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The Art of Money Getting

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Re: The Art of Money Getting

#41

Post by fullStackOasis »

an0malous wrote: post #37
n0on3 wrote: post #22

Oh boy, this did not age well. Most cases of “extremely successful” people I can think of exhibit the opposite of these core principles: have no “knack” whatsoever, except not giving a shit about whatever they pretend to be their focus while only focusing on personal return; they contract clusterfucks of debts, just usually never end up having to repay them personally; very few of them even know what “going all in” m…

Yes Jeff Bezos was famously passionate about retail and Marc Benioff would build customer relationship management solutions using paper and glue as a young lad

As a counterpoint, there are plenty of people who are passionate about their hobbies and make no money on them at all. I have some doubts that there's a correlation between passion and money-making. Except, perhaps, that it helps to be passionate about money-making in order to be successful at it.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#42

Post by galangalalgol »

an0malous wrote: post #36
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #5

> They take whatever job pays and spend decades fighting upstream. I suspect that this affects a lot of folks in tech. There's a lot of money to be made, so people get into it. They don't really like what they do, so it's always a chore. Their work often shows it, too. I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. I like the Integrit…

This is conflated by the fact that most people start to enjoy things that give them a lot of money and prestige. Otherwise everyone would be in playing sports and making art, the things kids do before they care about money and prestige

I started programming at 5, making it do what I wanted it to provided dopamine. I never found a sport I enjoyed. I do like painting though. I doubt very many people get into sanitation because they love making toilets clean, but even there I'm sure a few do. Before 2000 I think it was pretty normal for people to select software as a career without considering the compensation as a factor. It wasn't excessively better than other similar choices for one.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#44

Post by andrepd »

idiotsecant wrote: post #31
wiseowise wrote: post #29

Nobody is going to seriously discuss moneymaking tips from 1880, right? …right?

Because people now are so wildly different from people 150 years ago? We are exactly the same, with slightly shinier toys.

Many things in the world are radically different, and the economy especially is a different beast. The point about avoiding debt for example, is hardly relevant for businesses (even if it's generally good advice for personal debts.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#45

Post by fullStackOasis »

n0on3 wrote: post #22

Oh boy, this did not age well. Most cases of “extremely successful” people I can think of exhibit the opposite of these core principles: have no “knack” whatsoever, except not giving a shit about whatever they pretend to be their focus while only focusing on personal return; they contract clusterfucks of debts, just usually never end up having to repay them personally; very few of them even know what “going all in” m…

Indeed. This book strikes me as yet another "guide to making money" which was created in order to make money for the author. It is all just his opinion, without any evidence. One might do the exact opposite, and make money as well.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#46

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

an0malous wrote: post #36
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #5

> They take whatever job pays and spend decades fighting upstream. I suspect that this affects a lot of folks in tech. There's a lot of money to be made, so people get into it. They don't really like what they do, so it's always a chore. Their work often shows it, too. I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. I like the Integrit…

This is conflated by the fact that most people start to enjoy things that give them a lot of money and prestige. Otherwise everyone would be in playing sports and making art, the things kids do before they care about money and prestige

I think they enjoy the money and prestige; not the work, itself.

I get a real joy out of developing software. I have, for all my adult life. The fact that it paid well, was gravy.

I do feel that I was incredibly fortunate to have landed into a field that I already loved. I guess that my loving it, made me much better at it.

Of course, there were lots of "friction points," along the way. Working for myself, in retirement, has removed all of them. The one thing that I miss, is working in a team.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#47

Post by tianqi »

One of my thoughts is that it's not easy for people to discover what they're truly good at.

The reason is that if you're truly good at something, if you have a real talent for it, then it's easy for you to do it well from the start, so you rarely judge it or realize how good you are. Just as no one thinks they're good at their heartbeat and breathing. Because you have the talent to be good at them from the beginning, so you don't put in much effort to learn them, and therefore you don't realize how difficult they are.

I think a real way to discover your strengths is not to reflect on what you do well, but on what makes you most frustrated when you see others doing it. It feels like an experienced driver watching a student drive and getting frustrated: Why can't you do such a simple action correctly? If you find yourself constantly wondering on something: why can't everyone just do this and it's so simple? You can remind yourself that that one might not be simple at all, but rather that you possess a genuine talent for it.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#48

Post by lugu »

amunozo wrote: post #2

The hardest thing is to know what's your best fit. Any advice?

Ask people who know you well what you are talented for. Oftentimes we don't see it ourselves. As you get good at something, it become easier, and you think of it as a given. On the opposite, we tend to over appreciate what is difficult for us.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#49

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

draftsman wrote: post #32
UncleOxidant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career. Same. Claude/Gemini/DeepSeekV4/Qwen3.6 are enabling me to do way more experimentation than I could do on my own. 10X at least. Not getting paid for any of it, but that's OK, getting paid imposes limitations on what you can work on and imposes responsibilities that I don't care to have a…

Do you find joy in using LLMs to write software? I tried using Claude/Cursor/CodeX/etc. for personal projects and experimentation, and I found no joy in it. I learned nothing, and when my MVPs were complete, I only had a shallow understanding of how the code that powered them worked.

I do, but I also use LLMs in a manner that seems drastically different, from most folks here.

I use the standard $20/ChatGPT Pro sub, and run Thinking 5.5 as a chat interface.

I use it like a "trusted personal advisor," as opposed to a "black box employee."

I'm intimately involved in almost every step of the development process. Most of what I ask from the LLM, is function-length snippets.

It's made a huge difference in the velocity and scope of my work.

I have learned that I need to be very careful, though. The LLM sometimes really borks things, and I have to rip out the garbage, and rewrite the code, myself. I can't even imagine the quality of "vibe-coded" software.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#50

Post by smilespray »

idiotsecant wrote: post #31
wiseowise wrote: post #29

Nobody is going to seriously discuss moneymaking tips from 1880, right? …right?

Because people now are so wildly different from people 150 years ago? We are exactly the same, with slightly shinier toys.

This can't be stated often enough. Society, diet, education and technology changes, but we've biologically had the same makeup for thousands of, if not more, years.

Just because they're dead doesn't mean they were idiots. This is the young person's folly.

Then again, this attitude may be a substantial cause of what we define as progress. Gray areas are hard to figure out.

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