When I was an undergrad at CMU, I learned how to work hard. Really hard. After having coasted through too-easy high school, I spent all day every day at CMU either programming, doing mathematics, or thinking about one of those things (to great effect: often the trick to prove a theorem would pop into my head while showering or while taking a walk). I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dream about programming, then wake up and continue programming just where I left off.
One thing from this essay really stuck out to me:
> The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off.
One thing that always happened at the end of a semester is we'd have a few days after exams but before flights back home. On these days I'd typically try playing a video game (my hobby before college) and every time I would stop playing after just an hour with deep feeling of unease at the pit of my stomach. "Alarm bells" is exactly how I would describe it - a feeling at the core of my psyche that I have been wasting time and there must be something productive I should be doing or thinking about.
Years later, having tackled anxiety problems that had plagued me most of my life, I came to recognize that my relationship with hard work during my college years was not healthy and that this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing, at least not for me.
I've since reformed my ambitions, instead of looking to start a company or get a PhD in mathematics, I've decided that hard work is not the love of my life and instead I should focus on my hobbies while looking for a career path that can be simultaneously fulfilling but laid back.
I feel the same. I can hardly sit through an entire two-hour movie or play a video game without feeling like I should be doing something else. I cannot feel good about myself if I cannot sense that I'm making progress learning a skill, and am stuck for hours looking down at a blank page as a result.
But what's dangerous for me is that this alarm system does not trigger consistently. I might spend too much time on HN, for example, because my impression is that HN is a place to have intellectual discoveries. I might spend too much time on YouTube because I can't think of anything else to do. Ironically there is a wealth of knowledge contained in some games that would be more worthwhile than a bunch of highlights on YouTube, but YouTube is just too easy to go back to.
When I work on some of my programming projects, I come out with the feeling that I'm just using the act of constantly working on them as an excuse to not have to worry about the fact that my life outside of them is one-dimensional and currently stagnating. I work way too hard on such non-work projects and burn out only to stop and instead spend weeks anxious that because I'm not doing anything, I am not growing as a person. I still believe this is true; I don't think I am much different from the me of two years ago, except that I've made some progress on programming projects.
But it's weird because I enjoy programming. I think it is because I enjoy programming so much that I become blinded to things that I should have seen as more important. I think I am already good enough at programming to not need much more to learn, and am only applying the skills that I happen to have built up for years.
But when I turn back to the other hobbies I always told myself I wanted to spend my life doing, all I find is a void of interest, and I ultimately accomplish little.
I also believe this was a result of how I was raised and the coping mechanisms my upbringing/college ingrained in me.
This is me. Though I didn't just learn this in my upbringing - I feel like my entire working life has been one of false promises and dehumanization, that has left me unable to enjoy anything.
I'm 47 now, have worked at 6 failed startups in a row, and can't face work, or looking for a job. I used to blame social media and hacker news, but I now recognize that too much delayed gratification and overwork have had a much greater effect.
At this point, I can't work, and can't not work. I do a lot of sitting quietly, with my mind almost empty of thought. All the processes and systems I have used in the past to overcome this are failing me. I feel exploited, betrayed and overwhelmed by alienation; genuinely broken.
Work is a drug and I seriously think it triggers some sort of endorphin response in the same way that exercise does.
Unfortunately, many white collar types of work are insular and while you are sitting on front of a screen getting a buzz about solving little problems, or even quite big ones for specific issues, the world is moving on.
It is possible that you may even be compromising your career by being good at the technical issues of a job to the extent that some bosses who cannot stay on top of what you are doing may feel they would be more comfortable with a safe, matey colleague than a bit of a strange wizzkid who gets to be known as the oracle of all things.
Fortunately, 47 is still pretty young no matter what the newer generation of employed go getters thinks, and there is life yet to be pursued.
I would say try taking up a sport - gym, cycling, rowing, jogging, or even something physical and competitive. Get the buzz of routine and physical wellbeing and socialising going again.
Then take a deep breath and think about everything that you have learned over the years that can be actualised into real value. The great thing about coding is that it teaches its practitioners that progress only happens from meeting certain logical imperatives - build on that and problem solve your way to another commercial enterprise.
You have got this. The main thing holding you back is your own thoughts.
I'll second the advice to take up a sport or other physical activity. Easiest for me to get going with was 'body weight fitness' aka calisthenics, since all I needed was my apartment + youtube videos + time/practice.
It took me a while to turn it into a regular habit, but now the effect on my mood + energy is a night/day change. Wish I'd made this happen years ago.
A last tip on it: if it's un-fun, doesn't stick, etc. experiment, try variations, new activities—but keep going back to it. (Their seems to be some initial resistance that is partially psychological if you're just beginning to work out after a long time without; parts of you, maybe unconscious, may try to convince you to quit. Be understanding of that, but persistent in continuing (imo)).
> It is possible that you may even be compromising your career by being good at the technical issues of a job to the extent that some bosses who cannot stay on top of what you are doing may feel they would be more comfortable with a safe, matey colleague than a bit of a strange wizzkid who gets to be known as the oracle of all things.
This is always a possibility... however in my experience things tend to fall more on the side of bosses being all too happy to offload responsibility onto that whizzkid and then tuck them away in a box away from any possibility of career advancement.
After all, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
True - I have seen this on a few occasions; sometimes the 'tucking away' includes a social element applied by overriding responses in conversations, making detracting remarks and generally casting shade over said whizzkid - boxing them in in the co's social as well as organisational hierarchy.
> have worked at 6 failed startups in a row, and can't face work, or looking for a job
I don't know much about your situation but this comment on HN from 2013 (1) might be helpful in your situation:
Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure.
[snip]
On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past. These all have an immediate reward. Now I don't burn out anymore, and find it easier to re-attempt very difficult things, with a clearer mindset.
You're just burned out. I hope you have some financial cushion and can take some time to just do nothing. Or try gardening, or woodworking, or something really different that can be personally rewarding with no pressure to meet anyone else's expectations. With time you should heal.
Unfortunately, I've been burnt out too many times now, for too long. Every job now ends in burn out and takes 6+ months to recover from before I can start looking for another job. This time, however, feels different - it never felt insurmountable like this before. I can't work on my own stuff, can't level up my skills, not sure how to get back to that.
I suspect that my situation is likely common among aging coders and might contribute to a lot of what is otherwise attributed to ageism. I can no longer pretend that the kind of work open to me is going lead to anything but more suffering, and I feel like this results in increasing interview anxiety.
So stop coding, or put yourself out to pasture at a low intensity coding gig.
I came from a family of engineers and I watched my dad work himself to death at the expense of virtually everything else in life. One day he up and died, and that was the end of it. Most of his projects are no longer applicable or noteworthy. Life is the process of taking a daily step towards death every day. In 100 years, no one is going to remember us. Even the man rich enough to prolong their life can only make their path longer, but we all get there in the end.
Just find things you can enjoy and do them. Everything else is wasted time.
As someone who's considered this idea, the problem I wind up with is "but people still want 8 hours of my time per day".
If people are laying claim to that, then I want to be compensated as highly as possible for it. Try as you might, it's very hard to get rid of one of those 8 hour blocks, and make time for yourself, while retaining that daily/hourly rate.
Are you hooked on that quarter million per year at a FAANG (or on getting there)? Yes you will probably have a hard time getting rid of those 8 hour blocks.
Get a 'normal' job at a normal enough company? You can probably do a comfortable version of the 8 hour blocks that you enjoy, which sometimes are 9 or 10 hour blocks and sometimes 6 or 7 hour blocks or an afternoon off.
Personally I love the pandemic WFH. It's been possible to do flexible time arrangements without the 'bad feeling' you have when you leave the office early, while everyone else stays. People are in different timezones anyway now, asynchronous communication for many things is normal etc. YMMV as always, like that WP article that is also currently up here on HN.
Why not work a service job for a while? There's no delayed gratification in bartending or waiting tables. Show up, clock in, serve drinks, go home. It's not easy, but the success conditions are clear, and when you're done you can completely forget about it until it's time to go in again.
This is something I've considered, as I'm in a similar situation to OC. With a PhD, I feel certain expectations about my career haven't been met. Publications dropped off, I'm not even sure I could pass an undergrad exam in my field of expertise anymore... so I look overqualified but feel underqualified. I'm nervous about unexplained gaps in my career because I regularly see that as a reason not to interview a candidate. But a service job? All I can hear is my judgy coworkers laughing at a resume with recent non-technical work.
I don't know if this helps, but I've hired people in situations like this.
If somethings stands out in a resume, people will ask. But the fact it's there doesn't mean it's negative - the question is what's the story. If the resume as a whole makes sense but has a curveball I'm probably more likely to have them interviewed, not less.
Maybe call it a sabbatical on your resume. You get to decide what is and isn’t a sabbatical for you. Then disclose the details if and when you trust the hiring manager.
Most of all, don’t let worry about that damage your long term mental health.
I've got a cousin who unsure with things got a job as a delivery van driver for a while. Worked ok for him. He now has a fairly cushy lowish level job at a pr outfit.
The main issues from the person comments don't seem to revolve around money. And doing nothing won't make any money.
This is not something you have to do for the rest of your life.
But the point is to do something, anything to avoid sinking into the swamp. Visible goals that you can mentally pick up and put down with some human interaction thrown in, might help. Only one way to find out.
this is what I don't get about this site. The world is software. you can code anything. and yet the majority of people sit around and complain. Its no wonder that you all are burnt out and bitter. The best is when people complain about tracking software, or windows telemetry. Software engineers wrote it! they are you're own people. its not a business guy that wrote the code. you're all weak!
You have some toxic ideas about what "strength" and "weakness" are.
Strength is facing your demons, being honest with yourself, admitting your mistakes, being able to change your opinions in the face of new evidence, and admitting when you're failing. Real strength is humble.
Weakness is "manning up" instead of dealing with the problem, reducing all situations down to a conflict of two sides because the reality is too complex, being unable to admit that you were wrong, "pushing through" instead of working out why, and being unable to face reality when it's not what you expected. Weakness is a fragile ego full of pride.
Yes, software engineers wrote tracking software. That doesn't mean we all agree with what they did. They're not "our own people" because we don't see the world as "software engineers vs business guys".
The world is not software. That's a silly catchphrase.
You can't code meaning, joy, health, or good company into someone's life.
Software won't provide company and solace to a dying patient or make you feel blissed out when having sex. It can't give you the pleasure of talking to your six year old child or getting into the mosh pit of an aggressive rock show.
Software development is a nice profession with lots of benefits. But it's easy to spend too much time in solace and inside your head. And as a human we have needs that it won't be able to meet.
I can't believe that I've never heard of the phrase "high-performance requires high-maintenance" before. I really like little aphorisms like this as a way to regulate behaviour. Thanks!
Maybe try finding an open-source project you are interested in and contribute to it? It might energize you and let you re-connect with whatever you originally were looking for in a job.
It might morph into a side-project, but either way its something you can keep going even while working at a regular job, and then the job might be less of a make-or-break proposition.
I feel bad for you. but eventually if you've failed 6 times, you have to look at yourself and understand what you're doing wrong. It actually sounds like you might have clinical depression, and that's not anything to take lightly. There is tons of help and support and if you want, I'd be happy to help.
in my early 50's, and I think 5 failed startups now. I kinda lost count. Just closing off the latest failure this month.
I'm taking July off completely, finishing some creative coding projects that I haven't been able to work on while coding for the startup. Then I'm going to work out what's next.
I sleep a lot. There's no motivation to work. But I've been through this before, and it changes. I went through a serious clinical depression a few years ago, and have learned that the trick is to keep breathing and trust that everything will change over time.
The whole "work hard" mantra is interesting, and not nearly so simple as PG makes out.
Yes, to do great things we need to work hard. I love those times, when I'm inspired, the work is flowing, and all I want to do every day is work.
But working too hard for too long is not healthy. It causes this kind of burnout. Sitting staring at the keyboard, the last thing I ever want to do is switch to the code window. Emotionally drained. It's not a matter of discipline, or willpower. It's deeper than that. I'm literally unable to focus for any length of time even if I force myself to work.
I love my work. I genuinely enjoy building things. But I can't do it all the time. I have to take time away from it because it's a marathon not a sprint, and I need rest periods.
"Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will to renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of the work; acquire that state of soul unburdened by desire and self-will which is the state of grace of the intellectual worker. Without that you will do nothing, at least nothing worth while." ~ A.G. Sertillanges, O.P.
At 41 y/o I am going mostly through the same. Without my wife I would have become a completely numb robot. But even if you don't have a good partner -- or friends, or your older family -- to turn to, I'd recommend the following:
Engage in interviews but be upfront: you're not looking to prove yourself, you are not interested in stocks / futures / options / whatever, you're not scared of tough work but you're also looking for a good work-life balance, and you're willing to take a small pay cut for not taking on all the responsibilities that senior programmers are expected to have.
Say something like this: "I have all the chops to not only be a senior programmer but also a team leader; I have all the necessary qualities but I don't want to practice them for a while. I'd like to use those skills simply to be the best colleague you have."
I don't know you so the following might be severely misplaced and please forgive me if so: but I'd advise you to take A LOT of walks in nature. Even if you don't have some nearby, find a routine every now and then: take a taxi to a nearby big park (or bike/drive to it), and force yourself to just not think about anything.
Additionally, re-read a favourite book -- even if it dates back to your teenage yours.
You likely have a lot of negative inertia in your brain and you need to engage in semi-passive lifestyle to help it remove the negativity by itself which usually happens by eating well and sleeping as much as you need.
Finally, consider cannabidiol (CBD / cannabis) pills. They are absolutely harmless, they cause no hallucations at all, you can't overdose on them (I am getting those with 15% concentration), and their general effect is to slightly alter your brain chemistry in the direction of reducing anxiety. It will help you look at things from a new angle and I found it extremely therapeutic because this in turn helped me deal with my problems in sustainable and lasting ways. (Unlike before when my knee-jerk reactions only made things worse with time.)
Meditation, if you can master doing it for 30-40 minutes, works wonders too. Mind you, some people need weeks of practice every day until they feel this tranquil state of mind. Eventually everybody succeeds though.
I wish I could actually help you because I think I know what you're going through. There is a way out but sadly it never happens exactly as we want it, e.g. we can't just not work until we feel better. But there are middle grounds that help achieve the same result, albeit slower and with a bit more deliberate effort.
I hope you manage to pull through.
(EDIT: Forgot to mention something important: cardio exercises! Forget strength training. Absolutely learn basic yoga for stretching -- especially the exercises that deal with your core area because they will heal your guts and bowels! -- and do loads of cardio: run, bike, plank, nevermind which one. Find your cardio thing. Again, forget about strength training. We the sedentary people need to get our metabolism going again. Make your heart pump faster, consistently and regularly. That's the exercise that's going to make the biggest difference for your mental health.)
Great comment, but I wouldn't throw out strength training that quickly.
Some people are more motivated to do strength exercises than cardio, for whatever reason. And there are types of strength training that get your heart rate up as well. I think the most important thing is to do not overdo it, or you'll just end up with one more thing that puts stress on your system.
The biggest benefit of cardio (in my opinion) is that there are many things that you can do outside. Not quite as simple with weight lifting for example, although possible.
Yeah, I don't disagree. F.ex. planks are definitely both strength training plus cardio and they are my favourite cardio so far. Riding a bike I love as well but I am in the middle of a city and just biking to a big park that I love is by itself an entire workout session, quite the long and risky one at that (since you have to navigate traffic and people -- no bike lanes).
My message mostly is: "get your heart pumping". The sedentary lifestyle reduces the speed of the metabolism which is one of the worst things that can happen to our bodies. Thus we have to actively work against this negative phenomena.
How does one go about it is indeed a personal journey.
If you wear a heart rate monitor, you'll find that genuine strength training spikes your heart rate something fierce, much more akin to HIIT than low-intensity cardio.
And building lean mass as one tends to do with strength training is one of the most effective ways of increasing one's metabolic rate. Lean muscle mass is much more metabolically active thank a similar amount of fat tissue.
And that's not even getting to the effects on glucose/insulin sensitivity, body composition, self-confidence, quality of life improvements, etc.
Ideally one should be doing a few hours of cardio and a few hours of strength training every week.
Thank you for the kind words. From where I am standing, I can completely sympathize with my parent commenter and I know how it feels like being stuck. I wish our society tried to help us treat all of this (because avoiding it in the first place seems to be too much to ask of it).
They are just words and I have no big hope they will help somebody but if they do, that will genuinely make me little happier.
I can only feel happy if my blabbering helped you. Reach out if you have any questions or need advice (although advice is a dangerous thing in general). I've been around, I learned to be kind and I love helping people when I can.
Advice as I see it is a bit of a risky affair because (assuming you do want to actually listen to it and implement it) you kind of give up on a situation and would like to be steered in a certain direction because you feel you cannot make the right decision at the moment.
I am well-intentioned but I don't know your life, your upbringing, nor am I empath / telepath and thus I don't know how do you feel inside. Hence, me giving you an advice assumes a lot of context that applies to myself only and not to you. So if you follow my advice you will likely end up in a situation that I can deal with. But will it be a situation that you can deal with?
Example: I am one of those people who can deal with meetings and people quite fine BUT I get tired of it and there's an upper limit to it, and surpassing that limit renders me literally useless for the next several hours. Thus, I could give people advice of the kind "you feel your job requirements are not clear and that's stressing you out -- go chat with your team lead, your colleagues, then your manager, it will help you have a peace of mind". Good advice, right? But some people can't be in a meeting more than 20 minutes a day before they need to retreat back into their shell and thus this person could have one small meeting but have no strength for the next ones. What's worse: from the perspective of the more outgoing people they started a good initiative but never pursued it to completion.
So I'd say that in this hypothetical situation I actually gave them a bad advice while still having only good intentions.
(A better advice in the above situation would be for this person to have a very quick voice/video chat with their manager and tell them they feel the requirements towards them aren't clear and that they would like to receive a document / Wiki outlining those in clear language. This avoids the additional meetings.)
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TL;DR: Advice, even when given with the best of intentions, misses a lot of context. The receiver of the advice has to carefully weigh this factor; it's OK to reject an otherwise excellent advice if it doesn't apply to you one way or another. And sadly there's also the aspect of people blindly accepting your advice and then blaming you for the consequences.
It's not. It's anhedonia. It feeds on itself. It makes things worse over time.
Mindfulness is overprescribed. Having practiced meditation for quite a few years in the past, I'm convinced that it's not good for people that are prone to anhedonic depression.
No solution suggestions here, just curiosity, so feel free to ignore. What does your depression look like in terms of time? Is it constant, or do you get hours/days/weeks/months off? Is it recurring, or is this your first experience? How long has this bout of depression lasted, and what triggered it -- the end of your last job?
I've had a few bouts of depression myself, three to be exact: ages 21, 31, and 34. The've always initially been triggered by some extremely negative emotional experience (e.g. a breakup), but continue for 4-6 months, long after U'm over whatever the initial cause was.
I am in a similar boat and the most painful part for me personally is trying to overcome the hurdle or stigma associated with being older but not having idyllic career beats to show off to potential employers.
It's easy to look at past failures and blame those failures for your present circumstances. But say one of those startups had made it big. What would you be doing instead? Because if your mind is stuck mindlessly scrolling social media and shaming yourself for it, it could be worse - you could have $10mm in the bank and still be mindlessly surfing social media, and shaming and guilt tripping yourself for not doing more with it and you'd feel even worse about it, and fall into substance abuse issues (eg Tony Hseih; Zappos).
Mindset is key. If you want to get into philanthropy with your imagined largess, there are tons of philanthropic organizations looking for help, not to mention, fundraising for non-profits isn't entirely different than trying to get VC funding.
6 failed startups in a row!! Sounds like recipe for burnout and depression. You may well have shown much resilience to not end up in a mental hospital after that. Which could be a good sign in terms of recovering from all this? (It may take time though) Why do people do this to themselves I wonder? Must've been super hard work, and for what? I guess, the hope of making it big? To achieve 'FU money'? Well, going forward from here, there are less stressful tech jobs... They don't pay as much, but... a not-very-well-paid software job is still overall a not badly paid job. As for ageism which you allude to in other post, can be a problem if all one's colleagues are much younger, depends on the environment of course. I'm a similar age to you, seems like if one has good (i:e in-demand, and of long-term value) skills, people generally don't mind one's age. My coping strategy with age (less energy and tiring responsibilities outside work) is look after your productivity super-powers e:g command-line, vim, which take years even decades to learn. Sometimes us oldies are more efficient than the younger ones even if they can put in more hours.
Why not join a slow enterprise F500 and recharge, focus on hobbies and coast through the 9-5? Start ups in contrast over work you and leads to burn out.
start ups lead to burn out if you're not successful. That's what most people on this site don't understand. You are in control, you are in charge, don't blame others.
> I can hardly sit through an entire two-hour movie or play a video game without feeling like I should be doing something else.
One summer we rented a beach house, I had delusions of lazing on the beach under a big umbrella, drinks, books, dogs, netflix, music, a endless orgy of entertainment and sunny weather. I went stir-crazy in about half a day, there's only so much lazing about I can do, after 2 movies I thought meh, I'm wasting this day. I envy the people who say they're going on vacation and do nothing for a week, two weeks even. I can't seem to do that, and I don't know whether that's something intrinsic to who I am, or that's a toxic thought pattern I need to get rid of. When I'm back at home and at work I am so busy I have a tendency say "I wish I had some more time to unwind" a lot.
At the present, I'm trying to have focused and purposeful idle time. With intent, sit through a movie, read something, play a game, whatever, for a chunk of time, or deliberately do nothing at all. The last one is very hard for me, I don't think I've managed 15 minutes of it.
I had a very similar experience a few years ago after travelling to Rarotonga for a holiday. There was little reception for mobile data without a new sim - this turned out to be an absolute blessing. The first day or so was easy, but the next few were restless. We had explored the island, snorkelled, swam in the pool, and tried lots of the local food. We had run out of things to do.
The funny thing is, it took there being nothing to do, no phone to idly turn to, to truly start to unwind and relax. I didn't initially realise it at the time, but my body and mind had been in this constant state of stress. After pushing through that initial restlessness and that constant need to be actively doing or reading about something productive, my whole body began to feel noticeably more relaxed. The invisible state of constant stress was finally parting. Waking up later than usual, grabbing some tropical fruits and enjoying them around the pool with a light fictional book at the ready started to feel more natural and enjoyable. It started to feel like I could truly enjoy doing "nothing" and just bathe in the relaxation.
After returning home, there were many noticeable improvements to my creative thinking, productivity, and my general feeling of wellbeing.
My take away from this experience is that it is so incredible difficult to fully disconnect from day-to-day life when your phone can provide constant access to information. It's oh so easy to go on holiday but still turn to your phone and hn or reddit when idle. I highly highly recommend taking a holiday either without your phone, or without any easy access to the internet.
What works for me is, in advance, saying that I will be doing X thing for 10 minutes, an hour, or whatever.
Even when I'm waiting for something, I'll say: "I will leave in 5 minutes" and set an alarm, knowing and trusting that I will leave and I can relax until then.
I know it sounds paradoxical, but it helps for me to schedule both creativity and relaxing time since I know for those times that I'll be able to do be purposeful about my relaxing or making.
Going on vacation doesn't mean doing nothing.
Like you I don't understand how/why people do this.
I think it's about doing something different. Travel, visit, explore, camp, hike, do sport, meet new people, share that with family/friends or not.
For me it is about the approach. I like to plan very little. Plan something, but not very much.
Holiday goals, simply to have somewhere to go. They don't matter if you don't do them.
As you get to that goal, you take time to look around, maybe duck into a place here, do an activity over there. Or maybe not, and simply let life roll on by as you stroll to your destination.
I have gone hot air ballooning, day hiking, snorkelling with turtles. Wander over, have a chat, book it in for the next day or two. It is then the goal for that day and might lead to something else.
For me having a list of "places to be, things to do" means I have to be switched on, getting there and doing that, and if I don't then I have failed.
Holidays is noFail time. Allow serendipity to take charge.
> Like you I don't understand how/why people do this. I think it's about doing something different.
You raised the question and answered it in two sentences. This is exactly why some people are able to take a complete break and "do nothing" - their daily life is already filled to the brim with work, family, kids, etc, that when they get on vacation, what actually feels different is doing "nothing".
Fair point. I believe I manage to save enough time of "doing nothing" in my daily life (although it might feel uncomfortable sometimes as others pointed out in the thread) that I don't need that during vacation. I see it as an opportunity to do things I don't have time/energy to do otherwise.
Fair enough too. In my case I tend to go for 50/50 - I take about half my vacation days to literally "do nothing" (meaning catching up on games I missed since my son was born by lack of time, waking up late(r), watching movies and series, etc) and the other half as a family getaway, bringing my son to new places, trying out new things together.
I have the same feeling, out of the fact that I have not achieved anything I want in my life so far and I can't adjust my targets according to my shortcomings.
Everytime I take a vacation I feel bored from the 2nd or 3rd day and want to _do something_. Maybe I can indulge myself in one night of games/movies but the second night I'd definitely feel very uneasy.
And frankly the older I am, the stronger the feeling is. I want to tell myself that OK this guy can achieve _nothing_
I want in his life and he is almost 40 so maybe relax, but I don't listen to myself.
maybe its time to be honest with yourself. you don't have the drive to achieve something big. you watch movies as your big night to relax. do something better. who feels accomplished after watching a movie. cmon. the amount of people on this site that lie to themselves is too much.
Why sitting through a movie is a bad thing? Have you tried watching some “harder” movies? Maybe you’re just bored with the specific movies you are watching. I for example know that I have a very specific love for sci-fi genre; but unfortunately a lot of sci-fi is basically trash with good CGI and I can’t help myself but think that I am wasting my time when I watch stuff in that comfort zone.
However there’s a lot to film that is quite hard to watch. Maybe of the recents Almodovar comes to my mind. It’s engaging and very unique.
It's a moving target. At first I wouldn't sit through genuinely asinine popular media, like 'Friends'. This is not unhealthy: most of it is shit. But over time, I've found that I can't sit through anything that isn't utterly engaging. My SO used to joke that I 'hated everything' until that started to make me feel bad.
Paying attention to anything that isn't doesn't at least appear to be addressing existential dread has lost all flavour. I'm not sure what the solution is.
Before anyone suggests it, it's clear that I'm dealing with clinical depression, but medical help has been of limited benefit. Therapists don't seem to be familiar with the situation that is being described by posters here, don't have tools to suggest. I suspect that it's not so widespread a phenomenon outside of knowledge work.
Psilocybin results in profound sadness for me, that lasts for days. Microdoses, macrodoses - it just varies the intensity/duration of the dysphoria.
NMDA antagonists were an amazing find. A ketamine prescription allowed me to function at all for the last few years, until I started to develop bladder pain and had to discontinue it. I've recently experimented with nitrous oxide, but hasn't turned out to be feasible.
LSD, I can't source. Given my experiences with Psilocybin, I haven't tried very hard.
The further out stuff, such as salvia divinorum, is so under examined as to be utterly speculative. Can't say it had much of an effect, either.
I've also used induced hyperthermia, which has a minor effect on my mood. The effect is also of very short duration.
Since you're willing to try some out-there stuff, here are the two things that turned my life around: a shamanic healing ceremony (literally saved my life) and EFT/tapping (allowed me to work through what was left).
I was in the same boat you seem to be -- crushing, horrific depression that hadn't responded to anything medical and counselors and therapists had no idea what to do with the sense of dread and self-loathing I was experiencing. They kept telling me to try meditating or do breathing exercises, which I did to no effect.
Then a single 20-minute encounter with a shamanic practitioner changed everything. This was over 10 years ago and to this day I have no cogent explanation for the experience.
As an aside, I later learned that I was hurting for quite a few nutrients -- most notably B12, magnesium and lithium. When you get nutritional insufficiencies sorted out, you start feeling a lot better.
How is it getting ketamine prescribed in the US for depression? Do they give you 30 lozenges to take one a day? I've had no success with SSRIs and want to go that route, but don't know how to ask a doctor for it without looking/sounding like I want to get high, when I just want to be functional and normal.
Find a doctor that specializes in treatment resistant depression, which IIRC is defined as failing more than two conventional antidepressant.
I'm anything but objective on this, but I'm convinced that SSxx classes of antidepressants are entirely useless for depression (and likely anything else).
The usual method is IV ketamine treatment, every 6 weeks, but this can cost $400+ per session, which at the time I started treatment was not an option. My doctor went out on a limb for me and prescribed intranasal ketamine, which is off-label, and only $60 for a six week supply. I was taking it every three days for several years.
There is also intranasal esketamine, which is quite likely what you will be offered these days, as it has received FDA approval. Unfortunately, this is not as effective as regular intranasal ketamine, while getting you 'higher' into the bargain. Why did this get drug get developed? Because ketamine isn't patentable, but an enantiomer of ketamine (s-ketamine) is, so there was money to pay for clinical trials and pharmaceutical executive enrichment. The other enantiomer, r-ketamine, is actually less innebriative and more therapeutic. So, why produce s-ketamine? There's no reasonable explanation for them to bring s-ketamine to market other than to be able to milk the patents as long as possible.
That said, I'd still encourage you to pursue s-ketamine, if it is your only option, but IV ketamine may be better route, if you can afford it: insurance will cover esketamine, but not IV ketamine.
I should mention: It's not clear whether the ketamine alone was responsible for the bladder discomfort (which was never more than a mild sensation - I discontinued mainly out of concern that it might worsen): it's likely that autoimmune illness played a part too. It's not usual to experience this on the dose of ketamine that I was taking. S-ketamine is not any easier on the bladder, and it was able to pass the clinical trials.
A reasonable question. But, it's very hard to watch a "serious" movie or read a "serious" book while at the beach. There's a reason why there exists a genre called "beach reads". I am not going to watch Almodovar or Bunuel or Bergman or Aronofsky or Inarritu on the beach.
I can't watch trashy movies either, but my tolerance for them is more flexible at the beach.
Severely off-topic to the OP but have you tried watching "Battlestar Galactica" in full? (The remake from the 2004+, not the original -- tried the original and didn't like it at all.)
I mean, you don't get much CGI there but the premise is extremely realistic and the actors are absolutely brilliant.
Plus, you'll get to cry, a lot, during the long series finale.
Yeah, that part was a bit weak and not well explained but it was IMO a natural evolution for thinking and feeling beings. I agree it could have been shown better and more gradual -- it was kind of sudden in the series and that's one of the valid negative remarks towards it.
Your description here, and others, eerily match my own angst with 'being productive'. As someone who has spent covid traveling the States in an RV i've come to realize that I don't know what I really like doing that's not work (for example I enjoy, but have no deep passion for, outdoors recreation). Instead I spend hours aggressively reading and writing reviews on books because that feeling, 'being productive' is the only somewhat satisfying feeling in my life.
Have you had any luck adjusting your thinking or finding other joys in life?
I didn’t have “hobbies” for a while after graduating. Having kids and making time for them as they grow up was one of the catalysts that helped me (re)discover things that I enjoy.
My grandfather passed away a while ago and when we had to empty his house, I took some of the larger telescopes he had. He was a die-hard astronomer and astrophotographer. I’ve always loved looking up at the night sky and now I’ve picked up astrophotography too. It’s a great mix between gear, science, patience, skill and technology. There’s something very rewarding and humbling about capturing the light of a galaxy 21 million light years away.
Electronics is another one of his hobbies that I was always fascinated by that I’ve now picked up. Building some toy gadgets, getting the soldering iron out to fix one of my children’s toys. It feels fun & productive.
I used to play sports as a kid and teenager and kind of forgot about that for more than a decade while working hard. I’ve now picked up skateboarding with my son. I love it. I think our human body benefits from intense movement, especially when you’re used to sitting stationary all day. Skateboarding is rewarding because you can learn something new every session. The place that organizes my kid’s skateboard lessons also does sessions for parents. It’s double fun since you also get to meet other people.
Anyway. I was in the same “work hard” position 2 years ago. My mind spent most of its “cycles” thinking and worrying about work. Now it gets diversions and downtime. I think it helps.
Hobbies are this thing between work and entertainment. It’s rewarding like work without being forced or mandatory.
Like you, I was very recently considering doing some kind of traveling. I don't know if it would be in an RV or other vehicle. I'm still on the fence however; it would be the most radical thing I will have ever done with my life.
I understand that just traveling isn't really a solution to my problems, but I feel like my life at present is too sterile and I don't have much to say. Some writers say that first-hand experience is valuable in creating new ideas. Maybe I just need more experience.
It's like when I read the passage in Kerouac's On The Road where the protagonist wakes up in a motel and realizes he's farther away from home than he's ever been. I feel like, if I choose to write for fun, I don't think I can write properly without experiencing that kind of thing myself (though opinions may vary between people). That's at least true for everything fictional I've written so far, despite how little I've actually written.
If that doesn't work then I could find something else like working abroad, provided I have enough contacts to help me, but I struggle with that sort of thing. I also wanted to find some people I feel comfortable keeping in touch with, though I haven't quite put in enough effort to reach that point.
Because about all my therapist does is sympathize with the things I talk about (such as the issues in my parent comment) I don't think much real change is going to come out of that relationship; it would only keep me sane. That carries its own value, but I feel that there's something more I'm missing. This is the kind of thing that I have to get my hands dirty in order to have any hope of fixing it.
Travelling by motorcycle added a dimension to it. I always had to plan ahead, keep the bike running, find my next place to sleep, and generally make sure I'm not just driving through and missing everything. It's hard to just sit there when you don't carry your home with you.
It felt pretty productive, in the sense that your only idle time is riding the motorcycle, and the end-of-day beer and meal.
It felt rather silly to take a vacation from my vacation, but sometimes I just had to stop for a bit longer to recover. It really felt like work, but the kind that leaves you proud and fulfilled.
You know, I once read, or was told, that volunteering is a great way to get out of your head. In fact I spent a good amount of time before traveling doing so and really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to getting back to stationary life to get more involved in it again.
I can relate to a lot of this. One thing I learned about myself recently is that I tend to default to programming because it practically guarantees that I'll feel good (dopamine from making things work, fixing bugs). Since I don't have many other hobbies that guarantee similar reward, there's not much of an incentive for me to do anything different whenever I'm feeling antsy about sitting around and not feeling productive.
one thing I've been doing with the help of some therapy recently that's somewhat helping is scheduling time (1 hour) to NOT program. No expectation of actually doing anything and accepting any uneasy feelings that arise. Just making sure that I make the time to tune in to feelings / thoughts without the option of picking up my computer as a sort of pacifier.
first time I did this, I just sat nervously for 30 minutes until I got bored and then looked for problems around my house to fix (which took 2 hours and was pretty satisfying). After a few rounds of this I noticed myself acting on small, non-programming interests outside my scheduled times.
just figured I shared in case others are feeling same and want something to try :)
Me too. I've been actively working to do the opposite. To build my outside of work life, give it priority and give myself the permission to have it be the main focus of life and stop running from the bear all the time.
I have started using a pomodoro timer, not as a way to keep myself working and improve my productivity, but as a way to remind myself to stop and smell the roses.
I don't have anything substantial to add to the discussion beyond another data point: I also relate to the feeling of wanting to be 'productive' most of the time and not really enjoying pure leisure time.
I recently spent 2 weeks working remotely from a nice location in Italy and definitely would've enjoyed the time less if I couldn't have also worked from there. I also enjoy hobbies/free-time less when I believe it ultimately doesn't lead myself to becoming the person I want to be.
On the one hand, I think this is only natural if you are an ambitious person (this desire is imho exactly one of the things that allow a person to achieve ambitious feats); on the other hand, I am definitely struggling with finding enjoyable, non-work activities that recharge me.
Really appreciate you saying this because it matches the way I'm feeling exactly.
I grew up poor, achieving and being productive made me stand out. Went to a good university got a job at FAANG and feel pretty empty, unable to relax because it feels unproductive, spend time working on side projects I don't care about because it feels productive.
Really well written, thanks. It's interesting to read how others have faced and are facing the same problems. I've found it's a question of comfort and social environment that pushes you regularly to do things you'd not normally do and forcing you to set aside the whatever programming or other "self-improvement" you were planning to do.
It's not necessarily a bad thing if you can diversify your targets of learning to multiple areas that are not as solitaire as programming. Music, anything with performing and socializing is great. Gym or a physical sport - very important. It doesn't have to be just programming. And I at least am more happy after having practiced music than having just played video games.
But I grant that even with multiple hobbies one still sits well inside their own bubble and it isn't really a life-altering experience to practice music instead of coding some npm library. What one needs is social connection to satisfy the basic primal desire for one's own tribe. It's weird how we are hard-wired like that, but if one stays alone inside programming something "useful" it does not really tick the boxes our biology craves.
In any way, my point is - do I have a point? Well, the problem is basically how to rewire our brains to react to certain input in a way we find the most pleasing. We all can't be rich, beautiful and famous so one should do with what they got. If chatting with friends makes you more happy than programming inside maybe you should focus on nurturing that. Not being content is a good start for development. I think some people really try to fool themselves to believe their current reality is 'ok' while in fact they are not happy. I guess taking responsibility for changing things is too much and they rather just forget they even had a chance.
Maybe it is evidence of an interest in writing. I am pretty sure that is the case with me. There is no place more likely to produce quick direct and possibly thoughtful feedback.
Writing for pleasure is a thing that is hard to accept as worthwhile. It costs our lives. Hours we will never get back for imaginary internet points.
I was the exact same way in college. I remember saying to a professor one time that whenever I was inside studying hard I would look out the window and say, "What am I doing? I should be outside in nature, enjoying the beauty of the world for the short time I have here." But when I would go outside, I would immediately say, "What am I doing? I should be inside studying so I can make something of myself and contribute to the world!"
No matter what choice I made, some other choice always seemed like the mature decision, and I was perpetually stuck in either a childish pursuit of good grades on paper, or a childish avoidance of work while I frolicked outside. I just couldn't win.
> I also believe this was a result of how I was raised and the coping mechanisms my upbringing/college ingrained in me.
It probably is. You deserve the chance to know. Wether it be through therapy, an ayahuasca ceremony, months long backpacking trip in a foreign country or nature to find yourself - whatever floats your boat - you're worth the effort. Dig deep into your psyche and unwrap the trauma that makes up your personality. You'll live better for it. Framed under capitalism, if a month off helps you better realize your potential, such that you earn twice as much money the next year, then the month off pays for itself in a year.
Every personality has its problematic characteristics. I think that one of the more problematic, even toxic, ones shared by many Type A personalities is a need to try and make other people feel bad for not themselves being sufficiently neurotic.
(I realize the Type A/Type B personality theory is largely crap. I'm just using it here as a useful shorthand that many people will recognize.)
That paragraph the quote came from makes me feel kind of sad. It prompted me to mentally re-frame PG's life, not as one that is defined by material success, but one that is defined by near constant anxiety. The material success is apparently just a by-product of that anxiety.
On the other hand, at least he gets to have some excess material comfort to take the edge off a bit? I imagine things would be much harder for him if he had fallen into the presumable silent majority of people sharing the same kinds of productivity-oriented anxieties who haven't been so lucky in their business dealings.
On the other hand, maybe it doesn't work that way. Maybe it just raises the bar, so that your future accomplishments have to be even more spectacular before you're able to see them as genuine accomplishments. Which sounds to me like a bleak existence. A bit like that of an addict who's forever chasing the dragon.
I saw PG speak once. He didn’t strike me as the anxious type. And I do not think it was polish: he is a good speaker, but he also seems like the type of speaker who would be exactly the same after the speech.
It felt more like he was….excited. Like in a childlike way, in a positive sense. That’s how I’ve interpreted stuff like the paragraph you cited: he is like a big kid excited about his work and does not want to waste time getting distracted from it. The same way a kid might acutely have a sense of boredom if not doing what they thought was important. The key here is PG really seems to find meaningful work fun.
I’ve known anxious types and they’re all rather different. Beset by doubts among other things.
It is possible that he is fueled by an anxious drive. Even probable, but there are a small group of people that find meaning in what they do. When the work towards that they get a buzz that is insatiable.
This was exactly my experience except Masters instead of Bachelors. I had this feeling that I mostly coasted during my bachelors, only putting any effort the week before Finals or Unit Tests. I did my Masters in EE from a university renowned for being a tough program. I was up for the challenge, doing exactly what you did: thinking math all the time, feeling like I was wasting time any moment I was not in front of my books.
I have the exact same problems you mentioned: not being able to just be, always anxious to be doing something productive, can't bring myself to watch a movie unless the movie was an all-time classic and "worth wasting time on".
The pandemic, weirdly enough, brought me back down to Earth. I faced some real mental lows but now I am able to relax more. Time management and deep work a few hours a day goes a lot further than just fretting about being productive all the time. I still have a lot of work to do, and I still don't think I've fulfilled my potential but posts like yours have definitely helped me re-calibrate my expectations.
There are university programs where you can coast through a degree, and others where doing that will at best leave you at the back of the pack.
It can be fun to be in a program where everyone is pushing hard but it can also be very stressful and not healthy for everyone who tries it. It is possible to live the rest of your life like that, but the vast majority of people I know who have tried it, aren't happy. The exceptions are outliers in several ways.
I'm closer to retirement age than the beginning of my career. Some of my age peer friends are already retired, and many of them could be if they wanted to. It's not even on the radar for me. I'm a bit envious, as I'd love the freedom to be done for life, and to be able to take or leave work as I please.
The flipside is that I've taken a lot of time off along the way. I've taken whole years off between many jobs, I've traveled a lot, and I've spent a lot of time just doing nothing. I have some minor regrets about not making better use of my time between jobs, but I don't have regrets about taking the time off. I would have gone insane if I had worked nonstop for 20-30 years, only taking a couple weeks of vacation a year.
If I were really passionate about the work--especially if I'd launched my own business--I might not have felt burnt out or wanted time off. But I never wanted to bust my ass just for the sake of working hard, or for some nebulous future goal (although that future is now my present). If health or something else prevents me from enjoying life as much in the future, at least I've got memories of the past.
You remind me of a coworker I had four a couple of years. He and his wife were both extremely competent and well-compensated programmers. Their lifestyle was basically "work for two years or so, save up a bunch of money, then quit and wander the world doing whatever they liked until the money ran out, repeat." I've thought about them several times. Some part of me is really, really uncomfortable intentionally living off of my savings for a prolonged period, but I also sometimes wonder if they haven't figured out something important that I haven't.
15y ago I met a guy who was specialized in repairing escalators. So what he did was repair some escalators in the city, and then he spent some weeks or even months motorbiking with his buddies. When money ran out, there was always a broken escalator to return to. Obviously he was so certain he would find work that he didn’t feel the need to save up any money.
That's awesome and you don't have to take it to that extreme. Right before covid I took a 3 months break after my last contract as independent consultant. Traveled in South America with a backpack and it was awesome. These 3 months feel (fill) in my memory so much longer than the year and a half of covid. Can't wait to do that again once travelling is easy again. Only issue is that when I came back I needed a more meaningful work meaning that I'm not independent anymore. But I'll trade that off again and repeat happily
> intentionally living off of my savings for a prolonged period
For most people, this is what retirement means, no? So one way to think about it is they are trading off time, and doing some things while they were young and sure to enjoy them.
The flip side is I have known people who never took a 'real break' and worked doggedly until 65 or whatever, then found a few years later health issues constraining what they could do.
That was my parents. Both worked into their late 60s. Both dead before 75. The amount of retirement they even had a chance at enjoying amounted to about three years.
Having been through CMU and YC, I think while this piece makes sense for the average person, for someone who's been to CMU it's very easy to read this with a re-traumatizing reaction of stop-glorifying-working-to-the-bone.
CMU and YC were maybe the 2 hardest working environments I've been in, but CMU SCS was just plain more hours of staying awake, more implicit peer pressure, less mature peer support systems (mostly from being younger) in the median case of a class/batch.
You can get by (with a huge cost, as evidenced by the semi-regularity of suicide when I was there) with that intensity solving finite problems in semesters that come to an end but not tempering that attitude and knowing when to take strategic breaks in the infinite game that business is can really do harm.
CMU is a weird place, the kids that get in are very smart but often have their inferiority complex relative to say MIT or Stanford, which coupled with the uncompromising academics makes them work insanely, often unsustainably hard. I loved it there, but I'm very glad I had a training in balance going in.
I didn't go to CMU. But to me, as I read this essay, that was balanced by the "quit when you're too tired to do your best work". That's not working-to-the-bone. That's working hard, and then stopping.
Now, someone who went to CMU may be too traumatized to hear that, but PG did say that...
That's sensible, but it's an extremely difficult thing to build concrete awareness for when you're so deeply in a problem space that often your best ideas just pop up from your subconscious.
There's also ways some kind of work you can be doing for any given energy level that adds up to your end goal.
Do you have good advanced strategies for knowing how to identify when you're too tired to do work in complex scenarios. Always happy to absorb more of those :)
I should also clarify that I think this essay is written with the best intentions. I also think there's a specific audience that can very easily misinterpret it. You're not in it, which is great!
I had the exact same issue in my undergrad. I was suffering from pretty severe anxiety/depression during highs school, to the point where I dropped out in my junior year. I started “thriving” in my undergrad, if by thriving you mean busy and getting good grades, and my anxiety was much reduced. But the reason it was reduced was because I was going to school full time and working 40+ hours a week and I simply didn’t have time to stop and think. Whenever I had a vacation, or significant time off, I had extreme anxiety, to the point of panic attacks, about not getting anything “important” done.
Ultimately the overwork gave me a chronic neck injury that forced me to have quite a bit of time off work, and over the years I have become very happy with myself, to the point where I can sit and do nothing, be alone with my own thoughts, for days without the anxiety and self-loathing entering my mind at all. I’m not sure when exactly the switch flipped, but it made me a much better person. And I am much happier with myself, my life situation, and my work.
Very similar experience for me. I have a hard time spending time on hobbies at the moment, because it feels like I should put that time towards my PhD instead of "wasting my time and energy". Yet, I somehow have no problem spending hours every day on reddit, YouTube, hacker news etc. because I think I tricked my mind into believing that those things don't cost energy so it's ok. Unfortunately they don't really bring joy and fulfilment the same way hobbies do.
I think the real problem for me is that the work of my PhD is never fully done until I've defended and submitted my thesis. It means that even though I definitely don't get even close to doing 40 hours of actual work per week, it feels like I am working all the time, which is exhausting. It's bad feeling like you are not supposed to take a break and wind down. It's probably why people burn out all the time...
The most impactful activities I pursued during my PhD had absolutely no bearing on my research itself.
Here's one example: I created a robotics blog where I wrote about some of the new, interesting developments in the field that piqued my interest. It ballooned into one of the top 3 robotics websites on the web. I felt guilty about it for a long time... until I realized that the blog had a bigger impact & reach than any of my research -- I was known in the community; articles were cited on Wikipedia and in Congressional testimonies; and it established my credibility.
There are at least a half-dozen similar examples -- including just pursuing random intellectual curiosities. What really helped me come to terms with this is "Structured Procrastination":
This is absolutely a common feeling in PhD programs - I think partially because it is a transition out of structured programs and a more nuanced idea of "done". I wouldn't beat yourself up about it, part of the process is learning for yourself how to deal with finding the right balance of focus and exploration.
> On these days I'd typically try playing a video game (my hobby before college)… wasting time… hard work was not healthy
It sounds like playing video games was your medicine, and denying it from yourself traded “wasting time” for something worse, like bad anxiety, which you don’t have to get into.
It’s obnoxious that the Paul Graham culture targets video games. The alternative medicine is always worse.
Of course, what he’s omitting isn’t some nuanced take on what is and is not wasting time. He’s omitting that he doesn’t give a fuck about hard work that isn’t about making money.
As someone who also did their undergrad at CMU, I can confirm that it was the hardest I've ever worked (even considering my 10+ years of professional experience). It was burnout level with how many units you had to carry and how difficult some of the advanced math and CS classes became.
We used to sit in the Tepper Faculty Lounge (always unlocked = free coffee) many nights from 10 PM - 4 AM to merely crank out a 6-question problem set...as a group.
I find that I can still get into the mode of "hard work" that CMU instilled but I also find myself generally disinterested in getting into a world where that becomes my life again...it was fun, but tiring, and I don't need to be tired/worn out to have fun anymore!
Yeah I went to a not-at-that-level-but-still-rigorous state school, and one of my first impressions of my internships and out-of-college jobs was... "WOW I get to get paid to code, and no homework? I can spend my evenings+weekends however I want!?"
Part of what makes programs like this work (there aren't a large number, but CMU is hardly alone) is the fact that it's a fixed time to create a pressure box in.
I know of an undergrad double honors program that was unreasonably proud of the fact that after inception it took something like a dozen (maybe fifteen?) years before anyone actually graduated from it; everyone dropped one or the other half to lighten the load. Trying to pitch something to almost-but-not-quite break you only works when there is a finish line.
> Years later, having tackled anxiety problems that had plagued me most of my life, I came to recognize that my relationship with hard work during my college years was not healthy and that this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing, at least not for me.
This resonates with me.
I would often try to outwork depression, anxiety, grief...basically any difficult emotion. Work was my coping mechanism and all external signals were positive about that--i.e., "he's a real go-getter." The pathology of all this became apparent after, well, becoming a parent.
Fast forward to now, I still sometimes struggle with those "alarm bells" but for the most part I can solidly state that I am not defined solely by my productivity. Contentment is an active practice, I suppose.
While I fundamentally believe I experienced the phenomenon PG writes about, there's something to be said about the scale of it. Taking a sufficiently generous interpretation of his essay, an admirable goal for self-growth is not to work hard all the time but to develop the self-discipline to work hard when you intend to be working (with the restraint to not be working when you intend to not be working, and the internal clock to help you schedule the two at whatever the correct balance is for your life).
Perhaps as a life goal as I enter my 30s, I should endeavor to revisit my love for mathematics and computer science (as opposed my work-life-balanced but frankly boring current career path), using both the restraint and discipline I've learned, so to not make the mistakes I made in my early 20s.
After leaving the work-always atmosphere of CMU, I moved in with my then-girlfriend (now-wife) and committed to working exactly 8 hours every day to keep work from taking over again. Trying to cram all the ambition and passion for work I once had into 8 hours of junior dev work basically turned me into a soup of anxiety, inferiority, and resentment[0] for some time. I thought I was wasting my career, after trying so hard in college. It took years to reorient my priorities (and also to reach a position that was a bit less meaningless than tech support for Matlab).
I think nowadays I could do better. Maybe next time a hip startup emails me with a job opportunity, I'll give them a call ;) thanks
[0] Anxious to try and find ways to work harder and achieve more in a bland corporate environment where the build system was more of an obstacle than the actual project, inferiority compared to the success that some of my still-overworked friends were experiencing in silicon valley (with opportunities I didn't have in Boston), and even occasional resentment towards my girlfriend, for whom I had chosen to restrain myself to 8 hours of work a day, because I felt I could do such great things without that limitation.
I did this, ended up at MIT due to work ethic, and thankfully ended up having a number of kids who are akin to a vector field with locally negative divergence (for these feelings).
There are always things to clean up from the chaos, and so much more meaningful than if I were doing it fit myself.
I think I was lucky in a way. I had my first experience with vertigo while working 80+ hour weeks for several years. In my dizziness I couldn't see my computer or cell phone screen to email or text my boss to let him know.
I was down for several days, literally only able to lie in bed and breathe. It was then that it dawned on me that if I died right then, I sure would miss a few things I'd been neglecting or putting off in life.
Vertigo has not returned yet (may it never!). It was a catalyst to a lot of meaningful change in my life.
Hobbies can be a very useful endeavor. So can volunteer work. I've been intrigued to learn more about the Civilian Air Patrol (US based, CAP) and how they help during disasters. Also fun to go up in planes and take pictures, either for training or in consequence of supporting disasters. They have more they do as well, but these things are fascinating to me. There are thousands of organizations with these kinds of opportunities.
You're not alone. Good luck in your hunt for meaning beyond output!
I had a similar realization. My inner desire had weird bits of fear and narcissism at its core. When that side of me cracked the desire to perform vanished. I did do some math after that (mostly to asses brain damage after health issues): i could do some new stuff, and did enjoy it.. but something changed, there need to be solid reasons: either aesthetical (a sudden epiphany that I need to study topology) or social for me to go into workhorse mode.
Another thing is that I also realized that crushing is not progressing.. so very often I understood things without any effort, what it took is for my brain to accept an idea more than anything else.. so I stopped forcing things, I simply walk around ideas and let things come and go.
All in all.. I also believe that is simply biology talking.. when young all you care is being the best, with age your focus spreads over other people (SO, kids, family)
For me the similar thing was when I started to read HN, 3 years ago.
It wasn't until 3 month before graduation, when a guy at the lab that I admired suggested HN and all the hustle culture and the background stories of successes was available first hand, that I started to get truly anxious about the time I felt like I wasted/ was wasting during college. Playing games are really hard now, so is watching movies. My list of movies or clips that I'm supposed to see on downtime is filled with daunting "productive" materials.
Also created the bad habit of quitting (job) when I feel like I'm stuck or "not growing/improving" due stress. The mentality of having to "constantly be productive" also caused strain in my personal relationships.
> a feeling at the core of my psyche that I have been wasting time and there must be something productive I should be doing or thinking about.
It's a little bit of relief to hear that others have experienced this issue. I've had this feeling when playing a video game, reading a book, watching a movie, etc. As if a part of my mind has trained itself to believe that the only worthwhile pursuit must be "productive" in some way. I've had to teach/remind myself often that it's healthy to relax, so keep playing. I think it's starting to sink in over time. :)
> I've since reformed my ambitions, instead of looking to start a company or get a PhD in mathematics, I've decided that hard work is not the love of my life
I 100% agree. Having just finished my masters (a bit later in life, I'm in my 40s now), I have concluded that I have exactly zero interest in pursuing any further formal education. I just don't have enough f*cks left to give for that.
But I do dream of starting my own company. But maybe it will stay a dream. And even if I realize it, I'm talking about a lifestyle business and not an attempted unicorn.
He has these alliterative buckets, like Craft, Community, Contemplation, and Constitution. Everyone's priority stack is different but generally speaking ... all humans need a bit of each.
>I spent all day every day at CMU either programming, doing mathematics, or thinking about one of those things (to great effect: often the trick to prove a theorem would pop into my head while showering or while taking a walk). I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dream about programming, then wake up and continue programming just where I left off.
This is such a great experience. I wish I could study at CMU on-site and experience all this. I'm an old horse still kicking :P
>I've since reformed my ambitions, instead of looking to start a company or get a PhD in mathematics, I've decided that hard work is not the love of my life and instead I should focus on my hobbies while looking for a career path that can be simultaneously fulfilling but laid back.
Glad that you figure it out. Guess the study burned you out :(
> This is such a great experience. I wish I could study at CMU on-site and experience all this. I'm an old horse still kicking :P
In truth, it was a great experience, it was just also the worst experience of my life. It's a little tough to explain but, in the end it comes down to personal expectations and mental health.
I often miss the work itself. A single problem set at CMU felt more interesting, impactful, and substantial than a multiple months-long project at a corporate job. Professors typically give you starter code that's ready to start working on "the meat" of the problem - here's a C++ project that loads a 3d geometry and renders it but the key function in rendering isn't implemented. Now go write a raytracer. Now go write a typechecker. Implement "malloc". Take this efficient sequential algorithm and design a parallel version that's provably more efficient, and implement it in functional code.
The big problem is that the pacing was brutal and inescapable and for many - such as myself - failure was not an option. When you don't get to sleep on sundays, wednesdays, and thursdays, every single week for a few months, all while dealing with the anxiety that maybe doing your best still isn't going to be good enough, you start to daydream that maybe you'll get hit by a car finally have an excuse to take a break.
I also went to CMU and had a similar experience. I got into programming because of my love for video games and ended up thinking they were a waste of time. A few years after graduation, my friends tricked me into going to a PC cafe (telling me it was a hip bar) and I rediscovered my love for gaming.
I had exactly the same reaction, and I also went to CMU for undergrad (not SCS though). However I found that it didn't translate to long-term productivity during my PhD program, when I needed to think about my career goals 5 years in the future. There I needed to focus on sustainable work ethic and working "smarter" rather than "harder" -- for example, okay I got an A in my quantum field theory class, but who cares? Other students who took easier courses but were able to start writing papers probably got ahead in the long run.
> I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dream about programming, then wake up and continue programming just where I left off.
This was almost always the case for me in group projects as we'd invariably do a waterfally style project management and each person would be 1 day late turning my 7 day window into 3... And worse yet usually what I got handed was crap and I'd just have to rewrite the project keeping only the barest clues of their work in place.
Not that much has changed 20 yrs later in my career.
This idea that work is required(!) and that rewards of it should not be wasted can be traced to some religious roots, for example.
This view on work ethics has been given rise to interesting theory more than 100 years ago in the birth of economic sociology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
> this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing
This, 100%. I got trapped in a work loop for several months this past year and am slowly recovering from it.
One of the most important rules for sustainable productivity that doesn't damage your health is having hard limits for the amount of time you spend working. It's very tough, especially when there are deadlines and other people encouraging you to exceed safe limits.
Thank you for this suggestion. As an Asian, I have always found the American fetish for "passion for work" disconcerting. My passion is for poetry and grammar. Unfortunately, in Asia, you really can't feed your family on this. Your career is distinctly "what you are forced to do". So it is a sense of duty and self-sacrifice that forces me to work, and I would gladly avoid any unnecessary bullshit work and virtue signalling, so that I can read fiction and poetry.
I currently experience this. Every moment of downtime the last 4 years is plagued with these alarm bells that I'm not properly using my time. That I should be working on something productive. This even extends to avoiding home improvement projects because a more efficient usage of my time would be to continue to work on work/side software projects.
I’ve heard this same mentality from many people who went to rigorous colleges or had a rigorous college experience. (It isn’t just prestigious schools that are like this - choose the wrong major at particular public schools and your life can be just as difficult)
I’m of the same opinion. I still don’t know how to enjoy just existing - even small pleasures can be hard to do unless I think there is some kind of “work” aspect to it. Video games need progression or bragging rights, hobbies need skills that will make me better at something, and simple pleasures must be only to get me back onto the progression track. Recharging must be to get me back in the game and working hard again. Etc… I was overtuned in college to always be working on something because if I didn’t, I was going to flunk out. (Yay for bad professors and academia that cherishes weeding people out than growing what they have)
I despise the way college trains people. Feels like capitalism training 101.
is it anxiety? I don't have a single hobby at this point that doesn't involve learning new stuff or having to work as part of it. I've totally stopped watching movies for enjoyment or playing video games because it feels so "unproductive"
Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here but there seems to be something obvious that you and others in this thread are overlooking: not all leisure activities are created equal. Some nourish the soul or the body, some are spiritual deserts.
Video games are in the latter category. Of course you’re going to feel bad about spending your time on them. But you could instead read a classic novel, play a sport, play some music, converse with friends, keep in touch with family, etc., any of which will help you develop as an individual in dimensions that will simply not happen otherwise. They connect you with the rich tapestry of life and human society.
If anything, old video games were more innocuous, as they didn’t try to be anything other than simple distractions that you would naturally tire of before long. Today’s games are precision engineered to be dopamine treadmills in the guise of immersive cinematic experiences, yet due to the primacy of gameplay mechanics, remain hobbled as works of art or storytelling.
Sure, some gaming could be a healthy bit of fun in a social context, but it tends not to be, doesn’t it? It tends to become a massive time sink, the accumulation of which over many years, usually of your youth (notice that older people just lose interest in games, like they suddenly don’t see value in them anymore), will not leave you well-read or physically fit or able to entertain others or even good memories - just precious time committed to the void.
I am not ignorant of video game culture. I’m just honest about the actual quality. I know games have storytelling. For instance, the Marathon series has an excellent story told via text read in terminals, utilising different types of prose and poetry, even concrete poetry, quite creative. The Halo series has something similar, except the primary storytelling mechanism is cinematic cut scenes, which, like 99.99% of such things, are terrible. Like the worst dregs of the sci-fy channel would have more artistic merit.
Some of both - I’m never going to claim that all games are of cultural significance, but I find the assertion that gaming is a passtime devoid of spiritual reward on a par with the idea that reading novels might be devoid of spiritual or intellectual reward - trivially true for a large proportion of the material, perhaps, but no more true for one medium over another.
I get what you're saying, and think you're mostly right.
However, I just booted up Breath of the Wild for the first time in a year (it's the not the first video game I've played in a year -- I just haven't played it in a year) and was absolutely astonished at how beautiful and well-designed it is. "Soul-filling" is a proper adjective for its affect of me.
Some games are obvious dopamine and money pits; some games are art. Those in the latter category are unfortunately few and far between, but I suppose every medium is like that. Some books are just as pointless and trashy as Clash of Clans.
Speaking for myself, I haven't lost interest in games as I grew older. What happened, rather, is that I lost the drive to go through the initial learning pains to get to the point where the game is truly fun and enjoyable - and so I end up mostly playing older games where I already know the ropes, and, occasionally, new games that rehash the old formulas and thus don't require much learning.
Video games probably taught me more than any other activity in my youth. I also played football and was an avid reader of fiction.
I don't really play them anymore because I played competitive games (As opposed to very casual or story driven games), and being good at games is no longer a priority to me. It takes a lot of time and effort to maintain your skill level, let alone increase it.
I definitely still see value in playing competitive games, but I think I've already extracted most of that value.
Just because you cannot appreciate the story telling of games, or the skill/teamwork needed to play competitive games, does not make them a waste of time.
The value of time spent is in the eye of the beholder. There are people who burn every evening/weekend playing games, and they are less happy and enriched from it. Equally there are people who spend a lot of time gaming and are much happier doing so. I can't spend a lot of time gaming atm because of personal projects, but the time I spend playing Stardew Valley with my girlfriend or competitive FPS games with my friends is invaluable.
your argument is flawed. in your story gaming could be replaced by drinking or toilet cleaning. as long as you are doing it with friends/strengthening relationships the activity is positive. but that is precisely what gaming is missing! there is nothing wrong with doing a lan party with your buddies, but playing an hour every day of the week your favourite game is just a waste of time. it's highly unlikely that your mind is relaxing, especially in competitive games you mentioned.
That's a _ridiculously_ reductive view of what games are. Like any form of media they range wildly from simplistic and addictive to rich and artistic and everything in between. Suggesting that all games are built to addict and waste time/money belies an utter lack of understanding of the landscape of games.
I could say the same about novels and be just as correct.
You’ve never made friends through a shared interest in games, or even through the games themselves? You’ve never been enthralled with the story of a game, and been left richer afterwards? You’ve missed out, and you’ve missed out through snobbery.
Like I said, I would be just as correct. There are addictive games and gamers, just as there are trashy novels and people who devour them one after another. I would consider neither more valid than the other.
I have met people I value through games and gaming, just as I have through Internet forums. I have experienced emotional highs and lows through the characters I’ve encountered in games, through the twists and turns of stories.
Like I said, perhaps you’ve missed out.
I’ve also blown off a lot of steam and enjoyed it as frivolous entertainment. I’m not trying to say it’s always worthy, social or a growth experience, that would be as absurd a claim as that it can never be so.
> A novel can make you addicted? Like you have to read it every day?
My wife used to spend multiple hours a day reading Harry Potter fan fiction to the detriment of other aspects of her life. It might not be designed to be addictive (same way HN isn't), but it can definitely have that affect.
>I played a lot with friends, but I never made friends through playing.
I know people who have made lifelong friends through online gaming. I do not know people who have made lifelong friends through reading books.
>I was enthralled by games, but when I was finished I wasn't "richer" in any way, just shorter of time.
What games were you playing? I've definitely felt absolutely floored by the technical achievements, storytelling and genius design in games before; the same way a good book or album leaves you shocked that a human could have created this.
I don’t consider myself a loser, as a successful software consultant with a house, a partner, a lot of travel under my belt and enough cash to basically do what I want. I’m moving to a new continent in a little over a month, to spend more time fishing and exploring the wilds, not lurking in a basement somewhere.
You're getting repeatedly downvoted but I think you have a point here that could have been articulated with less snobbery.
There's many folks here who grew up on videogames and most likely find it to have been a vehicle for meaningful experiences that are to some extent comparable to some of the things you've listed (for example, often videogames have social dimensions to them where lifelong connections are made).
I find you more agreeable with your emphasis on artistic value however towards developing a person. While it is true videogames are an artistic medium as well, the vast breadth of human art and knowledge/ wisdom lie in more established mediums that have been around for longer such as literature and music.
Videogames certainly have the potential to provide artistic value that is comparable to this long accumulated pile, but this is no easy task, pleasure and relaxation aside.
I worked my way through college as a mover (and came out the other side with high 5-figure debt). Many of the older guys I worked with had drug habits. I worked 16-hour days with those guys. They'd get on me for not running up stairs, for packing with too little paper around glass, for setting things down more than once. None wrote articles entitled "How to Work Hard." None knew Warren Buffet as a child (see Gates). None attended the most expensive schools, if they had they certainly wouldn't have chosen to drop out because they got bored or were unfulfilled (see Graham and Zuck). Take a look at the top 10 highest valued YC startups. All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates.
Privilege is what I'm getting at. Having an income 300:1 your lowest paid employee is disturbing. Making millions or billions off speculative, debt-fueled VC is disturbing. Proselyting your brand of success is disturbing. Recommendation: every time a founder, investor or businessperson starts to wax poetic on virtue, look for an angle. Why do founders want to appear virtuous and hardworking? Why do we need that from them? How else can they justify making sometimes up to 50% of their companies entire payroll? How emotionally satisfying must it be for Graham and his ilk to tell you why they got what they have?
What if most of serious wealth and success is decided at birth?
I was a mover and then I ran a moving company. I love movers and the culture of people who work with their hands. They tend to be much funnier than office workers.
I realize yours is a common reality, but it's not been my experience. I always felt surrounded by underdogs, and our privilege mostly came from former underdogs choosing to bet on me.
My parents are middle class New Yorkers. I went to a public high school, ran track, skateboarded and played with computers and programming for fun.
I went to Wash U in St Louis on financial scholarship. A great school but not the ones that tech companies recruit aggressively from. My freshman year I bootstrapped a moving company and a custom apparel company, and I worked constantly at both on top of a full course load for a double major and social obligations. I probably couldn't do that today, but it didn't feel like work then. It was fun. Both of those companies did well enough that I got introduced to Joe Lonsdale as he was starting Addepar, and I made enough money from them to pay off all debts and enter adult life with over 150k in savings.
I joined Addepar my sophomore summer. It was me, Joe, a CMU dropout, a Berkeley grad who was working at Yahoo, a snowboard apparel designer, and a santa clara grad. We hacked it out, and now that company is worth over a billion dollars. Joe was a Stanford graduate, the rest of us made it with equity.
While at Addepar in SF I met Keith Rabois, who tried to recruit me to Square. I turned him down because I wanted to graduate school, but we became close friends and eventually started Opendoor together with Eric Wu, the child of immigrants who went to University of Arizona. We recruited a great team, and now Opendoor is a 10 billion dollar public company.
There are a million and one privileges I've enjoyed, but they were mostly people being willing to bet on me. And most of the money I made was in equity. I never had a six figure salary until my last 6 months at Opendoor, and I didn't take any money off the table until year 5.
I appreciate you sharing your story! It's cool to hear about your success and I definitely understand that it's different than some might think of it. Congrats! I'll try not criticize your narrative or how you frame it and focus on sharing how I think about mine instead.
I'm American, white, male, and got into an American college. I studied economics in school, got super stressed about my debt and income inequality. So I came to SF after college, doubled down on my debt with a bootcamp, and got a high paying engineering job. It was a big, stressful risk and paid off. I paid all my student debt off in a few months. My life has been an absolute dream since. I would never, never in a million years say this:
> ...our privilege mostly came from former underdogs choosing to bet on me
From working with those guys at the moving company I can tell you, seemingly small missteps lead to irreversible stagnation in traditional measures of success (career, achievement, wealth, etc). Let's cast all that aside though and just focus on demographics. Americans represent ~4% of the world's population. About 32% of Americans have graduated college. ALREADY I'm part of ~1% of the world's population and we haven't even included white/male. And I bet you like what half of SF engineers and YC founders fall in that population? Just incredibly disproportionate.
During the Great Depression stocks didn't rebound for 20 years. Over the last 20-40 years interest rates have steadily declined, ROI across the board has shrunk, and VC funds have proved highly profitable. All of that means that the last 20 years have been gangbusters for VC funding, SF, and software engineering. Had the next long protracted economic crisis hit during my job search, what would've happened? I was job searching for 6 months before I got my first job offer at a doctor's salary. What even is that!?
I worked hard, I was lucky, and I was successful. I don't even pretend to understand the cause and effect there.
> Americans represent ~4% of the world's population. About 32% of Americans have graduated college. ALREADY I'm part of ~1% of the world's population [...].
FYI, other countries have effective college/university programmes too :)
One other thing, last I checked one third of the world doesn't have access to clean water daily.
Facts like these should be a mandatory preface to any success stories, tips, or tricks shared by the ultra-wealthy. The preface should also include this xkcd comic:
https://xkcd.com/1827/
It's not even really material inheritance or gifts. It's that successful parents teach their children how to be successful.
When I reflect on my life I realize that pretty much everything went right because my parents had explained all the steps. I followed my parents advice to learn programming, I followed my parents advice on how to get a job, I followed my parents advice on how to negotiate how to negotiate higher pay and when to put the squeeze on management.
And now I'm doing pretty well for myself. I did work hard but I could have worked just as hard in the wrong direction and got nowhere. But I was already shown the path by my parents.
My best advice would be to find a friend who is doing well and learn from them. Chat and meet up often. Ask them about work and stuff. Personally I give out as much advice to my friends as possible and have helped them get started in software development careers.
Knowing what you can and should ask for is so important. Recently management suggested that it would be better if I had a formal certification. I then requested that the company pay for me to go to university. They accepted despite it not being an advertised perk. If I had not seen my parents do the same thing previously I would not have known this is even something you can ask for.
While I'm not naive to not see that life is inherently unequal, I completely disagree with you.
I know plenty people, including myself, who not only had the wrong zip code, they didn't even have a zip code. Somehow they made it. You can get lucky after you're born. And if you work hard, you can increase your luck odds.
Also, why zip code is the axiom here? I'd say having good parents is more significant than being born in the right zip code. Who's to say?
Nobody's to say. For some reason some people think that statistics dictate reality when obviously they just take an average. The zip code thingy is silly, but on average more expensive zip codes produce children with higher incomes.
Yeah because their parents are better educated and pass on their values to their kids. So what?
I am frankly tired of this modern idea that is is somehow unfair if parents pass on their advantages to their kids. That is what nature has always been about. It even starts before people have kids - they seek out partners that maximize the potential for their kids. So if a woman chooses an intelligent (or even just rich) man as a father for her kids, it is somehow unfair because it gives the kids an advantage. Even trying to become attractive (for example to become rich) to make you a good choice for parent is somehow unfair? It should be obvious that all that is some Marxist bullshit, where individuals are not allowed to operate for their personal advantage anymore, and their bodies are being utilized (women are not allowed to choose attractive partners anymore, or have children for their own enjoyment. Everybody has to be dedicated to the benefit of society or "fairness").
Stephen Curry's father was a professional basketball player, and now Curry is one of the best Basketball players. Is that unfair? What would have been fair, to disallow his father to play basketball with his son, and instead mandate he gives free basketball lessons to poor kids?
Maybe it is unfair that Curry's father didn't push for him to become a lawyer or a doctor, "forcing" him into a career as a basketball player. Well his dad knew about the world of basketball, so that is where he was able to help his son. Why shouldn't he do that? I personally will see to it that my kids learn to code, because that is where I am able to help. I don't feel bad about it at all. In fact I wish there were other things I were able to help with, but there are not. Still, they can go out into the world and seek other teachers. Especially with the internet, a lot of things are free to learn. There even is a Masterclass by Stephen Curry about learning to play Basketball.
parents passing on their experience isn't the only part. They also pass on their wealth, their connections, etc. The rich family can send their kids to the top schools. The rich family generally has connections. If your parents are house cleaners or gardeners or plumbers, can they loan you $100-200k to try out your pet startup idea? Can they introduce you to people that as likely to want to invest 5-7 figures in your idea? Are they even likely to know which topics to study or what opportunities exist?
The point is not that any of this is wrong. The point is to recognize all the benefits or luck or privilege or whatever you want to call it that one person might get that another does not and then add that to the sum of things it possibly takes to succeed.
Person A, has taxi drivers for parents, manages to go to a nice school, works hard, maybe has a chance at hitting it big
Person B has rich parents, is sent to the top schools where other top students challenge them, was idea, parents fund it, if not directly at least by knowing that they'll have a fallback should it fail, via top school connections or family connections they are given tutors, advisors, and or access to top talent for their startup, their chances of success are far higher.
Another example: Person A tells parents "I want to make an app". Parents say "that's nice". Person B tells parents "I want to make an app". Parents say "oh, I can introduce you to Ms.X, she designs apps, and Ms.Y, she had a successful startup, on and Mr.Z, he says his daughter just graduated CMU with a CS degree and she might be interested in joining you"
Again, nothing "wrong" with that . Just maybe it would be nice to fine ways to help Person A, not how to hinder Person B.
Success and wealth tend to compound intergenerationally. That can be a good thing. When societies have economic mobility, wealth tends to enter and leave families over a couple generations.
I love music from Drake, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Justin Bieber and the like. Their music and the fact we live in a society where stars are bred for music -- that's incredible. Fair/unfair isn't a very interesting binary. Natural variance and inequity is an important part of healthy competition. How much inequity is too much? That's a very interesting question.
Instead of fretting about people who became successful, we should think about how we can help more people become successful. Which incidentally seems to be a huge part of what PG does.
Even poor people today live better than kings in the past. The things we can afford, microwave dinners, washing machines, were only available to kings with lots of servants in the past. When you consider medicine, it becomes even more obvious that we are better off now than rich people in the past.
> ...we should think about how we can help more people become successful.
It's like you're purposefully missing the point.
What if most of serious wealth and success is decided at birth? What are the logical consequences of that?
Let's go extreme: A rich guy wins the lottery. He then tells everyone in town how they could've won if they bought tickets. What's your reaction?
> Even poor people today live better than kings in the past.
I generally agree with this on quantitative measures of productive or technological progress. Other quantitative measures don't look so great: education, housing and healthcare costs; health (esp. mental health) issues in developed vs developing nations; prison populations in the present vs past.
Michael Foucalt has better arguments to make here than I do [1].
The claim is not that all wealth and success is determined at birth, just that most of it is. This claim can't be disproven by counterexamples.
It's more productive to look at broader trends. The average Chinese factory worker works more hours than the average westerner, yet tends to end up less successful. The difference is that they had the bad luck to be born in a poorer country.
PG talks about that in other essays, on how you should probably move to the right location. He compares Milano to Florence - it is unlikely people in Milano were less intelligent, but all the famous painters emerged in Florence.
Nevertheless I think your claim about the zip codes is too broad. Most people will have average lives. I suspect even in Silicon Valley only a small fraction of kids grow up to be successful entrepreneurs.
Note that everyone on this forum is prima facie remarkably privileged compared to someone in this world.
'We' all went to some kind of school as opposed to no school. 'We' all have amazing technology at our finger tips, as opposed to lacking basic nutrition and sanitation and personal safety.
The difference between 'us' and the abject poor is much greater than the difference between 'us' and PG or Bill Gates. The abject poor can't even post on here to point this out.
My point is that privilege tagging is hypocritical, and not useful. As such, I simply read this essay calmly for what it is, knowing that I too was born with more than enough luck. Yet I constantly fail to honour that most essential fact about my life.
It's an article called "How to Work Hard" that doesn't once mention luck, psychology, or basic human needs.
What do you get from the success how-tos of multi-millionares? Do you really not see it as self-serving? Disclose survivorship bias, incredible privilege, and impossible odds and I'm in... I think? At that point I'm still unclear why the rich have something useful to say here that Maslow or other academics don't.
I've lost track of what your critique actually is. Anyway, I didn't read this essay because PG is rich. I do not in fact know if he is rich or not. His wealth neither increases nor decreases the likelihood that the essay is worthwile. I starting reading PG's essays because he made HN, which I find valuable, his net worth is irrelevant to me. I know about him because of HN, because of something he created, and for no other reason.
I am able to contextualise his essay myself. It is not necessary for him to start the essay with a laundry list of disclaimers (eg I'm a neurotypical rich white guy with good parents, no major medical conditions, good teeth, 4 limbs etc).
You have just become lucky because you stumbled upon the article and can act on it. So it is not necessary to mention luck, because the readership of the article is already selected for luck.
The article also mentions the necessity of talent.
It also doesn't say everybody can become a billionaire by simply working hard.
Also even if you are born in Africa with no access to schools (or in some US ghetto were everything is sooo horrible), you can probably set yourself apart from your peers.
A lot us are able to take pleasure in other people's success and try to learn from them. It isn't very useful to assume the worst about people. The generalizations you are making here about rich people, etc. etc. are honestly ridiculous. Some of the most generous people I've met were filthy rich.
Every time pg puts out a new essay, we get into this privilege bingo stuff. It’s always irrelevant. There’s a huge audience of people who don’t care if their CEO is 300x better paid than they are, or that they didn’t go to an elite school, or that they didn’t have prestigious family connections: what they want to know is how did he work, what can we do to unlock our productive potential, how can we create things that we can be proud of in the same way. That’s who Graham is writing for.
Maybe the way he worked is also a product of his environment, and could thus be dependent on things like wealth, family/genetics, upbringing, network, etc.?
And those could also be good topics to explore. There’s room for different types of introspection and self-reflection. But from the perspective of how can we learn from or emulate or find proxies for the benefits of these other factors, not starting from the preposterous notion that Graham is writing self-serving screeds to hoodwink us.
> All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates.
This says they were overachievers in prior pursuits too. Universities may not do a perfect job of it, but their admissions is primarily based on merit. In fact the kind of person that will make a big impact on society is precisely what they look for in addition to grades and test scores. Perhaps they are just pretty good at it.
Why are they overachievers though? What factors -- over which they had control -- formed their psychology, intellectual capability, access to resources and education?
I'm guessing zip code predicts "overachiever-dom" depressingly well. I'm also guessing it's not everything, life is noisy.
What difference does it make if there were factors they had control over? I suspect grit or tendency to work hard is primarily inherited just like intelligence. So you could also say anyone who works hard is not really doing so by their own doing.
Hey Soheil! I'm actually doing really well and my life is awesome. No complaints personally.
I'm worried about the future -- my own, yours, my parents, those of the guys I worked with at the moving company, etc.
The problem when wage growth stalls for most of the population [1], but wealth grows disproportionately for the wealthy [2] is three-fold:
- The wealthy don't spend additional wealth, they invest it. This leads to lower velocity of money, which is a factor in consumer spending.
- Economic mobility stalls with decreased consumer spending and concentration of wealth. [3]
- As people lose faith in economic mobility and experience economic hardship, political instability follows. [4]
This cycle is compounding. It's about long-termism and general social welfare.
Economic competition is good. Inequality can be good. Current levels of economic inequality and mobility are concerning. Like pre-Great Depression concerning and it's only getting worse.
Right now we need people, especially wealthy people to be in-touch with how out-of-whack our economy is. The gospel of prosperity is poisonous right now. We need more people to acknowledge luck and to understand the economic suffering of others.
I guess you have to balance the harm caused by the "lower velocity of money" as a result of wealthy investing a portion of their earnings vs decreasing the incentives that allow one to become wealthy in the first place thus reducing wealth generation to flatten the inequality. Hasn't this been tried in almost every socialist country in South America?
Success has been compounding in fundamentally destructive patterns that are causing serious, unintended economic and societal consequences for 100 years now. If you're benefitting from that, great. I'm genuinely happy for you! But when it comes to policy making and interactions with others, holding onto a sense of personal exceptionalism hurts everyone. It also makes you look like an ass.
Not all hardworking and talented people become successful, but all successful people are talented and hardworking. Some people are born with better chances than others, but we should strive to make a society where at least most people are born with a good chance.
Suppose someone is average and lazy. They're practically guaranteed to live a life of coasting by from job to job, living paycheck to paycheck, and struggling to get by in America these days. That is not success by my measure.
What if that someone is average and lazy in their work to devote the rest of their time to their family? What if they raise a bunch of kids that love their parents, care about each other and the world and want to make it better? Would that be success?
What if they were molested and use drugs to cope, but live their entire life without molesting anyone else? Would that be success?
What if they have serious depression and they check out by playing video games, but they don't kill themselves? Would that be success?
Holding up a few spectacular achievements as the paragon of human experience is fucking stupid.
I genuinely think really rich (and smart) people do it to try to salve their guilt and signal for others.
Just want to say that I agree with everything you've posted in this thread, and it's always shocking to me that people still believe the prosperity gospel in 2021.
Ahh so "How to Work Hard" is really "How to Work Hard for the Privileged and Unsuffering."
I was confused as there was no mention of privilege, no disclaimer, no recognition of his revelation as an innate human need as fundamental as those for connection or play.
Graham figured out work folks, pack it in. Maslow, step aside.
Well the most important factor of economic mobility has historically been women marrying up. So you might be on to something - it seems doubtful that wives who were able to marry up work that much harder than other wives.
> The major correlates with high economic mobility Chetty identifies are racial segregation, income inequality, school quality, family structure and social capital.
It isn’t, obviously, because look at the example of Bill Gates: starting a business as a 20-year-old college dropout puts you at a big disadvantage compared to people with more life experience.
The Bill Gates Mythology in this essay is a bit odd though. No doubt a hard worker, but the claim
>"Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one."
doesn't align with the facts that have recently emerged about him. [1] Maybe PG should examine selection bias and self-reporting bias a bit more before making the claim he does here.
Another ex, Jill Bennett — described as his “first serious girlfriend” — said they split because of Gates’ fixation with working long hours.
“In the end, it was difficult to sustain a relationship with someone who could boast a ‘seven-hour turnaround’ — meaning that from the time he left Microsoft to the time he returned in the morning was a mere seven hours,” she told Wallace.
I don't see that being a "womanizer" is in any way incompatible with being a workaholic.
I don’t see misalignment at all. I see complete irrelevance between that quote and the facts. Why can he not be a womanizing workaholic? They are not mutually exclusive and possibly actually correlated.
Sex lives need to be private or at least not included as judgement of individual as they are not relevant at all to people’s accomplishments in politics, business, academics, or any other facet of an individual’s life.
Incongruent? I've frequently worked full day and then hosted a pool party in the evening. More often, I've also hosted pool parties in the day time and went on to work 12+ hours afterwards.
I'm left assuming either you've never owned a pool and incorrectly assert that it's a full day activity to host a party or since you seem to want to be a myth buster I could assume it's the "naked" part you see as an issue. This completely ignores the fact that in the '80s, it was not uncommon to do business at strip clubs and a naked pool party is really not much different. So maybe the party was his work that day? He sold software, right?
What an extremely revealing comment on your part. For your sake, I'm sorry the world has moved past your heyday of 'business in strip clubs'. I'm also sorry that your life is such that you can't even enjoy a full day off.
I have two separate threads of response:
1) You think Bill Gates just had friends who he could casually invite over for a naked party? You don't think that he had to invest a significant amount of time into coordinating those parties (read: finding and paying for his guests, since it is also widely reported that most guests were strippers likely under NDA)? I really want to know what world you live in where you can be a semi-famous (at the time) sexual libertine who operates in secret without devoting a lot of time to it. Maybe you pull it off, given the confident tone of your comment, but I'm guessing not.
2) I'm in shock that you can read PG's essay on hard work (Assuming you did), then make a comment that 'maybe the naked pool parties with strippers WAS his work for the day.' Even if that was true, my point about mythologizing 'Bill Gates' hard work' still stands.
EDIT: Tell me you've never been to a strip club without telling me you've never been to a strip club. Maybe they were brighter and quieter in the 1980's, but I somehow doubt it.
> What an extremely revealing comment on your part. For your sake, I'm sorry the world has moved past your heyday of 'business in strip clubs'. I'm also sorry that your life is such that you can't even enjoy a full day off
Revealing on yours as well. You make broad assumptions and put words in peoples mouths. I take plenty of time off. I never glorified the "heyday" (your word not mine), but I am aware of it as fact. I didn't enter the workforce until the 2000s and it was pretty much over so I never even experienced it second hand.
> 1) You think Bill Gates just had friends who he could casually invite over for a naked party? You don't think that he had to invest a significant amount of time into coordinating those parties (read: finding and paying for his guests, since it is also widely reported that most guests were strippers likely under NDA)? I really want to know what world you live in where you can be a semi-famous (at the time) sexual libertine who operates in secret without devoting a lot of time to it. Maybe you pull it off, given the confident tone of your comment, but I'm guessing not.
Bill would pay a party planner. He didn't operate in secret, it was just not as big of a deal back then. There was this thing called the sexual revolution that had just ended but the norms hadn't fully shifted. It wasn't seen as news worthy as it is today. The title of the linked article called him a "womanizer" and I don't think that was even much of a thing at the time it happened. You need to but social norms and actions in context to the time and circumstanced it occurred.
> 2) I'm in shock that you can read PG's essay on hard work (Assuming you did), then make a comment that 'maybe the naked pool parties with strippers WAS his work for the day.' Even if that was true, my point about mythologizing 'Bill Gates' hard work' still stands.
I'm just not ready to myth bust based on a moral difference even if I disagree with it. Where as you seem to prefer to completely ignore his hard work and accomplishments because you think he was a bad person. He still worked hard and accomplished many things by all accounts. Typically if someone says "i didn't take a day off my entire 20s" they aren't being literal or it doesn't mean they didn't take a single moment off (they were on call, or took meetings from family vacation, etc - still working). Others in this thread attribute it to his status at birth ("privilege") and I could see that as a stronger argument to make. But still doesn't prove he didn't work hard; just diminishes the value of his hard work to his ability to succeed. To use an analogy, Keven Spacey was cancelled. But his body of work is still excellent. I refuse to ignore his body of work where as you may feel that it should be stricken from cinematic history.
> EDIT: Tell me you've never been to a strip club without telling me you've never been to a strip club. Maybe they were brighter and quieter in the 1980's, but I somehow doubt it.
What does this have to do with anything? If I've been to a strip club or not has nothing to do with this topic. Strip clubs are legal and people make their living there. You're obviously on some moral high horse where only your view of the world is important.
1) Ok, let's say it's not your heyday, but then what are you basing your claim of 'business done at the strip club' off of? Stories you've heard? You said you didn't even experience it second-hand, so how do you have this information?
2) Did you read the article at all?
a) Operating in secret: "but newspapers like the New York Times hid the unflattering reports to continue getting 'spoon-fed stories" - sounds like he dedicated a fair amount of work-time to otherwise needless PR then.
b) Hiring a party planner: "Gates would visit one of Seattle’s all-nude nightclubs and hire dancers to come to his home and swim naked with his friends in his indoor pool" - sounds like he spent a lot of time in strip clubs & would pick his favorites. How likely do you think it is that all-nude strippers willing to go to a John's house are also on-board with cutting said party short so their John can get back to work? As you state, it was the 80's so I'm sure everyone was sober enough to make that decision every time.
3) The literal quote is "I never took a day off in my twenties, not one." He doubles down IN THE QUOTE. I agree he's a hard worker, but it's not good to tell a generation of up and coming entrepreneurs that they should strive to 'always be on call' when Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, etc. etc. all have VIBRANT personal lives that REQUIRE TIME OFF. That's the only point I'm trying to make. Time off is important and even an actual psychotic hard-worker like Len Bosack admits it.
4) Kevin Spacey is an actual pedophile (Anthony Rapp was 14), so EXTREMELY weird example. I don't think people shouldn't watch American Beauty (it's the second-best film set in Sacramento!), but to glorify him the way you do IS kind of sus.
5) I was just making a joke about the 'business in strip clubs' thing. I think sex work is great when done right (Evidenced by the fact that I know what a strip club is like on the inside). It's one of the most innately human things we do. I just think you're out way over your skis.
Feels like I’m an adult arguing with a pre-teen here. The way business was done, first wasn’t the only way business was done, but it wasn’t uncommon either. It still occurs to some degree. Why do you think strip clubs are open for lunch? Second, it’s common knowledge documented throughout pop culture and I’ve spoken boomers and older that remember it well. You might be shocked to know that women weren’t a part of the workforce until this time as well. What do you think happens when it’s all men doing business with all men? The machismo exudes.
Literal quote yes, but it shouldn’t be your literal interpretation because not every statement is literal. If I said my commute today took “forever” how do you interpret that? Am I still commuting? Is that my eternal punishment?
So we’ve established your ok with sex work. Which in gates example was done correctly. He went to professionals and paid them. If you agree with the work, you have to agree with the acts of the clients. So, I guess you just think it’s a horrible thing that he knew it would cause embarrassment and wanted to keep it out of the media. That’s what most people do. Have you ever heard someone tell there mom, I’m going to the prostitute but I’ll call you when I’m done? No that’s embarrassing. People hide their embarrassments but that’s not wrong in of itself.
Kevin spacey was meant to be an extreme example. Yet you agree his work was good. My “ his body of work is still excellent” comment was not glorifying him, you’re really bad at this. Let me say another way, if my dry cleaner turns out to be a serial killer, well he is still the best dry cleaner I’ve ever had.
Take a look at the faces on the Forbes list and get back to me. Just how white, male and western are they exactly?
It's not that Gates wasn't smart or hardworking. It's just that it's easy to be hardworking and ambitious when you had books growing up, proper nutrition, when your parents stayed together, when you're in good health, when you got tutors and went to great schools, when you were engaged in extracurriculars, when you lived in an affluent society, when your parents were well connected, and on and on and on.
Are his contributions to humanity worth 60B+? Scientific discovery springs up in a bunch of places simultaneously and organically. I have to assume his contribution to society would've too, maybe with a smaller amount of value extracted to his personal fortune?
He's a philanthropist now, so that's good. I would be too the way social and political tides are turning. Funny how philanthropic the wealthy become. Even Epstein.
Having good health, proper nutrition, and extracurriculars in an affluent society, i.e. having two parents who don’t suck, is a regular American baseline that public school kids experience. Gates’s particular advantages were being smart and having access to computers in high school in his day, which countered the bad luck of not being born a few years earlier such that he’d encounter computing in college with the same lead time before the 8086. Of course he found some great luck in business, too, well after the company was established and had employees on the payroll.
> Gates’s particular advantages were being smart and having access to computers in high school
You're forgetting something important[1] about Bill Gates' mom:
> Her tenure on the national board's executive committee is believed to have helped Microsoft, based in Seattle, at a crucial time. In 1980, she discussed her son's company with John Opel, a fellow committee member, and the chairman of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other IBM executives. A few weeks later, IBM took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer.
If that’s inaccurate, tell us what gives us more bits of information distinguishing him from the general population born in the same year he is. The smart part puts him in the 0.1%, 10 bits right there, and early access to computers adds another rare multiplier to that.
The difference being that gates was never in any real danger. His credits didn't disappear. He lived in a paid for apartment. He did not have to worry about money, and if he chose, he could've gone back to college at any time. It only puts you at a 'disadvantage' in business circles, because there's a slight chance that people with more experience will not take you as seriously
> Take a look at the top 10 highest valued YC startups. All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates.
This is not true. AirBnB is the top valued company that went through YC [1]. AirBnB was founded by Brian Chesky among others. Brian Chesky went to the Rhode Island School of Design [2]. The RISD had an acceptance rate of 20% in 2020.
I'm not going down the list because I don't have time at the moment, but #2 is DoorDash, and the two founders with Wikipedia pages went to Berkeley and Stanford. Both schools with lower acceptance rates.
I am not going to engage with most of this topic, nor am I disputing that Bill Gates had advantages most of the world didn't : mom on numerous boards, dad a successful lawyer, got into Harvard, etc. However, I will dispute that Warren Buffet knew Gates as a child. In a YouTube video Gates describes his first meeting, as an already wildly successful tech entrepreneur. https://youtu.be/VBIiy5CnTiY
Then we would be living in an alternate dystopian reality.
Has privilege just come to be a catch-all to explain any difference in outcomes? I mean you mention Buffet first, kinda ruins the point you are making here.
As a software engineer, I fail to see what is so impossible about any of the people's origin stories. With a little programming knowledge, a somewhat novel idea, and a laptop anyone could become the next Zuck. They aren't royalty, no special blood requirement anymore.
Your story doesn't actually demonstrate that you have to know Warren Buffet as a child and attend an expensive school to become successful.
I don't think anybody here claims that working hard automatically makes you successful, either, just that it is difficult to become successful without it.
Also your movers could probably afford to work less if they dropped their drug habits.
> Having an income 300:1 your lowest paid employee is disturbing
I can imagine how and why communist revolutions were so "successful". This ratio simply shows theft from the workers. Probably, if we don't get a regulation in that area, so that let's say the maximum ratio could be no more than 10:1 and heavily tax capital gains, dividends and other means that privilege class use to extract value without having to work for it, this history will repeat itself.
In some western countries, extreme left parties gain huge support, because people are simply fed up of reading that e.g. Amazon got another record year while they themselves have to sleep in a tent because they cannot afford paying rent.
The Russian communist revolution succeeded because Tsarist Russia was brutal and despotic, and the brutal and despotic Bolsheviks were merely the lesser of two evils and better fighters. The Chinese communist revolution succeeded because the Chinese Communist Party waged a guerilla war while the Nationalist army fought the Japanese invasion by themselves. Once the invasion was defeated the Chinese Communist Party fought a brutal conventional war marked by long sieges where 100,000s of city dwellers starved to death.
I think political and military factors are underrated as explanations for the success of communist revolutions compared to social and economic factors.
> It was similar with Lionel Messi. He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win.
I can assure you, there are many kids that practice harder than Messi did when he was young. He is not a great player because of hard work, he is a great player because of luck. I know the VC thing about the importance of hard work. They love to promote hard work because that's how they make money. It's just plain silly to attribute Messi's greatness to anything other than luck - both his physical abilities and the environment that taught him how to fine tune his abilities.
Hard work is useless without that special precise knowledge of which work you should be doing. Few young soccer players know how to practice in a way to become Messi, even if they have the right body to do it. It's useless without being in the right environment too.
> Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.
That, my friends, is what a VC would love for you to believe. There's nothing sincere when someone in his position writes something like this. Because hey, if you're the 0.1% of the time that it works out, he gets rich. And if you're the 99.9% that wastes their time (like all the kids that never play soccer at the highest levels) he loses nothing.
I used to enjoy PG's writings. He's crossed a line where he believes that the only thing good in the world is what is best for VCs.
In fact there is a good video from Verassium [1]. One can't discount luck. There is no such thing as hard work. It's just the feeling of being in flow and whatever one does to make you re-live that flow, it's totally worth it.
Instead of working on hard problems, it's best to prioritize on optimum problem and get the best out of your situation. With optimum problem, I mean the problems that allow you to maximize your living, instead of believing on moonshot dream.
It's okay to dream, but putting expectations on dream is losing touch with reality. Sure in an ideal world, essays like this would be perfect motivation, but you are living in a world ruled by billionaires and plutocrats. So, as long as you get enough share of the pie, I don't think one should pursue the moonshot dream.
Rather invest this time on working on job (whole-hardheartedly) only during office hours, and actually try living a life outside of it. You don't have to be a superstar to live a life because humans have already lived for so long.
Stop believing these bullshit VC ideas. The real essence of this essay is understanding the flow and noticing the events that triggers flow. [2]
I’ve been feeling great dread lately with the direction our industry is going (has always been going tbh). This conversation gives me some sort of renewed hope though. Hundreds of people admitted hard work burned them out; seeing VCs ask to sacrifice your life for their bottom line. Realizing the role luck plays in success.
Maybe covid pushed a significant number of people past their breaking point and now their eyes are wide open. I cannot say, but I’m glad to see so many people are speaking the truth.
Check out Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb, it's a great little book that goes over just how much chance goes into one's success (and how oblivious most humans are to detecting this chance).
*Veritasium. His tag line is "An element of truth", since "veritas" is Latin for truth and most element names end in "ium". I recommend the whole channel!
There was a long article linked on HN a while back, about how you can't start a company or invent something unless it's the right time, you can't rush innovation just because you try hard. It was gwern-style detailed and full of references and citations, not just a top of the head opinion piece.
> There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard.
I think that's the fundamental secret to success at anything. If you want to compete at the top level you have to have all three. It's not sufficient to just work hard, or just have natural ability. You need to fully apply yourself aligned with your natural talents.
Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient requirement.
Without luck, you will not get to the level of Messi. Without knowledge, you will not get to the level of Messi. Without living in the right environment, you will not get to the level of Messi.
The "natural ability" thing is just a spin on the same idea. Work hard to recognize your natural ability. Be realistic about it. In that view, natural ability is not a matter of luck. It is still a story about doing the right things so that you deserve all the credit if you are successful, and more importantly, so that you can blame those that didn't.
The issue is that you can't know if you meet the other requirements, so it's easy to think "I'll get lucky by just being persistent" and you never go anywhere.
Without hard work, even lucky Messi would be a nobody.
The ability to do hard work is a worthy personal goal. Not for the sake of a job per say, but for the sake of one's own well-being. You seem to be seeing this exclusively through the lens of predatory capitalism, which might blind you to any valuable insights here.
Fundamental secret? I thought this is obvious. Imagine the following simple model. People have 3 normally distributed attributes: luck, talent and laziness, their sum determines succcess. If you generate 1 million people and sort them by success, the top 1000 will be good at all of the 3 attributes
Okay, but nobody is going to become anywhere close to Messi without working hard. That's the point. Do you think someone could become Messi by putting in barely any practice or effort? You might get into a team, but you won't be a Messi lol. Be honest with yourself.
Obviously luck plays a role, but most people (>90% I'll bet) who are successful in the end get there due to hard work.
I could sit on my butt and do nothing all day, and suddenly my doge coin are worth a million bucks. I basically don't know anyone IRL who got mega rich off these things. I know a lot more people IRL who are mega rich because they work hard to this day.
It’s important to recognize physical activity is very different from mental, creative or social activities. If you can convince people of things, you can be wildly successful. They may listen to you because you speak well, they may listen to you because you’re telling them what they want to hear or they may listen to you because you’re rich. None of which require the rigorous practice of a professional athlete.
Same goes for creative endeavors. I can be much more creative (and successful) if I’m well rested vs. grinding.
Contrary to you, the most successful people I know didn’t work hard at all. They either inherited cash and a network or they invented something that got huge and they sold it.
Put it this way: if you’re lucky and work hard, you could be like Messi. If you’re very very lucky and don’t work hard, you may still be like Messi. If you’re unlucky and work hard, you won’t ever be like Messi.
Just ask Babe Ruth, he didn’t work hard like Messi. He was very very lucky to be born with phenomenal talent.
Luck is the critical factor, hard work is secondary, though beneficial in that it decreases (but can never eliminate) the required amount of luck.
Sure, hard work is often a requisite (unless you luck out in the extreme). But for the most part, it’s not enough, it’s not a guarantee, and it’s not the hardest worker who necessarily becomes the most successful. The point is that you shouldn’t look at the rich and the famous and think ”wow, the reason they’re there and the rest of us aren’t is because they’re so much more virtous and hardworking”.
Obviously it’s all a matter of degree, I’m assuming we’re talking really well off here. A lot of people are in the position where hard work is likely to yield moderate success and a decent life at least.
Messi was one of those kids like Tiger Woods and Steph Curry who had a dedicated parent coach who got them into the game at an extremely young age, and into the hands of the best trainers they could throughout their childhood. Most kids who are born into that situation end up at the tops of their sports.
Putting aside the fact that the article explicitly agrees with you that just hard work isn't enough, here's the part of your comment I don't understand:
> I know the VC thing about the importance of hard work. They love to promote hard work because that's how they make money.
Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter? And if it does matter, then what exactly is your problem with what pg is saying?
Of course hard work matters, but when VC tells you to work hard, take it with the grain of salt, because this is how VC is going to make money off your work. What is missing from this advice is what is sacrificed. If and when 10-20 year later you cash out, what else are you going to have beside money? Family, friends, health? If you can make this trade-off consciously - good for you, but most people just go with the flow and don't think about it until it's too late.
Double irony of this advice is that many VCs are one of the most laid-back people you can meet. Usually they are already rich, so they don't exactly have to hussle anymore, and can choose when to do so.
You are waisting your breath trying to convince the fanboys here. Their brain cannot grasp the concept that the VC just wants to make money.
To the VC, investing in a startup is equivalent to buying a very out of the money call option. Option theory tells us these are ultra low premium but have immensive upside, so the payoff for the VC is ultra convex and non linear: from 1000 startups, 10 get more than 10 mil valuation, and maybe 1 is a unicorn (i’m making the numbers up but u get the idea). So yes Mr Graham would love for all of the fanboys to work hard since they are literally just options to him, and he has nothing to lose apart from small options.
On the flip side, startup owners are then underwriting options in the form of their life and work, so must be short volatility.
Long story short: dont do startups thinking you will win, think the VC will win
I think part of what you're calling luck is what pg calls natural ability and part of it is the idea of "luck favors the prepared". I don't see how you can attribute luck to Lionel Messi's success, with his natural ability+hard work there's no way he wouldn't have been discovered and achieved success.
Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. I agree that the essay glosses over the element of luck that is involved, but I don't think that makes the rest of what Paul is saying wrong. Even if hard work alone doesn't always lead to success, not working hard guarantees that you won't be exceptional.
What about intelligence and being able to notice emerging trends? Do you think Jobs and Gates were simply lucky in the early 80s? Or did they see what was going on at Xerox PARC and the coming PC revolution? Their less lucky colleagues stayed in college and went on to have normal careers.
Those are important, but nearly as much as luck. Without the luck he had in terms of timing and location it is absolutely not clear that Gates (or Jobs) would have been as successful.
This is a simple empirical observation: there are many individuals who are both more intelligent than and harder working (in the sense of this article) than Gates or Jobs and who never come to within a tenth of their success. That’s 100% luck in action.
Could Gates have been a success without intellect and hard work? Probably not. Could a number of others who were more intelligent or harder working have succeeded if they instead were in Gates’ position? Almost certainly.
Technology is littered with failed experiments, not always for hard work or technical reasons. Remember Xanadu? How about Transmeta? For each Jobs or Gates, there's probably 20 of them out there who ended up having more normal careers simply due to luck.
> Do you think Jobs and Gates were simply lucky in the early 80s?
This seems like luck to me[1]:
> [Mary Maxwell Gates'] tenure on the national board's executive committee is believed to have helped Microsoft, based in Seattle, at a crucial time. In 1980, she discussed her son's company with John Opel, a fellow committee member, and the chairman of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other IBM executives. A few weeks later, IBM took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer.
Intelligence is genetic, which you have no control over.
Noticing "emerging trends" is also likely to not have been 100% due to Jobs/Gates attentiveness. If you heard about it from a friend of a friend, that's extremely lucky.
This is all also in hindsight. Of course it looks like they knew exactly what they were doing, because they succeeded. Other people were not so lucky.
> Intelligence is genetic, which you have no control over.
So is all of evolution, but then you still have adaptation. There is a skill to noticing opportunities and having the fortitude to take the risk. Not everyone does that.
> Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter? And if it does matter, then what exactly is your problem with what pg is saying?
Hard work doesn’t matter (at least to the extent pg posits) and they promote it because (surprise!) they’re not all knowing entities but humans with flaws (yes even successful people can hold views that are not correct).
Hard work matters exactly as much as the dozen other factors but when you are busy working hard you don't think about those. It goes both ways. If those factors are in your favor you don't talk about them, when they are not, you pretend that they don't matter because hard work is above everything else.
> Why would they promote hard work if hard work didn't matter?
Hard work matters. But it isn't enough. Luck is needed to transform hard work into wealth. Line cooks work very hard.
Incidentally, YC's business model positions it extremely well vs. other VCs to take advantage of this calculus. Fund 1000s of startups full of maniacally hard working kids, and you can expect a few to also get lucky just by sheer volume. Whereas if you're only funding a few startups they may work equally as hard and never run into the luck required to succeed.
Your comment about VCs makes no sense. If a VC wants you to work hard because that’s how a VC gets rich, that means that working hard leads to building a successful company. If it were purely luck, why would the VC care if you worked hard or not?
If VCs knew what made companies great, they wouldn’t fail 9 out of 10 times. More than any profession I can think of, VC is almost pure luck + how much wealth you already have, which attracts deal flow, which increases your odds to get lucky. PG blogs because he thinks it increases his deal flow (or he wants attention). Just because he’s saying it, it doesn’t make it true, even if he believes his own story.
So they encourage hard work because it makes them money, but not really, because they are only ignorant in thinking that it does, and it's actually entirely luck?
Yeah, this attitude is a mental pretzel more akin to ideology than fact.
> this attitude is a mental pretzel more akin to ideology than fact.
Of course that's the case, because you are baking your own misleading slant into questions and then wondering why the output of the questioning process is not satisfactory
Slant such as:
>"...If hard work had no effect..."
Which is not something that's being argued for. It is just a strawman of your own making to the points raised
Id recommend you to do introspection on manicheist type thinking, and the difference between aggregate results of "Luck+Hard Work" vs the "Luck"/"Hard Work" work binary thinking.
I can't solve your errors of thinking, you'll have to work hard to understand the problem, or maybe you'll be one of the lucky few to understand it with ease :)
The condescending, passive aggressive reply, filled with “you must look within” tropes and topped off with a smiley face. Is there anything more irritating?
Just dont add the slant to the questions next time, it is just ...... not even unnecessary, it is counterproductive for you and everyone, to the other person is just as irritating as what I did to you with the previous reply + smiley
Or alternatively go watch that veritasium video that's being shared over the thread, it is very good
They make money through luck. They speak authoritatively out of ignorance. Monkeys rolling dice could do an equally good job, that doesn’t mean you should take advice from a monkey with a gambling problem.
Why delete the reply? It is an accurate angle, albeit inflamatory, after all that was the outcome of the Buffet bet vs HedgeFunds regarding the ROI of index funds
But yeah, not sure if id say that they make money through luck "alone", more like they make money through "the aggregate of luck" and very deep pockets which themselves are financed through suprasecular low interest rates, or in the same manner that a Casino will always win in the aggregate
I think the criticism is not so illogical. Let's just assume your company has a 5% chance of wild success and you can double it by working insanely hard (I think these numbers are likely generous, but easier to take round numbers for the sake of argument). It is in this case simultaneously true that it's in VCs' interest to convince you to work very hard and also that it's probably not in your interest. It only makes sense for them to promote because the one or two lucky groups will make up for all the duds.
I don't think the point is "hard work has no effect on outcome", but rather "for nearly all people who end up successful, luck played a very significant role which is often minimized", and as a corollary "hard work is not a sufficient condition for success, but successful people tend to portray it as such".
For a good summary of this argument, I recommend the (fairly short) Veritasium video that has been posted several times already in this discussion: https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I
Perhaps this point is a bit too anecdotal, but I've certainly encountered the "just work hard and you'll make it" attitude a lot. And its inverse, people assuming that unsuccessful people must be unsuccessful because of their personal flaws.
In any case, that's the corollary, not the main point. Which is:
> I don't think the point is "hard work has no effect on outcome", but rather "for nearly all people who end up successful, luck played a very significant role which is often minimized"
You ever read jwz’s “Watch a VC Use My Name to Sell a Con”?
>
I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here.
> So if your goal is to enrich the Arringtons of the world while maybe, if you win the lottery, scooping some of the groundscore that they overlooked, then by all means, bust your ass while the bankers and speculators cheer you on.
The controversy is that while it technically increases your chances, increasing infinitesimal chances to slightly less infinitesimal chances isn’t necessarily worth your health. But if you have a stake in tons of companies hey, one of them will probably pay off if everyone is sacrificing everything for them.
I still don't understand what is so difficult about this. If you work hard, you're more likely to succeed. Not guaranteed to succeed. Luck still matters, although a lot less than people think.
Whether or not VCs are justified in earning their returns is a completely different issue. This has nothing to do with hard work and everything to do with investment and dilution.
The "controversy" is this online meme that everything is just "random" and "luck" and no one, anywhere, can ever do anything to be successful. The entire world is nothing but a Vegas casino.
It's just rationalization for laziness and frankly, it's completely uninteresting. No one who has actual business experience thinks this.
Expand on this and taboo the word 'lazy' or the insult it comes with? "It's a rationalization for understanding that you aren't going to be Jeff Bezos. Unpicking the cultural idea that the more you suffer, the more you gain, and stop ruining your physical and mental health and social connections in a frantic all-out hard work obsession. Rebalance, and learn to be happier with the very ordinary non-millionaire life you will almost certainly get regardless of how hard you work".
> "The "controversy" is this online meme that everything is just "random" and "luck" and no one, anywhere, can ever do anything to be successful."
That is not the point of the meme. The point of the meme is to counter the "you Amazon warehouse worker, fast food worker, retail worker, call center worker, teacher, shouldn't expect a living wage or a pay rise or a better minimum wage, or a home, or medical cover, etc. because you are lazy. We know that because if you were working hard you'd be rich. Since you aren't rich, you must not be working hard. QED." norm.
Jeff Bezos packed boxes by hand using a door as a makeshift table at the start of Amazon! Well, a hundred million factory and warehouse and commercial kitchen and food processing plant workers are looking at that story with annoyance. It's not because they think Bezos didn't work hard. It's that they work equally hard at the same kind of work, for a lot longer, and nothing like the same return. And buried somewhere in the side comments "Jeff Bezos' parents invested $250,000" in mid-90s dollars. Yeah, sure, it was the hard work packing boxes on cheap homemade tables, that's the spin y'all put on the source of his success? It's not luck that he chose to start a company instead of working in a factory, but if a truck driver from Iowa tried to start an online bookstore in 1994 with no computer science background from Princeton, no wealthy parents, no background in a Wall Street firm known for "developing mathematical models to exploit anomalies in the market", no access to a home with a garage to work from, how much value is this "if you don't make it, it proves you're lazy" rhetoric adding to the world?
The meme is unpicking the logical fallacies "if hard work -> success, hard work is inherently virtuous, then success implies moral virtue (regardless of cause of success), and absense of massive success implies moral failure and laziness".
"Lazy" is a cheap dismissive non-explanation insult.
Nothing of what you wrote here relates to this link by PG or to what I wrote. Thinking that hard work is good and should be encouraged does not mean you think working class people shouldn’t have healthcare or that class mobility shouldn’t be easy.
This is really the fundamental issue I alluded to. Long political screeds filled with emotional appeals that have little to nothing to do with the topic.
Do you think "you could be Bill Gates, Lionel Messi or PG Wodehouse or Patrick Collison", "you could do great things!", counts as an emotional appeal? That's the carrot PG is dangling in the essay, and it feels more emotional than logical.
>That is not the point of the meme. The point of the meme is to counter the "you Amazon warehouse worker, fast food worker, retail worker, call center worker, teacher, shouldn't expect a living wage or a pay rise or a better minimum wage, or a home, or medical cover, etc. because you are lazy. We know that because if you were working hard you'd be rich. Since you aren't rich, you must not be working hard. QED.
I think the fundamental confusion is that this meme itself is an misrepresentation and strawman used in the ideological battle between right and left politics in the US. Nobody is claiming that blue collar workers are categorically lazy, especially not populist right politicians courting their votes.
Reasonable people across the political spectrum can agree that financial success is combination of hard work + aptitude + luck. They are likely to differ on the relative impact of each factor, and the degree to which the government should act as a equalizer to correct for aptitude and luck. It is a major problem that both sides choose to fight this issue in the context of extreme outliers and apply the conclusions to everyday situations.
Personally, I think the meme of emphasizing luck to the exclusion of hard work is destructive. When the belief is taken to the extreme and hard work doesn't improve outcomes, the path to improving your situation changes from being more productive and improving yourself. Why bother learning a new trade, relocating for a better job, building something, or taking risks if there is no payoff.
It is as though you are not reading what I'm saying. Let's try analogy. If you work really hard at it you're more likely to become an NFL quarterback. Does that mean it's a good idea to neglect everything else to chase that dream or that Roger Goodell would suggest that to you out of careful consideration of your welfare?
Because most VC founded companies are not about results. They are about virtue signaling to attract even more capital. Profitability has been thrown out of the window long time ago. Success is measured in the stupidest KPIs you can imagine. That's why 9 out of 10 VC founded companies fail. So you need to indoctrinate your minions to make them act accordingly.
You are arguing a completely different point than PG.
PG is talking about the ingredients for "doing great things" and "great work".
You are talking about getting rich. Sometimes these are aligned, and sometimes they aren't.
It seems like you are looking for a predictive model of who succeeds in society and who doesn't, while PG is offering life advice on the value of hard work (something within an individual's control) - a different topic.
Well to be the best in a very large group of people, you need to max out all of the main factors: luck, talent, hard work. That's just statistics.
I agree with you though. I find it annoying when people play down the role of luck in their success, it's kind of narcissistic. Unconsciously, they like the feeling that they are better than others, and by achieving success, they prove it to themselves. Giving luck too much credit would break this line of reasoning.
Also, one very important but overlooked factor of hard work is that it's highly correlated to the expected reward. It's much easier to work hard at a quickly-growing startup that you co-own, compared to working hard at a regular job that you don't find meaningful. The hard-workers in the former example then think they "deserve" the success because they've been working harder than others, when in fact, they were just lucky.
He is talking about doing great work, not about becoming rich or successful. You do need luck for your great work to take you places, but your own agency counts for much of your ability to do great work. Plenty of great work will not reap great rewards; it is done because someone feels that it has to be done.
howdy. as someone who has followed his career trajectory for the last 15 yars, I can assure You that "Luck" or serendipity or however You want to normalize his abilities has nothing to do with his abilities. Its Sheer Hard-work and Will to win. Being lucky is scoring 50 goals one season and 10 the second. This guys averages 50+ every season. So You might want to read up on it before You hypothesize. Like Spock famously said, "there is no such thing called miracles".
GP isn't saying that he is lucky each game, he's saying he was lucky to be born with the body he has and he was lucky to get the coaching opportunities that came with that.
But it's not exactly true. His body statistically is not the best for football. In fact he had a growth problem he had to take hormonal treatment for. Initial coaching opportunities are thanks to the parents, but then he had to work hard to qualify for Barcelona youth program. Then he had to move to Spain as young teenager to be able to continue training at the required level. Amount of hard work and sacrifice he invested is way beyond that most other footballers do, and incomparable to normal population at all.
Shorter people have a lower center of gravity which is an advantage for players maneuvering the ball through the midfield. There is certainly a trade off with strength and vision but Messi's body type is hardly unusual in top flight football. Xavi and Iniesta, who played with Messi on Barcelona, were superstars and all three are 5'7".
Messi is 169, average height at the World Cup is 182.4, this is quiet a difference. In fact he is in the lowest percentiles. Ronaldo is 187, Neymar is 175.
why do you care about the average height? - in some positions being taller is better and others being shorter - being an average doesn't mean that it's in any way better.
So he was lucky to go through a system that had him competing against higher level talent while at a physical disadvantage. By far the best way to train at a young age. His statistically good body for football counterparts meanwhile competed at amongst themselves and with lower talent. He was lucky enough to be good enough to push past the barrier of being able to be in a situation of advantageous training. It is a very rare position that often leads to exceptional players.
He also was lucky enough to be born. If you take to absurd, you can attribute anything to luck. A lot of kids where in position like him, and none made it to number one.
In what way did PG work hard? His job seems incredibly cushy to me. He even had the leisure to write his own lisp! VCs don’t work hard. They sit there and watch people grovel.
PG was lucky yes but also prepared to build web apps which nobody was doing at the time. He also had great co-founders/friends. Also the idea that a website could edit itself instead of having to be uploaded etc... And then they did it. So part of it was being there, part of it was building a technology/product that Yahoo needed etc... Part of it is working in computers as the web took off. Nobody at the time really knew what the web was going to be and I think we don't really know the full impact of the internet will be even today.
Take my story as an example. I worked in high school as a web form developer in 1995 and 1996. Lots of demand from professors to build their course websites with forms. I was just happy to have a summer job inside with AC. I had the technical chops to build an MVP of wufoo or surveymonkey etc.. But I didn't because I thought it was trivial and underestimated it. I thought at most I would sign up a few dozen psychology grad students or something. It wouldn't be a proper business etc...
Likewise, sometime in 2005-2007 I was in SF and couldn't get a cab and thought about a mobile app but discounted it as infeasible b/c I thought cities would never legalize it to preserve their taxi medallion scheme etc... That's probably true, they would have liked to do that but the public basically demanded it and Uber moved very fast. I reasoned incorrectly and underestimated the market.
I also underestimated DropBox, AirBnB, Hotmail, even Google, Yahoo and FB. The list goes on and on. Hind sight is 20:20 but I think it is important to figure out why I discounted these ideas at the time and what biases I had etc...
I think though that if you are actually interested in something though that goes a long ways to keeping you engaged. You can see past the discounting and the haters. If you continue to work on that, then by the time the rest of the world catches up, you are way ahead.
You don't even have to be some kind of Jedi who can see the future, if you just work on it because it is interesting. As you do that you will get glimpses as to what the future might look like.
Today, I actually don't think Dropbox is "just a sync or backup feature". It is so much more than that and that market has a lot of potential. GDrive, iCloud, and Microsoft all have big problems and limit themselves which hurts consumers.
"I never took a day off in my twenties" (Bill Gates) quote is a misnomer because what Bill Gates considers a day-off is something where you are just lying around doing nothing, such as lying on the beach. A two week sojourn into a set of books that interested him were not considered "days off". He did such activities yearly.
Bill Gates wasn't in the office working a 7 day schedule for his entire 20s. So that is not the impression we should get from the quote at all. His productive time away has merit, and I have followed that attitude to reading myself, and recommend it to others.
It would have been better if he had said "I never wasted a day in my twenties" which I think would be more accurate.
As someone in their early twenties struggling with burnout post startup failure, these bullshit hustle tropes NEED to end (like the Bill Gates quote).
I'm going to go against everything I was told and say: don't work hard in your early twenties, don't kill yourself over your work, don't fill your life with anxiety.
Phrases like "I wish I was like you in my youth" or keeping young people rolling in their hamster wheels just encourage the worst kind of personality damage in these developing years.
It is bullshit, it is harmful. Stop encouraging the young towards handing away their lives in a silver platter.
PG has turned a good profit selling the same pile of bullshit to two generations of CS grads and wannabe entrepeneurs now. I always thought the subtext was "and if you're really lucky, I can be your mentor/investor/boss and tell you why you're not trying hard enough." Nice to see he's still hustling too.
It always struck me as selfish, pompous and sanctimonious all at the same time.
He silently banned me from this site in 2012 for saying roughly the same thing - basically just made anything I posted invisible to 99% of others, so, yeah. Work harder, slaves!
[edit/addendum] The ban was never told to me. It was a hell ban apparently decided without consultation b/c he felt insulted. So for years I would post stuff and not know why almost no one saw it. Sneaky. As a sysadmin I wouldn't do that. Meanwhile, all his pseudo-self-help motivational speeches added up to one thing: Gaining authority and power over kids who were desperate to get a tiny bit of backing for a great idea. Money played a big role and everyone supposedly knew what they signed up for, but the personal power dynamic and control issues have always been near the surface. PG fronted as the ultimate "angel", but his interest in making money let alone helping anyone always appeared to take a backseat to having power to manipulate children's emotions and form a cult of personality to pander to him and sing his praises. All HN is essentially an outgrown version of his ego.
You have it right. Don't fall for this crap. It's just another iteration of the old company line, retreaded for the renter/gig generation - work hard til you retire, hope for a cash injection, then die early please. Nothing wrong with hard work, but you're right, it's better to spend your 20s living life. And question the source. [/edit /rant]
Every time we read or hear that quote, we have to remember that Gates also lose and win a lot of money playing poker in university, so there was also time for non-work related tasks :-)
Poker can be considered work. If you actually truly learn to play it, it teaches you a lot about people, emotions, thinking ahead several steps, probability, and risk and reward.
He's not going to claim that his success was the result of a few bets that paid off in spectacular fashion, strongarming OEMs and mommy being buddies with the CEO of IBM.
It's going to be hard work, spectacular insight, old fashioned grit, persistence in the face of adversity, etc. - all the things Hollywood slavishly worships with either a clichéd montage or a poignant scene. It's how our culture frames laudable and justified success - of course it's how he will tell his story.
Bill Gates more than most billionaires really wants to be seen as the hero, as a good guy. His charitable giving demonstrates just how much.
There is widespread statistical evidence that wealth is gained through luck. I imagine though that every billionaire thinks they are the one that got there through hard work.
Well, who doesn’t want to be seen as the hero in their own story?
What I suspect is that it’s a case of “all of the above”. Yes, gates got lucky, but he was also talented, and he worked hard. To be an outlier you have to defy the odds, and luck, talent and grit are different ways of defying.
Repeatedly you see "influencers" be overly generous with their own retelling of history. The problem with this style of retelling is there's generally not very much humbleness or self reflection involved - they want you to _believe_ this is how it was, even if it wasn't. You can't really fix it, I don't think. Famous influencers are going to tell their narrative however they want, lots of people are going to say "Well, that's not really true...", and lots of other people are going to just aimlessly believe the influencer in question.
There are plenty of examples, even in this thread. Nobody is saying PG and other various influencers didn't work hard - but the virtue signaling of scale is usually way off. "We worked 100 hours a week at hour desks to launch ___", when in reality they "worked" maybe a half of that, extremely hard, and spent the remaining half thinking about work and/or stressing and/or recovering. If everyone was able to count "Thinking or stressing about work" as "work", I don't think this would be a problem, but people usually omit those parts.
People lie all the time and in the direction that can make them virtuous and a bit contrarian. How come that they all love their wife and family is important thing they have (although work is important along with their sacred responsibility of producing jobs and wealth) and then we find out they either treat their partners as inferiors in the relationship, have affairs, have been living in separate houses for years if not decades?
To me it is all fine since except in case of abuse, people can all choose how to live our life as they please. But isn't all of that taking advantage of credulous people, like entrepreneurial wannabes when the gospel is not "love your kids", but "work hard"?
Looking back I worked quite hard, as I see it, or very hard, as others might see it, at various stages of my life, but I would not write a propagandistic essay about "working hard". And you know why? Because I see life as full of ambiguities, because I have nothing to sell and I have not a public persona that I am trying to build, defend or that I use to generate views.
When I hear or read "work hard", "hard work", "work ethic", "never give up" and similar memorabilia, I immediately judge the speaker and writer negatively. Maybe it is just me, but I don't like to be sold personas.
If you're in a position where you benefit financially from the extra labor of others, you would probably be incentivized to proselytize the value of "hard work".
I think he has money for multiple generations of do-nothing at this point. But I also think he likes to be at the center of attention and a north star for ambitious nerds, and that's whey he proposes essays that are clearly propagandistic (but not for money). That's fine, I like people rooting for themselves.
The problem is the outsized reward relative to the effort.
It shows a broken system and should not be celebrated, if for no other reason than the opportunity cost of elevating such a small percentage of humanity to such wealthy heights while letting 1/3 of humanity live crippled lives with no access to clean water.
Whereas Bezos goes the other way. He wants to claim that he was lucky at Amazon, not that he foresaw the chokehold he would be able to put suppliers in, built a company that encouraged people to burn out and ruthlessly pushed employees and partners.
There's always a blend of work, intelligence and luck that goes into success, so it's nice to have anyone emphasizing luck. But it's definitely supposed to distract from how he kept long term deferring returns on investment to go all tentacley into every business line.
(I should point out that however hard he pushed his employees, he seems to compensate them for it. If you worked in one of his warehouses from the jump his RSU-distributions would have netted you enough for a downpayment.)
> There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard.
I'd like to add that it is more than fine to not do great work. If you like to spend a lot of time with your kids and tend to your vegetable patch, by all means only try hard enough to keep the job that pays for that lifestyle.
So, no dig on the author, but there is more than maximizing for great work. Try for a while to instead maximize for life happiness and experience how that feels for you.
Playing as Devil's advocate here. I think that "good work" is much wider that you are considering.
Having quality time off with your partner is "good work"
Raising your children is "good work"
In a more philosophical way. "Work" could be defined as trying to make a change in your reality. So yeah, that life discovering the arts, eating tasteful and healthy food, and spending time with your beloved ones is "good work" and requires ability, practice, and time to do it well.
This, exactly. It takes a lot of hard work to raise children and have a good relationship with your partner. I consider taking vacations to lay on the beach with my partner or children a part of that hard work. The definitions in the essay seem a bit short-sighted to me.
PG never said you should maximize for great work. The essay is about "how to work hard", not "work hard is the only purpose of your life". You are missing the point here.
In addition, you mistakenly exclude great work / achievement from happiness. Spending time with your kids is great, tending your vegetable patch is great, doing great work is also great. Life is not a single purpose process. Happiness is not a single threat process either.
Currently all the critics on the essay are terrible, but you are better at least know to keep it civil.
My reply was based on the interpretation that the author defined work as "doing your job". That interpretation was mainly based on him mentioning Bill Gates not taking a day off from Microsoft (his company and job) in his twenties, and the writer Wodehouse spending so much effort on his livelihood, writing. So I think my interpretation is correct.
The article strongly correlates this interpretation of "working" with "being happy". Two quotes:
> When I asked Patrick Collison when he started to find idleness distasteful, he said
>> I think around age 13 or 14. I have a clear memory from around then of sitting in the sitting room, staring outside, and wondering why I was wasting my summer holiday.
And
> Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off. I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.
My point to the above is: if you feel awful when you don't work hard on a job, by all means work hard on a job.
But if you feel fine only working moderately hard, and that is enough to fund your true passions, pleasures and happiness, do not feel bad for not wanting to work hard on a job.
And the reason I felt the need to say that, is that "hustle culture" [1], which this essay is not far away from in my opinion, might make people believe (incorrectly) that only people who work hard at a job are valuable and worthy human beings.
I don't think the person you're responding to is missing the point. Rather, they are making another, adjacent point. Our culture glorifies hard work and financial success (and excess) to what some believe is an unhealthy degree. It's worth noting almost anywhere hard work is brought up that it should be within the context of the values you hold for the other aspects of your life.
I will say that it is better to do great work than good work all other things being equal. But other things aren't necessarily equal. I would not want to have the discomfort with idleness that the author of this blog post lauds, for example. Although, if you do have that and are pleased to, then good for you!
I wonder how much of the criticism is skewed by the Western notion of “work”. I.e., we tend to view a vocation as the most legitimate definition of work.
If we take a different perspective, I think the author is much less likely to be the target of ire.
>working hard means aiming toward the center — toward the most ambitious problems.
To those in a society hyper-focused on productivity, this can certainly rub people the wrong way because so few are able to dedicate themselves to super ambitious vocations. As the saying goes, the world needs ditch diggers too.
But if your ambition is to cultivate a meaningful, verdant life I don’t see why the author's statement is incompatible with the GP comment. Maybe we just need to broaden our definition about what is worthwhile “work”. It’s certainly possible to do great work cultivating relationships if that is your goal rather than, say, creating a new field of mathematics.
I don’t think you’re wrong, that’s the same impression I got as well. But I suppose that is to be expected in a society that tends to consider one’s vocation as the height of personal ambition.
I would also suspect the author scores highly in the conscientious personality trait. So it would follow they have high levels of discipline, derive pleasure from achievement etc. Maybe the title should be changed to “How to Work Hard (and why that matters to people like me)”
Agreed, but I also found that 3-ingredient formula to be one of the more insightful things he says in this essay. It's a good way to understand what it takes to be successful at anything.
Including, by the way, being a parent. Many of us aren't born with (or have a sufficiently healthy childhood) to have naturally great parenting abilities. But hard work and practice sure do go a long way.
Anecdotally, from years at the playground, the attitude of trying to maximize the quality of your parenting is however a killer impediment to being a good parent. Parenting is challenging and a lot of time, but works a lot better when you are doing it in the moment rather than to achieve some agenda.
Of course one of the great things about parenting is that mostly you get to have the same situations over and over again, and get to change your approaches (including consistency) to see what happens with different approaches. So you get practiced at each thing. And the talent needed for parenting is more intimate that for writing software - it's the talent to make your toddlers laugh, to make your 4 year old confident enough to try something they want to try. It's a set of skills for doing stuff between a particular parent/child system. My tricks might not work for you; my tricks for my first born did not work for my second born.
PG essays are written for an audience of startup founders and prospective startup founders. When he says "doing your best work" he doesn't exactly have a guy pouring concrete sidewalks in mind. Theoretically, a founder who works harder can make 10,000 as much as if they slacked off. That will never be true for basically any other profession.
There's a lot of spectrum between "only try hard enough to keep the job" and PG described "great work" in many tech jobs, and indeed most tech people are somewhere in the middle.
I came here to rip apart this post and PG for propping up hustle culture bullshit, but am actually pleasantly surprised at his takes. I would reword most of his post to be more about "being engaged" instead of "working hard", because "work" has so many flavors and misconceptions.
> My limit for the harder types of writing or programming is about five hours a day. Whereas when I was running a startup, I could work all the time. At least for the three years I did it; if I'd kept going much longer, I'd probably have needed to take occasional vacations. [5]
Most programmers don't have the ability or scope to be engaged in the way that he's talking about wrt his startup, so most programmers should stop working as soon as they're at their "productivity threshold" throughout the day and have fulfilled their remaining busywork duties. I really wish tech "influencers" like PG would post more about that - when to put the mouse down and go for a walk or watch a movie.
I actually think the "best" take would be "Every individual should work exactly as hard as they believe they should". I think it's a reality, in that most people are unwilling to work any harder than they want to, but also I think context is probably the most important factor in terms of "work", "output" and "success". If you don't feel like you should work hard, or don't need to, you're either working on something that isn't worth your time, or you don't feel engaged at all. Both are fine, but both also signal you should move on.
This post turned into kind of a ramble. Apologies.
Just quoting Gates as model is swallowing gallons of the "Koolaid" in my opinion. Other have gone into that in more detail here.
When asked the secret of his success, An insider who leveraged a monopoly position to get more of a monopoly position, said "hard work, relentless hard work, nothing but hard work!"
It’s a frustrating essay, because it comes close to having a helpful message. A phrase like “being engaged” seems closer to what he tries to get across, but a lot of young people will probably mostly take from this essay that they need to hustle, which is the kind of useful advice you’ll hear from a high school guidance counselor.
One must not forget that PG has an agenda to push just like every other influencer. I believe he was specifically aware of his use of hustle culture language.
This is a beautifully written post and definitely not a ramble, thanks for sharing this.
I would take this a bit further that being happy or feeling fulfilled is really the best way to have an open mind to do things differently. If you're stressed out from working all the time, you have little chance of appreciating "problems" as more than things that must be dealt with rather than as opportunities for learning.
I took the approach that in your 20s you are still forming, still growing, still malleable. The experiences you have in your 20s will have a disproportionate effect on the kind of person you end up being. Therefore, you have to think about what environment, what experiences you want to foster that growth in. I would suggest optimizing for variety and new experiences is a better idea that working 80 hours weeks throughout your 20s.
In your 20s, don't just work hard, work hard at becoming the person you want to be.
I love this advice. I started working remotely in my 20s and negotiated to work 4 days a week, while traveling the world and deciding where I wanted to call home. I'd never trade that time spent growing up and finding myself, learning about other cultures and places, for any level of start-up monetary success.
Everyone is different and obviously has different priorities, ambitions, ideas of success, but that time spent not working my ass off has made me a more well-rounded person and I believe has contributed to a different kind of success and confidence now in my 30s.
It’s always a trade off and there’s no right answer for everyone.
I spent my twenties roughly as you advise, and i definitely grew and learned from it. But some of my counterparts focused on career and have achieved more on that front and have been able to have more freedom in their thirties as a result. It’s not obvious that either path is better. There is no optimal
The issue, of course, is that we seldom have the luxury of this, unless we are willing to make sacrifices, or do a heck of a lot of extracurricular work.
In my own development, I never had the advantage of a fancy sheepskin, so I wasn't really paid that much, compared to a lot of folks, and my employers didn't have much of an issue, when it came to throwing me at experimental stuff. It wasn't much of a risk, for them.
Meant that I learned a lot. I was also given a disproportionate amount of architectural responsibility. I learned how to design systems, and complete stuff, early in my career.
But it also meant that I have spent my entire career, looking up a lot of noses. I've usually been a "n00b," in most of my endeavors, and geeks tend to treat neophytes pretty badly (maybe because of all the atomic wedgies we got in grade school?). It drove me to do a much higher-quality job than what might have been considered acceptable. I developed a "screw you, I'll show you" attitude, and I've habitually produced highly-polished work, from the very beginning[0].
Didn't always win me friends. No one likes it when the chav kid shows up the toffs (but the bosses liked it, and really, they were the ones that mattered).
I'd say that the humility taught by that treatment was as valuable as the book-larnin'. It forced me to solve my own problems, find information, develop a thick skin, and not rely on "magic answers from the sky." I was never able to throw the problem over the fence, so someone else could address it. I always had to clean up my own messes.
I also practiced a very good team ethic, with a great deal of kindness towards teammates that were struggling or being marginalized. I figured out how to support and mentor people without making it seem as if that was what I was doing (the trick is to lead by example). I used the cruelty that I experienced from other geeks, and from awful managers, as an antipattern, in my own dealings with others. I think it helped me to be a fairly good manager.
It's always a very good idea to help out folks that are not that high in the food chain. They are likely to return the favor, sooner or later, and they often have their fingers on the real pulse of things. They can be quite helpful.
It hasn't been that much fun, and I haven't lived high on the hog.
But I am pretty good at what I do, and, in this phase of my life, it's paid off in spades.
When I saw the title, and who wrote it, I said to myself "This should be fun."
Yes. And "learning" shouldn't just be measured in PhDs or being an expert at one thing. I think the "work hard" advice can be interpreted as "focussed, tunnel vision, excelling in one area to the exclusion of everything else" when there is great benefit of aiming for a wider range of experiences in your 20s.
I took extra classes and worked hard in college to get a CS degree because I loved it. I was so excited to start a career because the internships were fun and exciting. I graduated in 2001 right after everything dried up. The only place hiring was Raytheon, there was no way I'd step foot back in that place to work on weapons. I asked a friend what to do, "Why don't you move to MT and snowboard", so I did. Seven years of my 20's in MT, the first five snowboarding and climbing, the last two figuring out how to get back into tech while snowboarding and climbing. I'm now in my 40's married to someone I met in MT with two beautiful kids and good career in tech. I don't spend much time thinking about what I might've been able to achieve had I spent those years in my 20's working hard in tech. I'm just very grateful things ended up the way they did. We need people who want to achieve great things, especially now with the urgent problems we've created for ourselves. But it's just fine to not be one of those people.
Reminds me of my intern at Google. PhD CS, had been an intern at Google 9 summers in a row. Spent remainder of year skiing. Smart and contributed a lot, also seemed happy.
Stories like your intern skiing for 9 years or the GP ‘5 years snowboarding’ usually omit describing rich parents in the background picking all sort of tabs.
I won't fault you for the not unreasonable assumption but not the case for me. I have fond memories of sleeping behind a friends couch while securing a job at the ski resort. Initially working at the resort from 4 to midnight so I could ride every day. Sleeping in dorm style housing slightly worse than freshman year of college. Working my way up to running the ticket office. Somehow not blowing all my money on new gear, saving just enough to buy a $59k condo at the base of the resort which I still have. No financial safety net, no savings, but also no dependents and nothing to lose living in one of the greatest areas of the country.
One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down.
"Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels. Then I can take a break and have the adventures I want.
My in-laws confirmed this attitude for me - they retired in their 50s and traveled the world. What a great life goal!
Guess what, life happened. Health issues. I'm never going to travel the world. All that time in my 20s in 30s - I was healthy, I was happy, I was carefree, and I didn't appreciate it and threw all that time away sitting at a desk looking at a screen. Today, now, that's about the only thing I'm fit to do.
Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.
PG briefly touches on it here, but one of the biggest factors on being able to consistently work hard is reward.
PG mostly talks about intrinsic reward in this article. We should work on stuff that is interesting to us, and brings us fulfillment. However, I believe that Paul is missing a huge component here, and that is extrinsic reward.
Extrinsic reward complements intrinsic reward. Extrinsic reward allows us to push through the hard, difficult work that we might not be interested in, because we know the work will be rewarded. It is the light at the end of the tunnel for difficult work. PG, and Bill Gates were able to work so hard because they had internal belief that there was an extrinsic reward for all the work they were doing.
In a perfect world, we would all be completely self motivated to work on every task, but this just isn't realistic. Especially in today's working work. People like PG, and Bill Gates are able to fully credit intrinsic reward, but fail to mention that the extrinsic reward ($$) validated the hard, gritty work they put in.
This is something I struggle with, as someone who worked really hard in school but has become less productive as a professional. In school there are well-defined deadlines and discrete tasks with extrinsic rewards in the form of grades. Even though the rewards were "fake" in a sense, people cared about them so I was motivated to earn those rewards, partially due to competitive drive.
In my professional life, that motivation has all but disappeared for me. I already have the comfortable salary I hoped for, and individual achievements aren't directly rewarded with more money in the short. So what else is left as an extrinsic reward that can provide that drive on a daily basis?
I haven't found the answer to that yet myself. Sometimes I feel like I've been given too much too soon and that's removed my hunger to work. That plus existing in a collaborative environment instead of a competitive one.
> when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels
I think that's where you went wrong. The backpacking at hostels is the best (as long as you pick hostels and fellow travelers that do not look like your typical backpacker haha). The thing is, now that I'm 30, I feel it's probably out of fashion. But these nights I spent in big-city hostels had the most fun, stories and affairs.
> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.
You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth.
> You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth.
Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only went out 1 night every 2 weeks. If you had kids, I'd understand but for someone in their youth - that is nearly shut-in status.
What you're thinking about doing over the period of 15 years, I've done in about the span of a year. Life is too short to spend it inside working. You won't get your youth back - once it's gone, it's gone.
> Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only went out 1 night every 2 weeks. If you had kids, I'd understand but for someone in their youth - that is nearly shut-in status.
I think we need to agree on what's a night out. If you come back at home around 3AM and sleep at 5AM; I find it hard that you can work the next morning and keep at it everyday. It's possible to do that at weekends, but then you probably have errands to run at that. A month in another country avoids any onshore errands and also brings adventure.
Sure you can go out every-night for 1-2 hours at your local pub/coffee. But these hardly bring any adventure or novelty; they are just part of the routine and honestly now, I couldn't care less about them. They are forgettable events: irrelevant. I'd rather be doing interesting work, or just sit down in front of Netflix.
This might be a bit of a niche version of a night out that might only fit well with Berlin. I was usually out for 3-6 hours/day (go out around 7-9PM, come home 12-2AM). Varied on how much I enjoyed what I was doing wildly. Not every night out was great but neither was every night out when I'm traveling either. (Nor is every night memorable)
If you do things enough - the memories aren't likely to last. Things that are novel are what create memories. For you - you were visiting countries and seeing things you'd never seen. Unrealistic for regular 9-5 life. Doesn't mean that you still can't have a good time in a non-novel thing though. I had plenty of good nights that I don't really remember but I enjoyed them still.
Travel enough - and you might find out... the novelty wears off there too.
But novelty shouldn't be the only pursuit in life.
You've "gone out" 300 times in a year? I can't imagine that would leave a person with much functional liver tissue, or you're using "going out" in some unusual way.
Ah. If you're using "going out" to mean literally any activity outside the home that is not work, then sure, "going out" a lot wouldn't be not hard. Someone with a reasonable amount of disposable income could probably eat out at a restaurant five days a week, if they wanted to.
30 is the next 20 :) I've started seriously backpacking when 27 and 29 (2x3 months in india&nepal) and continued till current age of 40. Life changing experiences.
The only thing that stopped me was having kids, so the best reason possible. Corona would just mean closer travels and more mountains rather than people if we didn't have them.
I see no reason to stop unless your body or mind can't handle it anymore. Which with taking good care of oneself (and a bit of luck) can be easily 75, met quite a few of those.
I understand what you mean by health problems, because I too have health problems that limit my ability to work and play the way I dreamed of.
But Paul Graham never recommends mindlessly working on things that don't interest you for the sake of some imagined tomorrow.
He even recommends not to do it:
"...if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself."
That's a strawman version of what Paul is suggesting.
" Are you really interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you, or because your parents want you to?"
"The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting"
"Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are."
"It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation, I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach."
Listen to PG kids. Not some misinterpretation of what he's saying.
But I hope you can find the peace you're searching for. I really do.
I understand the agony of not being able to get what you want.
> "It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation, I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach."
There are few things I enjoy more than just sitting on a beach. When you go on vacation, actually go on vacation. Turn off your phone. Leave your laptop behind. Bring some fiction, or maybe select non-fiction (biographies are great). Put sunscreen on. Get a cold beverage. Fall asleep with the book on you.
I recommend learning new things while you're on vacation! But learn about the place you're vacationing at. Learn about the culture, the people, the history, the geography. Expand your horizons and waste time.
This exactly. Vacations are an amazing time, and the only real time I can dig deep into places. Going to places like Philippines, I didn't have much of a plan, only return ticket and vague concept from Lonely planet.
Those books actually contain tons of useful information apart from their main focus (accommodation & restaurants). History of a state and its various parts, culture, mindset, local quirks, food. And then you actually mingle with people, ask for directions, look for accommodation, trying to get last bus to some other place, start a chat with a stranger going same direction.
This are one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. Constant discovery of how amazing our world actually is and people inhabiting it. I've met the utmost kindness from the poorest of this world like Dalits in India who have nothing and shared everything with a lost traveler.
I come back from such trips richer and more experienced than ever. But yeah just sitting mindlessly on the beach, which I think not many people do actually might be a cure for near or complete burnout, otherwise just a waste of precious time off.
> One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard
This is such a narrow definition of "great things" that it is useless. Great things in PG's eyes maybe, but I hope no one's life goal is to impress him.
> "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one."
I still think you're strawmanning the essay (and I'm sorry you didn't figure out sooner what you wanted to do with your life - that really sucks!).
Bill Gates knew what he really wanted to do and what interested him so not taking a day off was probably a no-brainer.
If you had been able to realize earlier that travelling the world was what you wanted to do, then you could have put all your efforts into making that happen.
I think the essay is suggesting that merely working hard without enough of that effort spent on the directional problem won't yield the results you want, ultimately. So I think the suggestions here taken holistically are useful to a theoretical-younger version of you.
I have to echo this. I know HN is full of people obsessed with a very different lifestyle but frankly... I think this piece misses the mark entirely.
PG I suspect and many others derive intrinsic happiness from the grind. From achievement. Yet this is a very myopic way to live that for the vast majority of people will result in a fair amount of unhappiness.
A far healthier and happier way to live is to live a balanced life. Work efficiently when you need to work, and be focused on your objectives. Don't waste time on stuff that doesn't matter. You can still be successful, grow yourself, etc. but without killing yourself in the process.
And for the love of god... take time for yourself to enjoy the finer things in life. Take a walk and try to find the beauty in things. Go travel somewhere new! Enjoy some you time and treat yourself.
I cannot disagree more with PG here, sadly. But that's all it is... a disagreement. Everyone gets to choose what life they want to live.
I think on some level, barring the "stuck-in-bed depression" cases, we all work hard, but the work is nothing like a startup or a coding challenge.
It's more often things like going on a walk and identifying the birds, going to the bar and getting better at telling stories or playing pool, seeing patterns in watching daily traffic or weather. Things you absolutely could go deep on, but just can't justify as "character building exercise" because they won't directly lead to you acquiring property or power.
And that's where the alarm bells start to come in; if you get anxious about that, you can get stuck on the idea of work and cut yourself off from a balanced set of interests, and this hits young people especially hard because they don't know what the balance could look like, or they observe media(including HN) where the balance is clearly defined towards one extreme, think "I will become that" and treat it as a masochistic exercise. I believe this to be a deep affliction of the online world particularly since, without trying you can stumble into media containing the "best" of everything.
He's got an audience that he is writting too. He's talking about building great things, not how to live a full and happy life.
While working at Tesla, we definitely all built great things but that's all we did. I left, took a 70% paycut to start my own consulting business and work 4-5 hours a week while being a 'Digital Nomad'. I've never been happier and guess what, that nagging feeling of 'I'm not doing real work' or finding 'idleness distasteful' goes away when you don't feel like the whole team has a gun to your head.
Bingo. Author is writing for his audience. On one hand I don’t care how his followers are following his words. On the other hand, I’m concerned that few years down the road, these founders/leaders will end up imposing these expectations on their employers.
How many of those founders will actually do something great, and how many will do the supposedly “great work” of building something designed to siphon off as much of people’s money and attention as possible in the pursuit of getting rich?
> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.
Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now, because we're trading that off for a potentially better life X years from now (where in our case, X = 5-10 years).
X can be whatever you want, and it's up to individuals (or families) to decide that for themselves. But once you do, delayed gratification is an important social concept; as evidenced by the marshmallow test administered in children. For adults, "rejecting the marshmallow" can mean working a little harder in your '20s, so that you may get 2 marshmallows when you're in your '30s — which for a lot of people is important as that's the age when they have children.
Having children means sharing your marshmallows. It’s also a lot easier to chase a kid in your 20s than your 30s. It’s also maturing, enjoyable, and spending time with them is the best part of the day.
Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know).
The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful. Spending the prime years of your life slaving to a computer is something I think a lot of people will regret.
So, no, I won’t listen to PG. My most fulfilling work is being a dad.
I want to make it very clear that I do not expect everyone to want kids, and I'm never ever one to say "oh you'll love kids once you have your own!" to anyone, but...
I cannot understate for me personally how much having my own kids over the past few years has shifted my priorities. The best parts of my weeks are when I'm with my family all doing something fun together. Work is now only a means to provide and is not a source of personal fulfillment anymore (again, YMMV!!!!)
It's hard to stay "extra motivated" at work now, though. I went from being willing to put in the long hours and weekends to barely being able to get 30-40 hours a week.
But you know what? There are plenty of perfectly great jobs that allow for that. The place I'm currently working told me in the interview loop they can't compete with FAANG salary ranges, but they promised me total autonomy on when/where I work as well as great work-life balance, which has proven to be true.
I worked very hard in my 20s and I'm extremely glad I did. The work was interesting, engaging, maturing, and super valuable for society. It also set me up with an extremely valuable skill set, of hard and soft skills, that are useful in both my professional and personal lives.
This trend of saying you enjoyed your life and therefore yours was the only correct choice is extremely closed-minded, and tends to come from parents in particular a lot. What if instead you solicited the opinions of people whose life you clearly don't understand? Are you so scared of the idea that other choices made other people happy?
I also totally understand being single, childless, and driven to a career. I’m happier now. Who is the one not listening to other’s opinions? You sure you understand?
> Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know).
The vagueness of "work" in this article is (IMO) a feature, and not a bug. Raising your children can be great work, to your own point. You can't half-ass raising your kids, as you well know, and it sounds like you get the most purpose and fulfillment from doing that. What PG appears to be arguing is that, whether you're doing a "great" job of it depends on: 1) how hard you work on raising your kids, 2) your natural ability, and 3) effort — and I trust that you satisfy all 3 of those preconditions, as a dad.
> The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful
First of all, to call it an "unknown future prize" is a bit of a mischaracterization. If someone were to argue that one ought to spill their lives into their career with no well-defined end goal, then I'd agree that it's silly and wasteful. But if you actually have a clear view of what a desired end goal looks like (it could be anything: a house with a yard in the Bay Area, enough money to retire early, etc etc), it can be entirely reasonable to defer gratification. Keep in mind that in the experiment, the child knows that there's a second marshmallow coming if they wait. Adults need to know what their second marshmallow is before delaying the first one.
Second of all, I don't think it's fair to make such a sweeping generalization for how other people ought to live their lives. The neat thing about PG's post is that it's sufficiently abstract that it can apply to anyone, regardless of what they consider "great work".
> But if you actually have a clear view of what a desired end goal looks like (it could be anything: a house with a yard in the Bay Area, enough money to retire early, etc etc), it can be entirely reasonable to defer gratification.
The one thing I often don't find people discussing is that you may actually achieve your goals and find them not at all worth the effort.
I'd put a lower bound of at least 50% likelihood that the goal you seek is not the goal you'll be happy with if you achieve it. Of course, you won't know until you get there.
I have goals - I hope I attain them and I do work towards them. But keeping the above in mind, I will try to ensure that my present life is also on the positive. Even if I attain my goal and find it worthless, my time/life would not have been wasted.
But is _is_ an unknown future prize, and countless stories prove that. Pension funds go belly up, whole industries made obsolete, an accident/injury disrupts everything, etc.
I think your premise of “telling people how to live their life” falls more on the popular notion that investment early in career, rather than family or life experience, is more important. I believe this is wrong and it’s repeated more frequently than my counterpoint!
> But is _is_ an unknown future prize, and countless stories prove that. Pension funds go belly up, whole industries made obsolete, an accident/injury disrupts everything, etc.
This is only an "unknown future prize" if the defined goal is very specifically to have a successful pension fund, or to
thrive in a specific industry.
Using the example of what makes you, personally, feel the most fulfilled: children die prematurely (disrupts everything), or they have developmental challenges that make it difficult to do much else in life. None of that changes the fact that you're probably still better off devoting your life right now to rearing children.
You're absolutely correct that there's uncertainty in the future, but none of that refutes any of what I said in my comments, or PG wrote in his article. It's a "yes, and" addition, rather than a "no, but" refutation.
YES, there's significant entropy in life, AND given that, the most reliable way to do "great work" is still <dot dot dot> (as laid out in PG's blog post).
> I think your premise of “telling people how to live their life” falls more on the popular notion that investment early in career, rather than family or life experience, is more important. I believe this is wrong and it’s repeated more frequently than my counterpoint!
I argued no such thing. It clearly bears repeating that the more abstract notion is that investment in XYZ early in your life, rather than ABC is more important. XYZ and ABC can be the exact same thing, if your circumstances permit; there's no requirement that they be different things. If you find the most fulfillment and joy in life raising children resources notwithstanding, then you can certainly start doing that early in your life. If you think that raising children will only be more fulfilling if you have some baseline threshold of wealth, then you may have to defer that in favor of a career. Again, it all depends on how you, as an individual (or as a family), defines XYZ and ABC.
I have no problem with how people define XYZ and ABC. What I have a problem with is in telling people how they ought to define XYZ and ABC. Neither PG's post nor my comment did the latter.
It's not about YOLO, it's about looking at your life though a lens besides "work,work,work,save,save,save"
When I was 25 I had the time and the money to take a couple of weeks off and travel. I wouldn't have stayed in the nicest hotels or eaten in fancy restaurants, but I could have done it. It would have had no negative impact on my career and my current financial status.
What kept me from doing it wasn't a careful look at my life goals and the cost/benefits ratio, but a mental model that stopped at "Work hard now and you'll be rewarded I promise"
I didn't see any accounting for that in PG's essay. "Great Men Work Hard And Succeed" is the only message I got.
I don't think we disagree here; my point is that there is a broad spectrum between "YOLO" and "work,work,work,save,save,save"; and that it's up to you to decide where on that spectrum you want to be.
From PG's article, he acknowledges that the hard work is a necessary but not sufficient condition to do "great work" (in his words).
"There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three"
The vagueness of "great work" means that it can apply to any kind of work. Raising children can be "great work". Writing a book can be "great work". Learning something new can be "great work". Traveling can be "great work", etc.
> When I was 25 I had the time and the money to take a couple of weeks off and travel. I wouldn't have stayed in the nicest hotels or eaten in fancy restaurants, but I could have done it. It would have had no negative impact on my career and my current financial status.
Great! And for you, forgoing a marshmallow means something very different from someone else. The advice in this article is sufficiently abstract, that when applied to the circumstances of your life, should still track consistently.
If a middle school student was to come to me, a hypothetical English teacher, with an essay including the following:
"There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three",
I would tell them, my friend, come back with some ideas of yours, please do not list simplistic views just to get the nod of approval of your audience of middle-school students/ bored teachers/programmers.
PS. We all have seen plenty of people who did great work with top natural abilities, little effort and little practice. Such is life. I had a similar reaction of disbelief when at a work-sponsored leadership development program, the instructor told us that one of the special traits of Fortune 500 CEOs (they all like to talk about CEOs) is empathy. It sounds good, yes it does; the only problem is that it contradicts what one can see with their own eyes every single day.
If you get used to looking 5-10 years ahead are you sure you'll stop and starting living that better life? Or will there just be more goals another 5-10 years ahead?
I lost a whole bunch of friends in my 30s and nearly died myself a few weeks ago. Later on doesn't arrive for everyone.
I don't think that means you should never delay gratification but just don't put all your eggs in the future basket.
Yeah, we don't disagree. Like I said, there's an "in-between".
Always "living in the moment" can be bad, depending on what you want out of life. Always "living in the future" can also be bad, depending on what you want out of life.
Ultimately, they both depend on the same thing: what you want out of life. The key is for everyone to define that goal for themselves; an exercise which is possibly the single hardest part of the human condition.
"No answer" can be a perfectly acceptable answer to "what do I want out of life?"
It can be a great way to live a life, and once you've decided that that's your answer, you'd obviously spend more of your mental capacity in the "living in the moment" side of the spectrum.
That being said, it's an answer that has the possibility (though not a guarantee) of having very real negative consequences to one's future well-being. Individuals that choose to go that route should be responsible for those consequences, if any.
Not thinking about it isn’t the same as deciding that there isn’t an answer. Nor does it preclude planning. It’s just not something that bothers me or seems important. I have more interesting existential thoughts when I think about the enormity of the universe.
I also don’t see why you think there is risk in it. After all you can have a long term plan to do extremely dangerous things to self actualise. Both routes (a false dichotomy in itself) in fact have a possibility of having very real negative consequences even if your plans are dull.
> One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s.
In my 20s I was similar. A 'long' vacation was a long weekend in Vegas with friends. Fun, but not much of a vacation. I was fortunate to meet my wife in my early 30s who pushed me to slow down a bit and take at least 2 consecutive weeks off a year (sometimes even twice) in a time zone that made work near impossible. We've been to many places across Europe spending 3-4-5 days in a single location, which is long by American standards.
> when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels
There is a lot of room between staying in hostels and traveling in style. It's possible to travel relatively cheaply and still be comfortable. I know some hostels are nicer than others, but tbh nothing about staying in a hostel sounds vacation like to me.
> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.
It's hard to know. If I didn't work as hard in my 20s would I be in the position to take off 2-4 weeks/year since then? IDK. Hindsight and all that...
Finally, I think the most important thing people can do is learn to enjoy the day to day. Even if you're working hard, learn to appreciate those fun moments with your co-workers or those moments with your dog when you come home. Not everything has to be about the big adventure. As I get older I'm learning to find happiness in all sorts of mundane things, even something as simple as sitting the backyard with the sun on my face.
In most countries in Europe everyone gets 5-6 weeks a year plus public holidays and often flexible days off. You don’t have to “work hard“, just work. I spent my twenties learning skills and working well but not too much. Could have gone a bit further in my career by working harder but not that much further. Looking back I think that was the right compromise. As developers we are fortunate to have a lot of choice for interesting and well paid jobs, so there should be space for an interesting life besides that.
> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.
It really depends on what you're working for. If your goal is retire in 50s that's pretty achievable without working terribly hard (for most engineers).
If your goal is to be as good at soccer as Lionel Messi probably not so much.
Define what your goals are really well, then you can figure out what level of work is required to get there, then decide if that's a sacrifice worth making to you or if you want to adjust your goals.
Of course, there's some unknown in there, but if you don't want to be incredibly rich and change the world it doesn't take the same inputs.
SAME exact experience. I wish I wouldnt have been so driven in my 20s/30s.
I made many millions *for other people* -- and as luck would have it, I left several companies a month or so before big aquisitions.
SI spent years as a consultant, where I was brought in to focus on a specific project and get-it-built - so I never got stock in those companies - just had a high paying hourly rate... which obviously life happens, and all the material bullshit I acquired meant nothing and is now all gone and I am pretty minimalist.
I worked with a guy once who would work for six months, then take six month off to travel - every single year. That was a good model...
Also, I became a manager WAY too early in my career - so I had to focus on people/people-skills, which actually took time away from me going deeper on some of my technical skills/creative interests.
There is room in the world for all kinds of people. If you love going to work every day, do that. If you love making something great happen, do that. If you love backpacking around the world, do that. Only two rules: don't let anyone tell you that your choice is wrong and don't second guess the decisions that you made in the past.
Time off from work is no fun when all your friends have glued themselves to a monitor. It's impossible to even convince my most sun-loving friends with secure jobs to take a beach day.
I don't find meaning in traveling alone so... drown myself in work it is.
Find some new friends. Seriously. I know that sounds hard but your friendship choices always end up aligning with your work as you get older and that's not healthy. Literally you work to the work calendar. Eventually you get to the point that the first calendar you look at is the work one every time. At that point you are owned. Been there. Was stuck in the rut for about 4 years.
Meetup is a great place to do that. Just turn up at random events outside of your usual comfort zone outside of your usual calendar cycle. Amazing the variety of people out there who are interesting and friendly.
YES! I was terrified to do anything alone before my mid-life divorce, but now I realize that traveling alone is absolutely amazing. Seeing movies alone is fantastic.
Doing things alone is a radically different experience than doing them with other people, and I love both, for different reasons.
This is physically unsustainable. Our bodies and our minds are not built to sit at a desk and work 60 ours a week.
Ignore that and you'll get all sort of issue ranging from back pain to mental illness.
We don't need lavish vacations in fancy places. We need to stretch every hour, go for a walk in the park every other day, some hours for cultural and social life every day.
I feel for you there as I’m sick myself in a way that means even working is a challenge.
My suggestion for you and possibly advice for myself is if you can’t “travel” then move.
For me I imagine working 2 years from New Zealand outside of a city, somewhere beautiful to be a cool thing to do. You need to travel to get there but then you can stay put for the most part, doing short trips when it suits.
I think world trips are overrated. I did some backpacking in SE Asia and in some ways it feels like IKEA: a bunch of sheep following the same path around doing the same things trading money for a buzz. It’s interesting to see places but boring at the same time, everyone wants to “party”
If I had the time again I’d trade those 3 months travelling for a year in NZ, Tasmania, some parts of Eastern Europe or US and very slowly travel while working remote. Really wish I could have had that idea planted in my head.
Final thought: if you are a coder it can feel quite bad looking back on your years because most of the code you write has probably been replaced! So I cope with this by thinking of it like I am a gardener and most of my veggies have been eaten. So what? My work was useful and helped people.
Investing your time is just like any other kind of investment; you are taking a variety of risks which have a variety of rewards. Pick the ones which line up best with your preferred balance of risk tolerance and goals.
Don't over index on high-consequence/low-likelyhood risks, but keep them in mind as part of your overall strategy.
Time is what you are made of. Money is a number in a database. Your sentence makes no sense to me. You have no idea what will happen because you almost touched the butterfly in your garden, or struck up a conversation with a stranger at the cafe. Your life is just process, just pure flow. Each moment lives on its own.
Then your best bet is most likely to adjust your expectations. Otherwise there's a good chance you will never have enough to live the life you want until it's too late to enjoy it. Figure out how to live happily now, is my advice.
You don't have to be rich to enjoy your life while you're young. Not every experience worth having is expensive!
Sage advice, thank you so much. I have actually been trying to apply it in my life in everything (with success thankfully), but I hit a wall lately when it came to marriage and relationships in general. I admit that this isn't just a me thing though, it's actually something that most of the youth in my country face.
My brother in law said: I have two feet and they are working now, not sure about later. Quit his job, and my sister did the same. They sold their house and staring working at a wildlife refuge in Alaska in summers and traveling by camper in the lower 48 in winter.
If you build your life around this assumption, you're going to be unpleasantly surprised when you see how easy it is to get a job in your 40's. I was hired by a FAANG at 43 with a high school diploma, quit and hired on again non-FAANG (at 45!) and have since nearly doubled my TC in that role over the past five years. In that time I've applied to three jobs just to keep fresh, two FAANG and one at a specialist company in my domain and got offers for two of the roles.
If you face obvious age discrimination, put them on blast and keep looking.
I've heard this trope for decades, but the only time I've seen it manifest is when the 40+ people haven't learned anything in 20 years. Are there people in their 40s who've kept their skills up and still aren't getting hired?
Ok but how common is this? Can the average old developer expect to have "kept their skills up" to some arbitrary standard even though we know humans tend to calcify in their thinking, have lower risk appetite and worse memory as they get older? If my cohort consisted of John Carmack and Jeff Dean type outliers, I could also claim that they have no trouble getting jobs in their older age but it wouldn't be a particularly helpful observation for most developers. IMO it's a very realistic & plausible scenario for many to not have kept their skills up and end up unhireable as they get older.
In my experience, it's the norm. I'm pushing 50, and I'm more in demand every year than I was before. I have dozens of friends my age in tech, and it's the same for all of them. I don't keep my skills up to an "arbitrary standard;" I've learned continuously throughout my career. I haven't tried to keep up with modern technology, I've just done it. I'm always learning, I change jobs every few years to follow my interests, I look for challenging things because I'm motivated by the same quest for knowledge and enjoyment that got me started in my career in the first place. I think you have to go out of your way to stagnate, or at least be so passive that you probably picked the wrong career in the first place. This isn't just an issue with IT jobs; you can be a skilled laborer in any trade, and if you don't learn along the way, you'll become obsolete. But if you're not learning along the way, what are you doing it for?
Honestly I hope you're right. I think many people (especially nowadays) pick SWE as a well-paying stable profession without being motivated by a noble quest for knowledge and enjoyment. And even though I personally may have passion now, I think it's possible that I may lose it later as I run into negative experiences like burnout.
I wouldn't say it's a noble quest; it's just what I like to do. I agree, there are a lot of people who now get into SWE because they want a stable, high-paying job, and not because they actually want to do it. If they can't get hired in their 40s, I say good riddance. People who are only in it for the money--and do the minimum to get by--aren't good coworkers. I hope they find a career they enjoy.
It's unfortunate that tech eats so many people who would rather be academics, researchers, artists, craftsmen. I get it; tech pays stupid high salaries to smart people who can do it, but want to do something else. I've run into a lot of PhD physicists who are coders because there are only so many jobs for a physicist, and they invariably pay less than entry-level web coding jobs. Many of them find they enjoy software, and make for great coworkers. But there are a lot of people who only do it for the money, and science, art, and other fields are worse for it. Tech eats everything.
I'm fortunate, I guess, in that I started in a tech career because it was what I enjoyed as a hobby. When I started out, it wasn't the best way to make a buck. My first few jobs paid less than I was making working in construction, and far less than a teacher made. I got lucky, financially.
Up work sucks, don't waste your time. Start by moonlighting.
I started by creating a one person llc and a business account, and moving over my expenses. Even before making money the fees are offset by tax writeoffs. My first client was a friend that wanted some help w/ his startup, then my first big client was a former employer. The first quarter you make money you start filing a 1040.
Did you read the whole essay? He writes about finding out what's important. That doesn't have to mean (and probably doesn't mean) some mindless job. He also talks about constantly re-evaluating what the correct time commitment is for the given work, and that it's not the same for everyone nor for every task. Bill Gates not taking a vacation day wasn't trying to communicate that we all should be this way; it was evidence of the fact that big success requires hard work.
True he doesn't talk much about leisure and retirement, because that's not what this essay is about.
Your resonse is valid and interesting, even moreso without the first sentence!
I think one thing that could be added is that the metric of success is not necessarily monetary. Financial success often depends more on socioeconomic conditions, rather than hard work. But intrinsic satisfaction seems to be based on truly earned achievement.
I feel like you could be talking about me. I'm 37, and I worked very hard through my twenties and thirties. I kept telling myself there was time to live later, when it accomplished my goal of starting a software company. That still hasn't worked out, although I haven't given up.
> When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels.
That's the exact line I've been telling myself.
My wife and I want to travel for a couple years before we have kids (and it's getting to the point where we have to stop delaying that.) We've set a year from now as the hard deadline to start. Because otherwise we'll just keep pushing it back until we're too old to enjoy it or something happens and the dream becomes impossible.
Perhaps you'd like to elaborate? I find the experience enormously enriching: learning new languages, making friends, gaining a new perspective. It's very valuable to me and I'd be curious to understand your position more, because right now it just comes across as sour grapes.
You don’t read a book by reading the first 10 pages. You don’t learn a culture by visiting a place for a week. You don’t make real friends in a weekend. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 4 years and I still feel like I don’t quite understand the culture here, feel like I haven’t quite experienced the city. I don’t understand how anyone could visit here on a vacation and think they’ve really “experienced” LA. This is even more true for foreign countries. There’s also something weird to me about going to a place with lots of poor people, “helping” them for a weekend, taking a picture, posting it on Instagram, leaving, and somehow getting a warm feeling from that. The common denominator is a shallowness- none of these experiences are as deep or meaningful as the people who do it claim to themselves and others.
I don't mean to come across as rude, but maybe the LA influencer culture has you jaded? I can guarantee that not everyone wants to travel the world just for some instagram photos.
I do agree with some of your main points. You can't learn a culture in a week, and "helping" poor people for an instagram post is definitely problematic.
However being exposed to the different types of cultures around the world can be extremely valuable and eye opening. The world is a beautiful place with lots of interesting places to explore.
LA is not influencer culture. It’s first and second gen Latino immigrants. It’s Armenians. It’s white Protestants from OC. It’s a major industrial port. It’s a real estate scam. And yes, the entertainment business is here. Thinking that LA is it’s influencer culture is SO SHALLOW.
Yes, that’s fair. My only exposure to LA culture is the entertainment industry and the large amount of influencers that are based in LA. So I’ll be the first to admit my understanding is shallow. I was just curious why you are so jaded to travelling.
My point still stands that travelling the world is not a completely shallow endeavour. However you seem obsessed with labelling people as shallow, which ironically comes across as pretty shallow in itself.
Some books you learn 80% of the new-to-you concepts in the first 2 chapters. For sure living some place for 10 years you will know different things from someone that stayed for a few months, but travel is an incredibly efficient way to get new stuff you wouldn't have thought of in front of you to pay attention to. It's not to master all the variety in the world, it's to bring your experience outside of the little ruts that you can fall into. You have to travel with a certain attitude of openness, curiosity and respect. And the knowledge that your own ways aren't special, but just your own ways.
You know that when people say they want to travel the world, that doesn't always mean they want to to pose briefly in instagram-hot tourist spots, right?
One could make a case for breadth or depth when it comes to world travel, but so far you're not doing that, you're just sniffing dismissively at a stereotype.
I'm a fan of spending weeks or months in a place, rather than days, but spending years in any one place necessarily means seeing far fewer places. Breadth vs depth.
haha - I've visited LA and also thought it was a shallow experience ;) Also, sounds like you haven't traveled much.
And yes, I do read a books first 10 pages and stop reading it. Sometimes i read the first couple pages of each chapter and stop reading it. I never claim i read the whole book, or understand every nook and cranny of the rhetoric, but that book will still shape my subconscious going forward.
I feel travel is the same. As you go around the world you learn that no one has the answers, each place is entirely based on your experience of that city and everyone has different philosophies in life. It provides a sense of empathy to ideas. Meeting people who worked at hostels or people who bought a sailing boat, some fishing poles and some rice and traveled vastly changed the way i look at the world. Life is really easy in actuality, we as a species seem to complicate it.
Travel has brought me a vast amount of serenity and peacefulness in my normal life, because normal life can never be as hard as traveling.
Unlike the books, traveling has a clear curve of diminishing returns. Sure, you don't understand the culture by spending a week in Japan, but get a glimpse of it. It's a good ROI.
Since you have a contrarian view I'd be curious to hear your take on some reasons I like to travel:
- Get a feel for life in a place. How do people live? Where do people eat? How do people move around? Where do people congregate? How does life ebb and flow throughout the day and week? Obviously each one can be expanded to more questions, but I like to experience these things and then compare and contrast. What do I like? Is this better or worse or just different?
- Try new cuisines. It can be really hard to get an "authentic" experience outside of a country for a variety of reasons
- Activities. Skiing can't be done everywhere
- Natural wonders. I find viewing certain nature scenes in person very satisfying
You read a well-written, multi-paragraph comment with an astute, on-topic point, and decided the best thing you could bring to the conversation was a vacuous put-down. All things considered, you're not making a good case for yourself as an expert on what's "deep."
I admire pg; I don't admire his essays, even though in broad strokes I agree with them. I feel his choice of style works against him; that's where I disagree.
Write like you talk, but if you talk like pg writes you lose your audience. His essays check out line by line, paragraph by paragraph, but they fail to drive at some deeper, more subtle point that can capture the imagination of an audience. I'm sure pg is nothing if not imaginative, but his essays aren't.
Another comment criticizes this essay as just another pg stream of consciousness; I feel it's the opposite: short on many of the details, digressions and emotions that can make an essay come alive, that can give you sense of the author and his world. Often when I read an essay that's what I'm interested in most and I don't think I'm alone in this.
I think I understand why pg has chosen his style; the principles and aesthetic sensibilities that went into his choice and I agree with them. Nevertheless I think it's a poor choice. I hope pg reads this and reconsiders. Innovate!
In the past I read a lot of his essays but I can no longer stomach his obsession with (high) school. He overanalyzes it and relates almost every essay to how things are in school and I'm certain someone has made it into a drinking game by now. Sadly, my tolerance for that kind of game is quite low these days.
Due to having enjoyed his essays 5+ years ago, I still open the new ones and start reading them but I can't help but preface that desire by skimming them for school references now. Additionally, if they're congratulatory of people similar to himself - which they often are - then I also have to say 'no, thanks'.
In the last 20-30 years, American parents and adults have put an enormous amount of focus and pressure on students for educational achievements as indicators for future successes. It's likely because of inequalities in the quality of education between schools, and inequalities of opportunities from schools. Get to a good school -> get good job because went to good school-> get good life. Otherwise, you're a failure. Education is seen as the lynchpin in social mobility.
The lack of social safety net, and a desire for their children to become successful, creates an all or nothing focus on educational achievement.
if you or your parents dedicated a large chunk of resources on said asset (education) it's hard to be detached from it... Ancient China achieved relative stability by pretending thus coercing intellects of the society that the only way out is by studying and become part of government. So yeah, it's quite a sound crowd control mechanism.
Eh, I don't know. I came from a lower middle class background, but am now top 1% for my age and income + I probably have more wealth at this stage of my life than PG did.
I love idleness and leisure. I only work to get more of it in the future. I do have a drive to do a job well, but not for the sake of achievement itself shudder.
The idea of saying at age 13 "I hate leisure activities, its not productive" is really unsettling to me.
It’s just not written for you. There’s a small percentage of people with whom this attitude resonates. This essay is advice on how to harness these personal tendencies in an effective manner, so it’s natural that it seems foreign to you if you don’t have this deep seated need to not be idle.
There is something fascinating about this article, and it's not the tips about how to properly work hard, which aren't new or particularly insightful (otherwise reasonable and well summarized).
It's the fact that throughout the article, hard work is an implied imperative in life, the main thing to do (otherwise it brings a "feeling of disgust"), without questioning if that's healthy, right, or so absolute. Maybe instead of the how, I was expecting something about the why, a reflection on the bad aspects of working hard too, and its associated costs on other parts of one's life, whether it's Paul, Patrick or Bill.
pg hasn't been running Y Combinator for over 7 years!
You've got your causality reversed. It's not that this essay exists because of YC, it's that YC exists because PG is obsessed with the idea of doing great work. (There are other reasons too, of course, but that was one vector.) He was that way long before YC.
This is clearly true looking from the outside, but people seem so eager to attribute motivations to greed or self interest, and success to luck, inherited wealth, and connections for any famous and successful person.
Is it just jealously and pettiness? Do people downplay the achievements of others to make themselves feel better about achieving nothing remarkable?
There is a rarely used English word I learned for the first time the other day - compersion - which is the opposite of jealousy. When you take joy in other people's success. Let's do more of that as a community and as human beings.
It’s not clearly true at all. Please tell me what was “great” about Viaweb (how pg got where he is today). It was literally about being at the right place at the right time. I think you’d also be hard pressed to find someone who would call Arc great.
> Is it just jealously and pettiness?
It’s neither, it’s people seeing who gets rewarded, how and why.
> think you’d also be hard pressed to find someone who would call Arc great.
I would call Arc great! It's one of my favorite things about my job that I get to work in it every day...though not nearly enough every day.
As for Viaweb, are you sure you're not looking at this through hindsight? Those guys were among the first to invent what we now call web apps, years before AJAX. In an era of internet startups coasting on hype, they built a real business - basically what is now called Shopify today. They also did it with a shockingly small team. All that seems pretty great to me.
I guess I don’t find an online store interesting or innovative. It’s hardly the Apple II or Linux. I also wonder if a sub 100M acquisition would be considered a success by pg himself on a YC company.
Have you ever heard of WebObjects? It was light years ahead of what Viaweb was doing at the time.
An online store generator is not an online store. To do that with Lisp macros in 1995 seemed crazily innovative to me when I first read about it in 2001 or so.
Honestly I’m not trying to be rude, sorry if it came off like that. That’s cool you like Arc, I’m a lisp fan myself (mainly Clojure).
I’m just pointing out that there was a lot of innovation happening at the time and what pg did wasn’t really lasting or that innovative. I don’t have a problem with it, until he espouses what I consider toxic work habits as advice. Too many people listen to him uncritically, it’s not good for our industry.
Just because something makes money, that doesn’t make it great. MS is a perfect example. Made a ton of money with products and predatory business practices so bad they held back innovation for years until Linux gave people an alternative and created the foundation for the modern internet. That was great tech from the time period.
It was great compared to what else was available at the time. Yes, it was about being in the right place at the right time - a place and time where three guys could build something that was better than anything out there, that people actually used.
Yes, there's an element of "the right place at the right time". And there's working very hard to make the most of it.
Or look at it this way: That opportunity was there for multiple millions of people who could code at the time. It was Viaweb that took advantage of it, though.
Regardless, the point is that we should not be listening to a guy who got lucky with mediocre software sold to a mediocre (at best) company in the middle of a bubble about how to duplicate his success.
> Regardless, the point is that we should not be listening to a guy who got lucky with mediocre software sold to a mediocre (at best) company in the middle of a bubble about how to duplicate his success.
You're doing exactly what I was taking about. Downplaying his success. Spinning a narrative that makes it look like he just got lucky. Why?
What have you accomplished with your life? Are you bitter about something? Because if we're really honest here, your opinion of Paul Graham seems to have more to do with you than with him.
My beef is that a lot of ignorant people are going to cargo cult this nonsense and create a toxic work environment for everyone. I also have an issue with hero worship, I didn’t become a technologist to prop up billionaires.
> My beef is that a lot of ignorant people are going to cargo cult this nonsense and create a toxic work environment for everyone.
Very little of Paul Graham's essays are written for people in the workplace. When he says work hard, he's not talking about work hard at a 9-5 job to make your employer rich. He's talking to people who found companies. Everyone else would do well to focus on work life balance. I take it you're not one of those people with ambitions to found a large successful company. Most people aren't. There nothing wrong with that, just that these essays are not really aimed at you. Paul Graham is one of those people. So am I, although I'm not successful (yet anyway.)
> I also have an issue with hero worship, I didn’t become a technologist to prop up billionaires.
Because jealously? Why does his wealth enter into this equation at all? Why is it relevant to you? It's fine to be inspired by people who achieve things. It can be taken too far, but you can say that about anything.
You shouldn’t make assumptions. I’ve been a senior leader at multiple very high profile and successful startups. I’ve also founded several VC backed startups. The problem is founders absolutely read stuff like this then create toxic work environments. I say it’s nonsense because I’ve succeeded without working myself or others to the bone.
> Because jealously?
No. Because I think celebrity culture is toxic. It induces the cargo culting effect I’m talking about. I also don’t think wealth inequality is a good thing for society. I would include myself as someone who should not be worshipped. I accurately attribute a lot of my success to luck (including being born at the right time with the right skills). I think you’d find my attitude more prevalent in the early tech industry. I didn’t invent the term “kill your idols” but it’s a good one. If you succeed enough you cross the line from disruptor to disruptee.
You do realize not everyone in our industry agrees on everything right? Tbh you seem pretty junior. PG isn’t some universally loved figure. A lot of people (successful) don’t like YC at all and think they pump out lame ideas. I’ll coach you a bit here and challenge you to go find a senior person in our industry that doesn’t agree with pg. There’s a lot of them out there and you’d definitely expand your horizons.
As to my background, I’d prefer to stay anonymous so I can freely speak my mind. You don’t have to believe me, but it would probably be helpful if you admitted that there are many philosophies on leadership and it’s worth exploring more than one.
Software engineer is a much more common job title now than back then. Back then IT people or developers did a good amount of building & coding, and many would be called software engineers nowadays.
You should work hard if there’s something important to you that you want to achieve. If there’s nothing that you particularly want to accomplish then there isn’t much point in working hard.
- Working on a computer all day, from the comfort of my house
- Being able to tend to work issues from my phone
- Getting intellectual stimulation from my work
- Getting to work with really really smart people
- Getting to see the joy customers get from using a product you helped build
These may not seem like much. They might even seem like a burden to some. But I've worked horrendous jobs in the past. Not just brutal manual labor, but mindless factory jobs that practically turn your brain into mush.
Working on things I actually enjoy, in an enjoyable environment, for 12-16 hours per day is a life I'd take any day of the week over life's I've lived in the past.
I'd say overall, working hard pays off if you have a strong impact on the business and own a good chunk of it. If you're working at BigTechCoFaang I'd slack absolutely as much as possible. Just riding the border between hired and fired.
Maybe the world also needs people who are not so achievement-driven, who act as a kind of lubricant in the machine of society by making the environment around themselves lighter and more pleasant. And people who are that way should learn to value themselves and not feel guilty for not being as driven as some.
A world where everyone is a nose-to-the-grindstone overachiever seems like a pretty dreary one to live in.
And really is Viaweb that big of a deal? He got rich by selling .com in the .com bubble to another .com company. That wasn't so hard at the time. He wrote a good book on Lisp, and used his riches to invest and get richer. None of this seems particularly extraordinary. Does he somehow imagine Dropbox or Viaweb have transformed human experience? He writes a good essay, but he seems overly impressed by his own success.
I know this is somewhat of a false dichotomy, but at some point I think PG's essays started to shift from being directed at startup founders to giving advice to his children that they can read when they grow older.
There probably is some tethering to whatever his perspective is at the time. At some point, YC was a relatively new idea coming to life and he was probably constantly thinking a certain way. Now, it's something that he's been up to for decades.
That said, I think there's more of a zeitgeist change than actual change in pg's content. Things sound different 10-15 years apart. A lot of things age poorly, often: idealism, stand up comedy... most anything avante garde-ish.
Clever people spoke highly of agile,for example, when it was manifestos and such circa 2005.
Ok I just looked up the phrase false dichotomy, apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant, probably would have been better said as "the two are not mutually exclusive", still point holds.
"False dichotomy" implies more than just the fact that "the two are not mutually exclusive". It further implies that the speaker in question has implied that the two are mutually exclusive, when they are in fact not.
I feel like a lot of it is the same stuff that you get in generic self help books, but explained in contemporary techie language and cultural references.
Not that that is necessarily bad per se, there can be a lot lot of value to reminding people of things that may seem obvious. But it's annoying when people treat him like a genius for saying fairly standard platitudes in a clever way
I hate the whole "hard work," but not "long hours" sort of discussion. Basically, if you work hard, but not long and succeed, then your hard work was "valid", if you work "long hours", which by some definition is "hard work" but don't succeed then it was just "long hours" and not "hard work."
In other words, as long as you succeed whatever work you did is considered "hard work" or "working smart", etc. etc.
Hard work can be good, but only if you own a substantial capital interest in the company/result. But if you can hire people to do it for you, then you can reap the benefits and live a life worth living. If you are just part of the labor and not the capital, then there really isn't an incentive to work harder than necessary to keep you job or earn a measly raise.
If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be multi-millionaires or billionaires, then almost everyone would accept that position. The real world doesn't work that way and using statistical outliers like Gates is disingenuous to the discussion about hard work and how it applies to normal people.
> If you tell people that if they work 12+ hours a day in their 20s that they would be millionaires or billionaires
Billionaire isn’t a realistic goal, but millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now. It doesn’t even require a FAANG job or living in a super expensive city any more, just wise job selection, a reasonable amount of financial savvy and budget adherence, and a deliberate effort to work on your career path.
You don’t need to own substantial equity in a company in your 20s to have a reason to work hard, as long as you’re doing work that builds your skill set, reputation, and network. Everything you do (or don’t do) has some impact on your persona capital over time.
Working hard in the mailroom or stocking shelves at a grocery store isn’t going to translate into a successful software career, but making an impact and helping people get things done at several companies through your 20s is the easiest way to build a strong network that opens doors in your 30s and beyond
> millionaire is a common outcome for software developers who work hard through their 20s and 30s now.
No, it's not. It's common for some FAANG engineers. It's not common at all for the industry as a whole.
Look at all these comments doubling-down on the "7%/$10k-per-year" arithmetic, as if the only thing that affects savings rates is knowledge of this basic math. For a data driven community there sure are a lot of people ignoring the data.
The Millionaire Next Door concepts are still as relevant as ever, albeit the specifics are a bit dated. Millionaire status is reasonably achievable for someone whose income and cost of basics allow for modest discretionary income. This is certainly the case for the majority of software developers
It’s so hard to get $1MM that only about 19% of people age 65 or over ever reach it. Is software overrepresented in that group? Probably. But not to the extent that it’s reasonable to make the claim that it’s common for software developers to reach it in their 20s and 30s.
I think you misread the comment. Or at least read it differently than I did. I read that most software engineers who work hard in their 20s and 30s can become millionaires at some point. You seem to have read it that they will become millionaires in their 20s or 30s, which I don't think is what it says. My reading is more that putting hard work in early in the career sets you on a path to pay off debts and start saving and also have the experience to get good jobs later, which allow you to save more. This meshes with my experience of the industry.
Not that they _do_ reach it, but that they can. I think the general argument is that most people are not sufficiently financially literate to appreciate that the path to a million dollars is paved with consistent savings and reasonable budgets.
It's a bad argument, though. Financial literacy isn't even necessary, though it may help. Life happens, things occur that make sustained savings impractical or impossible, and so on.
One thing from this essay really stuck out to me:
> The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to. Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off.
One thing that always happened at the end of a semester is we'd have a few days after exams but before flights back home. On these days I'd typically try playing a video game (my hobby before college) and every time I would stop playing after just an hour with deep feeling of unease at the pit of my stomach. "Alarm bells" is exactly how I would describe it - a feeling at the core of my psyche that I have been wasting time and there must be something productive I should be doing or thinking about.
Years later, having tackled anxiety problems that had plagued me most of my life, I came to recognize that my relationship with hard work during my college years was not healthy and that this deep seated desire to do more work is not a positive thing, at least not for me.
I've since reformed my ambitions, instead of looking to start a company or get a PhD in mathematics, I've decided that hard work is not the love of my life and instead I should focus on my hobbies while looking for a career path that can be simultaneously fulfilling but laid back.