[HN Gopher] The Creative World's Bullshit Industrial Complex
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The Creative World's Bullshit Industrial Complex
Author : vitabenes
Score : 149 points
Date : 2021-09-08 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (99u.adobe.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (99u.adobe.com)
| RGamma wrote:
| Yeah, it's become bad from a reader/viewer/listener/player
| standpoint as well.
|
| I've been waiting for the media torrent/general market
| oversaturation to die down, but the moment never comes.
|
| Until then I rely on personal recommendations, such as
| occasionally in the comments here.
|
| Store fronts, autosuggestions and viral stuff are a lottery not
| least due to many gaming the metrics and sheer volume of
| submissions; I don't really bother anymore and hope the pearls
| make their way to me anyway (or remain findable _somewhere_ ).
| asdff wrote:
| There was a point a few decades ago where we took the expert
| individual out of decisionmaking and favored whatever we have
| today. A director like spielberg today would never have had the
| independence he enjoyed early in his career. It just wouldn't
| be possible anymore because of the mechanisms we have
| constructed in order to ensure we select the most generally
| engaging product out of the pile. Engaging rarely means good,
| an example is netflix's new cash cow "The Kissing Game" which
| started as a terrible terrible movie covering every cliche you
| can expect out of some highschool romance movie. Panned
| critically of course, but what do you know, people like junk
| food and junk TV and this turd becomes one of netflix's most
| successful original movies, which they've turned into a
| trilogy. This is the Lord of the Rings of 2021.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Seeing this on Adobe's domain is rich, they produce vasts amounts
| of Creative bullshit. They likely have hundreds of people with a
| job description can probably be distilled down into Creative
| bullshit.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is a feature of the internet publishing model crossed with
| the social media marketing model: people believe they need
| followers to advance their career, and websites need content to
| feed the hungry click monster. I see the same phenomenon in other
| domains I pay attention to.
|
| Giving him the benefit of the doubt, it may be a bit worse in the
| creative world, since there are so many more people in it looking
| for a leg up.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| One of the difficulties about being a creative is that bullshit
| is often required to earn enough to live off of. When you write a
| book, you may spend a very long time to write the work, then you
| spend a long time editing the book. Once it's actually purchased,
| your advance doesn't come in all at once but actually is split
| into 3/4 payments over the course of potentially 2 years. So if
| you get a 20k advance, you're actually only getting much less
| than that per payment. You have to then make up that shortfall
| with talks, interviews, patreon, and access to you in general as
| a published author which puts you in an authority position for
| advice.
|
| Unless you make it to well above bestseller level, and
| potentially even then, you have to participate in the bullshit
| pyramid described here if you want to be able to afford a living
| + paying your own healthcare.
| rikroots wrote:
| I solved this problem by deciding early on that the only way
| for me to get creative stuff done, and to enjoy myself while
| getting creative stuff done, was to treat my creative
| endeavours as hobbies rather than income streams. Turns out you
| don't need to be a full time Poet, toiling away at the academic
| coalface 24/7/365, to have fun writing and sharing poems.
| egypturnash wrote:
| _Being quiet and slowly building mastery and expertise doesn't
| pay off much at first. So many creatives must make a calculation:
| Do I want the short term, could-go-viral-at-any-second thrill of
| being a vocal expert in my field? Or am I more content playing
| the long game?_
|
| I've been playing the long game for longer than "social media"
| has been a word. It helps to have a lot of financial resources
| that I can burn while I continue to labor in obscurity.
|
| I have no desire to position myself as An Expert, nor to do the
| shit involved in chasing social media success (I like big slow
| projects made to satisfy myself, not quick stuff you can crank
| out daily and repeatedly pivot towards whatever gets the most
| traction), but I sure can see how that's super tempting. If I
| didn't have the financial cushions I do I'd have swallowed my
| pride and taken that bullshit path long ago just to try and
| survive.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Pretty progressive of a publicly traded company to use profanity
| in their blog, I dig it! What is 99u?
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Is there a common, non-profane, synonym for bullshit? I can't
| think of another word that conveys the same mixture of useless,
| deceptive, meritless, propaganda.
|
| While some may object to the use of profanity in a public
| space, I think such a reaction is fitting for the nature of
| bullshit. It SHOULD be repellent when invoked. A big,
| disgusting, load of crap that nobody should tolerate in their
| presence. I think bullshit captures the spirit of the term
| perfectly.
| jarjoura wrote:
| "load of crap" seems like the perfect synonym to me. Less
| provocative of a title, but there's other words that can
| convey the same.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Hogwash
|
| Poppycock
|
| Nonsense
|
| Rubbish
|
| Ya none of these quite hit like Bullshit.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| "Bollocks" is a little less severe than "bullshit" in British
| English, but that word is still considered swearing by some.
| I agree that bullshit is the perfect word to describe the
| subject, it's a vulgar word because it causes a vulgar
| reaction when you experience it. Using a non-profane word
| would just dilute it.
| stagger87 wrote:
| https://99u.adobe.com/about
| Applejinx wrote:
| I didn't know Adobe was LinkedIn o_O
| elefanten wrote:
| Article was fine. Nodded along to parts of it. Then, hilariously,
| came the spread of card links below:
|
| -Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love from Day One
|
| -How to Build a Brand--From Anywhere--by Embracing Your
| Surroundings
|
| -99U Conference Speaker Spotlight: Alain Sylvain on the Ever-
| Changing, Infinite Pursuit of Creativity
|
| It's almost like they were trying to prove this article's point
| by immediately hitting you with a bunch of "bullshit"
| [deleted]
| nomoreplease wrote:
| I noticed this too! Thought it was a random advertisement that
| I happened to receive in perfect irony. The irony is even
| richer since it's being shown to everyone
| stakkur wrote:
| Spoiler alert: we're _all_ bullshitting our way through life, in
| one way or another.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| In a world of quick solutions, elevator pitches and so forth,
| there will demand for summaries of summaries (of summaries).
| Dealing with the actual complexities is something that is often
| successfully trained away in the more recent generation of
| executives and leaders.
| Igelau wrote:
| > Group 1: People actually shipping ideas, launching businesses,
| doing creative work, taking risks and sharing first-hand
| learnings.
|
| > Group 2: People writing about group 1 in clear, concise,
| accessible language.
|
| > [And here rests the line of bullshit demarcation...]
|
| > Group 3: People aggregating the learnings of group 2, passing
| it off as first-hand wisdom.
|
| > Group 4: People aggregating the learnings of group 3, believing
| they are as worthy of praise as the people in group 1.
|
| > Groups 5+: And downward...
|
| Generalize this and reinforce it through a system of
| upvotes/downvotes and you have every the fate of every topical
| subreddit of any considerable size.
| unknownus3r wrote:
| Gorgias
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Reading this reminded me of one of the challenges with
| fundraising VC money, and that is... For the most part you're
| being judged against the best "bullshit" someone else can peddle.
| Which risks creating an incentive structure that's a race to the
| bottom of the manure pile.
| Nokinside wrote:
| At the bottom there is a whole subgenre of startup cosplay.
|
| It's like a cultural scene where group of people, mostly young,
| sometimes older are hanging out and networking and acting
| "startup". These guys don't even have credible bullshit to get
| a meeting from real VC. Retired lonely rich tech guys
| (cosplaying Angel investors) and random big firms from time to
| time provide snacks and feed the scene.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| That sounds... depressing.
| asdff wrote:
| I thought HBO's silicon valley would be a wakeup call at the
| ridiculousness of this culture, but if anything people have
| doubled down.
| nucleogenesis wrote:
| Capitalism begets grifters as a matter of necessity.
|
| This arena might be reserved for compulsive liars and psychopaths
| were we not compelled by society to make ends meet regardless of
| whether or not the ends ethically justify the means.
|
| In this society, bullshitting is built-in at every level to some
| degree and being savvy in it can be the difference between
| subsisting and not.
| nomoreplease wrote:
| > Capitalism begets grifters as a matter of necessity.
|
| While I don't disagree, I expect there's a substantially
| equivalent number of grifters under socialism as well
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Yeah, this is a thing of human nature. I'm sure if we rolled
| back to ancient Greece we could find no shortage charlatan
| oracle-soothsayers who put on a good show but deep down knew
| they were blowing smoke.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Depending on how the system is constructed, there's less
| financial incentive for it. Sure, the political arena might
| have some, but in theory you're supposed to try to weed those
| people out through the party. Nonetheless, I don't think you
| can characterize capitalist politicians as anything other
| than grifters or war mongers.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Not all incentives need be financial. _Connections_ yield
| better schools, better housing, invitation to more cultural
| events, etc etc.
| pnathan wrote:
| Then the grift is to be a party hack and have the party
| arrange for a nice dacha for you, good schools for the
| kids.
|
| of course, you don't hardly make anything, the party
| provides, in its benevolence!
|
| edit: my point is that grifters show up in any particular
| structure. not to sling arrows at the USSR or the USA.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't know if grifting is intrinsic to capitalism itself. But
| it certainly seems to be an emergent property of the
| unconstrained giant corporation massive income inequality
| flavor of capitalism we are experiencing.
|
| As the number of reasonable avenues towards financial stability
| dwindles, people will rationally pursue whatever ones are left
| with greater furvor, even if those paths are morally bankrupt
| like being an "influencer" or "thought leader".
|
| Like rats, we'll push whatever button gets us fed. If we want
| people to do more meaningful work, we need a culture and
| economic system that lets them provide a stable life for their
| family while doing it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| A misconception: commenters seem to be hearing OP's message as
| "quit your job and work on your own for the good of humanity."
| He's not demanding that of you.
|
| That would indeed get you out of the B-IC, but it's not
| necessary. You can gain genuine Group 1 expertise at a FAANG
| company (or any other). It may take years, but when you write
| about real lessons you've learned, that will not be bullshit.
| yboris wrote:
| Video embedded in the article doesn't work, so here's the direct
| link: https://vimeo.com/167796382
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Reading about Galileo, Newton, and others when I was young, I
| felt that they came from means or had the means to do 'deep'
| work. Until you have the means, the Bullshit Industrial Complex
| seems like the rational path to follow. It gets attention which
| gets you paid.
|
| I wish all programmers with a healthy bank account and vested
| stock quit their FAANG jobs and did research or worked on
| personal projects. But there is greater external validation in
| saying you work at FAANG vs. I'm working on some highly technical
| topic only .01% of people will ever care about.
|
| Edit: I 'ass'umed why people don't do quiet research/building
| when they have the money but would love to hear first hand
| reasons.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Idk if you need to be so cynical about motivation. It takes a
| lot of money to just quit young and do nothing but what you
| want. Buy a house, travel, have hobbies, family. You need
| millions in your back account to do these things. So we
| continue to work. How much money do you think people are making
| and how much do you think people need?
| david_allison wrote:
| > It takes a lot of money to just quit young and do nothing
| but what you want
|
| No it doesn't. You can do so with very little money, but
| doing so requires sacrificing other aspects of your life
| tayo42 wrote:
| Expecting people do sacrifice everything kind of goes
| against this cynical take that people are only working to
| feed their egos
| mym1990 wrote:
| There is a large spectrum between quitting young and doing
| some of the things you want and quitting young and doing
| nothing but what you want. There are plenty of people that
| travel in extremely economical ways. People don't have to
| live in million dollar homes. Most hobbies don't require a 7
| figure bank account to maintain over the course of their
| life.
|
| BUT...generally people will come to live at their means(and
| sometimes above with the abundance of credit in today's
| world). Ultimately it becomes difficult to back out of a
| lavish life and the paychecks become the only way to sustain
| it.
| tayo42 wrote:
| That's not sustainable. You need millions to retire today.
| That's why people are working. Not to feed their ego like
| the poster suggests.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _I wish all programmers with a healthy bank account and vested
| stock quit their FAANG jobs and did research or worked on
| personal projects._
|
| I think "deep" building requires specific resources that having
| been a programmer may or may not give you.
|
| The purpose of PhD programs, in particular, is to prepare a
| person to do original research in an existing field. While
| these may have some unnecessary hazing, a significant part of
| their difficulty is that leaping to one's own original research
| or building is hard. One has to navigate avoid both excessively
| small steps and vacuous (or unprovable) big ideas.
|
| Someone without a PhD needs to apply some similar level of
| discipline imo if they're going accomplish an important thing.
| For a few people, that might be an easier rout but for most, I
| suspect it's even more difficult - at least if you honestly
| avoid both the trivial and vacuously ill-defined.
|
| PS: I am indeed doing the "quit job and follow what you love"
| thing so I think a view of how challenging that can be.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > I wish all programmers with a healthy bank account and vested
| stock quit their FAANG jobs and did research or worked on
| personal projects. But there is greater external validation in
| saying you work at FAANG vs. I'm working on some highly
| technical topic only .01% of people will ever care about.
|
| Something that's weighed on my mind for the past 6 years: when
| I graduated CMU, in a speech the head of the CS department told
| us [paraphrased] to work on things that matter and to be a
| force for good in the world.
|
| I never felt like I've accomplished that. I also don't know
| _what_ I would work on if I did have the means to chase some
| deep work without worrying about money.
|
| I guess if I could get paid to do anything I'd probably do
| something silly like write a new programming language built for
| expressing mathematical proofs. These exist, but I've always
| been interested in starting from the UX side (how do I like to
| write proofs on paper) and working from there to a formal
| language; instead of the cutting edge research that is often
| the other way around (here's homotopy type theory, now let's
| unify it with modern math)
|
| Now the question: even if I had the means to do this while
| continuing to pay my mortgage, would this be doing any good for
| the world? Would anybody care about the end result? Would I
| regret it after 20 years?
|
| Edit: I guess the crux of the issue is, it's hard to optimize
| for being a force for good because the world is big and
| complicated. But it's quite easy to optimize for making more
| money, you just go down the list of top paying employers on
| levels.fyi and filter the ones you don't like.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I never felt like I've accomplished that. I also don't know
| what I would work on if I did have the means to chase some
| deep work without worrying about money.
|
| One rarely considered need is for an innovative new social
| network to clean up (and maybe even kill off, like
| StackOverflow did to ExpertsExchange) the others that have
| made such a mess of things.
| petra wrote:
| Want a lower risk ? Be more humble. Join some group that is
| doing things that matter, contribute there and you'll surely
| do good.
| Lichtso wrote:
| What you do and also what you don't do (but could do) will
| always be good for some and bad for others (neutral for the
| rest). In that sense there is no "force for good", only a
| good for: Yourself, a specific group, the majority, etc.
|
| Now, I have also pondered about this topic of doing
| altruistic work full time one day if I get the chance and it
| is nice to see a discussion (even just a small one) about it.
|
| I don't really fear regretting it afterwards as the attempt
| also counts in my opinion, as long as you don't accidentally
| cause more harm than good in the process. In that sense,
| wouldn't you instead regret it to never have tried it if you
| could have?
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| > _when I graduated CMU, in a speech the head of the CS
| department told us [paraphrased] to work on things that
| matter and to be a force for good in the world._
|
| > _I never felt like I 've accomplished that. I also don't
| know what I would work on if I did have the means to chase
| some deep work without worrying about money._
|
| Oh hey, I remember something like that when I graduated too,
| CMU 2015, and I remember walking away thinking the same
| thing: "well, how the hell am I supposed to do that?"
|
| Turns out I had a lot of work to do. I spent the next 6 years
| reading philosophy and psychoanalysis to try and figure out
| my own shit and understand the world better, which I felt I
| had learned almost none of at CMU (that said, there's some
| benefit to being a blank slate, in that I can follow my
| intuition rather than imitating my professors, but lack of
| mentorship makes it hard to get started). Being able to
| support myself through development work was significant in
| giving me the stability and flexibility to pursue that sort
| of research in my free time.
|
| This was a big influence for me quitting my job at big
| corporate and joining a small startup founded by a friend (at
| the cost of a big salary hit), and eventually I want to move
| on from that and work on more self-directed activities that
| even more closely relate my (still developing!) philosophical
| views and my abilities. But it took a very long time for me
| to "find myself" and what I believed, even on a very basic
| level. I had no idea of any of that after graduating, besides
| some gut feelings about the current moment in political
| discourse (which themselves took several years to understand
| fully).
|
| I always wonder about a lot of my peers, who didn't seem to
| take the same path, and instead continue working their jobs
| without thinking too hard. Will they find themselves 20 years
| down the road unsatisfied with where they ended up? Or will
| they not think too hard about it, and enjoy their day to day
| lives without much tension, besides the occasional political
| event? It sometimes seems more a matter of temperament than
| anything. But it is weird to see the "best and brightest" end
| up working for a company like Palantir because "we're all
| nerds here!", without taking any sort of stance on the value
| of their work.
| dageshi wrote:
| I think there's competing issues here, there's an aspect of
| "I want to prove myself" by creating something really good
| and unique that I can be proud of. There's also the "do good"
| aspect of potentially creating something that's a "force for
| good". Doing either one of those is hard, doing both at the
| same time is probably very very hard. You both need to chase
| down a good idea but also execute it well.
|
| If you want to do good for the world, honestly finding a
| charity that would benefit from your cash and making a
| donation would do that. But that won't scratch your nagging
| itch to make something you can be proud of.
|
| For that, perhaps saving up enough money to allow you to quit
| or take a sabbatical if one is possible to work on the thing
| you want to is a better idea. Would it be better for your
| career? Perhaps not, but it might scratch that itch and that
| might be better for you as a person.
| nbzso wrote:
| "Edit: I guess the crux of the issue is, it's hard to
| optimize for being a force for good because the world is big
| and complicated. But it's quite easy to optimize for making
| more money, you just go down the list of top paying employers
| on levels.fyi and filter the ones you don't like."
|
| Why I am reading this as: Is more easy to make money than
| being force for good? Because hey, the world is big and
| complicated. Or "hey making the world better place is not
| monetary rewarding endeavor, let's move fast and break
| things.
|
| Chasing big work is not related to money. It is related to
| creating meaning outside egoistic need of fulfilling some
| billionaires vision of success.
|
| Creating big work is a personal choice. And obviously is not
| popular or advertised.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Can you expand on what you define as "big work"?
|
| > Why I am reading this as: Is more easy to make money than
| being force for good?
|
| That's a wholly accurate version of what I wrote. It's been
| quite easy to climb my salary by about double in 6 years,
| with potentially more rises on the horizon. I'm just about
| as clueless now as I was then about how to make the world a
| better place.
| asdff wrote:
| Honestly, its easier than it seems on the outside. You want
| to work for something that is doing good, and you want to do
| do good work that is actually relevant for fear of working on
| the wrong problem without realizing it until you've sunk so
| much time. It sounds to me like grad school and academia
| would be a perfect environment for you then and I recommend
| you apply if you are interested.
|
| In grad school you will recieve a stipend which will help
| bills a bit. You will research different departments and see
| what the field is going and apply where you are interested.
| You will end up working for a professor trying to achieve one
| of the aims on their already funded grant from the federal
| government. The aim might actually be painted in quite broad
| strokes or have some methods to get you started at least, and
| you are free to go off the reservation and work on this aim
| how you think it should be worked on. Your professor, if they
| are any good, will nurture your efforts and help provide
| theoretical insights, supply you with relevant literature if
| you need help with that, and connect you with other
| researchers that have the talents you need to form beautiful
| collaborations. You will publish papers and feel good when
| some of them are cited by other researchers. You could even
| continue and do a stint as a post doc with another research
| group and develop more skills, and eventually find yourself
| interviewing for faculty positions if you want to pen the
| grant to the federal government yourself, and train another
| generation as you've been trained.
| zelias wrote:
| sounds like an excellent way to make mathematical proofs more
| accessible to the masses!
| helen___keller wrote:
| Potentially! But it would likely be years of effort and
| research to get something usable, which may end up being a
| dead end. It's simultaneously a tantalizing and torturous
| proposition.
| petra wrote:
| Even if the project isn't successful, it's a required
| part of innovating. it's a real contribution.
| asdff wrote:
| This is where grad school shines for this sort of stuff.
| You have mentorship that can steer you along toward doing
| something relevant and making a worthy contribution that
| wouldn't be a wasted exercise on your part.
|
| If you come in off the cuff thinking "Proofs need fixed,"
| you are probably going to end up reinventing the wheel at
| best since you lack any context to what has already been
| done in the field.
| mattmoose21 wrote:
| whether the project is a success or not it seems you
| would get a lot out of the process. Sometimes you have an
| idea of what you would like to do and only by going down
| the path do you realize what you should be doing.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts. It's
| fascinating to see how others reason.
|
| Is doing good for the world external validation? I'm not
| sure.
|
| The article author argues that a lot of people create
| bullshit which is the opposite of valuable (time consuming
| and attention grabbing). Maybe your work wouldn't be valuable
| but it also wouldn't be a net negative.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Making something that other people are freely willing to pay
| for is a very good proxy for doing good.
| avz wrote:
| In some cases, people will pay you for making things that
| help them hurt or exploit other people. It could be argued
| that this constitutes making the world a worse place.
|
| For example, you could get paid by criminals to make
| ransomware or by an ad company to flood users with ads or
| by a cryptocurrency company for building tools that
| facilitate money laundering and tax evasion or by a
| government to create a database of dissidents and
| protesters or by a toy company to use ML to generate fake
| reviews...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > people will pay you for making things that help them
| hurt or exploit other people
|
| I should think that running a criminal business was
| outside the scope of what I was talking about.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Some of them are not at all criminal. The war machine is
| always looking for a few good men.
| eaq wrote:
| Counterpoint: heroin
| WalterBright wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure about that. Heroin can deal with
| pain that morphine cannot. Heroin is a blessing for
| people dealing with terminal pain, for example.
|
| An awful lot of evil is done in this world in the name of
| doing what's best for others against their will.
| sidibe wrote:
| >I wish all programmers with a healthy bank account and vested
| stock quit their FAANG jobs and did research
|
| A lot of the most interesting research stuff is happening in
| FAANGs though where there are more resources and direction for
| research. I'd love to be able to do something useful outside of
| it, but I don't think there's more opportunities to do
| impactful research in academia or on your own than in a FAANG
| kodah wrote:
| I work at a large engineering firm. Even if you do get the big
| pay days it doesn't mean you can suddenly retire. You still
| have to put in a good 10-15 years to get reliable financial
| independence.
|
| I say that in the light of that I'd much rather be working on
| personal projects or projects which deal in resource
| efficiency/conservation/telemetry, but these gigs don't pay as
| well.
| throwwy28459533 wrote:
| Another option for those with FAANG (or other) money:
| Personally fund other people who are already doing research or
| "deep" work. Perhaps first people you already know, and then
| strangers on the internet who are asking for funding. These
| other people doing research or deep work are likely to have the
| qualities and knowledge to effectively direct the usage of
| funds in a manner that progresses their work; also see the
| comment by 'joe_the_user.
|
| (There is currently no shortcut for determining who to fund, as
| it ultimately comes down to a synthesis of intuition/taste and
| empiricism. Current funding systems are overly biased toward a
| form of empiricism, i.e. an implicit assumption that past
| results signal and legitimate the potential for continued
| future performance. Deciding on the basis of one's own
| intuition and taste is one approach to correct for overreliance
| on externalized empiricism.)
| taylodl wrote:
| You're still playing _their_ game, you 're living your life by
| _their_ rules. Once you realize there aren 't any rules and
| "success" is being satisfied with your own life then you may
| begin to forge a different path. Sadly, very few people go this
| route, but the few I know who have are profoundly content.
| munchbunny wrote:
| A lot of FAANG programmers are people who "work to live". Even
| with the financial means, the freedom to do what they want
| isn't necessarily something they value very heavily. Instead,
| it's a steady 9 to 5 and they have time for family, friends,
| and hobbies, and they're content with that.
|
| Also important to note though: while FAANG pays well, it
| doesn't pay so well that you can consistently retire at 35
| unless you pay very close attention to your wealth management.
|
| If I had financial independence, I'd try to become a teacher.
| Unfortunately, even fully vested, I'm a good ways out from
| financial independence.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I think I picture "freedom to do what I want" as a studio
| apartment with a laptop, an internet connection and a library
| card needing something like $30K a year. So I think for every
| year I make $150K I can take ~3 years off.
|
| Everyones situation is different.
|
| Hope you get to teach some day.
| [deleted]
| bluedino wrote:
| When I was 19 all I wanted was enough money to buy mt dew,
| pizza, a couple programming books, whatever the newest
| laptop was, and an internet connection.
|
| Not sure what happened there.
| WalterBright wrote:
| What happened was adults pay their own bills.
| munchbunny wrote:
| Just to give a different perspective, I am budgeting for a
| not-ascetic but also not-extravagant lifestyle (cook at
| home, buy nicer clothes less often, buy cars new but stick
| to low maintenance budget models, etc.), dual-income
| family, kid(s), one or two trips a year (one to travel,
| another to visit family), some hobbies with equipment
| costs, a chronic medical condition I was diagnosed with at
| 25 that is minimal impact right now but will almost
| certainly get expensive when I'm retirement age, some
| ongoing memberships like for state parks, etc.
|
| Factoring in taxes, it adds up to more than I'd like but
| less than I would intuitively assume.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Your going to live in a studio doing nothing but hack on a
| laptop for the rest of your life? No other things to do
| discover or try? No people in your life?
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Studio, laptop, internet cost money. Human relationships
| are free. Some hobbies are free or low cost. You would
| not be buying the latest gadgets, seeking out the best
| restaurants and visiting the 100 places you must see
| before you die. It's a trade off.
| tayo42 wrote:
| It's costs money to do things with people. Friends want
| too go places, do things, activities. I can't imagine
| you'll be hosting guests in your studio eating beans and
| rice. Life can be so much more interesting.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I wish all programmers with a healthy bank account and
| vested stock quit their FAANG jobs and did research or worked
| on personal projects. But there is greater external validation
| in saying you work at FAANG vs. I 'm working on some highly
| technical topic only .01% of people will ever care about._
|
| Wish granted (in my case).
|
| Actually, I didn't really have a choice. No one wants to work
| with a 55-year-old developer, so I was forced into early
| retirement.
|
| Best thing that ever happened to me. I started spending my nest
| egg a bit earlier than planned, but it will be fine.
|
| I have no intentions of ever working for anyone, ever again.
| Good riddance.
|
| I wish you the very best, at your windmill-tilting. I've done
| OK, with mine.
| nomoreplease wrote:
| Congrats on retiring to what you want to do! What are your
| plans?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have already accomplished a fair bit, on the "side work"
| that I did over the years.
|
| I'm currently working with a nonprofit team, and developing
| an app, aimed at recovering drug addicts. I have some
| fairly relevant prior art in this field, having designed a
| worldwide infrastructure platform.
| orware wrote:
| I would love to just focus on dozens of problems / interesting
| areas to myself, but those of us without healthy bank accounts
| don't really have that luxury.
|
| I really wish there was a sponsorship model of some sort where
| folks that just love programming for the sake of it could be
| sponsored by those wealthy enough not to worry about money
| anymore.
|
| While there are still a lot of interesting problem areas within
| a typical workplace, sometimes the interests one has within
| programming don't necessarily align with the workplace's needs,
| making it so that to work on the interesting stuff in your own
| time, which gets harder as "life" happens and bills become
| plentiful.
|
| I too though read about those famous folks in science and
| noticed how they had either financial sponsors, or were
| themselves already wealthy, and that allowed them to pursue
| their own learning paths in earnest, where I would say that
| isn't an option for the vast majority of us today (it also
| circles back to general opportunity...there are so many smart
| and intelligent people out there that may never get the chance
| to reach their full potential due to the lack of opportunity
| and instead have to focus on more basic needs, etc.).
| [deleted]
| yboris wrote:
| The essay / book (from the posted link) "On Bullshit" Harry
| Frankfurt is an excellent short read. Here is the link to the
| book and PDF:
|
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on...
|
| http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_...
| esel2k wrote:
| If been collecting great posts ,book paragraphs, methods and own
| learnings from my jobs as well as templates I created along the
| way and wanted to put all of these things on a webpage. Of course
| my goal was to a)get better (if I can teach it or rewrite it I
| consider myself as mastering the topic) and b) to get visibility
| to ensure my career.
|
| Would this make me a bullshiter part of the complex described in
| the article?
| madrox wrote:
| I completely agree with this article. However, in a more generous
| sense, bullshitters are not that different from sixth grade
| science teachers. I don't think my first biology teacher ever did
| deep work in his field. However, that didn't stop me from hanging
| on every word, because, let's face it, he made the topic
| interesting for me.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| > And when you make choices based on what others will think about
| you, you lose yourself along the way, and the world loses another
| creative mind that would otherwise share something original.
|
| I like it, but YMMV.
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