A Self-Made Man Looks At How He Made It

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/07/23/a-self-made-man-looks-at-how-he-made-it/

by barredo • 14 years ago

240 137 14 years ago

whatever.scalzi.com

scotth• 14 years ago

Interesting, but a useless exercise.

Far from it; if anyone's able to take inspiration, or bring success to themselves or those around them, it is of great use.

jack9• 14 years ago

Genetically gifted, "a self made man". A dickotomy.

linuxhansl2• 14 years ago

"I pay a lot of taxes. I don’t mind because I know how taxes helped me to get to the fortunate position I am in today."

Exactly! I pay a lot of taxes too and do not mind. How could I be stingy on welfare, public healthcare, education, etc, anything that can help others. (no sarcasm, I mean it)

rayiner9• 14 years ago

On the subject of paying taxes... there are places I could live where I would pay less taxes than I do in New York City. Texas comes to mind, but also India or for that matter Somalia. Yet people generally move in the opposite direction as they become more successful.

I find it deeply ironic that David Koch lives in Manhattan, with its high state and city taxes, as well as extensive welfare spending. It's almost as if paying taxes buys you access to civilization, which makes living in a place desirable.

11235813213• 14 years ago

New York is a city in which the very rich enjoy some of the best living in the world because it is the largest and wealthiest city in the United States. The city has enormous areas that are simply terrible to live in, but people like Koch are shielded from it. I understand that Koch, like most rational people, uses tax reduction strategies, so his tax rate is probably less than that of many ordinary people in the city.

I do not think the fact that rich people cluster in cities commends high rates of taxation in cities when so many citizens of them suffer poorer housing, worse schools, worse crime and general higher cost of living in addition to not having the benefits of living in a more spacious, green area.

suhastech• 14 years ago

With respect to India, I thought I'd give you a little more insight.

A grossly generalised point of view:

* Low class group don't pay taxes

* Middle class group do pay taxes

* High class group might not pay taxes

The middle class group usually bear the burden of the development of the country. The taxes that does reach the government is cut by a large extent by high income corrupt politicians, who obviously, don't pay taxes.

Bottom line, the ROI for a middle class person in India to pay taxes is not high as you thought it would be. Hopefully, this changes.

gm1000• 14 years ago

I find it a little troubling that you're implying that welfare and high taxes made New York one of the richest cities in the world.

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

In California you get to pay a lot of taxes but it goes to retired government union workers instead of public services. We have the highest marginal tax rate in the nation, but terrible services.

But Californians really enjoy paying taxes so they keep on going up. Maybe if we put enough money into the broken system some good will eventually come out of it.

tolmasky3• 14 years ago

The interesting thing about the discussion on taxes is that usually what gets discussed is how much we pay and not what it is used for. "We should pay more taxes" doesn't really mean anything to me until you explain the context which with those taxes will be used -- of course the grand elephant in the room is that it is preferred we not know or discuss the specifics of that. It is a great irony that voters have much more control in how many taxes they will pay, but rarely in how they will be used. Whether through electing a president who promises to raise taxes on the wealthy, or one that promises to lower taxes dramatically, or an initiative to increase sales tax -- it is almost never known what will be affected, even when a new tax is given a "purpose" it is almost always in the small print that it doesn't necessarily have to be used for that purpose. And so our system allows us to often end up with the worst of both worlds:

1. Citizens perceive waste and thus push for lower taxes, yet there is no guarantee the "wasteful" programs are reduced, and thus often it is the important programs that are hurt.

2. Lack of funding in important programs is used to convince citizens that higher taxes are needed, but there is often no guarantee that the higher taxes will be used for those programs.

Notice, for example, that there are certain "blessed" government programs that there seems to always be money for. Yet it is always the roads or education that will suffer catastrophically if taxes aren't increased.

knewter• 14 years ago

One of my biggest problems with taxes is that the output of my hard work is spent on things that I find morally reprehensible. I feel it is absolutely evil to take someone's money at gunpoint and spend it on something he finds evil. For me, that's abortion.

We needn't labor the point of why other people don't find it evil - that's irrelevant to this discussion. The important part of my argument is that, short of going to jail, there's no option for me not to subsidize something I find morally reprehensible.

Failing to let individuals make that sort of decision dehumanizes them. I'm sick to my stomach every time I think of it.

linuxhansl2• 14 years ago

You are absolutely right. In my comment I singled out programs that I agree with.

I did not want to make this too political, but of course I object to the parts that I perceive as waste such as: Financing two useless and expensive wars, bailing out banks that should have been allowed to fail, the "war" on drugs and other questionable law enforcement initiatives, much of the NSA and CIA spending, etc, etc.

rayiner9• 14 years ago

One major thing missing here: luck! Lucky to be born in the U.S.A., of course, but also lucky to be born with a high IQ (those test scores that got him into the University of Chicago), lucky to be born with a creative streak, and lucky to make certain connections in the right time in his life, etc.

shanelja• 14 years ago

I believe that everyone is helped out by a hefty dose of luck across their lives - being in the right place at the right time often serves us well.

Admittedly, it often comes down to hard work and preparation in the daily struggle, but that day where you needed to guess a few test answers and got them right, or you posted a job offer to a company you didn't think would notice you and happened to catch a random recruiters eye, or you happened to perform well on the exact day your boss wanted to promote somebody to an empty senior position they wanted filling.

Life is a series of hard work, intermingled with sprinkles of luck, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

True, having the IQ at a young age to go to a private school on a scholarship is fortunate and not the kind of advantage most people have, but I'm sure it still wasn't easy at some points, the author simply had the ability of self preservation to survive their trials.

rayiner9• 14 years ago

I might be inclined to charecterize things in the opposite way: life is a series of lucky opportunities that you work hard to take advantage of.

Anyone who has the test scores to get into the University of Chicago is very likely in the top 1-2% of IQ's. It's hard to say that everything doesn't ultimately stem from that initial stroke of luck.

jpiasetz• 14 years ago

Two things comes to mind; the author embodies "I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have."

And second I wish the author wouldn't try to ram his point about tax down. He's looking back at his life and saying taxes gave me a leg up and ignoring the places where low taxes and regulation did the same (the private school, AOL).

Nobody who is libertarian argues that there should be charity or we shouldn't care for our fellow person (well nearly nobody, I'm sure their are some mean spirited people out there). The point is how efficient we do it.

He's looking down the one path that happened to him but what if instead of having a military when he was young there was just lower taxes and better support for mothers would society be better off? What if instead of Pell grants there was better primary schools? What if we gave Bill Gates more money to try and make the world a better place? What if lower taxes made food cheaper so that he wouldn't have to be fed through the schools lunch program?

potatolicious3• 14 years ago

> "Nobody who is libertarian argues that there should be charity or we shouldn't care for our fellow person (well nearly nobody, I'm sure their are some mean spirited people out there). The point is how efficient we do it."

I disagree. More often than not when libertarians come around on HN the "it isn't efficient" argument seems more like a proxy for "we shouldn't do this" without sounding heartless.

It's also based on a bit of blind faith that, failing any requirement to help their fellow person, people will do it on their own, at rates high enough that the people who need help will be helped. This bit of blind faith simply doesn't jive with observable reality around the world.

Most of the time I see the argument made "government is inefficient, we should leave social assistance to charities" is made knowing full well that such a scheme will never work, and that the unfortunate/needy will simply be left in the cold. It's intellectually dishonest and a cheap ploy to avoid saying "well, let them die".

The entire stance - or at least, the stance in the way it seems to be most commonly expressed - is fundamentally mean-spirited, made all the more galling by the disingenuous reframing.

smokeyj7• 14 years ago

People are starving this very second. Instead of helping them you're sitting on your first world ass commenting on a forum. Does it not bother you they're dying and you can do something about it? Why are you so mean spirited and cold? I'd like to steal half of your property and donate it to the needy and less fortunate. So what if I steal your means of production? Sure, you'll also become poor and require my generous assistance - but that's welfare. Rinse and repeat.

clarky075• 14 years ago

You are making an awful lot of assumptions of the way we think and what we believe with absolutely no evidence to back it up other than this is what you think we think.

Maybe you should look at the stats on charitable giving and come back to this discussion. For a prominent example, Romney gave 4 million to charity last year. Meanwhile, Joe Biden gave less than half of what I did, while making 1/8 of what he did. < 4k if I remember correctly. If you insist I'll look it up but I'm just on mobile.

I know this is anecdotal, but the stats across the board show huge discrepancies. Liberals want to force everyone to be taxed more, conservatives actually give their money to help people.

stretchwithme4• 14 years ago

Why allow anyone to handle any of their responsibilities? There's a chance they may not, so government should be doing it.

stretchwithme4• 14 years ago

I agree. One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and conclude they are right because you have prospered. We have, or some do, the capacity to think in principles and what things actually provide real benefit.

I happen to think people are more generous when they are free to be successful and they aren't bled to death.

Even with the high taxes in the US, I read that charitable contributions are up around $300 billion.

And private charity has some incentives that are absent in government charity. People are actually more careful with their own money. And when the results are obviously bad, they change what they are doing.

The federal government has let many bad things happen for decades before addressing them. The disastrous public housing projects. Welfare that destroys the work ethic. It eventually changed course on these things, but not without much political wrangling. A private donor would move to change it after seeing the evidence.

Worse still is the total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement that many recipients of public money seem to have. I feel most people when receiving a gift from a private donor would say please and thank you. And if the private donor could not continue to give for some reason, they'd say thank you just the same, not harass them.

potatolicious3• 14 years ago

Your comment bothers me in very fundamental ways, though this is far from the first time I have seen this sentiment.

At the core of it is that your entire position is based around supposition - notice the generous use of "I feel that... would...", "I happen to think", and pointing out a lot of theories - that people would spend private charity differently than government charity, that welfare destroys the work ethic, that public housing would not have been implemented if the money was in private charitable hands, that people who receive public money are ingrates, etc.

Where is the empiricism that we hackers pride ourselves in? Your entire position is based on your personal behavioral model of how people think, that isn't verified against copious observations from around the world. This is, I think, a long-winded way of saying "citation desperately needed" and drawing big bold underlines beneath it.

Have you actually talked to a substantial number of welfare recipients to know that they generally do feel a "total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement"? Or, pardon the bluntness, is that entirely a personal assumption?

rayiner9• 14 years ago

Counterpoint: black people.

The federal government subsidizes Chicago's public schools to the tune of $1 billion. You think private charity would be so generous to a district that's 90% black or Hispanic? You're out of your mind if you do. Whites fought, violently, for 100 years, to keep blacks from integrating into society. When the courts desegregated the cities, whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate, leaving the urban decay that is a major target of welfare today.

The history of race in this country is an unavoidable prong of the welfare debate, and it really undermines high-minded notions of how great a system of charity could be.

scott_w• 14 years ago

If you think taxes are high in the US, perhaps you should come to the UK.

deadairspace• 14 years ago

>One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and conclude they are right because you have prospered.

Absolutely. This is the just world fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

lumberjack• 14 years ago

>What if we gave Bill Gates more money to try and make the world a better place?

Is this sarcasm or do you truly believe this? I hope not but if so, perhaps you should read this[1], where the particular criticism I'm concerned with is the irresponsibly zealous research funding on a malaria cure with the consequence of alienating other important fields of research that are just as important. Ironically enough this is exactly the sort of thing government funding is so notorious of, namely, ignorance or ulterior motives that lead to a less efficient budget that could have been employed is so much better ways.

However, that is only one wealthy man, not enough data for a solid argument, but even on a purely rational basis, I would very much, rather the money was in a place where the general population had, at least in theory, some say on where it is to be spent. To me it seems that by going from public to private funding one is exchanging inefficiencies. The inevitable economic inefficiencies of bureaucracy for new inefficiencies in the way the money is allocated from the perspective of what benefits the citizens of the nation.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

I don't have faith in any one individual or group of individual to make good decisions for all of us. That is why I believe in radical decentralization, allowing for experimentation and innovation.

I completely disagree with you. I don't want the general population to have a say where Bill Gates' money goes. I want money to be in the hands of thousands of different-thinking individuals who can try to find an opportunity that the rest of us don't know about.

jacquesm• 14 years ago

You're completely free to go out and earn a couple of billion and then to spend it in the way you propose. Bill Gates gets to spend his the same way.

ams61103• 14 years ago

Furthermore, millions of others avail themselves of the same benefits without anything close to this result. He seems to imply that without the help of "the taxpayers" he would never have made it, but honestly both he and his mother sound like the sorts of people who would have "found a way"

confluence2• 14 years ago

> I am a great believer in hard work. The luckier I get, the more of it I seem to be able to do.

Correlation != causation.

People fundamentally underestimate the complexity of the world and due to a variety of psychological factors grossly over attribute successful outcomes to personal attributes.

Give some more of your hard work bullshit to people without legs.

Oh yeah, you don't, because your ability to see complexity only extends to the edge of your own ego.

rhizome2• 14 years ago

Not to mention a level of success that enables them to ascribe it to hard work.

11235813213• 14 years ago

I think that if we want to have more John Scalzis in the world, we need to lower taxes. I am glad his mother could get him into private school. There are many parents who could if they did not have so much withheld from their paycheck, did not have a large property tax bill, or did not have to pay rents inflated by taxes. We don't need to pay for such an expensive military just to give military moms some help. We could give free healthcare to so many more poor women and still save money if we reduced our military budget.

Confusion5• 14 years ago

They wouldn't need a private school if higher taxes paid for better public schools. Which they do in most of Europe.

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

The United States spends more money per pupil than most European countries[1] in K-12 education, $11,000 per student compared to the EU average of $7,700 per student. Where are you getting your beliefs from?

At some point, the public bureaucracy needs to stop draining the blood out of the private economy and learn to do more with less. Or, in the case of US schools, do more with more.

[1] http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance...

11235813213• 14 years ago

We spend quite a lot on education, up to 40% of state budgets in our largest states like California. Spending per student is among the highest in the world. There is no reason to think we would do better by spending even more. To be European, we should probably spend less.

If we want to emulate Europe, and in some ways we do, we should reduce the size of our schools (e.g. France), end a lot of our special programs for challenged children and replace them with a high level of personal attention with the goal of integrating the child (Finland), and develop integration programs and job tracks for immigrants and tightly enforce participation (Germany.)

One of the boldest and most European proposals is to eliminate much of the Department of Education, which does not successfully regulate curricula and implements one expensive program after another without progress. European countries have ministries and departments to oversee education, but since the countries are smaller, the departments are closer to the size of some of our state programs. Eliminating or reducing the DoE to one or two small, specialized, service- and research-oriented departments might possibly reduce expenses while increasing the quality of education in the country at the same time.

In short, I think you will want to support fewer education layers, programs and departments, and smaller schools and budgets, if you want public education in the United States to be more European.

Edit: I would like to add that private schools are very diverse and their students accomplish many remarkable things. In addition to meeting needs that standardized schools cannot, and being run better as small, atomic organizations usually are, private schools and universities drive innovation in education and are the places today from which tomorrow's public best practices will be derived. In most European countries, there are many private schools, so that is another thing you will want to emulate in the European model.

amy_seqmedia• 14 years ago

TL;DR Always work hard, keep your eyes open, and be helpful.

On the point of luck, yes there is a whole lot of lucky circumstance which you have no control over that puts in you in a lucky position. But I believe you pass a point in your life where it goes from being purely lucky to being just plain prepared. If Scalzi didn't work at his craft or his networking, the opportunities that availed themselves to him probably would not have happened.

I think a lot about where I am and where I'm going. There's lots of things I do now that don't have immediate payoff. Rather, I think of everything as just training for something else down the road. So I try to get good (or at least passably decent) at a breadth of things and specialize in a few. Hopefully then when luck swings my way I'm prepared to go after that small window of opportunity with full force.

I'm also a big fan of paying it forward, like Scalzi. Not everything is money---often it's just time. Giving someone honest feedback, lending them a hand, or supporting their efforts is all good karma. When you help others in a way you help yourself: growing your community of interest, raising the overall standard of living, moving groups of people forward.

jhales• 14 years ago

Taxation is not equivalent to charity or 'giving back.'

This is sadly an incredibly common conflation.

rhizome2• 14 years ago

It can be. For instance: school funding.

KC8ZKF• 14 years ago

Nor is it equivalent to handing over the fruits of your work to armed thugs, another incredibly common conflation.

ams61103• 14 years ago

Try not paying them then

_delirium• 14 years ago

I don't think he's arguing that it's equivalent to charity, but that's it's part of building an equal-opportunity society. He's arguing that he benefitted from that society, much of which was funded by other people's taxes, and is happy, now that he has money, to pay taxes that keep it in existence for others.

My parents have a vaguely similar view. My dad lived for a few years when he was a kid from social-security disability payments that his father received; and he went to college on a CalGrants scholarship, which at the time covered you almost fully if you had good high-school grades and were attending in-state. He would've been in quite difficult circumstances if those programs didn't exist, and would've had to hope for charity, which tends to be much less reliable and less uniformly available (e.g. churches tend to help their own members first) [1]. So now that he's an upper-middle-class engineer, he doesn't have a problem paying taxes that support those kinds of things.

[1] This is actually an argument F.A. Hayek makes for why there should be a minimal state safety net, even though most of Hayek's writing is anti-socialist and pro-free-market. He argues that, otherwise, people have to rely on more cliquish safety nets (extended-family clans, churches, etc.), which produces a tribalist rather than individualist society. So, perhaps counterintuitively, a little bit of collectivism at the top level (safety net for everyone) produces more individualism throughout society (people don't feel the need to cling to these tribalist groups for safety). He supported taxation to pay for education for similar reasons, though he argued for provision of the education to be market-based (via school vouchers).

SCAQTony• 14 years ago

I was not impressed with both the individual and the article.

First off the man deserved all the success he achieved but seriously, he had a solid education, high self-esteem, he was summarily effectual, he showed up to work and was industrious. (80% of success is just showing up- Woody Allen)

If higher taxes assisted him then why is the United States faltering and our educational system becoming such a joke? I mean to say are we not paying enough taxes? If so how high should they be?

I pay federal income tax, SSI taxes, state tax, sales taxes, property tax, garbage fees, gas taxes, utility taxes, I pay car registration fees, and probably a bunch of fees I am missing.

My fed tax rate is 21.7%, my California tax rate is 9.55%, sales sax 8.75% I believe, but with all of the above I easy pay 40% of my income.

Confusion5• 14 years ago

My national tax rate is ~35% an sales tax 21%. Then there's some stuff I'm missing. Altogether areound 60%. I'm not complaining; I live in the most awesome country in the world.

ubernostrum2• 14 years ago

If higher taxes assisted him then why is the United States faltering and our educational system becoming such a joke? I mean to say are we not paying enough taxes? If so how high should they be?

Keep in mind that in the US, much school funding comes from property taxes, and is highly tied to the specific location of the school. Thus, affluent areas "magically" have better schools, and poorer areas have worse schools.

bridanp• 14 years ago

I'm confused as to why so many comments on the story are stuck on the very few lines regarding taxes. The vast majority really leads back to his Mom's abilities to seek out ways to provide for him and then putting him in front of opportunities that eventually helped him become who he is.

If she had not been so active in putting him in the right places at the beginning, his life would have been vastly different.

But I can't place where he advocates higher taxes or the misuse of tax money.

jeremyarussell• 14 years ago

He wasn't making a case for higher taxes. He was simply stating that the taxes and programs that went into our military having good medical facilities for themselves, spouses and children. The taxes that go into grants and education (and school counselors ), and the taxes that go into providing food to the least fortunate. All had a very positive effect on allowing him to turn himself into a successful and happy person.

jandrewrogers• 14 years ago

With any story like this, I have a hard time extrapolating it to the circumstances of anyone else. Most people have been fortunate to run into individuals that ultimately benefitted their careers. I certainly have. But let us not extrapolate one man's experience to everyone's experience. Most people never have the opportunity to even be easily lucky. Often, people have to work very hard to grasp just a little bit of luck. That reality should be recognized. And I cannot complain. I have done well for myself by working hard and grasping opportunities.

Scalzi is right to consider how he arrived at his current position. However, the tacit assumption that everyone in his position enjoyed the advantages he did is false and pernicious. Many people work much harder and sacrifice much more than the story portrays. I don't begrudge Scalzi in the slightest. My concern is that people will think his experience is typical.

Hard work is a big part of it, luck is a big part of it, and being in the right place at the right time is a big part of it. People that work smart, hard, and efficiently are not common but those that do, or at least occasionally approximate it, generally do well over the long term no matter how their "luck" plays out.

rooshdi• 14 years ago

Which influences make people work smarter, harder, and more efficiently than others and how does one attain these influences?

brennenHN• 14 years ago

You missed the point. This is not an expectation of luck, but is his acknowledgement that he could not have made it alone. The post is not meant to help you achieve like him (which I understand is different from most of what is posted on Hacker News), but is a retrospective acknowledgement that it is impossible to succeed alone.

j455• 14 years ago

You so nailed it.

As a corollary I think it also speaks to the importance of keeping moving, be it inward, onward, and upward in life.

lsc• 14 years ago

>Hard work is a big part of it, luck is a big part of it, and being in the right place at the right time is a big part of it. People that work smart, hard, and efficiently are not common but those that do, or at least occasionally approximate it, generally do well over the long term no matter how their "luck" plays out.

Where would you be if you were born in Somalia to average Somali parents? How much hard work would it take to bring your average per-capita income of what, two hundred bucks a year up to something we Americans would call success? I'm not saying it couldn't be done, just god damn, you'd have to be an incredible human to pull it off.

I mean, the majority of the humans in the world live in places where our average yearly per-capita of forty-eight grand or so a year would be a staggeringly large income; I think your average per-capita worldwide is well under ten grand a year. Just being born in the wealthy parts of the world means you are very lucky, and that you've cleared an enormous hurdle.

Race and gender. And height. I mean, sure, here in America, Women do make it sometimes. In my field, at least, they are at an obvious disadvantage, but it's something they can overcome if they are smart, lucky and hard working. But if she was born in Iran? Overcoming that birth handicap would be incredibly difficult. I'm not going to say impossible, but you'd need to be truly incredible, one out of a million, to get as far as I have as a mediocre, maybe one in fifty, if that, white guy born in the US to poor-ish but educated parents.

And what if you are born stupid? That's luck, too. I mean, sure, it's a mixture of genetic and environmental factors, but hell, you don't have much control over the environmental factors until you are mostly grown, so either way (environment or genetics) a lot has to do with the luck of choosing the correct parents (either as genetic materiel donors, or as keepers of your environment.)

Sure, there are some things you can do after 18 to move the needle in either direction, I'm sure, but man, you are really behind the kid who got lucky.

As a good friend (who is vastly more intelligent than I am, but maybe 6 inches shorter) said:

Me: "I don't believe in luck."[1]

Him: "that's because you are lucky."

And yes, most of the luck was me having the good sense to choose sensible parents. (And vs. this guy, I mostly got lucky in terms of height... I think I could argue that my ability to project confidence was at least partially learned through my own hard work. Part of it was the luck of the parents; my dad did encourage entrepreneurship; I had real sales experience at the age of 12 (low dollar; we grew pumpkins, and I walked them around the mobile home park in a wheelbarrow, knocking on doors "twenty five cents for the little ones, seventy five for the big ones." (I mean, obviously, at 12, he did a lot of the work.) I can claim some credit for expanding on that, but from what I know of his early family life, I got lucky in that area, too, and he got particularly unlucky.)

Confidence is obviously bullshit, but it has a huge impact on your income. But this guy, for that matter, was pretty lucky, too. I mean, the poor bastard had to work for me for a while, which I'm sure is miserable, but a real employer did eventually notice him and he makes reasonable money now. He's lucky for being born here in America, where he can make a decent living because, well, he's brilliant, rather than some desert or jungle where he'd have died an early death for being easy to beat up. I mean, he could have done a lot to generate some fake confidence. It'd probably improve his life a lot. I'm just saying, because of the extra six inches the genetic lottery gave me and not him? I don't have to try nearly as hard, in spite of the fact that he is better qualified, by virtue of his superior intellect, for nearly every job I've had or applied for.)

Now, if you are saying that it is better for a person who is easily discouraged to believe that there is no luck? sure, you are absolutely right. You can't change luck. I mean, it's a little bit like AI, once you figure out how to change something, it's no longer luck. So yes, if your brain, for whatever reason, can't handle the fact that most of your potential was set before you reached the age of majority, yeah, you're better off fooling yourself. Because focusing on the bits that were luck is useless. You've gotta focus on the hard work part, 'cause that's what you can change now.

(Recognizing what you have the potential to be good at is useful... but it's also really hard to do, and it's easy to make expensive mistakes. Figuring out how to work as hard as you are able, though? nearly always pays some dividends. So sure, until you figure out how to work as hard as you are able, that should be your focus.)

[1] Yes, I actually say things like that. Part of the practice for that confidence thing. You know, pretending to be white, and all that. It's kinda ridiculous, sure, but eh, you can pay me to look a little bit silly.

The thing is, you need a certain, I don't know the Chinese for it, but the translation is "Good face" to do well. There is this whole set of social rules you need to follow- this whole set of, well, this identity you need to assume to do business... or really, even to get someone else to hire you to write code. I call assuming the required mask in technical/business situations "pretending to be white" - because the most accessible and understandable 'good face,' for me, at least, is the "Real American" face. It's seeped into the rest of my life by now, too, which I find hilarious. I'm not the sort who can switch masks on the drop of a hat. It takes years, for me... So this bleed over into the rest of my life feels honest, authentic. I really am, in a small way, becoming a "Real American." I genuinely enjoy Johnny Cash now, though the country they play on the radio, well, that can still only be enjoyed ironically.

j455• 14 years ago

This speaks to a few things and our opportunity to participate in them:

No one is self made. Everyone owes it to breaks from those around them. Get over yourself. Your life isn't the only hard or misunderstood one.

Give more breaks than you get. No one is a stranger or enemy. Treat everyone as your friend and they'll become one. Treat someone like an adversary and they'll become one too.

If you don't take the time to learn someone's story you have no right to an opinion other than wishing them well.

Keeping kindness, goodness, and sharing opportunity is the bedrock of a world I want to live in.

Keeping kindness, goodness, and sharing a growing thing is a world I want to work on. We're dealing with our own stuff, together. Not everyone will get, or do this. I have my choice.

Remember how connected we are. How I treat others is how I truly do end up treating myself or being treated. Things aren't black and white, but the greys can lighten or darken based on me. The drop is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the drop.

Our universal responsibility for and towards each other. When we can see that we are owed nothing and owe our respect and contribution to the world in exchange for becoming better every day, we begin to realize what life is really about.

It's your job to understand yourself first, enough to keep moving, inward, onward and upward. Through your understanding of yourself, you'll be able to connect to others deeply and in a meaningful way. As much as this may terrify some, it will involve learning to use your heart and gut as much as your mind.

Our responsibility for our society, and our society towards us. We get the responsibility we deserve and demand/contribute to in our actions.

omegant2• 14 years ago

Great lines!

j455• 14 years ago

Wow, wrote this and went to bed. Glad you liked it, learning one line at a time and I try to remember to practice it one line at at time.

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

Yes, I appreciate public services. But I don't enjoy paying my taxes to inefficient institutions, or institutions that spend my tax money primarily to benefit insiders rather than the needy. And I don't want to live in a high-tax society where private individuals don't have the means to independently experiment with their capital in ways that benefit us all.

If the United States had taxes as high as Denmark, then Elon Musk wouldn't have had the money left over from Paypal to start Space X. When you watch the rockets fly to Mars, thank whatever god you believe in for low American taxes.

I appreciate the sentiment behind some of these comments, but fuck all these straw men and apologists maintaining a smoke screen for poorly run institutions (cough Sacramento cough). And no, I'm not evil, selfish, greedy, or ignorant if I want lower taxes. I am making a rational judgment based on what I believe will make the best society to live in.

Confusion5• 14 years ago

  If the United States had taxes as high as Denmark, there
  would be no Elon Musk.

Why do you believe this? Denmark also has multmillionaires that fund startups or start their own.

jacoblyles6• 14 years ago

Elon invested all his money from the Paypal sale to make Tesla, Space X, and Solar City at the same time. He had to borrow money from friends to make rent. Take away an additional 30% from his Paypal money and either Tesla or Space X would have never been born.

And that's only one entrepreneur's story. That same scenario is repeated thousands of times around the country. Taxes are sand in the gears of an entrepreneurial economy.

anujkk• 14 years ago

This reminds me of what my grandfather told me once -

"I often hear many people(mostly teens) claiming that they are independent and they can live life as they wish. They say they don't care about society. They wrongly perceive society as something evil that is stopping them to live the life they want. They forget that in society we are neither independent or dependent, but interdependent. It is next to impossible to live completely independently."

j455• 14 years ago

These are really great words that stand the test of time. Inherent truth is eternal.

antidoh• 14 years ago

This reminds me of my favorite joke:

Man has progressed to the point of rivalry with God. Man talks to God and brags about his accomplishments. God agrees that Man has accomplished a lot.

God reminds Man that God made him from dirt. Man says "Oh, we mastered that long ago." God says he'd like to see that.

Man smiles, and reaches down for a handful of dirt.

God says "Ah, no, you go get your own dirt."

OldSchool3• 14 years ago

The term "Self-Made" is repulsive. If you're not acquainted with the term "survivorship bias" get to know it well before you read any success story.

Just after the end of the 90's boom, I was taking care of the storage of my [insert name of any large luxury item] and on the other side of the counter was a guy about my age and disposition who said, "hey what do you do for a living?" I gave him a minimal description and he soon responded with "Wow that's nice, my (tech-related) business went bust and now I work here behind the counter and live upstairs, trying to get back on my feet."

There wasn't the remotest possibility that there was a thousand-fold gap between us in any entrepreneurially-related skill category yet Lady Luck had placed us on opposite side of the service counter that day.

Always be humble. Life is not wholly deterministic.

ScottBurson• 14 years ago

Your point is not a bad one, but you clearly didn't read a word of the essay.

OldSchool3• 14 years ago

I got the point of the essay. Mine was more a practical rant that the term Self-Made is so widely accepted as part of culture. Being a parent for many years now I've seen more "just believe in yourself" messages in kids' movies than I can count.

paulhauggis• 14 years ago

Was he really unlucky..or did he just make bad decisions?

OldSchool3• 14 years ago

That would depend if he was ever offered an exit. By the end of 2000 free-wheeling money for tech was gone. If that didn't kill a business, 9/11/2001 was a second blow. Those who had a chance to exit by Y2K and had a clue about financial bubbles thrived personally. Certainly though, there were smart people who were never offered an acquisition.

phreanix• 14 years ago

This is a really great and inspiring read.

The key takeaways, at least for me, were:

Your parents play a huge part in establishing a primary path through life for you. His mother worked hard and did what was necessary to give him a chance to concentrate on learning, to appreciate books, and to give him opportunities to grow and explore his world.

Your integrity, earned respect, and power of networks and relationships can't be emphasized enough. At almost every critical junction in his life, it was a personal relationship or the recommendation of people who had respect for his abilities and skills that opened a door and led to better opportunities. That says a lot, not just about the impression he's made on others (purposely or not), but on the confidence his friends, peers, and acquaintances had in him. That was no easy feat, tho some people can do it without effort. It is interesting that he remembers so many names, all the way back to teachers in elementary school. I may not have the best criteria for "great people" but to me, someone who makes the effort to remember key people in their lives for decades is in turn worth remembering.

Grab opportunities. Put in the work. I know this should be a given, but I know it can still be daunting. He took jobs he had no experience in and he moved to better opportunities as he saw fit. Passion can manifest in a kind of restlessness, and properly tapped, can mean the difference between mediocrity and absolute fulfillment.

Lastly, the most important part I think is the acknowledgment that you don't get to be where you are alone. Yes, one has to have that rare combination of drive, talent, intelligence, charisma, and everything else that makes up a certain formula for success, but "luck" can also be the result of stirring the pot just right. Being at the right place at the right time can also be attributed to having enough people recognize all the memorable and remarkable qualities one has that will make them remember to recommend you for a position or even just to point you out as an authority on a particular subject. The people around you are just as important to success.

chernevik• 14 years ago

It's great that OP had super public school teachers. Mine were lousy. Sorry, it's just a fact, they collected their checks and went home on the clock and didn't give a damn about the kids they taught.

There was one who was outstanding. He got laid off in a budget cutback because he was junior. Everyone agreed it was a shame, but no one did anything about it. That's what taught me what those people were about.

I've been helped by a great many people. Public school teachers aren't in my particular set.

confluence2• 14 years ago

Or as Chris Sacca once put it in "The Trouble With Libertarians":

> I think, sometimes, like, arguing with libertarians can be really frustrating because, I think, it can be, um..., I think it can be intellectually lazy. And I think it can be convenient, and, in the same way that, um, you know when everything is going right it's easy to attribute it to your own success and when things are going wrong, it's because you got fucked or because you were unlucky etc., like, I think sometimes, like, the libertarian point of view can be, um..., can be rooted in a limited set of circumstances where you give yourself a little more credit than, um.., than you want, or than you are due, probably.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHuU6-CFDo

I recommend watching the entire Chris Sacca Pando Monthly Fireside chat.

It is extremely awesome.

Just a teaser of what you'll see: $12 million is gained and lost, bankruptcy makes an appearance, the dot com crash crushes everybody, the rise of Google, playing with $4 billion in cash at FCC poker, running a billion dollar hedge fund, being a ski bum whilst simultaneously graduating near the top of his class at law school, then going on to live in poverty and working his ass off just to stay in the game and getting really, really, really fucking lucky :)

Yes, that awesome.

Entire talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I

Both the above article, and Chris Sacca are actually referring the the just world fallacy, a derivative of the fundamental attirbution effect, which in combination with cognitive dissonance, allows people to do the following:

> As a simple example, consider a situation where a driver, Alice, is about to pass through an intersection. Her light turns green, and so she begins moving forward when an ambulance blows through the red-light with sirens blaring and lights flashing, and cuts her off. Despite knowing that there is a good reason for the driver's behaviour, she is likely to form a negative opinion of the driver, e.g. "what an inconsiderate driver!".

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

You will not believe how many things in life are, ironically enough, a derivative of the fundamental attribution error (e.g. republicans/conservatives/religion/start-up conferences - so many others).

And another video on what entrepreneurship feels like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3NC_w9AOSA

chrisringrose3• 14 years ago

Beautiful. I fear this is a story about the OLD America, before The Right took intellectual control. Most Americans now believe that welfare is a handout to the lazy, as though the poor chose to be so, and would rather receive than work.

But these people don't view the cranky old miser in It's a Wonderful Life as a glorious capitalist hero, or George as a socialist. I know these people agree with giving to those they know in need, but when it's broader assistance, like through government, and those being helped aren't friends, they lose interest.

We need to get The Right to have empathy for strangers.

martinced• 14 years ago

I begin to understand why HN is so filled with negativity.

A lot of people here are bitter because they failed or because they know that they'll eventually fail. This place is a hive of socialists who do not have what it takes for to create future wealth.

It's very ironic to see them using hardware and software made by Intel / Google / Apple / etc. to spread their poisonous words.

Don't forget what made your country great (I'm not american and I'm not in the U.S.) and which kind of men you owe the technological world you live into (including, but not limited to, computers, space rockets, medecine).

And please: stop to try to create things and stop being negative with those who do. Go find a job as a state servant and, please, leave enough oxygen to those trying hard to create future wealth.

A Self-Made Man Looks At How He Made It

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