11 ms·

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

• snitko 16y 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_t 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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_t 16y 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.
      • nagrom 16y ago
        That could have multiple causes. Often, if your parents have achieved a lot academically, you will palce more weight on that aspect of your life. You'll get better grades and you'll be more likely to become an academic yourself. Since we're swapping anecdotes, as an academic, I have never known anyone to get a position just because their parent works in the field. Ever. The competition is ridiculous, to the point where many Americans opt to go elsewhere and leave the academic jobs to the people willing to work 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. I would not be surprised if many modern academics would prefer that their offspring go into industry. The rewards are greater and the competition is less, given the level or reward on offer.
        • Locke1689 16y ago
          Don't forget the genetic aspect -- smart parents tend to have smart kids.
  • tensor 16y 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 16y 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.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• enjo 16y 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.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • erikstarck 16y ago
    Yeah, but you don't have to be a super rich billionaire for that.
  • HockeyPlayer 16y 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.
    • kscaldef 16y 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.
      • orangecat 16y ago
        Geez. I never thought about that scenario, but it makes perfect sense. So much for the one possible advantage of employer-based health insurance.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  • nollidge 16y ago
    This is overly simplistic. Feminism argues for different expectations, not necessarily higher ones. Feminists have (largely) come around to accepting that whatever women want to do is fine: have a full-time career, raise kids full-time, somewhere in-between, something completely different, etc. But there's been no analogous movement to promote the same for men. And I have no idea what could possibly be dumb or dangerous about not prioritizing wealth over everything else.
    • dgabriel 16y ago
      One of the indirect benefits of feminism is that more men are more involved with their families, and more men are choosing to be primary caregivers. There are many, many fewer men who go this route than women, but it's slowly becoming more acceptable.
  • martey 16y ago
    The point of the article is not that men should not be ambitious, but that their self-image should not rely on how much money they make. You might consider it "ambitious" if a woman spends a significant amount of time, money, and effort on her appearance in order to look like a celebrity or supermodel, but others would call it "dumb and dangerous."
    • mkramlich 16y ago
      A man's self-image should not rely on how much money he has. But a woman's image of that man will often depend a great deal on how much money he has. Not all the time, and it's not the only factor, of course, but to say it's not a big or frequent factor in the real world is to deny reality. (Not assuming you think that, more that the OA's message came close to making this mistake.)
• jchonphoenix 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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.
  • orangecat 16y ago
    I don't actually think that would happen. Corporations are "immortal" today, and they can still rise and fall quickly.
• jlgosse 16y 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.
  • scrod 16y ago
    >Without trying to sound like an absolute ass... Some things just come naturally to you I suppose.
    • techiferous 16y 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.
      • scrod 16y ago
        Actually, I implied that he sounded like an ass. And it's disingenuous of you to pretend that the purpose of his comment was to purely, disinterestedly disseminate facts. Instead of hearing the wisdom of the article writer, he demonstrates precisely the mentality with which she was finding fault, essentially generalizing her philosophy to all women, and painting it in the light of failure rather than moderation and internal peace. Frankly, I find his comment chauvinistic and somewhat offensive, and I'm not even a woman.
    • deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  • rchi 16y ago
    on the titanic, 46% of women in the 3rd class was saved whereas only 33% of men in the 1st class survived.
  • 16y ago
• pg 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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.
  • nickpinkston 16y 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 16y ago
• plainOldText 16y ago
  If this would be OK then HN would lose most of its users. :)))
  • iamwil 16y ago
    Hardly, if HN attracts its intended audience--people that are intellectually curious about everything.
    • zackattack 16y 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 16y 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.
      • iamwil 16y ago
        startup programmer is so fiercely defended here because it's not in many other places, especially in the day to day work life. What one may call close-mindedness may be what a community strong identifies as its values. Regardless, welcome to HN. 12 days is but a blink. Keep participating. If it doesn't jive with you, perhaps you can find it in other communities or one that you start on your own.
      • gxti 16y ago
• ttol 16y 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_10018557.htm 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 16y ago
    A similar story: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-china-bachelor-20100621,0,755582,print.story http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-china-bache...
  • gametheory 16y ago
    All bachelors are men.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  • oconnore 16y ago
    You should have read to the 4th paragraph: "My girlfriends and I are certainly driven to be successful; we want to be high achievers in our fields, and we stress over everything we haven’t yet accomplished, but no one’s especially concerned with getting rich. We hardly ever talk about money."
    • mquander 16y ago
      I agree with you so much that I deleted my original comment, because I unjustly ignored a lot of what the author was saying.
      • natrius 16y ago
        Deleting the comment made the thread harder to understand.
        • jongraehl 16y ago
          I like the deletion. More people should delete their comments (if they turn out to be inapplicable or unfair).
          • natrius 16y ago
            How is that better than adding to the comment or replying to let people know of your change of heart? Deleting comments that have replies is in no way a good thing.
            • mquander 16y ago
              The comment I wrote was a pithy, uninformative comment that was misleading about the content of the article (I suggested that the author just didn't understand ambition very well, but she's clearly not talking about general ambition; she explicitly distinguishes people who are in it only for riches.) Worse, it had 7 upvotes almost immediately, meaning that people were reading it and getting a wrong and unfair impression. The reply added nothing except to correct me. I don't feel like anything was lost. You could say that I should leave it in case someone else makes the same misinterpretation. Perhaps I should, but I would not anyway. I don't care to represent myself with incorrect or useless comments documenting my stupidity; I would prefer to remove them from the record and let people who know what they're talking about go ahead.
• holdenc 16y 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 16y ago
  We need the startup-founder version of this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXf8fr0Kp3Q 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 16y ago
  ... "as long as I do"
• johnrob 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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.
  • waqf 16y ago
    If you're thinking of trying the sex ratios thing, I strongly suggest controlling for age, and preferably social class.
    • carnevalem 16y ago
      Do you have any data to do this? I think the results would be interesting.
      • waqf 16y ago
        Sadly, I was considering including just such an appeal with my original comment. If you find some, let me know?
• Sthorpe 16y 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 16y ago
  Bullshit. It's OK not to get rich, but it's not OK not to try.
  • gxti 16y ago
    Why do you think that?
• joey_bananas 16y ago
  Why do I get 20 odd javascript dialog popups from that page?
  • joey_bananas 16y ago
    Answer: Twitter is broken.
• tansey 16y 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=10.1.1.8.8219&rep=rep1&type=pdf 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. :)
  • jimbokun 16y ago
    Except, today, high levels of wealth is inversely correlated with the number of offspring.
    • dennisgorelik 16y ago
      Not really. It looks like there is weak or no correlation between wealth and number of offspring.
      • arohner 16y ago
        No. In most countries, an increase in productivity / GDP / quality of life is strongly correlated with a lowering in fertility rate: http://geocurrentevents.blogspot.com/2010/07/misconceptions-about-mexicos-birth-rate.html http://geocurrentevents.blogspot.com/2010/07/misconceptions-...
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• Revisor 16y 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 16y 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.
  • waqf 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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 16y ago
  The richest man in the cemetery is rolling in his grave.
  • mrtron 16y ago
    Nope, decomposing like everyone else.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• ajdecon 16y 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 16y ago
  The cake is a lie ;)
• c00p3r 16y ago
  ...if you born poor and in a wrong place (environment).
• skmurphy 16y ago
  "No man is rich whose expenditure exceeds his means; and no one is poor whose income exceeds his outgoings." Thomas Chandler Haliburton
• cwp 16y 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 16y ago
  ...unless you're not okay with it.
• evanrmurphy 16y 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 16y 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.