one of many great lessons in that book. happy to have finally read it after it came up on here a few times.

I have found it a real slog (challenge), and gave up after chapter 3. I think the lack of context made it a bit dull for me. Maybe I should try an annotated text to see if holds my attention better!

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#289
post #207

I'm a little jaded from years of seeing posts like this, to the point that now they don't seem quite as much like "see, you don't need all that", but instead read more like "See, I've redefined the rules and evaluations -- I'm the winner now!"

I see your point but at the same time - why is redefining the rules a bad thing? Why should people be obligated to evaluate themselves against criteria that’s popular or set by other people? Why does that actually matter?

It isn't a bad thing, and there is nothing wrong with that. Yet it isn't always conveyed at face value.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#290
post #221
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the idea that developers should have blogs. I see the advantage in using it to market yourself, but I write code for a living not blogs. There isn't that much information that I feel the need to share with the world, and for the things I do (that would be career related), I don't usually have the time and motivation to write them up properly.

> I hate the idea that developers should have blogs. I hate the reality that developers can't easily develop a portfolio of work because generally their work is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the companies they work for, and can't be legally shared outside of those places. So we have github, but even that is suspect and many potential employers don't look at it, unless you are some well known contributor or founder…

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