if i had a 1 in 100 shot of becoming google I'd just do it 100 times. I'm pretty sure its more like 99.99999%
Apart from the math being off there, who do you know who has the time and resources to try and start 100 startups? Most people barely have the time and resources for 1.
Yeah so i didn't put it well, but that was literally my point. Feels very "developer brain" of us to say "thats technically possible, heres the math and you're thinking about it wrong" and not consider the human aspect.
> Does anything good come from encouraging kids to think that they will manage to sail through life as a successful business founder rather than an employee? I would imagine dreaming big is pretty good for children. A big reason for why I'm optimistic in life is because I have hope for achieving something. I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe…
> I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe and should stick to climbing the corporate ladder. Such an uninspiring take, this one. Depressing. That is depressing! But also not what the parent comment said -- you seem to have accidentally taken a much more severe meaning from that comment (than I did, at least). The top-level comment is just talking…
The fundamental disagreement I have with the post is the idea that you're foolish for doing something because it probably won't pan out.
So what? Why be so terrified of failure? I think it's better if kids learn to be brave, and pick themselves up in life after they stumble. Living life in utter fear of failing at anything seems like a terrible way for your children to start off life. Besides for which few things are better learning experiences than trying to start your own company.
And who knows. They might even succeed beyond their wildest dreams, as some do.
I'm wondering if there is a research about which percentile of these two groups became rich: People who started a company vs People who worked for Tech companies.
Unless you're very early (and/or very lucky), you can't get "rich" (i.e., can choose never to work again and can invest in many other things) as an employee (though of course a highly-paid employee can become very well off and comfortable). Yes you need to be lucky to get super-rich as a founder too, but you have a lot more control, i.e., you make the primary decisions that determine whether the company will make goo…
What is "rich"?
There are tens of not hundreds of thousands of people who could retire comfortably after working at Google, Facebook, Apple, MSFT for a decade during their growth years. How many startup founders can do that?
Sure, becoming a billionaire is a different story but who cares?
I wonder, over the course of a career in startups, what is the probability that you'll either found or be an early employee at one that makes up (financially) for the rest? Not hugely rich, but better than "normal" career. Given it's a repeated game, and you gain knowledge at each round, I'd say the odds are probably pretty good that the highly dynamic / fast learning environment of early companies yields returns ove…
Well you can calculate that somewhat, right. If you're "top-1%" in skill, enough to get hired at Google (even if you did it for the badge), then did you or did you not start a business? Google: 180,000 employees. Let's say including ex-employees 250,000 These started 1,200 companies, according to the only source I could find. These collectively apparently made their founders ~20 billion. Let's say (heh) that it's a p…
The number of billionaires yc has produced in 4000 or so startups (with many future billionaires in the pipeline) suggests your numbers are off by, what, 100x? If we assume that a Google Engineer is as qualified as a yc founder, which isn’t quite true but still.
“Learn to code and surround yourself with smart people” is good advice, but it’s kind of funny that Google was used as the example of peak success for a group of 15 year olds. I’m fairly willing to bet that most of them think of Google as boring and old, and not exciting or innovative. How to start TikTok or Minecraft would have probably been a more inspiring example.
Folks underestimate how incredibly skilled Notch was and is. Unfortunately ludum dare has taken down its historical compo pages, but I remember that he had several games built from scratch in 24 hours which were mind boggling impressive. One had a full 3d rendering engine implemented in Dartlang written in 48 hours. Another was a minecraft top down rpg clone. Dude is the Bobby Fischer of tech
Notch was a great hacker, but not a good coder. His code is hacks upon hack all the way down.
> maybe you can just say if you've got enough to pull $100,000/year, you're good on healthcare too. You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan. You’ll be burning nearly half of that (and spending all your free time trying to keep hospitals and insurers taking even more) if one of you gets cancer—or, if it’s you who gets can…
My budget includes the premiums and the individual out of pocket max. If that's not good enough, what number am I supposed to be looking at? My with a spouse budget is just 2x the individual budget, family out of pockets are usually around 2x individual in my neck of the woods, so that doesn't make a big difference; if there's kids, then it would, but the modelling there gets tricky because you've got to figure out w…
Some people think that if you can't spend a million dollars a year on healthcare for 50 years, you are poor. In a sense they are right, because nothing is more valuable than life, but if you lower your expectations beyond the tippy top 0.1%, and take up a nice hobby like skydiving or motorcycling, you can get by with a lot less.
While agreed the chances are still low, if you joined Tesla or Nvidia in the last 10 years and especially before 2020, you very well and likely are rich if you're still working at either and kept all your stock. Hell if you joined Facebook last year and got in when the stock was around 100, your initial equity grant just 5x.
You could have been investing in Nvidia the whole time. Decision inertia means that employees often don't sell vested stock, and end up being lucky. Similarly, external investors aren't willing to put 30-50% of their networth into one bet and therefore miss out on the kind of luck that can set them up for life. There is nothing that a lowly engineer at Tesla or Nvidia knows, that can't be found out by an external inv…
> It's not about joining Tesla or Nvidia early. It's about betting on them.
It's also possible to bet on Tesla/Nvidia and lose. Badly.
I dislike this sort of advice for teenagers. You may as well tell them to be rock stars or professional sports people. Tell the kids to study, don't sell them an unobtainable dream
The core advice is to produce instead of consume.
And the second one is to study.
However, packaging it under a "being a mere employee is lame" mantra... Is lame!
But I'm curious. Why do you think that doing something which is maybe not study related is a bad idea?
("Maybe not" because ie. john Mayer is both a rockstar and a Berkelee grad)