Careless People

Post by technol0gic » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

keerthiko wrote: post #178

technothrasher wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer science in high school. When getting to college and finding people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly excited to finally find such people, not scared away.

in my experience, people who grow up as the biggest fish in a small pond (whether concerning just fields they care about, or in general) are always 99% of the time, one of these two when they end up a middling fish in the big pond: like you, happy to find peers and inspiring exemplars to collaborate with and learn from, or those who hate that they are not the best anymore. the former group probably leads the healthie…

Post by apercu » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #276

apercu wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Who says it's limited to the ultra wealthy? My network has a lot of people who have net worths of under $5-6 million USD and a lot of them are highly insecure. I've witnessed several of them going out of their way to tear down people who are fitter or more attractive than them as well. Look at the manbaby actions through that lens and you m…

Hmm. So highly insecure people have to "win" (however it's defined at the moment) in order to bury their insecurities for the moment, but ultra wealthy individuals 1) have more power, so they can make it so that they win more often, and 2) are noticed more (or at least by a wider circle), so when they do it, a lot more people pay attention.

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

nartho wrote: post #267

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a number of wealthy folks, many of them, actually really decent people. They deserve their wealth, and I have no issues with it. They tend to have somewhat different value systems than I do, but we get along, anyway. I have learned that one word they pretty much never hear, is "No." Even the very best of them, gets used to having every whacked-out fever dream their Id squeezes out, treated like God's Word. Peo…

How wealthy are the wealthy folks you know ? a quant or faang principal engineer making 1.5-2 million/year is wealthy and worked hard to get there (although, luck is still a big part of it) yet they're much closer in wealth than a fast food employee than they are to the super rich. Someone who has accumulated 50 millions of assets is wealthy, yet they'll never afford a super yacht or the lifestyle that billionaires c…

Post by tayo42 » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 2:30 PM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #9

> There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have th…

Post by esafak » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

exe34 wrote: post #105

vintermann wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also no shortage of people willing to tell Zuck and Musk (from a relatively safe distance, like in public here at HN) that they're insecure manbabies born into wealth who don't deserve a fraction of the power they've managed to claw themselves. I suspect that we, and the desire to show us wrong (or at the least spite us) are also part of the equation for why the current crop of billionaires are as they are. N…

For £1M/year after tax, I'd tell Zuck anything he wants to hear from 9 to 5, excluding weekends, bank holidays and 28 days of annual leave. We all have a price really.