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Sergey Brin's Unretirement

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Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#351

Post by james_marks »

burner420042 wrote: post #113
marcus_holmes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're describing my father. Now that he's retired his lack of hobbies is really catching up to him. His only hobby has been working and I've noted this about him since I was an adolescent and decided then as something I would not emulate. A few times I've quit a FAANG job with no plan for after other than to wander, and both times the lack of professional competition meant not just coasting horizontally but that I w…

This is especially true around NYC, SF, LA. The culture is built around accomplishment and work identity.

Much less true in other places (e.g. Midwest), where community / taking care of others is valued.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#352

Post by foobarian »

phrotoma wrote: post #226
jaapz wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That is I guess the point the person you were replying to was trying to make. It's also not really weird for a job to become such a big part of your identity, when people spend most of their time at work or at home thinking about their work.

A couple years ago a friend of mine mentioned that he had known another mutual friend of ours for many years, much longer than I would have guessed. I asked him "what does he do?" and he thought for a moment before saying "you know ... I have no idea, it has never come up". Definitely one of his more interesting qualities.

I don't know if this is acceptable in the US, but I always found it distasteful when people ask about your job 30 seconds into meeting you. I think it's much more polite to talk about generic stuff until jobs or skills come up naturally. Sometimes, they just never do, and that's fine. Need to know!

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#353

Post by vjk800 »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #26

Sergey unretires, Gemini suddenly becomes the top LLM (for a week or two at least) Google has made some subtle moves that a lot of folks missed, possibly with Sergey's influence. Like hiring back Noam Shazeer, who practically invented the backbone of the technology. It's good to have folks with presumptions of being scientists actually run companies for once. That being said, I wish his ex-wife hadn't spent her milli…

I've been a huge sceptic of the whole AI hype since the beginning now. Whenever I've tried any of the AI tools, the results have just been underwhelming. However, two weeks ago I tried Gemini (the pro version) and have been using it for various, random tasks and questions since then, and I've been pretty impressed.

There seems to be much less hallucination of facts than in other tools I've tried and whenever Gemini makes assumptions on stuff I didn't explicitly specify in the prompt, it says so. The answers also always have nice structure: it starts with a short and concise version, then gives me options and more details and considerations.

I also like the feature that I can make it remember facts across chats. I'm a physicist by training and I've told Gemini so, so now every time I ask something, it gives me an answer perfectly tailored for a physicist (often with mathematical formulas, etc.).

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#354

Post by ilamont »

kshacker wrote: post #347
dhdaadhd wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that’s a real concern of yours, maybe park what you think you’ll need in money market funds / gold (FX hedge)?

The typical FIRE requires compounding growth. You start with portfolio worth 25 years of expenses but if expenses keep on growing due to inflation and portfolio shrinks because of expenses and zero growth, it can get hairy quite fast. There are various ways to look at numbers but my thumb rule is 4% inflation 9% growth keeps you perennially happy with some choppy years of course. 4% inflation 9% growth implies you ca…

Typical FIRE also requires access to affordable healthcare. In the US that is going away with ACA subsidies.

Five years ago I paid for “market rate“ insurance through my business for my family because we did not qualify for ACA subsidies. The cost was about $40,000 per year.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#355

Post by ebergen »

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…

My grandmother said it like this, "sometimes people need to help more than people need help" in the context of a much younger me asking effectively why she bothered (I forget the context). That has stuck with me for years.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#356

Post by abraxas »

throw101010 wrote: post #244
weinzierl wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " [..] Risking a stereotype. In my experience from traveling the world it's a tell-tale sign for being from a culture heavily influenced by the Protestant work ethic. Introduce yourself like that in Spain, Italy, or Brazil and you'll get strange looks. On the flip side, I've found that people who do not define themselves through their work primarily often do so…

In a business/formal context it would be normal to introduce yourself like this in the countries you've mentioned. Do people introduce themselves like that in informal contexts in the USA? If so that's indeed a bit weird, and more a topic you would start talking about for small talk or if someone asked about it.

Americans don't usually have friends. Just "contacts". Working age "parties" are often just cloaked networking events.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#357

Post by [deleted] »

chihuahua wrote: post #97

About a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour indoor cycling workout at home…

[deleted]

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#359

Post by Schiendelman »

CatMustard wrote: post #306
glimshe wrote: post #237

After FIRE I started building my own small to medium projects. Emulators, tools, games, some available to the public. I tell people I'm a full time software developer who does remote consulting gigs (the last not true but justifies my FIRE income)

Would you mind me asking what age you were when you retired? I'm 28 and five years into my boring corpo career and need something to lust after lol

If you want something to lust after, I recommend you find a project you care about getting involved in right now, literally today. The things that make us happy are doing something we care about every day, not seeking long-term goals.
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