Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sergey Brin's Unretirement

inc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 499 posts

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#321

Post by mikert89 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #310
arjie wrote: post #27

It's been great to see. Google's AI efforts have truly seen a resurgence in quality with his return. What I enjoy about this article is the fact that it presents a view that now seems relatively rare: the idea that you may have a purpose beyond pleasure and that pursuing that purpose is a more fulfilling pleasure than any comfort you could give yourself. I think that kind of thing strikes many people. Sometimes like…

I don't buy this narrative (notwithstanding that great commencement speeches are almost always hyperbole). The way I see it Sergey HAD to come back or risk the poorly managed mess that is google completely drop the AI leadership . It proves again that all thats good in Google happened exclusively because of the two founders and that their CEO is not an effective leader at all.

Basically yeah, a lot of people just keeping the lights on

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#322

Post by rwmj »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #94
cuttothechase wrote: post #47

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " that suddenly having nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good identity. I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google. But…

Make up a name, print some business cards, and be a "director" (or whatever title you like) of your own Potemkin company.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#323

Post by le-mark »

scotty79 wrote: post #183
cuttothechase wrote: post #47

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

[flagged]

English surnames would seem to indicate being identified by one’s work has a long history (smith, miller, cooper, …)

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#324

Post by aatd86 »

black_knight wrote: post #171
aatd86 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was in your spot at some point I've heard. Nothing is impossible.

Dreams and hopes are powerful weapons of suppression. Everyone is a millionaire just down on their luck at the moment… In our advanced society, with incredible automation, we should _all_ have vastly more freedom and control over our time.

This is very true but the path to that seems to require a weird optimization where it is concentrated among a few before being being widespread. Technologic improvements should help. Help decouple time and money.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#325

Post by compsciphd »

cuttothechase wrote: post #47

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

he should have carved into the parking lot "Brooks Was Here"

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#326

Post by DannyBee »

senorqa wrote: post #114

> Sergey Brin’s lesson for the rest of us Is it? I know people who are really happy without doing much in their retirement. Probably because they weren't workaholics. To my mind, if one doesn't have hobbies during the working years, then they will struggle to find purpose when they retite.

This is kinda right, kinda wrong. I was a workaholic - I was a VP of engineering at Google. I'm doing fine retired.

You don't have to find purpose when you retire

At all.

Instead, you just have to be willing to face each day when the day has no expectations. You can do anything you want, and decide you love it, hate it, whatever. You can do it again the next day, or not. you can hate it one day and love it the next. It's completely up to you.

For some people, this lack of structure is crushing. For others, it's liberating.

It's similar to having spent significant time alone as an adult - some people can't deal with it, some can.

I meet a lot of people who are like "I haven't figured out what i will do when i retire". These are the people i worry about, because there isn't anything to figure out. They want a structure that probably won't exist. They will likely tire of trying to force their own structure on it, and seek structure elsewhere (IE work).

In the past 3 weeks i've done the following:

Building powered paper airplanes with the kids

Mentoring high school and college students

Advising startups.

Woodworking

Hacking on CNC machines

Hacking on minecraft mods.

Hacking on compilers.

Playing video games.

and a lot more.

The next 3 weeks may be the same or different, depending on lots of things (mood, energy, schedules).

There are also days i do nothing cool or useful at all, and feel great (and unapologetic - nobody gets to judge my retirement but me, my spouse, and my kids :P) about it

The world is really big, and has lots to do. You just have to be able to drive yourself because you aren't being forced into doing anything at all.

In the end - for some i also feel it's similar to divorce - lots of people don't get divorced because they don't want to deal with being alone.

Retirement similarly forces you to spend a lot of time with yourself (even if you have an SO and even if they are retired). Lots of people don't like that, at all, for various reasons. Work lets them ignore it.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#327

Post by yourapostasy »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #137

It sounds similar to people living long-term on welfare in Denmark. They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of meaning.

> They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of meaning.

I find it difficult to relate to such worlds. I make up all kinds of explanations like, "well, it must be because while they have food and housing, they don't have any funds to entertain themselves". Or, "well, it must be because they simply haven't had sufficient education to reach an activation level where the higher tiers of Maslow's come into their line of sight".

And then I read about plenty of counter-examples, like wealthy offspring living the textbook aimless/dissolute/pick-your-adjective life, or the ennui of able-bodied welfare recipients with quite reasonable spending cash from generous Scandinavian welfare regimes when one considers the mind boggling amount of free media, free libraries, free parks, free entertainment in general in the developed world. Perhaps this is just part of their human condition for people suffering from this malaise.

And here I sit, drowning in ideas of what I would be interested to pursue to know our beautiful universe if only I had the time. So much so I write them down into a file just to quiet the cacophony in my head like a dog seeing squirrels everywhere he looks, just so I can get real work done on a timely basis, haha.

When once asked whether I'd ever be bored with eternal youth and boundless resources, I immediately replied an eternity is still too little time to satisfy my curiosity.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#328

Post by jjice »

largbae wrote: post #287

From observing my parents and other elders, it isn't "work" in the job sense that we all need. It is feeling needed by others. This can be accomplished by being an active grandparent, charity(active volunteering not just allocating money), open-source contribution, mentoring. It can be something other than a job. It just can't be done alone. We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other. Luckily there a…

Totally, it's "work" in the sense that you're doing something to contribute to the world, even if it's something small or mostly unimpactful. Those kinds of things provide internal fulfillment, in my experience.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#329

Post by mycall »

fragmede wrote: post #107
siliconc0w wrote: post #79

Sergey is brilliant but it's really the lightsaber that is super voting shares that make him uniquely empowered to slash through Google's immense bureaucracy.

I think being the founder of Google gives him more political capital at Google than anything on paper. As a controlling member of the board there's a variety of things he can do with that hammer, but just simply being who he is, not even just on the org chart, has got to be worth way more.

What you describe is a benevolent dictator.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#330

Post by zippyman55 »

alexjplant wrote: post #110
dmitrygr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people asked "what do you do?" I found that outside of CA, this is asked a lot less often. In CA people ask that so they can mentally rank you as worth their time or not. Elsewhere, people ask you how your weekend went, or how your family is. One of the awesome parts of moving to Austin was not hearing that as the first question as much.

> I found that outside of CA, this is asked a lot less often. I moved to California a few years ago from the Least Coast (insert shaka, surfer, wave emojis here) and had multiple other out-of-towners in the same situation as me say the exact opposite at a party. They all were adamant that they had yet to hear "what do you do [for a living]?" since they'd moved as they did ad nauseum when they lived on the other side…

Never hear that question either. I don’t ask it either. I’ve actually been pretty successful but asking that question seems to rank someone on a scale that does not reflect their amazing contributions to society.
Post reply on HN