
The Unhealthy Desire for Prestige - adamant
https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-unhealthy-desire-for-prestige-is-ruining-your-life/
======
factsaresacred
> _I asked John how his product was doing, and he said that he’s looking to
> hire a CEO with more product experience...when I talked to him further, he
> said he was still looking to launch his MVP...So after 1.5 years, John
> basically spent $10,000+ attending financial conferences, collected no
> revenue, and hasn’t even launched a working website_

Laughing at how real this is. This is exactly the situation with me and a
friend. We both had an idea for different businesses 2 years ago.

He prints business cards, incorporates a business, talks about partnerships, a
launch party, worries about getting too big....and has no users.

I quit my job to code away in the morning, reply to user feedback in the
afternoon and emulate my competitor's marketing at night. I did this every
day....and just passed 100,000 users. Hardly anybody knows what I do.

The difference between us: he works for a big tech company where everyone
talks about their _app idea_ ™ over lunch and lives in a city where splashing
$1000 on bottle service is seen as smart instead of foolish. I don't. Instead
I grind for two simple reasons: to be free of a boss and to make something
people find valuable.

I love my friend and I'm not knocking his approach, nor saying mine is better.
But printing business cards before gaining users is a bizarre way to order
one's priorities.

~~~
clairity
i like your naecdote but wanted to add another perspective on the business
cards.

there are different paths to success. one path is through sales, in which a
good prototype/demo and pitch can get you early, paying customers.

you print up business cards and product sheets--even before you have a company
set up--and hand them out during sales meetings to bring a little bit of
legitimacy to your venture, and that's worth the $15-20 (plus design time) it
takes.

~~~
notahacker
Yeah. For some markets the business cards, registered company name and _client
specific_ conferences and illusion of prestige actually earns you the users to
pay you up front to write the code, or are more important than the code
period.

(funnily enough, I walked out on a fledgling fintech startup with a guy from a
similar background to John from the article whose prestige obsession was the
opposite: paying for people to write serious amounts of software to create a
more mostly-cosmetically modern bespoke _internal_ document management system
he was convinced he needed to get the partners he needed to take his ideas for
disrupting _other aspects_ of their mostly customer marketing & relationship
driven business model seriously. Frustrating when he had connections to
potential needed partners anyway and they were more worried about leadgen than
anything else, something he knew a fair bit about about and could have focused
on instead, but something that might have resulted in falling at the first
hurdle...

tbf he paid for it, stuck at it and his business is showing some signs of life
these days)

------
mrleiter
To seek prestige runs far deeper in our minds than one would think. It comes
from a place of uncertainty and fear.

There is an interesting theory called "social comparison" [1], which states
that one way to define ourselves is to compare us with our peers, either
upward or downward. It's pretty on point in my personal opinion, because I do
it as well. And when I have mentioned this theory while chatting with friends,
they confirmed that they do it, too.

We humans are brittle creatures that pretend to be very strong and independent
in order to survive and not be vulnerable.

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/social-
comparison-...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/social-comparison-
theory)

~~~
ivanhoe
Exactly, and it's because we, as all animals that live in groups, have a
strong sense of hierarchy inside the group and our place within it. Position
inside the group is a primary unit of one's perceived "value".

------
songzme
I'm glad this is brought up. ever since I left Google my parents no longer
have much to brag about when taking to relatives about me. I got to spend a
year doing stuff I was passionate about without having to defend my decisions
to anybody and it was so liberating. Life is much more fun when you are not in
the spot light, you can pretty much do whatever you want.

In my time off, I built a few profitable projects and gave away CEO title to
my friends. I write blog posts anonymously so my name is never associated with
anything. It was a pretty big mindset shift, but it's been pretty good so far

~~~
wskinner
I would love to hear more about your experience doing this. Would you be
willing to share links to your blog (perhaps privately, since your name is in
your profile)?

I'm interested in doing something similar.

------
coffeemug
The thesis of the post was great. But then:

 _> In fact, I don’t think I’ve cared about prestige since 2010_

Yeah, right. We're all wired to seek prestige. If we don't get it we wither
and sulk. He just figured out that he's unlikely to get it via traditional
means, and decided to seek it via an alternative route. Perhaps there are
extremely rare mentally atypical people who really don't care about prestige,
but it almost certainly isn't you or me or the blogger. Be careful about the
lies you tell yourself.

~~~
verylittlemeat
Not caring about prestige means cultivating your self-esteem and confronting
your insecurities.

Learn to respect and admire yourself rather than relying on society to gratify
your ego. It's a lifelong process not a state to achieve.

------
tsunamifury
I respect financial samurai a great deal and his posts give me a lot to think
about, especially when I respectfully disagree with some of his points.

Some thoughts:

1)Life is hard and humans respond to that in a variety of ways, like desire
for prestige. However prestige is one thing that can be given and received
freely as well. Compliments are a great way to build a culture of cost-free
prestige. It’s not always about climbing the stack rank.

2) Consumption as prestige is a trap created by marketing, but at the same
time a signal that works well in some cultures. Signaling you desire more
let’s leaders know you are hungry to grow. You can think of this as
unfortunate, but it’s very real.

3) Sometimes it is just nice to have nice things.

I find the desire for external prestige dies when your internal sense of
prestige grows. You see many wealthy people become unconcerned with showing
off after achieving real goals in the world. That being said they still live
in mansions and drive exotic vehicles.

~~~
FooBarWidget
> Signaling you desire more let’s leaders know you are hungry to grow.

Is that really how it works? If I look at Chinese materialism as prestige, I
don't see anybody signaling that they are hungry. I only see people signaling
that they have stuff and that somehow having stuff equates happiness and
"something good".

~~~
troycarlson
One interpretation of this is leaders viewing a young, "hungry" employee who
likes to spend money as being more reliant on a salary than someone who's
identity isn't so tied to spending money. If the hungry one needs a steady
salary to maintain their lifestyle, they're more likely to be loyal to the
company because they can't afford to leave. Of course that depends on the
employee being someone the company actually wants to keep around and and
whether the company can afford to pay them above market value.

~~~
tsunamifury
This is the unfortunate part. But if you are concerned with scaling salary it
can work to your advantage for a time.

------
paulsutter
"Always prioritize the substance of what you're doing. Don't get caught up in
the status, the prestige games. They're endlessly dazzling, and they're always
endlessly disappointing.” -Peter Thiel

~~~
wskinner
I like the quote, and in fact, the whole source article is well worth reading.
But it's hard to take statements like this from billionaires who already won
the status / prestige games at 100% face value.

------
jpm_sd
"As a soon to be 40-year-old man, I don’t give a rat’s ass about prestige
anymore!"

OK, great. I'm 39, I'm right there with you. But is this advice useful or
actionable for people in their 20s?

~~~
chubot
Yes, because prestige runs behind what is actually valuable. Prestige is what
other people _think_ is valuable.

If everyone thinks it's valuable, then there's insane competition, and you're
unlikely to get meaningfully ahead (unless you're simply smarter and work
harder than everyone else).

PG wrote several paragraphs about prestige here which still ring true to me:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html)

 _It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn 't
suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious._

(Corrolary: it was best to join YC when it wasn't prestigious, e.g. when
Reddit or Dropbox did. Now that it's prestigious, it's probably less valuable.
Although it could still be valuable compared to the alternatives.)

~~~
grepthisab
When looking at something like joining yc, wouldn't the prestige make it
_more_ valuable, because of the extended network and the increased reverence
shown to it by outsiders?

~~~
chubot
I'm sure the network is valuable compared to alternatives, but it's probably
diluted now, compared to joining when YC had no prestige. Your peers then
would have been the current leaders of YC.

Customers don't give you money because you joined a good accelerator, so in
that sense the "reverence" is useless. It's also a double-edged sword, because
you'll attract people who are looking to ride your coattails, as opposed to
doing useful work.

Apparently this phenomenon is common enough that PG has a word for it:
"playing house". People join YC and play house rather than start companies.

------
shanghaiaway
The author clearly cares about prestige - his bio mentions having an MBA from
Berkeley.

------
johnwatson11218
This book really shaped my views on luxury

[https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Up-Consumers-Goods-
Companies-...](https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Up-Consumers-Goods-Companies-
ebook/dp/B00186Z0N2)

I really liked the parts where they talk about how new luxury items are often
based on some technical aspect that makes the new product much better than
what was there before.

I remember one point about how the old luxury was based on rarity. People with
a nice watch didn't want to see others wearing the same watch. But with high
end mountain bikes it is actually very cool to see others on the trail with
the same gear.

------
jxub
Glad to see this blog pop up here. The author has great insights about
investing, FIRE and careers, even though his worldview is skewed towards the
SF bubble heavily.

------
internetman55
This seems to be quite a big issue for people in finance like the OP blog
author was

------
smallnamespace
> If we can figure out how to rid ourselves of the desire for prestige, we
> will become much happier in the process!

Why not just take this to the limit and become a Buddhist then?

I'll answer that question: because our desires are possibly adaptive and are
what keep us alive. The problem is not prestige, it's holding the wrong things
to be prestigious.

------
huac
korea has the highest suicide rate in the oecd, not really fair to say that
antidepressant use is correlated with depression rate. similarly
antidepressants are not widely available in japan (not even included in his
chart) and japan's suicide rate is also very high.

------
gumby
I have always hated the word "prestige" or "prestigious" as it always makes me
feel that the person using it wants to pick my pocket.

(I mean an advertiser or housing builder etc...I don't mean the author of this
piece, or for that matter my own comment either!)

------
randcraw
Prestige is just a variant of respect, but motivated by appearance rather than
substance. It's basically envy. Like fame, it's shallow and derivative, and it
works only when no one gets to look behind the curtain.

------
aavotins
An article about unhealthy desire for prestige has surfaced on HN, a
subsidiary of a very prestigious VC firm, a site with clever upvotes and, most
importantly, karma system. It strikes me as ironic.

I also think that John was a metaphorical figure. I can name a few startups
that got financed early and are now attending conferences, hiring and spending
a lot of money, without actually doing anything for their business.

------
dash2
Counterpoint: [https://www.naacp.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/04/The.Drum.Ma...](https://www.naacp.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/04/The.Drum.Major.Instinct.2-4-68.pdf)

------
beders
The article is about how to get women...zzzzzzz

