Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

http://www.seattle20.com/blog/Hey-Guys-It-s-Totally-Okay-If-You-Don-t-Get-Rich.aspx

by 3d3mon • 16 years ago

383 209 16 years ago

snitko• 16 years ago

See, the problem is, we don't want to hear that. We want to hear "do it for god's sake" or "stop dreaming, you're a looser". The latter would motivate even more. But not that it's okay. It's not. If it was, I'd be doing something else.

terra_t2• 16 years ago

Well, there's also the issue that the economy refuses to provide honest reliable jobs for honest reliable people...

If your dad or mom is a professor, maybe you can get a tenure track job, but if you're anybody else you've got take what's in the marketplace... And "playing it safe" means the odds are 100% that you'll get screwed...

The only career path that seems possible of providing any security of all is an "all in" bet on something that might make it big.

jonpaul• 16 years ago

Seth Godin said it best: "Ironically, playing it safe is the most unsafe thing that you can do." His point is that you have to put yourself out there and take risks to be successful. Sitting back and being "safe" is akin to waiting for problems to occur. People just don't realize it... because they feel safe.

abalashov• 16 years ago

Not directly related, but as the child of a family that amounts to a dynastic succession of academics, I feel the need to disabuse anyone reading of the impression that there is any connection whatsoever, at all, between having professors for parents and getting a tenure-track position.

As it stands, it's nearly impossible for spouses to exert enough leverage to find academic employment at the same institution. If they're lucky, they'll spend a good deal of their career building up the karma to pull that one off; there isn't anything left over for little Billy.

terra_t2• 16 years ago

Well, I'll just say that, when I was in grad school at an Ivy League school that 100% of the professors, for whom I knew anything about their parents, were also professors -- and that was a sample between 20 and 30 people.

Things might be different at other schools, but I do know that even the Chronicle of Higher Education is starting to recognize the 'dynastic succession' phenomenon after years of it going on under wraps.

tensor• 16 years ago

Tenure is not all it's cracked up to be. Today you are looking at being 40 before you acquire tenure. Sure, some people get it earlier, but I believe on average the numbers come out to roughly 40 or late 30's.

In those prime years before 40 will see very poor income given your education level and expenses, and a whole lot of stress and overtime spent in meeting all the requirements. Big publication list, talks, grants, scholarships, postdocs, teaching experience, taking on grad students, and perhaps even committees.

You really need to love the lifestyle, and not money, to stick it through to tenure.

necrecious• 16 years ago

Society places pressures on every one, male or female. It has been great for feminist movement to try to identify counter some of the pressure that has made women miserable, but there isn't really an outlet for men.

In fact, I think pressure on men are growing. Being smart, funny, successful and as good looking as Brad Pitt. Men are doing more cosmetics surgery and getting eating disorders now too.

enjo• 16 years ago

Of course it's not ok. At some level getting rich is a life-or-death issue. How do I get enough money to retire? How can I possibly afford health-care? What if I or my lovely wife get cancer?

The reality is, the later years of your life are going to be significantly more secure and happier if you make a lot of money.

erikstarck• 16 years ago

Yeah, but you don't have to be a super rich billionaire for that.

HockeyPlayer• 16 years ago

Don't be silly. She wrote that her friend, "could easily bring in a low six-figure income"

If you save wisely, you can retire just fine after a career at a tech company making 2-3x the US median salary. And most companies have good health coverage for the cancer.

She is talking about the pressure to make $10M or more through a startup, not getting the money to retire comfortably.

kscaldef2• 16 years ago

> And most companies have good health coverage for the cancer.

Well... kinda. One of the dirty little secrets of employer-provided group health care is that when you have one person whose health care costs vastly exceed the average, there's enormous pressure to get that person out of the "group". I've know companies where someone got cancer and the premiums for the whole company doubled the next year.

timr4• 16 years ago

"If you save wisely, you can retire just fine after a career at a tech company making 2-3x the US median salary."

This is a theory at this point...and it's not a well-tested theory. I don't know many people who have actually retired from a lifetime (i.e. 30+ year) career in tech. Considering that the software industry (as we know it) is only about 30 years old, it's hard to draw long-term conclusions.

iron_ball• 16 years ago

You're still going to be hired for tech jobs at 50? Not from what I hear.

pvdm3• 16 years ago

Wait. What tech company would hire you if you already have cancer ? Just ask Brian Reid.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/08/google_age_discr...

othello• 16 years ago

I feel the author really meant that it's ok not to be obscenely rich.

Of course having a sizeable amount of savings is important for all the things you described. Yet the "low six-figures" income of her first example is probably largely sufficient to handle these.

sosuke5• 16 years ago

I wish she had said that explicitly at the beginning, a low six-figures income is rich enough for me but making that money is almost as hard as becoming obscenely rich. After you reach 80-100k a year working for someone else it's a very large and all consuming step to make it to the next rung of the ladder.

GavinB• 16 years ago

There's a difference between "getting rich" enough to be able to retire and handle health issues and building an empire.

All of the possibilities you mention are much more likely to be handled by a) Good budgeting b) A solid career as an employee or an independent contractor

The reason to start your own business is because you want the challenge, and the satisfaction of building something important.

If you have a desperate need to have a few million in the bank, your best shot is to to get a good job, learn about investment, and start living cheaply.

notahacker• 16 years ago

Being rich is a sufficient, but not necessary condition for relative economic security in a developed country. It's perfectly OK to pay for your retirement and provide for your lovely wife by taking a standard career path from one salaried job to another.

You don't need to start a company to have enough money to retire. And of course if you choose to start a company you're trading increased likelihood of being severely short of funds at some stage in the short term for the possibility of being rich later in life.

How many founders on here can honestly say their main motivation is maximising their chances of survival in old age?

iamwil5• 16 years ago

And that's the attitude that she's pointing out. Just as women are constantly told and whispered (directly and indirectly) they're not pretty enough, men are constantly told and whispered (directly and indirectly) they're not rich enough.

So much so that a bunch of people agree with you and it's a defining norm.

Note that the article is talking about the obscenely rich, like the Facebooks and the Googles. There's no need to be obscenely rich to retire, afford healthcare, treat your lovely soon-to-be-cancerous wife. Above a certain point, having more money gives diminishing returns on quality of life. After that, it's just a scorecard as someone will almost always be more rich than you.

But we think we do need to be obscenely rich, and that it's our role, nay our purpose to do so. It's a story that's exulted, whispered, and told in our ear so often, we don't realize it anymore.

In the end, you should know yourself. The old masters weren't kidding when they said that the hardest thing to do is not mastery over others, but over yourself. You should know what you value in life and what you want out of it, and that the source of that inspiration comes from within.

Because when you buy into other people's values that aren't your own, you may find that when you finally get to the top of the hill at the expense of everything else, what you really wanted wasn't there at all. And that's what she's warning her friend about.

Tichy3• 16 years ago

"Just as women are constantly told and whispered (directly and indirectly) they're not pretty enough, men are constantly told and whispered (directly and indirectly) they're not rich enough."

She seems to think people have these thoughts only because the media whispers it to them. Unfortunately, there is also a degree of truth to them, and the media merely exploits this truth. It does matter how pretty you are (especially as a woman), and it does matter how rich you are.

grellas• 16 years ago

Yes, but the obsession with accumulating money can lead to problems.

Setting a high target for success and working hard to get there are worthy goals for men and women alike but going through life with a perpetually-agitated constitution because you don't attain a result that puts you in the top-1% wealth bracket (for example) is an almost certain way to find yourself unhappy and discontented as you strive to meet your main life goals.

In the midst of the tech bubble, a prominent Valley newspaper ran a feature story in which it interviewed five couples who were each at varying degrees of financial success, from modest to rich. Ironically, it was the rich couple (net worth of approximately $200 million) that was quoted as saying, in response to a question about what they most wanted, "we want to know what it would be like to be worth a billion dollars."

To me, this sort of mindset can be problematic, and the problem becomes one of loss of perspective. When the accumulation of money becomes in itself an obsessive goal, it comes back to bite because, no matter how much one has, it will never be enough. I don't think this is really an issue about the money itself, either - it involves instead the idea that your very perception of your value as a human being somehow becomes defined by how the ciphers add up, and that ultimately represents a sad loss of perspective because you wind up forever measuring your wealth (and what it brings) with what everybody else has.

Money is great when rightly gained and used. So too is ambition and a desire to achieve the ultimate success. It is good to set your goals high. But it is never good to become obsessed about the accumulation of money as an end in itself. Such a goal, even if attained, will sap the life out of anyone who allows money to become his master.

This piece was thought-provoking along these lines, though I think flawed in tying to tie all this to feminist themes. The issue of avarice as a problem is a transcending one that is hardly shaped by gender.

pvdm3• 16 years ago

Morphine is not that expensive.

ruang• 16 years ago

Rich,middle,and poor is a false trichotomy.

Once you hit late 40s to 50s, people won't pay you a high salary for a typical line position.

So at that point, you either continue to work for low wages, possibly being shifted within the company to doing sales on commission, being a trainer, or moved to a low-wage country.

Or you are independently wealthy by then.

jchonphoenix• 16 years ago

Great article and really hits home. One thing that's overlooked, however, is the reasoning behind the need to earn money.

For some people, money doesn't matter. Yet they still have a burning need to get rich. This is because they have something to prove. And money is their scorecard.

crayz• 16 years ago

Exactly. Reading a comment right next to yours, "Are lower expectations supposed to be a good thing?". It's become ingrained in Western and especially American culture that money is one of if not the most important measure for judging success. We don't all see each others paychecks and bank account balances, so this manifests in various ways from wanting prestige jobs to conspicuous consumption

People need to ask themselves - what do I want out of life? What are my personal measures for success, that I can explain and justify to myself based on my beliefs. Instead almost everyone simply avoids thinking on that level and instead absorbs and adopts the measurements promoted by society

It's not that making money is bad. It's that far too many people blindly focus on making and spending money without considering the amount of time and sanity and other opportunities for living that's being consumed by their consumerism

antareus• 16 years ago

Thank you. This comment is a breath of fresh air amongst the cries of, "but, it's just evolution that makes us want to hoard money!" That sort of attitude strikes me as fatalistic. Success is what you want it to be, not what you're told it should be. Even if evolution has drilled into us the need to accumulate wealth, that doesn't mean you have to accept it. I want to make things, and make them well. That is success for me.

I abhor the dating scene, because it perpetuates the morally bankrupt power dynamics that make up shallow value assessments of individuals. People's identities are shattered and reduced to a 3-tuple of salary, IQ, and waistlines.

leot• 16 years ago

If/when we achieve negligible senescence, and the social order becomes frozen, it might become pretty important to find oneself at the top of the heap.

orangecat2• 16 years ago

I don't actually think that would happen. Corporations are "immortal" today, and they can still rise and fall quickly.

jlgosse• 16 years ago

Without trying to sound like an absolute ass, this article shows EXACTLY why most of the founders of the biggest empires and hottest startups are in fact men. I say MOST as I'm sure there are many women as well, but clearly they are overshadowed by men in this case.

scrod2• 16 years ago

>Without trying to sound like an absolute ass...

Some things just come naturally to you I suppose.

techiferous• 16 years ago

"Some things just come naturally to you I suppose."

You just called him an ass. That's rude.

He(?) stated that "most of the founders of the biggest empires and hottest startups are in fact men" which is a fact. He's also speculating that the pressures put on men to get rich is the main cause of this. I see nothing offensive about what he said.

rchi• 16 years ago

on the titanic, 46% of women in the 3rd class was saved whereas only 33% of men in the 1st class survived.

byw• 16 years ago

I wonder if it has more to do with culture. According to Forbes, about half of all female billionaires are from China.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/22/billionaire-women-entrepren...

Elite• 16 years ago

Is Oprah the only self-made Billionaire in the US/Europe?

I know that there are several female billionaires but all the fortunes I can think of now are inherited

pg3• 16 years ago

In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people.

That could be because we prefer startups whose founders include hackers. On the other hand, we don't just prefer that type because they're more fun to hang around with, but because in our opinion they're more likely to succeed.

javery• 16 years ago

I think it's about the freedom to work on what you want mixed in with the ambition to build something great. I care more that what I am building makes an impact on people and businesses than if I get super rich, but they usually go hand in hand.

akkartik• 16 years ago

On the one hand I don't need that much money to have freedom. I live frugally.

On the other hand I fear that I'm underestimating how much I need. Because the macroeconomy will be more challenging in the future than it has been in the past. And because we're often competing financially with our closest peers. If more people have successful startups in the bay area the price of housing and everything else will go up. National inflation matters less than regional inflation.

We know the rewards of living in a big city. But the cost of living in a big city grows over time, and faster than one thinks. Like the red queen, you end up having to run at some speed just to stay in the same place.

nickpinkston4• 16 years ago

We just had this discussion yesterday at a StartupDrinks. I think the Darwinian notion says:

1.) We are hardwired to want things to attract mates. 2.) Power, Success, Prestige, Freedom, etc. are attractive. 3.) We want things that are derivative of such things, even if we consciously believe we want to benefit humanity, think it's, fun etc.

Conclusion: The mind has a way of aligning our conscious interests with our subconscious procreative ones. We need to recognize this, but we don't need to embrace the appetitive.

prototype56• 16 years ago

Yes immediate and proximate causations for our actions are often wildly different . This has parallels across all species .

A peacock my really feel that it has passion for dance this need to "express itself"( immediate causation )..but to an outside human observer all it is doing is attracting peahens ( ultimate causation)

aswanson3• 16 years ago

I don't care about my freedom being attractive. I want a certain level of material comfort without answering to anyone or reporting to a cubicle. Some drives derive from mating impulses, yes, but many derive from hating bullshit. Period.

clistctrl2• 16 years ago

I can only speak to myself, but I want to get rich not for a Lamborghini, but so I can start another company to truly make a difference. Personally I think the Gates foundation is going to have a longer lasting impact on the world then Microsoft has. Yes I realize how huge of an impact Microsoft has had.

oconnore2• 16 years ago

I think the one way that riches truly improve your quality of life is to make travel easy. The ability to explore your world is a great gift, and something that not many underpriveledged people can afford. A Lamborghini doesn't factor into that equation, because unless you live near the Autobahn, it doesn't get you anywhere a more modest car can't in the same time.

But if I ever become extraordinarily wealthy, my first purchase will be a private jet, and I will explore as much as I possibly can before I die.

seldo• 16 years ago

Call me cynical, but I don't think 18-year-old Bill Gates had the Gates Foundation in mind when he started trampling over the competition in his rise to the top. He wanted to be rich and powerful (because frankly, with the looks and alleged personality of Bill Gates, how else was he going to get a date?).

The Gates Foundation, worthy as it is, was something he only realized he wanted after he had achieved everything he'd thought he wanted, matured, and realized it wasn't really important.

geoffw8• 16 years ago

Yeah, I say you have to go out to play good football. Then goals come.

Mz• 16 years ago

I can only speak to myself, but I want to get rich not for a Lamborghini, but so I can start another company to truly make a difference.

I honestly don't understand this. To me, this is no different than the arguments elsewhere in this discussion about needing money to "travel". Why do you need money "to make a difference"? I don't have money but I run a website that makes a difference. The number of people it reaches is currently small. I have thought about it and I don't think throwing money at the problem would do any real good. If I thought throwing money at the problem would work, I would be trying to start a foundation and raise the money to throw it at the problem. But I really think the current model of throwing money at the problem is part of the problem, not likely part of the solution.

Gates said something once like "Automating an efficient system multiplies the efficiencies and automating an inefficient system multiplies the inefficiencies." I think throwing money at a problem does the same thing. If the solution you have isn't really that good, more of it may make a bigger "difference" but not of the sort I want to see in the world.

You "make a difference" every day of your life. What kind of difference are you making today? And if it is not something you think is worthwhile, why put off "making a difference" until some mythical time when you have more money?

Sincere questions, not in any way intended to bust you.

Peace.

axod• 16 years ago

>> "In my experience, startup founders who want to get rich want it more in order to have the freedom to work on what they want than to impress people."

Isn't the whole point of doing a startup, to be able to work on what you want? Surely creating a profitable startup gives you that freedom to do what you like?

fizx• 16 years ago

No, because there's billing, payroll, taxes, customer support, management, board meetings and a hundred other things that come with running a startup. We have to do what's best for the company, and that usually doesn't include taking a month off to try to build a robot spider.

b3b0p2• 16 years ago

I know this is how I feel.

The only time I think about the money is when I read someone on here mentioning it, but it quickly fades.

Otherwise, all I think about is being able to work on anything I want and starting my own company. Nothing seems cooler than that in my opinion. Besides, if you want bragging rights, how many people can say they started their own company?

sosuke5• 16 years ago

The problem is when you don't have money or savings to not think about money all you think about is making that money to do whatever venture you want without worrying about putting food on the table and a roof over your families head.

hyperbovine5• 16 years ago

It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so that you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness.

Why not just take the direct route?

rick8886• 16 years ago

"It's the Mexican fisherman story. Sacrifice your freedom and happiness so that you can get rich so that you can have freedom and happiness."

and how do you suppose we do that?

Freedom to me means:

1) not having to work for anyone 2) having enough time to do what I want 3) traveling around the world

You need money to do all of these. To get money, you need to create something that people are willing to pay for, which takes some sacrifices.

You are sacrificing some time and freedom now for complete freedom later.

pg3• 16 years ago

Are you saying that there is some more direct route to working on what one wants? Or that the direct route to happiness is to give up such aspirations?

pedalpete• 16 years ago

I'm not familiar with the Mexican fisherman story (search didn't return anything).

Was the Mexican fisherman toiling away on a fishing boat so he could become rich so he could have the freedom to spend his days fishing?

PawelDecowski• 16 years ago

For people who don't know the story: http://pauldecowski.com/

I put it up on my domain a while ago because I liked it a lot. Maybe it will be useful for once.

msort• 16 years ago

Because the direct route is not easy, or even possible for most people.

We are human being living in a commercial society. Money is essential for us to survive. And for most people, a modest level of success is essential for happiness.

I think the right approach is to strike for goals which have dual rewards: material and spiritual. Do things you love. If money doesn't come, also do things bringing in money.

JesseAldridge• 16 years ago

The Mexican fisherman story, in case people haven't heard it:

http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/resources/view_product.do?produc...

The main flaw is that it ignores the massive amount of wealth created by scaling up the fishing operation. The fisherman could've made a much greater contribution to the world by listening to the investment banker. We are all morally obligated to make enough money to buy a yacht with a flag saying, "Chillin' the most" and to subsequently rock that bitch up and down the coast.

Tichy3• 16 years ago

Sitting on your ass all day staring at the see is not what everybody wants. Also, the fisherman in the story already has a successful business.

blizkreeg3• 16 years ago

I keep hearing this thing about freedom to work on something you want to after getting rich as opposed to something you have to. I'm not sure that Utopian scenario exists.

It sounds charming to be a vintner, writer, film producer, or my personal favorite, travel the world care-free once you have enough money but I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it. Time and resources aren't that short that we cannot do what we want to (even if it means in a limited manner) in the present. I have a friend who wants to become a writer (he writes very well, too) but in the mean time wants to make a lot of money by being a Fx Quant so he can "retire" to write full-time. I can't help but think that he is mistaking what it means to be a writer to the idyllic charm of the idea.

My field of view might be limited but I don't know of even half a dozen people who went on to do drastically different things after getting rich, so to speak. They continued doing what they did before, the only difference being that they now had the means that afforded them more diverse experiences. In fact, just recently one of the ten richest men in my city came back to my division to run it after a hiatus of ten years. He is past 60, owns a vineyard, and enough money to outlast five generations. At this age, he comes back to the challenge but grind of trying to turn around a division's fortunes.

The purpose I think comes from industriousness, not in bumming around from one fleeting interest to another because you have money.

erikpukinskis• 16 years ago

I'm honestly not sure there's more to it than the charm of it.

I think this is true for those folks who are putting these things off... if you don't enjoy it enough to do it today, there's a good chance that you only find it "charming" in the abstract.

I'm not a vintner or a writer... but I brew beer and I write software for fun, and I garden and cook and all of these things... on top of my day job and my startup. They aren't just charming to me, these are things I love, and I'm excited about replacing my day job with more of that stuff as my startup starts to earn a profit.

ahoyhere• 16 years ago

Nail, head, hit.

A friend of mine's private dream is to quit the IT business entirely and go raise sheep in NZ. He may truly be a country boy at heart, but there's little stopping him from doing it now… it's just an escapist fantasy.

I always wonder if people who claim to want to travel the world have ever actually done enough travel to know how brutal it can be to, in fact, travel the world. I spent 9.5 weeks traveling around the world last year and it just about killed me.

Most people can't separate "feeling an impulse to do something" and "knowing it's the real deal for the rest of your life." My husband is one of those types who always wants to move to wherever we're vacationing, but since they're usually backwaters, I know for a fact he'd end up miserable. It's just that they feel good because they're away from obligations. (The real thing is that he doesn't enjoy the work he's doing but he's not ready to admit it to himself yet!)

piaw3• 16 years ago

OK, since I have retired to travel and write, I'll chime in here. The writing part is fun, and being able to do it on my own terms (i.e., not kowtow to a publisher/editor's need to sell books by the pound rather than by content) was worth it to me.

The travel is even more so. I'd taken vacations before, but always came back wishing I had 1 or 2 more weeks more. With a day job, it was hell asking for 5 weeks or so. Now, I just go. And I no longer come back wishing I had another 2 week. The indignity of having to ask for permission always annoyed me, but I didn't realize how annoying it was until I didn't have to ask.

Ultimately, I think you have to ask what it is that drives you. Some people like being bosses and being able to lord it over their underlings. Those people will never retire, and they shouldn't. Their self-worth is dependent entirely on other people being subservient to them and their goals. But many INTJ types (especially engineers) don't have self-worth tied to the opinions of other people. Such people historically do very well in retirement, and retirement is not a bad goal for them: http://retireearlyhomepage.com/mbti.html

joecode• 16 years ago

Indeed. The danger, however, is getting so caught up in the race that you forget why you started in the first place.

That's why I'm forcing myself to finish a book before my next startup. It's matter of self-respect.

simplegeek• 16 years ago

I'm not a startup expert so I'm going to ask an honest question. In old ages, when start-up wasn't a very well-known concept how did great minds convinced themselves to work on what they love without getting rich first (they even had to go through misery)? I mean I probably want to do a startup so that I can get rich enough to work on number theory while feeding my family at the same time (and I'm doing a startup so that I don't go through that misery while pursuing number theory)? So isn't it all because I want to avoid the misery and not because I love freedom?[sorry, not a native speaker]

PaulJoslin• 16 years ago

This is so true.

When I dream of 'winning the lottery', I don't dream of laying on sandy beaches. I dream of starting a new start up, knowing that I can have enough FU money to take risks and make it great.

purpledove• 16 years ago

She is saying that the start-up mythology of success, which is vital to keeping up the spirits of the best of us, can lead the good-but-not-great astray in their lives.

She is saying that ideas are powerful, and internalizing the wrong ones can cause damage.

I recently saw pg give an interview wherein he discussed how much more Y Combinator focuses on who the founders are rather than what the idea is. This is a great start, and I think there is a lot of fertile ground that can really be developed into a powerful message that will reach many young people.

bbers• 16 years ago

Won't successful founders from YC will have the opportunity to work on what they want no matter how much money they have? Or do the founders you know want to work on things that are very expensive?

corruption• 16 years ago

My goal when I first started was to exit and buy a fully equipped bio/physiology/elec/engineering lab and enough raw material to invent full time.

I thought I'd need 10m+ to do this, but over time I'm gradually acquiring everything I need due to places like sparkfun, ebay and alibaba for little more than the cost of an average car.

I'm inventing every day (5-6days software, weekends building random projects), learning more than I ever thought possible and loving every minute.

My point is that if this is anything like your dream, it's readily doable now as the cost of doing science is extremely cheap these days. And I've found that productivity increases when I take a break from software in the weekends and do some wet/hard projects.

plainOldText• 16 years ago

If this would be OK then HN would lose most of its users. :)))

iamwil5• 16 years ago

Hardly, if HN attracts its intended audience--people that are intellectually curious about everything.

zackattack2• 16 years ago

Don't think that's the intended audience, buddy. It was started as a ruse to recruit companies for a venture capital firm to invest in.

xyzzyb• 16 years ago

I'm not sure that's the HN audience. I came here looking to get away from the childishness of reddit, yet have found a new (and, hitherto to me, unknown) brand of childishness: the entitled startup programmer. Reddit was primarily populated by high school/college kids, but it definitely had a significant population besides that.

As far as I can tell, HN is much more of an extreme monoculture; and one I have to confess I'm rather disappointed in. Instead of thoughtful discourses and commentary from those looking to expand their worldview, it's a strong current of close-mindedness and superiority.

I'm sure that my brief glimpse into the culture of HN is woefully inaccurate and I may certainly have just unluckily gotten the wrong impression from the threads I've read; but I doubt it.

ttol• 16 years ago

An interesting article that talks about an entire nation's views on marriage, status, and success is: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-06/25/content_1001855...

It is so ingrained that one of the women described her marital vision: "I'd rather be miserable sitting in a BMW than be happy riding a bicycle."

It's no surprise that an extension of this is that the most desirable man, and bachelor, in China is the founder of Baidu, the largest search engine in China, due to his wealth.

raghava• 16 years ago

gametheory• 16 years ago

All bachelors are men.

holdenc• 16 years ago

The path to starting a successful business is littered with advice like this. It's certainly not easy, and the price is typically high (relationships, time, health...) especially when starting from nothing. But from observation, it's obvious that for those who do make it, failure is not "okay."

Sukotto• 16 years ago

We need the startup-founder version of this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXf8fr0Kp3Q (Depicts what goes into transforming a woman into a billboard image)

Not to convince us to stop trying... but to convince us to use a more reasonable metric than the one in 10,000,000 founder that makes a ginormous exit.

yannk• 16 years ago

... "as long as I do"

johnrob• 16 years ago

For both wealth and (perceived) beauty, there is often a relatively easy solution: move!

For more beauty, move to a location with a greater ratio of the opposite sex.

For more wealth, move to a location with a lower cost of living.

I don't know how much longer these arbitrage opportunities will exist, but for now they probably represent the biggest 'lifehacks' one can make.

pchristensen• 16 years ago

"I don't know how much longer these arbitrage opportunities will exist"

Forever. Unless there would be a world where every city costs the same and has the exact same gender ratio. And, most people don't move, thus leaving the arbitrage intact.

philwelch• 16 years ago

I can't speak for sex ratios, but generally the reason some places have a lower cost of living is generally because either no one wants to live there (often for good reason) or it's more difficult to earn money there.

waqf3• 16 years ago

If you're thinking of trying the sex ratios thing, I strongly suggest controlling for age, and preferably social class.

carnevalem• 16 years ago

Do you have any data to do this? I think the results would be interesting.

Sthorpe• 16 years ago

I could careless about money. I'm actually horrible with it. I build things and break a lot of stuff. One thing I have become obsessed about is reaching my goals. Not sure if i'm the only one, but I am terrified of myself. For example, has anyone set a goal in the beginning of the year and then on December 31 reviewed how far they got? A new years resolution? I have gotten very serious about my routines and where they take me. I have been surprised by how hard it is to keep a goal in sight and develop routines that help me reach it. But, so far, my new routine has become my happiness. I wish for all of you the same.

nickpp• 16 years ago

Bullshit. It's OK not to get rich, but it's not OK not to try.

gxti2• 16 years ago

Why do you think that?

joey_bananas2• 16 years ago

Why do I get 20 odd javascript dialog popups from that page?

joey_bananas2• 16 years ago

Answer: Twitter is broken.

tansey3• 16 years ago

Imagine you're in a big slot machine tournament with 150 competitors. Each player gets to pull one of two machines. One machine pays $1 every time. The other machine pays an average of $0 but has a variance of $50. Everyone gets 1 pull, the scores are tallied, and the bottom half of the players are out, and a new group is brought in to replace them.

Which machine would you pull? The evidence[1] is pretty clear that if the variance is high, the population will converge to people who go for the second one.

Not to sound sexist here, but women are not faced with having to pull the slot machine. From an evolutionary standpoint, they don't have (get?) to play in the tournament. Their goal is to minimize their own losses, since they only have a very small number of offspring they can create.

Men are forced into the arena, which creates the mentality that has the author baffled. We have to keep trying to hit it big, otherwise our lineage dies off as some other lucky guy comes along and forces us out.

That's what being an entrepreneur is all about. It's the diligent pulling of the slot machine with the lower mean.[2]

[1] Fogel, et. al., "Do Evolutionary Processes Minimize Expected Losses?" http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.8.8... [PDF]

[2] Everything after footnote 1 is pure opinion and based on only my own intuition. :)

jimbokun3• 16 years ago

Except, today, high levels of wealth is inversely correlated with the number of offspring.

dennisgorelik• 16 years ago

Not really. It looks like there is weak or no correlation between wealth and number of offspring.

tansey3• 16 years ago

Well the real world is a much more complex scenario than simple simulations. Two points though:

1. We have not had much time to evolve away from such a mentality, so it's still very much bred into us.

2. One could say that gaining wealth is actually playing a strategy designed to preserve more than just your immediate offspring. The wealthy have less risk of seeing their line disappear in future generations.

10ren• 16 years ago

With the number of official offspring.

Sadly, many studies have shown that a surprisingly high percentage of children are not the biological children of their fathers. IIRC, around 5%. And it's well known that many high-profile/successful men have many affairs.

This is fits in with evolutionary pressures.

Revisor• 16 years ago

I’ve watched him lose his health, sanity, credit and girlfriends again and again for this obsession. “This is literally killing you,” I tell him. “It has to stop.”

If she can see he's doing something wrong, she should help him get on track, not discourage him. I would avoid this lady like plague.

mattmaroon• 16 years ago

This is a misunderstanding of where the motivation comes from. It's not societal pressure that causes either men to want to be rich or women to look good. It's an evolutionary artifact.

waqf3• 16 years ago

There's also a popular misunderstanding as to why people can walk. It's not your legs that cause you to be able to walk. It's an evolutionary artifact.

forgot_password• 16 years ago

I feel as if this problem is exacerbated in the tech community because your credibility comes from having a big exit. For example, Chris Dixon is definitely an insightful guy but would he be as widely consumed if he hadn't sold a company for millions of dollars?

The commenters seem to agree that freedom and independence are the only things worth coveting. In VC-talk a tech founder can usually get financial independence for life with a "double" However, its the guys who hit the home runs that are respected and looked up to, and I imagine that drives a lot of tech founders.

gyardley• 16 years ago

In my experience, there's much less pressure on men to get rich than there is to get a 'good' job or a 'real' job - something perceived as stable and not risky.

dstein• 16 years ago

The richest man in the cemetery is rolling in his grave.

mrtron• 16 years ago

Nope, decomposing like everyone else.

ajdecon• 16 years ago

I would love to be rich, but I'm starting to realize that it's not what I need to be happy. What I need, personally, is a life in which I can work on things which I think are fun and interesting, and which pay me enough to live, save a little, and spend time having fun with my girlfriend.

The definition of that changes. At one point I thought the only way to do that was to get a PhD and find my way into academia; later it was found a company and make an obscene amount of money. Both of those goals were great, but the first one chewed me up and the second is one I don't know how to do yet. Right now... the goal is to find a job where the I can work on fun data-based problems. A startup would be fun, but so would a big company, or a government agency like the CDC. I don't need to be rich, but I do need to find satisfaction in my work.

And we'll see what happens next.

madair• 16 years ago

The cake is a lie

;)

c00p3r• 16 years ago

...if you born poor and in a wrong place (environment).

skmurphy• 16 years ago

"No man is rich whose expenditure exceeds his means; and no one is poor whose income exceeds his outgoings." Thomas Chandler Haliburton

cwp• 16 years ago

Ever hear a business idea disparaged for being a "lifestyle business?" For one reason or another startup culture looks down on business models that provide modest wealth via ongoing profits, rather than a big exit. Maybe it's the influence of VCs, maybe it's something else, but it's definitely there.

scythe• 16 years ago

...unless you're not okay with it.

evanrmurphy2• 16 years ago

The unusually high number of comments and upvotes on this post might suggest that a lot of HN readers want to know it's okay if they don't get rich.

switch• 16 years ago

she's neither male nor rich so her advice is bogus.

there are some things that are just true - all other things being equal women prefer men with money.

Even when all other things are not quite equal women prefer men with money.

here's a quick way to test it - list all the men she's ever dated/been in a relationship with and check on how many earned significantly less than her and how many earned significantly more.

This is the worst advice anyone could ever give anyone interested in doing a start-up. It's typical woman advice - they don't tell you what works - just something that'll make you feel it's OK to be a loser.

Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

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