
Are you built to be an employee? - springmissile
https://hackernoon.com/are-you-built-to-be-an-employee-d63c0773118e
======
skybrian
"if you truly want to have money, you will"

That's called the just-world fallacy.
[https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-
falla...](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallacy/)

~~~
KozmoNau7
It's amazing how many people believe that Just World nonsense. Truly
staggering.

~~~
bshimmin
Don't most religions basically teach this? "Blessed are the meek, for they
will inherit the earth"?

~~~
Balgair
I believe that Garrison Keillor said it best:" The Gospel is meant to comfort
the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Many 'prosperity' gospel folk forget the second half for a few years and don't
plan correctly. Then they end up as the first half without any comfort.

------
freeone3000
The promise that "if you want to make money, you will" seems fantastical. The
idea that everyone has the skills to run their own business if they just
BELIEVE hard enough is a tad ridiculous. He's had success, sure. Would you
have success? Would you have as much success as you would as a mediocre
employee?

~~~
grabcocque
One of the worst things about rich people is their incredibly damaging refusal
to admit the primary cause of their wealth is blind luck.

~~~
deadmetheny
You make your own luck. If you never put yourself into a position, you'll
almost never get lucky. There's a certain luck involved, absolutely, but that
luck is not blind.

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of
it." \- Thomas Jefferson (supposedly)

~~~
qntty
_Neither this statement nor any variations thereof have ever been found in
Thomas Jefferson 's writings_

[https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-
collections/i-a...](https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-
collections/i-am-great-believer-luckspurious-quotation)

~~~
deadmetheny
Hence the "supposedly", although I suppose it's silly to think I could avoid
the famous HN pedantry.

~~~
qntty
:)

------
xaedes
What I learned about this concept "if you truly want to have money, you will"
is that I just don't truly want money.

Sure I still need money for food and stuff, but that is the sole motivation. I
don't actually WANT it. It stays in the way and is just a means to an end.

I don't want to think about money, I want to use my mind for more interesting
stuff.

Accepting that money is just money put my mind at ease.

~~~
acconrad
The irony is that to truly be able to not think about money, you have to have
enough of it for your expenses to be paid on autopilot. To have that, you
essentially need to have enough to retire on, which requires a lot of money,
which requires thinking a lot about how to make that money.

~~~
xaedes
That is just your money focused mind at work. There are other ways.

Some trivial suggestions:

\- becoming a monk

\- begging for food

\- steal for food

\- roam the open land and life with the animals and eat what nature provides

\- die

Some of these are not really attractive, but they show how it is possible to
life in a way where you can truly not think about money.

But making the "not wanting to think about money" much less strict will also
work.

"you have to have enough of it for your expenses to be paid on autopilot"
Having a job helps here. If it makes enough money, you don't need to think
about it.

"enough to retire on" Solutions:

\- having kids

\- gamble that pension is enough

\- delegate your future problems alltogether to your future-self

\- never stop working

If you truly don't want to think about money, "enough to retire on" wouldn't
be a concept for you anyway...

~~~
ashark
> "enough to retire on" Solutions: > \- having kids

Whoa, no. I've had 3 over the last five years. Total expense of _well_ over a
quarter million so far, and we live in a fairly cheap city in flyover country.

[EDIT] small expenses that nevertheless add up to several thousands over the
first 5 years: clothes, diapers, food, formula (YMMV), toys, furniture (cribs,
beds, dressers); large expenses: housing (need more space and in decent school
district, both = $$$), cars (3 kids basically = at least one van required, no
getting by with only tiny, cheap cars), medical, lost wages of wife staying
home for ~1.5yrs, daycare/school after that.

~~~
xaedes
in the long term it can work out. can. and not a suitable solution if it
doesn't work out short or mid term, yes.

~~~
ashark
God, considering how much that'd be worth if invested it'd have to be a _hell_
of a payoff from my kids to make up for it. Plus we're nowhere near done
spending yet, and could _easily_ spend a lot more.

[EDIT] by which I mean we could spend more to improve their prospects and
educational outcomes, especially on housing or directly on school itself. The
sky's the limit on that stuff, at least until you reach absurd levels of
wealth at which point it does taper off (i.e. it becomes easy to afford _the
very best_ , and there's nothing more expensive than that)

~~~
xaedes
yea.. having kids while wanting their best probably doesn't go very well with
"not wanting to think about money" in our society/economy

having kids can be a good reason to change that attitude.

------
aetherson
"However, let me promise you this: if you truly want to have money, you will."

Well, that's very nice of him. I'm confused, though: how do I send him my
application for the money he's promised me? Is an email enough?

~~~
xaedes
If you truly want it, you will find answers to this questions and let actions
follow. If you only ask those questions and do nothing to reach your goal, you
wont reach it.

That is the point of this statement.

~~~
aetherson
But he _promised_ me.

\--

I understood the point of his statement. It was a stupid statement because in
fact it's not enough to "truly" want something -- it's helpful but not enough.

It was an insulting statement because it sets him up to tell anyone who fails
that they didn't _truly_ want it. There's little more offensive than someone
telling someone else that he knows their mind better than they do.

But the thing that I was really objecting to wasn't the insult or the
stupidity, it was the rhetorical flourish of "promising." As obviously he has
nothing on the line here, and if anyone was dumb enough to believe him, and
they failed, he'd be out exactly nothing.

~~~
xaedes
Yea, that is hardly something that can be promised. Actually I didn't
recognize that he stated it as a promise on first reading.

Hm.. interesting, you made me notice that in my interpretation "truly wanting"
something implies letting it follow actions. And not letting it follow actions
implies not truly wanting it.

------
ChuckMcM
Self discovery is important, it is also _self_ discovery so that makes it
unwise to generalize. This statement stuck out though:

 _" You’ll also need to have something that motivates you more than financial
security, which is an immense force."_

Granted it is a bit ambiguous (what does 'which is' refer to? your motivation
or financial security?) but assuming that it is saying that you need a purpose
in life other than accumulating cash then I would agree. I have observed that
people who have some goal other than cash, are much more likely to be happier
with their life.

I attribute that happiness to the definitive quality of making progress
regardless of your remuneration. Versus the challenge of score keeping by how
much one is getting paid and observing that there are always people making
more or opportunities that pay more. I think that sets up a feedback loop in
some people where they are constantly disappointed.

For some it must be like driving down a crowded freeway and only seeing the
spaces in the traffic up ahead that they could fit into, being angry at the
drivers around them who are preventing them from moving forward into those
spaces, and ignoring the progress they are making down the road.

------
Bahamut
Why is it that articles from Hacker Noon are so terrible?

One can have a regular job, work hard, and get to enjoy life with flexibility
too. There are a ton of bad assumptions/statements in this article.

------
trjordan
Startups are wonderful, freeing experiences. You can build exactly the company
and culture you want, balancing so many of the things that you didn't have
control over at a bigger company.

Then you get customers.

Customers don't care if you're burnt out.

Customers don't care if you're transparent and fair to your colleagues.

You get grace periods when you're first starting out, or first signed a couple
contracts, or after delivering a few key efforts.

But at the end of the day, customers are where the pressure comes from,
because they are the sustaining force of your business.

~~~
binaryblitz
Exactly this. I've worked at numerous startups and they're all the same. They
all eventually fail, or become an actual company. I'd love to see what the
author's "amazing work hard, play hard startup" looks like in a year, two
years, etc.

------
s73ver_
I take immediate issue with the idea that not working unpaid overtime makes
you "not a good employee". A good employee should take care of themselves, and
do what they can to avoid burn out, so they can continue to be productive.

~~~
scarface74
Simple solution -- go contract 1099 or W2. They have to pay you for every hour
and you get paid more if you have the right set of skills and live in the
right area.

~~~
s73ver_
Not so simple. For one, I need health insurance. And, especially now in the
US, trying to strike out on your own while needing that is quite dangerous.

~~~
scarface74
If you go W2 contract you are working for a consulting company. You can buy
health insurance through them.

------
fallingfrog
The thing is, in my experience _nobody_ really wants to be an employee,
because to be an employee is to be someone who has to sell their time for a
wage. What people really want who want to own their own businesses and set
their own hours is to own the means of production - to own their own labor.
This is not some fringe phenomenon, it's the story of human existence in the
modern world.

That said, this guy sounds astoundingly entitled and probably does not realize
that every person working weekends in retail is thinking the same thing, but
doesn't have the money to pursue it.

~~~
pcsanwald
I've hired lots of people that used to run their own businesses and want to go
back to being an employee.

~~~
fallingfrog
Are you sure they _want_ to or did they just go out of business? If you were
the person hiring them then they would probably feel compelled to present
themselves as enthusiastic about wanting to be an employee. You are probably
not getting their true feelings. It feels pretty wretched to admit defeat and
go begging for your job back but you do it with a smile if you've got mouths
to feed.

~~~
pcsanwald
I'm pretty sure at least a few people genuinely wanted to. they ended up being
pretty happy as they ended up working at our company for many years.

I have no idea how long you've been working, but for myself, my wants and
desires have changed pretty significantly over the years. Plenty of people
(not just in technology) want change in their career, and are more than
willing to trade off the freedom of running your own business with the freedom
of being an employee, and not having to worry about the 10 zillion things you
have to worry about when you're running the show.

I've also hired plenty of technologists that had similar experiences with
management. Do anything long enough, and the grass on the other side starts to
look a whole lot greener.

------
FLUX-YOU
>I want a culture that promotes living to work. I want employees to feel so
excited by their work that it’s no longer a chore, but enjoyment

Lifestyle businesses?

There's not a lot I know about them -- basically a business with high enough
margins that 6 hour days and trips are the norm. It sounds nice, but probably
requires a good amount of already developed skills/connections to get that
margin high enough to afford the lifestyle.

I suppose working with a minimalist/off-the-grid community also counts as
lifestyle employment.

~~~
binaryblitz
Give it six months and his startup will either fail, or have enough work that
this isn't feasible anymore. He's very young and thinks he's going to do what
a million other companies haven't been able to do yet. Good luck bud.

~~~
springmissile
You aren't half a pessimist, are you? I'll call you "practical" or "realist"
if you'd prefer your ego stroked. It's been almost 2 years and we've only
sustained growth so far. Good luck to you, too. Try coming across as less
pretentious though.

------
htormey
I think a better question would be are you built to run your own business?
Assuming the answer to the preceding question is yes a good follow up question
would be what kind of business do you want to run?

I quit my well paying corporate Job about 2 years ago to go work on my own
software product. I spent about 6 months working on this part time while doing
contracting then ended up focusing full time on my own consulting/contracting
business.

Along the way I have made a number of mistakes and met with people in similar
situations. Here are some random observations from my journey so far:

\- It's very easy to spend a lot of time building a software product that
nobody really wants (Duh).

\- It's really easy to spend a lot of time building a software product that
makes a small amount of money but not enough to justify your time.

\- It takes a long time to build a SASS business, budget at least 24 months.
If you are later on in your career, 24 months of little to no money is a big
opportunity cost.

\- Contracting/Consulting is at least 50% about selling & marketing yourself
effectively.

\- It's really hard to work on a product part time even if you can devote
about 2-3 days a week to it. Context switching costs a lot.

\- Finding a cofounder who complements your skillset, who you can trust and is
actually willing to go all in for 12 months is hard.

I think a lot of HN people conflate starting a company with coming up with a
brilliant new product or service and building it around that. If you are at
all entrepreneurial but lacking ideas, it might be worth your while doing a
little contracting to see what it's like. Doing so might even provide you with
some inspiration.

------
indubitable
A question for those who are irked at the _" If you truly want to have money,
you will."_ comment in the article. Where do you draw the line between
circumstance and personal engagement?

I used to find those sort of comments naive. A big part of that was because of
what I thought was a reasonable thought experiment. In particular if every
person tomorrow was replaced with Elon Musk. What would happen? Well not a
whole lot - you'd certainly have Elons flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets.
After all it would be literally impossible for everybody to be the CEO and
entrepreneur. And so if we can even Elon scrubbing toilets, how could it ever
be reasonable to suggest that everybody could succeed if they just tried
harder?

What changed my view has been life experience. Even if the number of
individuals that _can_ achieve great things is a sort of zero sum game, I
don't think that the lack of possibility of success is the thing holding
individuals back. What does seem to hold individuals back is them, for
whatever reason, never seeming to understand what it takes to succeed. People
will try to find a better job or whatever, but rarely will they try to
independently monetize what skills they already have, or teach them skills
with that goal in mind. That is not to say these people are lazy -- many will
work themselves to the bone even when it's not really expected of them (the
"overtime as a badge of honor" as the article phrases it), but it's like the
idea of spending some of that energy to try to do their own thing is something
that just doesn't seem to register with them.

And I think that's what this article is really hitting on, all be in an
unintentionally less than tactful way. And I also think that's why there's
about a million different derivatives of the quote from just as many
successful individuals that 'doors don't open themselves.' And of course once
you fail, which you will - try again. The advice is so ubiquitous that I think
people no longer even think about the wisdom within. We can even go back to
the one Shakespeare quote most every person knows: "To be, or not to be, that
is the question."

------
grabcocque
My worry, and I suspect I'm not alone, is I'm cut out to be neither an
employee nor self-employed.

Such is the lot of the anxiety-ridden terminal malcontent trapped in late-era
corporatism.

~~~
mottomotto
Perhaps early retirement should then be your goal? If you work in tech, you
can do it in 10 years or less.

------
eldavido
I've wasted a lot of time learning that "owner" vs. "employee" is the wrong
distinction. It's a hold-over from the industrial-era mindset of
union/employee vs. management.

In today's economy, many employees out-earn "owners". Employees even get stock
at many places. And even if you start the place, you're going to have to give
up a lot along the way if you want outside capital or good talent.

Stop wasting time thinking about being "an owner" and start thinking about,
how can I deliver the most value to the greatest number of other people, as
THEY define "value", in the shortest amount of time? That's a better approach.

------
bcoughlan
After working for startups, "work hard, play hard" is a red flag phrase.

Employees are employees instead of entrepreneurs because they don't want the
headaches of running a business. They want to do the work that they enjoy
doing and have the energy at the end of the day to socialise, spend time with
family and pursue other interests. Don't expect employees to be as interested
and excited about [revolutionising|disrupting|dominating] industry X as you
are, because they don't have the financial and social incentive an owner or
executive has.

It's fake and soul-destroying that modern corporate culture forces employees
to feign being over-enthusiastic about the company's success for fear of
getting fired.

David Mitchell put it best:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LiDTKEF1ek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LiDTKEF1ek)

~~~
justherefortart
Working for businesses that are "fast paced and agile" is my red flag. No
management or no desire to be good at IT because "we're not an IT company". So
you're always short changed, behind and not meeting their needs, when they
haven't even been defined.

Oh and Sally & Chuck saw you leave early the other day, we can't have that.
Even though you're putting in 50-60 hour work weeks. Oh Sally & Chuck are
admin assistants as well, so their opinion matters in this company that runs
like your high school social groups did, except less efficiently.

------
springmissile
It's the author here. There's a lot of feedback and I appreciate it all. A few
things to note:

1) I'm not rich and I'm not yet successful (not by my own definition anyway).
I am pretty much self-sufficient.

2) To the people who are complaining about poor people not having the same
opportunity... My target audience are people who have access to the internet.
If you can access the internet, you have access to wealth. That's my opinion,
anyway.

3) Work hard, play hard. It's good, as long as it's not you working hard and
somebody else playing harder because of it.

4) I haven't come from a rich background, I'm not university educated. You
can't complain about me coming across as generalizing and then assume I'm a
privileged white male.

5) There's plenty of tone in the article that suggests generalization. I
appreciate the feedback and I apologise if it seems way too over-generalised
but opinions in this area are quite hard to condense into a few words.

6) I still stand by the "if you truly want to have money, you will". If you're
reading this, you're on the internet. If you're on the internet then you have
access to free education and skills for you to build your own success.

Thanks

~~~
binaryblitz
> I am pretty much self-sufficient.

You do realize that being "self-sufficient" enough to quit your job makes you
wealthier than a vast majority of people on the planet? Even people that "can
afford internet".

Good luck in your endeavors, but you have a lot to learn.

~~~
springmissile
You do realize that I'm only self-sufficient because I made a business to
sustain myself. I wouldn't be self-sufficient if I didn't make that business.
Everybody has a lot to learn.

