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Almost-Billionaires (2014)

lackingambition.com

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Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#31

Post by zz865 »

throwmeafter wrote: post #16

I can relate to this a lot. I am quite blessed to be multi talented and able to do various things easily. It gets to the point that I have too many hobbies and interests. But I think none of those hobbies can make me singularly focused. I become jack of all trades. I am a software engineer by trade, doing regular web app business line applications. Work in FAANG salary. On the side I play music on weekend (acoustic g…

> I don't know what else to do.

Kids man. Get on that train you wont have to worry about what to do in your spare time.

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#32

Post by [deleted] »

daenz wrote: post #27

For a long time, my plan was to "get rich" and then use my money to work full time on specific interesting tech ideas of mine. The tradeoff of time spent "getting rich", even if it took a decade, was worth it because of the free time I would have afterwards. With this in mind, I tried building various startup ideas and joining startups that could blow up big. Nothing really worked out, and I realized just how difficu…

[deleted]

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#33

Post by hardwaregeek »

daenz wrote: post #27

For a long time, my plan was to "get rich" and then use my money to work full time on specific interesting tech ideas of mine. The tradeoff of time spent "getting rich", even if it took a decade, was worth it because of the free time I would have afterwards. With this in mind, I tried building various startup ideas and joining startups that could blow up big. Nothing really worked out, and I realized just how difficu…

I've thought about this too. It reminds me of the blog post Do the Real Thing^[1]. Too many people do everything except the goal they actually want to accomplish. While getting rich is not "easy" per se, it's an easy goal to set that won't get you any criticism from most people. Often times the loftier goals are not as clean cut and direct, and require serious amounts of introspection.

[1]: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/05/04/do-the-real-thin...

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#34

Post by cko »

mettamage wrote: post #21
cko wrote: post #6

About losing all motivation after financial independence, I've experienced it for myself. I'm not rich but I know how to live simply. What do I do with my time? I spend so many hours consuming random content on the internet nowadays. I feel kind of bad for the girlfriend, who has to listen to me regurgitate the content back to her. People looking in from the outside scratch their heads. Don't I have hobbies? Passions…

Has financial independence been worth it?

I've never been a big spender and I likely never will be, so it's not like I sacrificed much in getting to this point. An 80% saving rate for 9 working years while being lucky to invest starting 2011 goes pretty far.

If financial independence is its own cage, I'm not willing to leave.

I can't say I regret it - perhaps I should have had something else cooking during my working years that doesn't include blogging about FI.

I suspect most people are like me (and not Elon) - without a carrot or stick, a kind of meaninglessness sets in.

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#35

Post by throwmeafter »

mettamage wrote: post #25
throwmeafter wrote: post #16

I can relate to this a lot. I am quite blessed to be multi talented and able to do various things easily. It gets to the point that I have too many hobbies and interests. But I think none of those hobbies can make me singularly focused. I become jack of all trades. I am a software engineer by trade, doing regular web app business line applications. Work in FAANG salary. On the side I play music on weekend (acoustic g…

It seems you didn’t study CS. If you did, then we studied different courses :P - Compilers - Game Engines - Gnarly multithreaded problems - Using IDA Pro to analyze X86-64 binaries - Computer systems and networks (e.g. NAND2Tetris) - Creating your own kernel - Creating your own database - Replicating meltdown and spectre. Repkicaring rowhammer attacks - Web attacks (check out hackthebox.eu) I did almost all of these…

I did study CS, but the courses weren't quite as deep. Out of all the topics above, I only did interpreters (compilers) and multi threading.

I don't think I wanna do HFT. Not interested in numbers or statistics. I don't wanna do data science/ML as well.

I was just thinking what can I do to spark joy in programming once again. Maybe I need some creative-type of programming work like creating useless toys or tools.

Leetcode is mostly just brute-forcing yourself through problems. I've done around 500 Leetcode problems, its not that hard after you gone past 200 problems, it gets repeated but different style. Yeah a lot of Leetcode problems mostly are just graph problems. I think Leetcode managed to distract me a bit but after a while I got bored as well, after all I already got the FAANG salary, no interest for me doing Leetcode anymore.

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#36

Post by throwmeafter »

zz865 wrote: post #31
throwmeafter wrote: post #16

I can relate to this a lot. I am quite blessed to be multi talented and able to do various things easily. It gets to the point that I have too many hobbies and interests. But I think none of those hobbies can make me singularly focused. I become jack of all trades. I am a software engineer by trade, doing regular web app business line applications. Work in FAANG salary. On the side I play music on weekend (acoustic g…

> I don't know what else to do. Kids man. Get on that train you wont have to worry about what to do in your spare time.

Yeah it seems that is inevitable.

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#37

Post by cko »

amin wrote: post #20
cko wrote: post #6

About losing all motivation after financial independence, I've experienced it for myself. I'm not rich but I know how to live simply. What do I do with my time? I spend so many hours consuming random content on the internet nowadays. I feel kind of bad for the girlfriend, who has to listen to me regurgitate the content back to her. People looking in from the outside scratch their heads. Don't I have hobbies? Passions…

Thank you for sharing Philip Greenspun's blogpost. I read his blog 10 years ago and now I rediscovered it through your comment. I think his post is even better than the one I originally submitted.

His old posts are so entertaining. His daily posts have taken on this 'political rants' flavor which isn't very interesting to me.

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#38

Post by martinmakesgame »

graderjs wrote: post #10

I think that some component of challenge is required to live an interesting life, keep you on your toes, and keep you close to living at your edge. I think some people will invent challenges for themselves, even arbitrary looking ones, if they are otherwise unchallenged at the time, just to keep themselves engaged. All kinds of things can pose significant challenges: relationships, learning a new language, travel (um…

I feel like much of the time when people think about giving a challenge a go it relates to the external world. Sport, hobbies, a software project.

For people who have financial independence, what about mastery of our internal world, our thoughts and emotions? If we can feel joy most of the time and get enjoyment from what we do, by looking after ourselves and helping others and living well, I'm not sure what else there is?

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#39

Post by xwolfi »

graderjs wrote: post #10

I think that some component of challenge is required to live an interesting life, keep you on your toes, and keep you close to living at your edge. I think some people will invent challenges for themselves, even arbitrary looking ones, if they are otherwise unchallenged at the time, just to keep themselves engaged. All kinds of things can pose significant challenges: relationships, learning a new language, travel (um…

I moved to Hong Kong from France with a passable english and no cantonese.

Life is a constant challenge, it's really a fun life to live: the language gap in English can be overcome but not Cantonese, finding a partner in such a different culture is also a lot of fun, you can move flat within the blink of an eye where you need weeks of pre approval in France, so you're always moving around, jobs are so plentiful your own boss tells you you should move elsewhere and get a payraise he can't give you - so you double your salary every X years. And now, there's a game to play on politics with China !!!

Honestly, I feel everyday at the center of the world, am always constantly busy and never have enough money. I can't feel like it's normal life like it was before, it's like an adventure book everyday :D

Re: Almost-Billionaires (2014)

#40

Post by graderjs »

martinmakesgame wrote: post #38
graderjs wrote: post #10

I think that some component of challenge is required to live an interesting life, keep you on your toes, and keep you close to living at your edge. I think some people will invent challenges for themselves, even arbitrary looking ones, if they are otherwise unchallenged at the time, just to keep themselves engaged. All kinds of things can pose significant challenges: relationships, learning a new language, travel (um…

I feel like much of the time when people think about giving a challenge a go it relates to the external world. Sport, hobbies, a software project. For people who have financial independence, what about mastery of our internal world, our thoughts and emotions? If we can feel joy most of the time and get enjoyment from what we do, by looking after ourselves and helping others and living well, I'm not sure what else the…

Yeah man that's a good idea. Like Maslow actualization hierarchy of needs. Somehow Marcus Aurelius meditations and stoics comes when you talk about that mastery. Could be one approach to it.
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