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People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

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Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#301

Post by glitchc »

paulgb wrote: post #130
nickthemagicman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates Musk and Jobs all came from rich families and were able to work on what they wanted to work on. The people going for prestigious institutions may actually need a job and and are optimizing for the best possible outcome.

Also, I think Jobs is the only one who could really be said to eschew prestige institutuons. Gates went to Harvard and Musk went to Wharton (and Queen's, which is the Canadian equivalent of ivy-league).

Queen’s is far from the Canadian equivalent of “Ivy League.” You must be from Queen’s.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#302

Post by jimbokun »

barry-cotter wrote: post #124
pkhamre wrote: post #60

> Should I learn to make pasta from scratch? No, that’s crazy. Nobody cares if you can make pasta from scratch and it’s not going to make any money. I think the author got it wrong here. He mixes the words "successful" with "fame". By learning a skill like making pasta from scratch, you can make yourself and other people happy. And if you go deep into the field, you can even make money on it, if that's important to y…

> And I learn my friends and family how to make proper pizza. teach, not learn. Also in English one says pizzas not pizzi. Everything else is perfect idiomatic English.

"Also in English one says pizzas not pizzi."

But in Italian I believe the plural form is pizze :)

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#303

Post by 0x445442 »

jophde wrote: post #250
0x445442 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I went through the exact same thing back in 2006 and I can tell you while fear of the unknown is real, it might have been the single best decision we ever made. Also, Phoenix is pretty reasonable cost of living wise and they have a growing number of opportunities tech wise. June 15 - Oct 15 suck but you get used to it.

Thanks, I will check out Phoenix. Assuming you are a little older since you moved in 2006, do you feel like the top end of your career has been held back at all by not being in one of the major tech hubs? What does your role look like now.

Not at all. In fact there's quite a decent tech scene being built around ASU in Tempe; Amazon among others are there.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#304

Post by duderific »

fourmyle wrote: post #218
tmh88j wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Going through the realization right now that I need to go “FANG” or get out of the Bay Area right now. Just got engaged and I have been looking at costs. I thought I could make a small family work here on $170k. That’s dead wrong. I would need at least $300k to make a family of 4 comfortable here. My wife and I both want her to stay at home and focus on the kids and she makes non tech money anyway. Even at this amoun…

> Startups in tech aren’t paying close to family raising salaries in the Bay.

They are mostly hiring fresh grads anyway, who won't be raising a family anytime soon, so it's not a huge problem for them.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#305

Post by mcguire »

fourmyle wrote: post #218
tmh88j wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Going through the realization right now that I need to go “FANG” or get out of the Bay Area right now. Just got engaged and I have been looking at costs. I thought I could make a small family work here on $170k. That’s dead wrong. I would need at least $300k to make a family of 4 comfortable here. My wife and I both want her to stay at home and focus on the kids and she makes non tech money anyway. Even at this amoun…

San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Metro Area:

https://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US41860-san-francis...

Median household income: $108k

Owner-occupied dwellings: 55%

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#306

Post by jimbokun »

bambax wrote: post #22

OT, and possibly unpopular here, but this really gets on my nerves: > In Paul Graham’s essay on, How to Do what You Love* he warns us about the prestige trap: (...) you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you’re going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies* PG's contempt for anything literary pervades in many of his essays, which may reveal some kind of unhealthy obsession, esp. for…

I took it as an offhand joke.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#307

Post by bambax »

philwelch wrote: post #219
bambax wrote: post #22

OT, and possibly unpopular here, but this really gets on my nerves: > In Paul Graham’s essay on, How to Do what You Love* he warns us about the prestige trap: (...) you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you’re going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies* PG's contempt for anything literary pervades in many of his essays, which may reveal some kind of unhealthy obsession, esp. for…

Novels don't contain some otherwise ineffable TRUTH (in all-capital letters), they're just made-up stories for entertainment. Which is a perfectly fine thing for people to work on and to enjoy. If anything this bizarre attitude that literature "may be the only way to gain an actual comprehension of human nature" might be an artifice of people's desire for success and prestige--puffery motivated by a personal insecuri…

I do have kids. Did they teach me something about human nature? Not that I noticed. I still go to the bar often. Do I learn anything about human nature there? A little, yes, but not much (in essence, that people act stupid when drunk. They can be very funny though). Do I travel? Yes. What does that teach me? Mostly, that there's no place like home.

I maintain you will learn a lot more, and a lot faster, by reading Shakespeare, or Flaubert, than by talking with any number of people.

It's likely that putting yourself in "extreme situations" will teach you something about yourself, and by extension, about human nature in general. But you may die learning. There must be a better way.

If you think novels are "made-up stories for entertainment", chances are you didn't read many of them, or many good ones.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#308

Post by bambax »

cambalache wrote: post #247
bambax wrote: post #22

OT, and possibly unpopular here, but this really gets on my nerves: > In Paul Graham’s essay on, How to Do what You Love* he warns us about the prestige trap: (...) you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you’re going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies* PG's contempt for anything literary pervades in many of his essays, which may reveal some kind of unhealthy obsession, esp. for…

You are being very dogmatic with your definition of literature. Literature, as practiced today, is written art. Most of it (and even the best part of it) is just tales created for the simple pleasure to tell a story, that's it. Yes, Dostoevski, Kafka, Tolstoy, et al had this supreme talent to express "truths" about the human condition, truths which perhaps belong to the fabled-Jungian "collective unconscious", but th…

Literature, like any form of art, should be rated using the best works, not the worst ones, or the most common ones, or the most recent ones. Who cares if there are a million bad books. That's not the point at all.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#309

Post by mcguire »

beamatronic wrote: post #191
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing the same in SFBA would probably require at least $250K. Maybe more. Why? Each child might consume, generously, an extra 5k of food and 2.5k of clothes and other inputs per year. This is an increment of $30k on top of housing. For housing, you could add one or at most two bedrooms for four children. This does substantially raise housing costs, but there are still places in Sunnyvale for $1M or just above that…

Cheap homes in the Bay Area have terrible schools. You’ll need to factor in private school if you go that route. That’s $25k per kid per year.

Sounds like the Bay Area is a horrible place to live.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#310

Post by jophde »

0x445442 wrote: post #303
jophde wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I will check out Phoenix. Assuming you are a little older since you moved in 2006, do you feel like the top end of your career has been held back at all by not being in one of the major tech hubs? What does your role look like now.

Not at all. In fact there's quite a decent tech scene being built around ASU in Tempe; Amazon among others are there.

I was surprised to see that Amazon (Twitch) is in SLC as well. What sort of paycut would I be expecting. I think my current gig would probably make me go from $170-$150k if I went remote. I assume the top end wouldn't be what it is in the Bay Area but maintaining > $150k is reasonable with 10+ years of experience?
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