We do get out of bed for less than $10,000 dollars per day

http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/We+do+get+out+of+bed+for+less+than+10000+dollars+per+day

by jrnkntl • 15 years ago

118 52 15 years ago

tuhin• 15 years ago

The $10,000 per day was just a metaphor to not actually do things that you feel you don't deserve. Of course a lot of it has to fall in place before you are there to do that.

I mean for a man with no job and loads of skills he still needs to work for a while before he is able to claim that.

Also a good idea might be to have a constant fallback of some form. A safer job that gives enough time for freelance maybe?

richcollins2• 15 years ago

Wonder what you get from him for 2k eur per day

Maro• 15 years ago

"... working as a consultant to do technical due diligence. That is M&A jargon for the job of verifying that what a company says it sells and owns is actually true, and that it's all put together in a sound way to limit the risk investors and buyers are exposed to. I do this work for several renowned Venture Capital firms in Europe, and it's the most exciting and interesting work I've ever done."

roel_v• 15 years ago

I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly - are you really wondering about him specifically, or are you saying that 2k is a lot of money to be paid a day?

todayiamme4• 15 years ago

Your money's worth.

Seriously, this guy has implemented so many systems and has written so many lines of code that I've lost count. Plus he has awesome business experience ( http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/content/story-behind-wwcom-ca... ) and is a pretty great guy to work with. Yet again, the thing is that what he brings to the table isn't just pure coding skills, or business skills, but a combination of both and years of experience. So, what you're actually doing by hiring him for a day is hiring an army of programmers for all the human years he has invested.

You know the thing is that when you have been in the market for that long and people are willing to pay you that much for that long. There has to be a lot under the surface.

richcollins2• 15 years ago

That didn't answer my question ;-)

Maybe seeing what he's done for other ppl for 2k eur a day would be a good indication.

csomar2• 15 years ago

I think he should consider a better design for his website. And take more attention on Topography, since he probably has the money to buy a good theme or a designer.

dools2• 15 years ago

I think JM missed the point of Sebastien's use of the quote. From the original article:

"But like my freelancer friend wrote, or like Ms. Evangelista says – if you’ve got the chops, you set your own rates to a large extent. I’m not looking to pick up $80 per month at the expense of other things. More on this in a minute."

JM's entire post focuses on his use of the Linda Evangelista quote to illustrate a point about not cheapening your "product" or your "brand" unless it's really worth it. Maybe he didn't read the whole thing.

Sebastien's articles give me the shits and I think talk about winning, success, victory and individualism is counter productive but if you're going to criticise it at least get your facts straight.

crasshopper5• 15 years ago

Why is it counter productive? Because it makes us losers feel like losers? Or because it == resting on laurels?

JoachimSchipper3• 15 years ago

Because the CEO of BigCo isn't likely to award you a big contract if he gave you two dollars for coffee not five minutes ago. Picking up (advertising) pennies is not without costs.

dools2• 15 years ago

Hey, sorry I didn't get back to you on this. Really, a response to this question needs to be a blog post that I don't have time to write at the moment, but I've put it on "the list".

Short answer: because I'm a socialist.

Bvalmont• 15 years ago

I should stay in bed with my 3,5k a month it seems

It's a good income for 24 year olds in Belgium, though. Most everyone I graduated with has 2k/month. I wouldn't know what to do with 2k a day like JM.

bad_user2• 15 years ago

I make 55000 USD per year, but live in a cheap place where 8500 USD per year is considered a good salary.

It is all relative.

crasshopper5• 15 years ago

You consider 55000 USD per year low? Geez, I've never made over 20000 USD.

40000 is the median in the U.S. and that includes people at the peak of their careers. Cops, teachers, and social workers don't necessarily make much above that after a lifetime of hard work. Anyone over 40000 should feel proud and/or fortunate.

peteforde• 15 years ago

I generally love JM's postings, but it's clear that he did not actually read much of the article at all. Unfortunately that cheapens the discussion.

For what it's worth, I think that Sebastien's reasoning for not having advertising on his site should be summarized, screen printed and dropped propaganda style from airplanes over the financial districts of the world so that when bored fund guys hire us to build web properties, they might be slightly more likely to have a non-advertising business model in mind.

todayiamme4• 15 years ago

What Sebastian is advocating is a method of hard bargaining that may or may not lead to brand building. What Jacques is advocating is being careful about not crossing the line between bargaining and delusions about your own market worth. It's a perilous balance to maintain if you're playing this game and falling either way might ruin you.

endtime3• 15 years ago

Actually, he's not advocating bargaining of any firmness. He's saying that one's personal brand (or dignity, or whatever) should have a minimum price that is not necessarily $0.01. In his case, he's decided that the amount he'd earn with advertising isn't worth the cheapening of his brand it would entail.

It's shocking to me how many people commenting here (plus Jacques) totally misunderstood Sebastian's post.

ctdonath• 15 years ago

Indeed, he missed the point.

"I think I'll add some ads to this blog just to make the point that if you can't afford to leave money on the table you probably shouldn't."

Indeed, that's almost verbatim what Sebastian said - but for the added insight that if you CAN afford to leave the money on the table, doing so will make you more than that in the long run. JM missed that insight.

sp4rki• 15 years ago

I'll gladly take those 2k Eur to provide a day of reading comprehension classes that would help avoid such misunderstandings. :) \

Sebastien's article had little to do with actual money and a lot to do with the implicit value of one's skills, name, and work (and advises not to cheapen your brand with puny advertisements unless it actually makes sense financially). This response had nothing whatsoever to do with anything but the link bait title.

hasenj2• 15 years ago

He read it too literally. The point is not 10k or any magic number. The point is "don't be desperate for money". The point is to view yourself as something valuable. If you have no value for yourself, you'll be happy to get a low pay in exchange for a low-quality service. The more respect you have for yourself, the more people will respect you and the more valuable you become.

His counter argument is basically like this (he's B):

A: Doing X pays, just look at K (where K is a person)

B: No, you can't do X, and don't look at K, he's a special case.

A: Duh, he's special because he does X; he wasn't born special.

Someone should coin a name for this kind of argument ..

As JM himself notes, Linda Evangelista is not that special when it comes to prettiness or friendliness. He should've paused for a second to ponder how she became a brand.

(For the record, I have no clue who this Linda girls is).

Consider Steve Jobs. He says[1] he does not ship garbage. Why is that? Is it because he's rich and he can afford it? No, it's because this is who he is. He wasn't born rich; he got where he is because he could never ever produce garbage. A simple way to prove this is to consider: if he had shipped garbage through out his career, why would he stop now? Just look at Oracle and Microsoft.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu0qeb_rJYU

todayiamme4• 15 years ago

I think that there is a genuine difference between refusing to lower standards for a product and refusing to be price sensitive in respond to the market.

What Sebastian is advocating is a bargaining technique so old that my grandfather warns against it.

What he's trying to imply is that there's a thin lying between hard bargaining and being insensitive to the realities of the market. Be careful on which side you fall.

stcredzero5• 15 years ago

What Sebastian is advocating is a bargaining technique so old that my grandfather warns against it. [sic]

It's one thing if it's a bargaining technique with nothing behind it. It's another thing entirely if it's a real reflection of underlying value.

I think your point is that there is a difference. Agreed. Remember that the market is not perfect. It wouldn't function as a market in the real world if everyone made perfect decisions about value all the time, instantly. If you're going to command an information asymmetry, a good place to start is yourself. If you don't know yourself better than others, you have no business being an entrepreneur. It should be the other way around.

kenjackson3• 15 years ago

Steve Jobs mixes garbage, the AppleTV/MobileMe, with things that look pretty but are garbage under the hood, iMac, with things that aren't garbage, iPhone.

The beauty is that Jobs has created an aura where everything looks like gold.

infinite8s• 15 years ago

Wow, those are pretty strong words. By what justification do you call AppleTV/MobileMe garbage? Clearly they serve a need for people or they wouldn't be doing so well.

itg• 15 years ago

This place is turning as bad as reddit. You can't even discuss technology without some fanboy frothing from his mouth.

stcredzero5• 15 years ago

The more respect you have for yourself, the more people will respect you and the more valuable you become.

This only works in the short term, unless you come out with some real value. In the long term, people recognize real value.

tomjen3• 15 years ago

In the long run, we are all dead.

And this way we get a chance to demo our value before people shut down.

hasenj2• 15 years ago

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy; like self-confidence. If you have no confidence, you're more likely to screw up. By simply having more confidence in oneself, one is more likely to do better, and reinforce his confidence.

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

The point is that there is a cost and there a benefit to being a brand.

Being an honest/ordinary provider of an honest/ordinary service is easier. Have a skill, have satisfied customers who'll provide references. There are more people who will succeed doing this than there are people who become brands.

On the other hand, a brand can be a great shortcut to extreme, wild success, the difference between millions and billions. And also being a brand can give a kind of success that is deeply dishonest and unbalancing (as Hollywood, modeling and various other pursues will show).

Steve Jobs also makes the point that a brand is a simple point that evokes strong feelings in people. This allow the people to remember the brand. But by that token, it is inherently impossible for there to be a lot of brands since each brand is simple thing remembered by many people. Thus with millions of people in the world, there just are not going to be many people who are successful at being brands (indeed, the greater unification of the world, it seems there are inherently going to be fewer and fewer brands since any given brand can serve more and more people).

And certainly, someone who successfully becomes a brand takes the simple idea and makes as much as possible "who they are". Yet given that human are complex and varied creatures, it's a onerous task for someone to continuous exemplify any quality, even "excellence". The stories of Steve Jobs screaming at subordinates do not make it sound like the existence of a Steve Jobs would be entirely pleasant despite his wild level of success in not just making money but changing the world. (On the other hand, I am impressed that Google's "don't be evil" seems to have so far stuck as quality they exemplify - seems like something you'd want to look at if you were to be going for a brand).

I personally find a lot of Sebastian's posts here to exemplify a contempt for the less successful. That may be what it takes for him exemplify the relentless drive for success. And exemplifying that might really help him build his brand. I still wouldn't want to be that.

jister• 15 years ago

You miss the point of the article. "Don't be desperate for money" is the main point of the article.

And for me, I don't think it's appropriate to mention that I earn 2,000 Euros / day.

macca321• 15 years ago

Is he trying to being ironic by saying his fee is 2k? Its pretty much the same as Eva Evangelista's gambit.

Symbiont• 15 years ago

If you ignore the references to Sebastian in JM's post and pay attention only to the subject, it is clear that they're talking about different things.

switch• 15 years ago

For someone who usually writes very smart posts this is one strange post.

On one hand developers complain that they don't get paid enough and don't get treated well. On the other hand, they refuse to consider the possibility that perhaps not getting out of bed for less than $10,000 a day is exactly what developers ought to do.

If you look at the cumulative worth companies like Microsoft and Google and VMWare built up and break it down to the founders and first 10 developers - it'd be a lot more than $10,000 per day.

nyellin• 15 years ago

Is it just me, or is Jacques still reading and replying to articles that reach the HN homepage?

Did Jacques replace commenting on HN with writing blog posts?

icey2• 15 years ago

Commenting with a blog post instead of in the comments seems to be a new trend around here.

stcredzero5• 15 years ago

Actually, it's encouraged in the etiquette and advice pages of HN.

csomar2• 15 years ago

Linda Evangelista is a brand unto herself. That's why she's worth the big bucks, not because she's a good looking girl (I know prettier ones!) and not because she's that great to work with. It's simply because she moves product. Most of us provide a service, we are not 'brands'.

I actually see no difference. If I'm offering a service, then I need to brand myself. This is no different than products we sell, or buy. The Author, jacquesmattheij, himself has a brand. He should be popular in his field, so that he can touch 2K euro / day.

He has got skills in IT. Linda has got skills in promoting products. It's not her beauty what makes a difference. He actually mentioned that, though. So, she's not 'that girl'. She's someone that made it and become able to sell products. She has got her own marketing strategies and that works.

She has got skills, same for the Author. They are just approaching different fields.

We do get out of bed for less than $10,000 dollars per day

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