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How to Work Hard

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Work Hard

#381

Post by nimih »

mjfl wrote: post #355
nineplay wrote: post #317

One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…

Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.

Probably not as shallow as not taking vacations so your boss can get some marginal % richer.

Re: How to Work Hard

#382

Post by gentleman11 »

danlugo92 wrote: post #380
gentleman11 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be unhireable in your 40s in tech. What do you do to face age discrimination later?

Freelance

Any tips for getting started with that? I found out about the up work etc sites but heard you should avoid them. Is that true?

Re: How to Work Hard

#383

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

edderly wrote: post #302

I find the mentions of Messi, Newton, Mozart and Wodehouse bizarre. The essay is similar to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour theory, whether you agree or not, at worst Gladwell is writing a journalistic think piece. Here though, is Graham credibly putting himself in the same category as Mozart? Dropping a reference to Patrick Collison, who no one outside of tech would have a clue who that is in the same breath as you n…

There's nothing wrong with drawing comparisons at different scales. If you're talking about how to accomplish something it's fine to talk about famous works as well as mundane works and everything in between. If you're seeing it as a measuring contest you're missing the point.

Re: How to Work Hard

#384

Post by mjfl »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #367
mjfl wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.

Perhaps you'd like to elaborate? I find the experience enormously enriching: learning new languages, making friends, gaining a new perspective. It's very valuable to me and I'd be curious to understand your position more, because right now it just comes across as sour grapes.

You don’t read a book by reading the first 10 pages. You don’t learn a culture by visiting a place for a week. You don’t make real friends in a weekend. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 4 years and I still feel like I don’t quite understand the culture here, feel like I haven’t quite experienced the city. I don’t understand how anyone could visit here on a vacation and think they’ve really “experienced” LA. This is even more true for foreign countries. There’s also something weird to me about going to a place with lots of poor people, “helping” them for a weekend, taking a picture, posting it on Instagram, leaving, and somehow getting a warm feeling from that. The common denominator is a shallowness- none of these experiences are as deep or meaningful as the people who do it claim to themselves and others.

Re: How to Work Hard

#385

Post by sjm »

unklefolk wrote: post #55

Regarding the "work hard in your 20s" advice. I took the approach that in your 20s you are still forming, still growing, still malleable. The experiences you have in your 20s will have a disproportionate effect on the kind of person you end up being. Therefore, you have to think about what environment, what experiences you want to foster that growth in. I would suggest optimizing for variety and new experiences is a…

I love this advice. I started working remotely in my 20s and negotiated to work 4 days a week, while traveling the world and deciding where I wanted to call home. I'd never trade that time spent growing up and finding myself, learning about other cultures and places, for any level of start-up monetary success.

Everyone is different and obviously has different priorities, ambitions, ideas of success, but that time spent not working my ass off has made me a more well-rounded person and I believe has contributed to a different kind of success and confidence now in my 30s.

Re: How to Work Hard

#386

Post by cvwright »

giantg2 wrote: post #177
pjfin123 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a $100,000 salary, $50,000 expenses, 30% tax rate, and 5% real returns you could put away $20,000 a year and have a million (2021) dollars in 26 years. Hardly easy but not out of the realm of possibility for a persistent and highly paid software developer.

But that still doesn't fit the paradigm presented by using Gates as an example. That you work really hard in your 20s and you're set for life.

I’m glad you phrased it like that, because I think it explains a lot of the talking past each other that’s going on here.

The article is not titled “How to be rich af”. It’s How to do Great Work.

So Gates is the example here because he built a huge company that made software used by almost every human on earth, and because every reader will know who he is.

I guess the author could have used RMS, or John Carmack, or Bill Joy, but that would have excluded people who aren’t into free software or gaming or Unix etc.

Re: How to Work Hard

#387

Post by dgb23 »

tgtweak wrote: post #188

This rhetoric furthered by Elon, Jack Ma and several others where working 7 days a week for 18 hours is "ideal" and that rest and relaxation are had at the expense of productivity/success is a real dangerous position. You know what happens to the majority of people when they get to a state of anxiety when relaxing and not working? Stress and burnout. Let's acknowledge that it may have been the path to success for SOM…

This is discussed in the article closer to the end, when it explains the balancing act of continuously recognizing the difference of productive, interesting work and tired, harmful work for the sake of work and showing off.

PG also uses himself as an example of how the type of work can impact actual productive hours: about 5 for programming/engineering and almost a full day for coordination and communication.

Re: How to Work Hard

#388

Post by [deleted] »

nimih wrote: post #381
mjfl wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.

Probably not as shallow as not taking vacations so your boss can get some marginal % richer.

[deleted]

Re: How to Work Hard

#389

Post by dragonwriter »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #157
ericmay wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's common when compared to other industries, though maybe not generally common. Admittedly I have no data to back up this hunch. If I'm wrong, please correct me, but my interpretation of what the person you're replying to was trying to get at was that modest savings from a 23+ year old software engineer, to the tune of $800/month or $10,000/year (this could be 401k match and contributions) will get you pret…

Exactly. The math is easy, but convincing people that becoming a millionaire is a matter of consistent moderate savings is still hard. $800/month is $9.6K per year. Approximately half of the maximum 401K contribution limit, so it can be tax-advantaged as well. If you can swing the full 401K maximum, you’ll hit the millionaire status even faster. Add some taxable savings and it can be done in a decade without getting…

> The math is easy, but convincing people that becoming a millionaire is a matter of consistent moderate savings is still hard.

Consistent moderate savings on top tier income, sure.

> $800/month is $9.6K per year. Approximately half of the maximum 401K contribution limit,

Also, approximately 1/3 of national median household disposable income after taxes and transfers (NB: not essential expenses, just taxes and transfers) in the United States.

> A married couple doing this together makes it even more achievable.

Yes, you can become a half-millionaire much faster than a millionaire—brilliant observation.

> Unless someone has maxed out their career options (unlikely) almost everyone in software could get a $10-20K bump in the coming year through negotiation or changing jobs.

“Software” includes a lot of different occupations, but most of the nob-management ones have median compensation around or substantially below $100K; so you are suggesting most people are leaving upward of 10-20% on the table. That's...unlikely.

> It just requires consistency over 20-30 years.

Asserting that that is easy in software would be more convincing if we were more than 20-30 years from a major industry crash, or had some structural guarantee of it not happening again.

Not completely convincing even then, but more convincing...

Re: How to Work Hard

#390

Post by M277 »

nineplay wrote: post #317

One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…

Genuine question, what if you're too poor to live the life you want in your 20s?
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