[HN Gopher] Sergey Brin's Unretirement
___________________________________________________________________
Sergey Brin's Unretirement
See also: https://www.businessinsider.com/sergey-brin-says-leaving-
goo... _Google co-founder Sergey Brin on leaving retirement to
work on AI_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226292 - Aug
2023 (25 comments) _Back at Google Again, Cofounder Sergey Brin
Just Filed His First Code Request_ -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34645311 - Feb 2023 (16
comments)
Author : iancmceachern
Score : 357 points
Date : 2026-01-01 09:30 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inc.com)
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Having given so much of themselves to their careers, they often
| felt unmoored and purposeless when they left their jobs.
|
| That's in contrast with all of us who see the companies led by
| these guys as the cancer of society and we'd quit and never look
| back if we had FU money.
|
| My feelings aside, if all their purpose is to grow their company,
| I kinda get why they wouldn't give a damn about bettering the
| mankind, improving their communities or raising a healthy family.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please not post cynical and/or curmudgeonly comments to
| HN? I can understand the feelings behind it--we all can--but
| this is really not what we're going here, and it has a way more
| degrading effect on the threads than I'm sure you intended.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Sorry, point taken.
| p1esk wrote:
| Financial freedom is about not having to worry about losing your
| job, or tolerating shitty work conditions. Why would you retire
| if you do what you love? I think the real problem might be if
| there's nothing you actually love doing (long term), that's when
| money won't help.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| What do you mean? Money is the best thing to have if you're
| lazy and don't like doing anything.
|
| In this case I agree though, he's the boss, not beholden to
| anyone. Can wander around and do what interests him.
| p1esk wrote:
| But that's the problem - if you don't like doing anything,
| what will you do? What will you fill your life with? You will
| quickly get bored of anything you try. Your life will have no
| meaning, and you will probably turn to alcohol or drugs.
| mockingbirdy wrote:
| Had this exact situation. Turned to drugs. Lived like a GTA
| character. That's unsustainable, similar to luxury
| vacations which turn dull. Now I'm finding investors for
| curing MS with a team of researchers who've built sth that
| is more accurate than CRISPR to cure my sister. I actually
| want to get in contact with Sergey Brin about that because
| we might have something interesting for him - but my
| American contacts are only connected to Musk and people
| like a Polygon founder and music/hollywood people. This is
| not a psychotic or exaggerated message, I'm sure HN can vet
| us (@dang) and get us contacts, currently I'm talking to
| family offices in Saudi Arabia. About meaning: if you get
| bored, aim for bigger positive impact.
|
| paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29857928/
|
| short: We have a rigorously validated antigen-specific
| immune tolerance platform with bystander suppression,
| NIH/MS Society backing and a clear translational gap.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I can play World of Warcraft indefinitely.
| oreally wrote:
| Indeed, video games are probably the things most of
| humanity will retire to if they didn't attach so much ego
| and meaning to their jobs and by extension, the people
| around them.
|
| Just be sure to swap games once in a while so you don't
| get bored.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Everyone, even the laziest person likes doing something
| even if that's just parking yourself in front of the TV and
| stuffing your face.
|
| Most people though genuinely like activities that most
| times would be impossible to monetize enough to make a
| living, which isn't a problem if you're rich.
| Alternatively, there are plenty of things people want to do
| that they have no intention of being the best at, they want
| to dabble.
| canpan wrote:
| The people with the drive to be able to retire early are also
| the most likely to be bored when it happens.
|
| Working on something fun and novel, like in his case Gemini,
| mentioned in the article, is the ideal.
| abhinavb05 wrote:
| Once you're hooked, you're hooked
| nsoonhui wrote:
| When I started my company, we suddenly found that we were in a
| good small fortune, not enough to be millionaires or
| billionaires, but enough to get people to run the business semi
| automatically with very minimum input from the founders.
|
| I took a semi retirement approach to the business, there really
| wasn't a lot of things to do, my role was sort of just "managing"
| programmers. I got so much free time that I could even start a
| second business on the side.
|
| Despite my best ability to stretch my work, I couldn't even fill
| up half of my working hours. One would have thought that this is
| heaven. But the time I was most free was also the time I was most
| miserable. I wasn't happy, I was gaining weight, I was
| perennially asking myself why the business couldn't be bigger and
| I couldn't sell it, so that I can be real millionaires and
| billionaires with financial freedom!
|
| Then fate intervened, the sudden fortune disappeared and I no
| longer had the luxury of just "managing people"; I have to do
| hands-on. And it was this activity, the feeling that I was
| contributing to something, that I was writing code again and
| actually building stuffs, that made me happy again.
|
| Today we are bigger than what we once we were, but still, I am
| writing code and pretty much hands-on.I vow that I will never
| retire, even though if I could. Because it's the meaningful work
| that sustains life and provides happiness. Being able to work on
| it is a luxury that I will never want to give up, ever.
| Palomides wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack in HN comments. It's
| not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "Because it's the meaningful work that sustains life and
| provides happiness."
|
| For you.
|
| For me, it is having the time to do what I wish. Currently
| helping a friend with recovery after a major surgery. Next
| month, who knows?
|
| No, it's not at all the same as "meaningful work".
|
| At least in part, I do not need the attaboys or regular 'sense
| of accomplishment' that one get from plate-spinning or other
| meaningful work.
| chuliomartinez wrote:
| You agree more than you disagree. Meaningful might be
| something else for you. But I bet deep down it is doing
| something for others (clients, coworkers, friends, family,
| even strangers) that gives meaning.
| ironbound wrote:
| Should of moved and signed up for physics classes on the East
| coast or Europe. No wonder they got pulled back into the valley
| bubble.
| modeless wrote:
| Retirement wasn't as interesting as a role at the company you
| founded where everyone looks up to you, doing whatever you feel
| like with no expectations or defined responsibilities? Shocker
|
| Seriously, I'm glad he came back and found something he's
| interested in. I bet his role has grown some responsibilities,
| too.
| pm90 wrote:
| I worked at a company with multiple cofounders; one of them
| became the CEO, the other one was initially CTO, but ultimately
| his title was just cofounder after a while and someone else was
| hired to be CTO. This person then went on to just prototype and
| build whatever he wanted to; the service he built ended up
| having no OC engineers supporting it, pages went to him but he
| didn't bother responding and nobody would tell him he had to
| respond lol. Ultimately people just didn't use that thing or
| delayed using it as they couldn't really rely on it.
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| It'd be funny if a manager used the playbook to manage him and
| give him reviews the same way
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Sergey unretires, Gemini suddenly becomes the top LLM (for a week
| or two at least)
|
| Google has made some subtle moves that a lot of folks missed,
| possibly with Sergey's influence. Like hiring back Noam Shazeer,
| who practically invented the backbone of the technology.
|
| It's good to have folks with presumptions of being scientists
| actually run companies for once.
|
| That being said, I wish his ex-wife hadn't spent her millions in
| the divorce proceedings to get RFK Jr into a cabinet level
| position to gut billions in research spending. :(
| m348e912 wrote:
| I don't know who to credit, maybe it's Sergey, but the free
| Gemini (fast) is exceptional and at this point I don't see how
| OpenAI can catch back up. It's not just capability, but OpenAI
| have added so many policy guardrails it hurts the user
| experience.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| You must be using it to create bombs or something. I never
| ran into an issue that I would blame on policy guardrails.
| energy123 wrote:
| It's the best model pound for pound, but I find GPT 5.2
| Thinking/Pro to be more useful for serious work when run with
| xhigh effort. I can get it to think for 20 minutes, but
| Gemini 3.0 Pro is like 2.5 minutes max. Obviously I lack full
| visibility because tok/s and token efficiency likely differs
| between them, but I take it as a proxy of how much compute
| they're giving us per inference, and it matches my subjective
| judgement of output quality. Maybe Google nerfs the reasoning
| effort in the Gemini subscription to save money and that's
| why I am experiencing this.
| cj wrote:
| I'm curious, what types of prompts are you running that
| benefit from 10+ minutes of think time?
|
| Whats the quality difference between default ChatGPT and
| Thinking? Is it an extra 20% quality boost or is the
| difference night/day?
|
| I've often imagined it would be great to have some kind of
| chrome extension or 3rd party tool to always run prompts in
| multiple thinking tiers so you can get an immediate
| response to read while you wait for the thinking models to
| think.
| energy123 wrote:
| It's for planning system architecture when I want to get
| something good (along the criteria that I give it) rather
| than the first thing that runs.
|
| I use Thinking and Pro. I don't use the default ChatGPT
| so can't comment on that. The difference between Thinking
| and Pro is modest but detectable. The 20 minute thinking
| times are with Pro, not with Thinking. But Pro only
| allows 60k tokens per prompt so I sometimes can't use it.
|
| In the $200/month subscription they give you access to a
| "heavy thinking" tier for Thinking which increases test
| time compute by maybe 30% compared to what you get in
| Plus.
| Version467 wrote:
| I recently bought into the $200 tier and was genuinely
| quite surprised at ChatGPT 5.2 Pros ability for software
| architecture planning. If you give it ~60k tokens of your
| codebase and a thorough description of what you actually
| want to happen then it comes up with _very_ good ideas.
| The biggest difference to me is how thorough it is. This
| is already something I noticed with the codex high /xhigh
| models compared to gemini 3 pro and opus 4.5, but gpt pro
| is noticeably better still.
|
| I guess it's not talked about as much because a lot fewer
| people have access to it, but after spending a bunch of
| time with gemini 3 and opus 4.5 I don't feel that openai
| has lost the lead at all. The benchmarks tell a different
| story, but for my real world use cases codex and gpt pro
| are still ahead. Better at sticking to my intent and
| fewer mistakes overall. It's slow, yes. But I can't write
| requirements as quickly as opus can misunderstand them
| anyway.
| knowriju wrote:
| When ChatGPT takes 20 minutes to reason, is it actually
| spending all the time burning tokens or does a bulk of the
| time go into 'scheduling' waits. If someone specifically
| selected xhigh reasoning, I am guessing it can be processed
| with high batch count.
| eru wrote:
| > [...] I don't see how OpenAI can catch back up.
|
| For a while people couldn't see how Google could catch up,
| either. Have a bit of imagination.
|
| In any case, I welcome the renewed intense competition.
| jart wrote:
| It's the worst thing ever. The amount of disrespect that
| robot shows you, when you talk the least bit weird or
| deviant, it just shows you a terrifying glimpse of a future
| that must be snuffed out immediately. I honestly think we
| wouldn't have half the people who so virulently hate AI if
| OpenAI hadn't designed ChatGPT to be this way. This isn't how
| people have normally reacted to next-generation level
| technologies being introduced in the past, like telephones,
| personal computers, Google Search, and iPhone. OpenAI has
| managed to turn something great into a true horror of horrors
| that's disturbed many of us to the foundation of our beings
| and elicited this powerful sentiment of rejection. It's
| humanity's duty that GPT should fall now so that better
| robots like Gemini can take its place.
| solarkraft wrote:
| FWIW, my productivity tanks when my Claude allowance dries up
| in Antigravity. I don't get the hype for Gemini for coding at
| all, it just does random crap for me - if it doesn't throw
| itself into a loop immediately, which it did like all of the
| times I gave it yet another chance.
| nsoonhui wrote:
| Sergey might have some positive influence on Gemini, but given
| that he isn't an AI scientist ( AKA no technical background), I
| really do wonder what sort of influence that (only) he could
| have had, beyond just bringing in key people.
| slyall wrote:
| I assume by "no technical background" you mean he doesn't
| have a PHD in AI.
|
| He's probably not developing the low-level algorithms but he
| can probably do everything else and has years of experience
| doing so.
|
| He's also perfectly able to spend 60 hours a week improving
| his AI skills using the best teachers in the world.
| fragmede wrote:
| The man that invented PageRank while going to college at
| Stanford for a PhD doesn't have a technical background? He
| did not get that PhD because he founded _Google_. He may not
| be as smart as you think you are, but he 's no slouch either.
| ithkuil wrote:
| A charitable interpretation of what GP said is that Brin
| might not have a specific expertise in AI.
|
| I also think this doesn't make sense, because he certainly
| stayed on top of things
| drewda wrote:
| It's not just millions. Shanahan received over a billion
| dollars when divorcing Brin:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Shanahan
|
| Today's unscientific gutting of the CDC's childhood vaccine
| schedule is what is being accomplished with all that $GOOG
| money.
|
| It's honestly very disturbing and rather than discuss it as a
| matter of politics, I'll just say that as a parent I'll be
| following the AAP's vaccination recommendations (even if their
| recommendations on baby sleep are impossible :)
| ngcazz wrote:
| While Brin comes back to Google to advocate for 60h workweeks
| as it lays off thousands of employees.
| neilv wrote:
| I'd be happy to do 60-hour weeks of good work, in a good
| environment.
|
| I wouldn't want 60-hour weeks of dealing with a lot of
| promotion-seekers, though.
|
| I wonder how different Google would be if they'd just paid
| people enough money they didn't have to think about money,
| but it was the same amount of money to everyone. You do the
| work, not for promotions, but because you like doing the
| work. You can train up for and transfer to different kinds
| of roles, but they pay the same.
| ngcazz wrote:
| Okay? I'm not making a point about how long individuals
| should want to spend working (although this being 2026 I
| believe it should be less not more)
|
| Alphabet has effectively monetized the world economy and
| gained outsized influence on policy, and Brin has about
| 25% of voting shares on the company
|
| His money is on advocating that people widely forfeit a
| right acquired by labor movements in the early 20th
| century, and through his ex, on public-sector scientific
| research becoming unviable
|
| This amounts nakedly (if fortuitously) a further
| consolidation of power and capital in the hands of a
| powerful few
| neilv wrote:
| I fully agree about the labor rights concerns.
|
| (In my head at 2am, I was (wrongly) taking that as a
| given, understood by everyone, and then remarking on a
| tangent from there. About the implications of 60hr/wk at
| Google specifically. And then going from there, about how
| maybe it didn't have to be like that. Moot for Google in
| reality, but it makes a good example for what-if thinking
| or daydreaming about how we'd like the next good tech
| employer to be.)
| Balinares wrote:
| Honestly, though, screw even that.
|
| There are so many things worth doing in so many areas
| that pinning your whole weekly life on a single one is
| just an immense waste.
|
| Cap the time that a company gets to have from you, and
| achieve so much more.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Why would I want to be paid the same amount as any moron
| that gets in? What motivation is there for me to work
| hard?
| neilv wrote:
| * You like the mission.
|
| * You like the craft.
|
| * You want to be there for your team.
|
| * You like that your financial needs are taken care of,
| so that you don't have to think about that.
|
| * You like that everyone else's financial needs are taken
| care of, because you want everyone to be happy.
|
| * You like that there's alignment by everyone on this.
| (Even though there will be disagreements on, say, how
| best to accomplish the mission.)
|
| If someone gets in and doesn't actually have or find
| motivations like that, or doesn't rise to the occasion
| despite help, I guess they'd be managed out. That
| cultural mismatch wouldn't be good for anyone involved.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Why would I want to be paid the same amount as any
| moron that gets in?
|
| You answered your question by yourself: the company has
| to prevent these morons from getting in.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's what's beautiful about this scheme: people with
| attitude you presented would self-select out of it.
|
| That solves half of the problem of typical work dynamics
| already; the second half, preventing unqualified morons
| from getting in and setting themselves up for life by
| being paid good money for doing nothing, would need to be
| solved in some other way.
| maest wrote:
| > even if their recommendations on baby sleep are impossible
|
| If you put yourself in their shoes, you realise that you have
| to give advice for the 10-20th percentile parents (or worse)
| because you are giving the same advice to everyone.
|
| The alternative would be to offer more complex advice such as
| "if X Y and Z then do A, if only X do B", but the perception
| is that's too difficult for people to follow.
|
| So you end up making very defensive (and therefore onerous)
| recommendations.
|
| An interesting fact is that, since the introduction of the
| "baby sleeps on their back, alone", SIDS has gone down, but
| flat heads have gone up. It's probably been a good tradeoff,
| but it's still a tradeoff.
|
| Also, I've seen a second time mother refer to "don't cosleep"
| advice as "western nonsense" which I found funny because it
| puts things in perspective - vast swathes of the world think
| cosleeping with your child is safe, natural and normal.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| I wonder whether we're trending towards a high-sensor
| variation of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" / Vannevar
| Bush's Memex that ingests the details of a user's daily
| life (the smart glasses being a primitive first example
| products of such) and identifies salient information in
| their lives can help us perform mass customization of
| instructions into direct prescriptives, with backing
| evidentiary data for SME's. Instead of "if X Y and Z then
| do A, if only X do B", the interaction becomes "do this,
| anticipate that outcome" to the user, and if an SME (a
| doctor in your example) asks about it, the system recalls
| and presents all the factors that went into deciding upon
| the specific prescriptive.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I'm not going to attribute Gemini's success to Sergey. It was
| already basically there before he came back.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Well all the core people left to do other shit, and when
| Sergey came back, some of those people were hired back for
| exorbitant sums of money
| vjk800 wrote:
| I've been a huge sceptic of the whole AI hype since the
| beginning now. Whenever I've tried any of the AI tools, the
| results have just been underwhelming. However, two weeks ago I
| tried Gemini (the pro version) and have been using it for
| various, random tasks and questions since then, and I've been
| pretty impressed.
|
| There seems to be much less hallucination of facts than in
| other tools I've tried and whenever Gemini makes assumptions on
| stuff I didn't explicitly specify in the prompt, it says so.
| The answers also always have nice structure: it starts with a
| short and concise version, then gives me options and more
| details and considerations.
|
| I also like the feature that I can make it remember facts
| across chats. I'm a physicist by training and I've told Gemini
| so, so now every time I ask something, it gives me an answer
| perfectly tailored for a physicist (often with mathematical
| formulas, etc.).
| arjie wrote:
| It's been great to see. Google's AI efforts have truly seen a
| resurgence in quality with his return. What I enjoy about this
| article is the fact that it presents a view that now seems
| relatively rare: the idea that you may have a purpose beyond
| pleasure and that pursuing that purpose is a more fulfilling
| pleasure than any comfort you could give yourself.
|
| I think that kind of thing strikes many people. Sometimes like
| with Socrates and his _daimonion_ which restrained him from risk
| and other times like with one of my favourite lines in all
| literature where Ahab of _Moby Dick_ remarks:
|
| > What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it;
| what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless
| emperor commands me?
|
| I find so much of this relatable in my own way, billions absent.
| It's good to see there are others who feel this way. Community
| from afar.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I don't buy this narrative (notwithstanding that great
| commencement speeches are almost always hyperbole). The way I
| see it Sergey HAD to come back or risk the poorly managed mess
| that is google completely drop the AI leadership . It proves
| again that all thats good in Google happened exclusively
| because of the two founders and that their CEO is not an
| effective leader at all.
| mikert89 wrote:
| Basically yeah, a lot of people just keeping the lights on
| alex1138 wrote:
| I've been curious how much the Facebook IPO affected the
| industry also
|
| We know they lied about video metrics; everyone has to pivot
| to video to stay competitive (with fradulent metrics)
|
| Given the suspicion of fake accounts and further ad fraud how
| much have companies felt they have to follow trends rather
| than come up with sort of, their own organic business models
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I'd have guessed that Google's rapid advance with Gemini was
| more due to the merger of Google Brain with DeepMind under
| Demis Hassabis than the return of Sergey Brin.
|
| I remember seeing an interview (Dwarkesh?) with Sholto Douglas
| who had been working at Google at the time (now at Anthropic)
| who said he would work late there and the only other person was
| Sergey Brin, apparently wanting to be part of (or following)
| the development/training process.
| scottyah wrote:
| To be fair, working late doesn't have quite the same effect
| when nobody is going to judge you for not coming in on time
| or at all the next day.
| pm90 wrote:
| Living as we do in a society where basic needs are not guaranteed
| without a giant pile of money, most humans don't get to
| experience what it feels like to be in a place where you don't
| base your life decisions on financial well being. Thats very
| limiting; it isn't that surprising that someone who has achieved
| that is now looking for meaning in other things. Besides: if
| you're Sergey Brin, I imagine you can get to talk/work with
| whatever at Google interests you most and hand off the gruntwork
| to minions all the while being treated with deep reverence. It's
| not exactly hard to see why he might like it.
|
| One thing I wish more people would understand though is that this
| is also the best case for some kind of guarantee of basic
| necessities for every human (UBI, State Subsidies, whatever).
| Once we know we won't just die, people might then spend their
| time on trying out different things and figuring out what works
| best for them. I believe we could achieve an overall better
| society this way.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I don't think this is really accurate because the traditional
| state of society, and one that remains in the 'developing
| world' which is almost certainly still the wide majority of the
| world at this point, is families living in multi generational
| housing with many people contributing. This enables older to
| generations to comfortably 'retire' when they see fit, and
| provides financial comfort and security. It's basically like
| decentralized pensions.
|
| This new world of low fertility, small household size or even
| people living entirely alone, high external dependence, and the
| consequent broad insecurity - is still extremely new. And I do
| not think it will survive the test of time.
| adrianN wrote:
| I think you might be romanticizing multi-generational
| households a bit. We introduced social security systems
| precisely because the family systems failed so frequently. In
| all but the richest families no retirement as we understand
| it today was possible. Illness or death of the main bread
| winners was fatal to the whole household and children were
| expected to work as soon as possible.
| ares623 wrote:
| I base my multigenerational dream on the documentary
| "Encanto"
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You are 100% correct.
|
| Pre-1960s, the elderly were living in SROs, often
| windowless, with family (without aid or care), in county
| poorhouses, or marked as senile and sent to a mental
| hospital.
|
| Retirement and living with family was viable for many as
| long as they remained healthy. People imagine Norman
| Rockwell. Reality was very different.
| somenameforme wrote:
| There's a great article on the history of social security
| here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Social_Secur
| ity_in_...
|
| It was not because family systems were failing. It came
| about in the era of the great depression, and the idea was
| rather unpopular at first, particularly among groups like
| farmers who had no interest in the new taxes that would
| come alongside it. Some of the arguments in favor of it
| were it being a way to get older individuals out of the
| work force in order to make room for younger workers. You
| have to keep in mind it was introduced at a time when
| unemployment rates were upwards of 20%. And retirement was
| and is absolutely possible. When people own their land and
| house and have basic maintenance skills, your overhead
| costs become _extremely_ low.
|
| Of course there's also no reason these things must be
| mutually exclusive. I think the ideal is to learn from the
| past, which proved its sustainability over millennia, and
| work to improve it. In modern times we've instead set out
| to completely replace it - or at least build up something
| from scratch, and what we've created just doesn't seem
| particularly sustainable.
| laughingcow wrote:
| It has been my observation that those that retire without solid
| plans to keep busy 15-20 hours a week really do struggle. You
| have to be missed by people when you are sick or out of town. You
| have to have a reason to get out of bed. I think your choice of
| activity tells a lot about you since the 'pay the bills and save
| for retirement" argument no longer applies. Some volunteer to
| better the world. Some continue their life work to take wealth
| from those with less power.
| alansaber wrote:
| You're saying he should have gone the Gates path and formed an
| NGO? Fair enough but I imagine nothing else matches the thrill
| and stress of running the C suite at Google
| lillecarl wrote:
| Mitchell Hashimoto went on to create a new awesome terminal
| emulator, in a programming language he had not used (much)
| before. Sounds like a great way to stay entertained!
| fragmede wrote:
| That, and flying fighter jets for fun.
| jedberg wrote:
| I retired when my first kid was born. I had plenty to keep me
| busy playing with her, taking care of her, traveling with her.
| And then we had the second one, and were extra busy.
|
| But I was still "working" the whole time. I was running a small
| startup, and still keeping up on tech and taking speaking gigs. I
| was not great at fully retiring.
|
| I unretired when the second kid got to 1st grade. We could no
| longer travel on a whim and the house was empty 6 hours a day. I
| didn't seek work, but someone reached out with an interesting job
| and I didn't say no.
|
| Funny enough, my wife and I were just talking about how we were
| both bad at retirement (she also retired and has since gone back
| to work). But we talked about how the next retirement will be
| better, because the kids will be gone and we'll just sit around
| making art and building Lego all day.
|
| We'll see if that actually happens!
| qweiopqweiop wrote:
| You didn't retire at all if you still were running a startup
| surely? You just had multiple jobs and quit one.
| jedberg wrote:
| I retired in the sense that I was in complete control of my
| time and had no active income, living off of assets alone.
| HendrikHensen wrote:
| It's honestly a bit confusing to use words to mean things
| that they don't generally mean.
|
| Retirement has the definition to stop working. One could
| argue that another definition may be that you reach an
| older age and start receiving pension payouts (regardless
| of whether you keep working or not).
|
| But having a passive income alone simply doesn't mean
| retirement.
| Angostura wrote:
| You switched jobs to childcare
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| Humans spent thousands of years living in small groups where
| everyone had to be useful. When all of sudden you stop working
| and sit in your corner, you are doing something that run against
| thousands of years of evolution.
| InMice wrote:
| I scrolled this whole thread curious if someone would make this
| simple observation. We did not survive and evolve for millions
| of years to be born and then do nothing, to not meet needs and
| have needs met. Historical precedent, tamper with carefully.
|
| I am partial fire and I feel that line of demarcation
| personally. I've also watched it play out in others like
| clockwork. As wealth grows, new responsibilities emerge.
| vander_elst wrote:
| If I could I'd retire tomorrow, I have so many projects I would
| like to take on, I have the feeling I could fill 3 lives with
| them: gardening, learning math, system programming, wine tasting,
| carpentry, sport, traveling etc... There are *so* many
| interesting things to do and so little time. I guess time will
| tell but at the moment I have a hard time imagining myself
| getting bored.
| leptons wrote:
| In my old age I'm learning that this is rare. I take my
| projects for granted, because I guess I'm just very creative, I
| have way more "projects" than I have days remaining. But it
| seems like most people have no projects, and nothing in their
| lives but watching television, playing video games, or doom
| scrolling.
| leoedin wrote:
| Yeah, my main worry about retirement is that I'll spend all my
| money on tools and projects.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's going to be the main problem for me heirs: where do
| all the tools go :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| me -> my
| fuzztester wrote:
| for me, it would be bread and cheese making (easier cheese
| varieties), vegetable fermentation, more cooking of various
| cuisines including indian ones, drawing and painting,
| carpentry, permaculture (i did organic gardening earlier, which
| is a subset), wood carving (done some before), and maybe
| tailoring (making clothes, by hand or by sewing machine, for
| own use).
|
| only a few at a time, of course, maybe only two, and by
| rotation. and then maybe i would narrow it down to two or three
| for long term.
|
| would try to make money from a few of them too.
| lionkor wrote:
| Arguably Sergey should have just gotten into Sourdough.
| darkwater wrote:
| Same here. It's no a big surprise that the article is addressed
| to CEOs which are usually the embodiment of workaholism.
| abracos wrote:
| It's about scale, when you built something as grand as google
| you don't want to spend time building a garden
| prawn wrote:
| Could at least try building a bigger garden!
| driverdan wrote:
| For some people that's the case. For others after working on
| something so large they want to do something small that is
| wholly theirs.
| gedy wrote:
| Not to knock you specifically, but I know a lot of people who
| say that they have no time for this stuff waste a ton of time
| watching TV and doom scrolling.
|
| I try remind myself of this with the Bukowski poem 'air and
| light and time and space':
| https://allpoetry.com/poem/14326888-air-and-light-and-time-a...
| cuttothechase wrote:
| Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with
| non-work.
|
| We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a
| lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about
| lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come
| to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday
| morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to
| not feel the hustle and the adrenaline rush of experiencing the
| blues Monday morning!?
|
| Another colleague used to drive up to the parking lot of their
| previous employer, post lay-off., so that he could feel
| _normal_., and he did this for well over 6 - 8 months. Pack bags,
| wave to his wife and family, drive up in his Porsche to the
| parking lot and I guess feel normal !?
| beambot wrote:
| Sounds a bit... Neurodivergent.
| csomar wrote:
| I am guessing if you have been doing this daily for a couple
| decades then the neurodivergence is _not_ going through this.
| I assume any normal person will find it hard to not do _any_
| kind of work and if you spent 20 years of your life doing
| tech, how useful are in the "real" world. Unless you have
| been doing handy work on the sides, spoiler alert: not much.
| mr_toad wrote:
| 'You don't have to be neurodivergent to work here... ...but
| it helps!'
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of
| "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm
| Marcus, I'm IT Director of <business>" that suddenly having
| nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do
| you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good
| identity.
|
| I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always
| be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google.
|
| But that "work as identity" may still be a problem. For a lot
| of us, what we do _is_ who we are, and so not having any work
| to do is like not having an identity.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > When people asked "what do you do?"
|
| I found that outside of CA, this is asked a lot less often.
| In CA people ask that so they can mentally rank you as worth
| their time or not. Elsewhere, people ask you how your weekend
| went, or how your family is. One of the awesome parts of
| moving to Austin was not hearing that as the first question
| as much.
| alexjplant wrote:
| > I found that outside of CA, this is asked a lot less
| often.
|
| I moved _to_ California a few years ago from the Least
| Coast (insert shaka, surfer, wave emojis here) and had
| multiple other out-of-towners in the same situation as me
| say the exact opposite at a party. They all were adamant
| that they had yet to hear "what do you do [for a living]?"
| since they'd moved as they did ad nauseum when they lived
| on the other side of the country.
|
| I've not noticed either way. My pet theory is that people
| hear this frequently if their social and professional lives
| bleed into each other which they do if one lives in a town
| dominated by a specific industry or profession. Those
| moving westward during COVID and remote work suddenly had
| to contend with this much less.
| zippyman55 wrote:
| Never hear that question either. I don't ask it either.
| I've actually been pretty successful but asking that
| question seems to rank someone on a scale that does not
| reflect their amazing contributions to society.
| alexjplant wrote:
| I ask because a) I'm interested in the same way that a
| child is in what people's jobs are and b) it gives me a
| frame of reference for interacting with them
| conversationally vis a vis common ground.
|
| Wealth signaling still seems to me to be done primarily
| by conspicuous consumption and expensive hobbies.
| burner420042 wrote:
| You're describing my father. Now that he's retired his lack
| of hobbies is really catching up to him. His only hobby has
| been working and I've noted this about him since I was an
| adolescent and decided then as something I would not emulate.
|
| A few times I've quit a FAANG job with no plan for after
| other than to wander, and both times the lack of professional
| competition meant not just coasting horizontally but that I
| was actually lowering myself somehow. Hard to explain, and I
| don't fully understand it.
|
| I also noticed most people, especially women, determine your
| value by your 'right now'. While intentionally unemployed I'd
| answer truthfully and with a smile, 'I'm unemployed!' which
| visibly confused people.
| RobRivera wrote:
| The people worth knowing were the ones enthusiastically
| socializing with me after uttering that phrase.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| life is phase oriented
|
| when i'm working i find retired people boring
|
| when im taking 6+ month break i find the nervous energy of
| employed people annoying
|
| ultimately, comfort comes from being around like minded
| people
|
| then again seeking comfort rings hollow to me, even though
| it's quite enjoyable in the moment.
| james_marks wrote:
| This is especially true around NYC, SF, LA. The culture is
| built around accomplishment and work identity.
|
| Much less true in other places (e.g. Midwest), where
| community / taking care of others is valued.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >While intentionally unemployed I'd answer truthfully and
| with a smile, 'I'm unemployed!' which visibly confused
| people.
|
| The proper term is "Funemployed"
| intended wrote:
| Hoo boy, this is definitely a weird one to navigate,
| especially if you have a weird set of roles. It takes time to
| settle various threads and figure out how to address this.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I've found asking "what do you like to do" vs "what do you
| do" to produce much more interesting conversation.
| stavros wrote:
| I really don't like getting asked what I do for a living. I
| exchange labour for money somewhere out of necessity,
| what's at all interesting about that? What I do in my free
| time is who I am, and that's much more interesting to talk
| about, to me.
| dirkc wrote:
| I sometimes joke and say that I type for a living, not
| entirely untrue. But I've found that sometimes people are
| offended if I answer their question evasively
| dopidopHN2 wrote:
| I work in a buttons factory
| oefrha wrote:
| I don't like getting asked what I do for hobbies. The
| real answer I want to give is "none of your business",
| but I'm polite enough to never say that, so it gets
| awkward.
|
| Getting asked what I do for a living is totally fine.
| It's on my website, the whole world can find out if they
| bother to search. I'll save you a search.
|
| The point is people are different. Not everyone wants to
| share their private interests with you, especially if you
| just met. What you consider interesting conversation,
| well, for some of us it's just intrusive. I also don't
| care what you like to do 99% of the time. I've been
| socially forced to sit through way too many of these
| "interesting conversations".
| pastorhudson wrote:
| I always ask "What do you do for fun?"
| scottyah wrote:
| Same! I love the pregnant pause after "What do you do..."
| as they start to mentally draw up their usual work spiel
| before adding the "...for fun" to flip the conversation
| around and actually get their brain thinking and
| exploring beyond the standard conversation flows.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > When people asked "what do you do?"
|
| "I mostly breathe. It's a bore but you gotta do it"
|
| "I meant for a living"
|
| "Same"
| blitzar wrote:
| "waste management"
| throw101010 wrote:
| I'd say we moreso produce waste than manage it as humans.
| We seem actually pretty bad at managing it unfortunately.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Who were you before you got a job? No one? Nothing?
|
| I identify more with myself as a child than I ever did with
| my work.
|
| Why would I identify with someone else's goals that I'm being
| paid to help achieve?
| scottyah wrote:
| If you ever get to talk to people who are more than
| laborers trading time for dollars, it is great fun. When
| dollars are just one of the many rewards from their career
| (where a person spends like 80% of their life energy), you
| get to hear a lot of passion, learning and growth. It
| really is a whole different way to live.
| lucianbr wrote:
| What is the point of the "I'm Marcus" part of your
| introduction? Reading your post I get the impression it has
| zero value, or at least you think so.
|
| > Hi, I'm Marcus
|
| > What do you do Marcus
|
| > I'm on a break now, but I used to be a director of IT
|
| Is this really difficult? Seems really easy, and I was never
| a director of anything. Maybe that's the problem.
| jaapz wrote:
| For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of
| their identity, that for them this is a problem. That is I
| guess the point the person you were replying to was trying
| to make.
|
| It's also not really weird for a job to become such a big
| part of your identity, when people spend most of their time
| at work or at home thinking about their work.
| phrotoma wrote:
| A couple years ago a friend of mine mentioned that he had
| known another mutual friend of ours for many years, much
| longer than I would have guessed. I asked him "what does
| he do?" and he thought for a moment before saying "you
| know ... I have no idea, it has never come up".
|
| Definitely one of his more interesting qualities.
| foobarian wrote:
| I don't know if this is acceptable in the US, but I
| always found it distasteful when people ask about your
| job 30 seconds into meeting you. I think it's much more
| polite to talk about generic stuff until jobs or skills
| come up naturally. Sometimes, they just never do, and
| that's fine. Need to know!
| jasode wrote:
| _> For some people, their work/job is just such a big
| part of their identity, that for them this is a problem.
| _
|
| That's only 1/2 of the dynamic. People also like to
| _assign an identity to others_.
|
| For example, if I say, _" I'm semi-retired."_ ... the
| follow-up question is always _" Oh, so what did you do
| before that?"_ ... which is polite coded-speak for, _"
| Did you inherit money or what work did you do for money
| that put you in the position to do that?"_
|
| People are naturally curious about your rough level of
| success, wealth, expertise, etc. Having a "no identity"
| stance isn't really a satisfactory answer for many
| listeners. _They want to know more._
|
| EDIT to replies: I do understand the harmless "small
| talk" aspect. I should've added more to re-emphasize the
| _" people assigning identity"_ aspect.
|
| Once I reply to the followup question with _" Oh, I used
| to do consulting for finance"_ what then happens is
| others then introduce me as _" And this is jasode -- he
| was a consultant for X"_. My ex-consultant life that I
| last did over 15 years ago is now part of a
| tagline/subheading associated with my name even though I
| never intended it.
|
| The point is other people have this irresistible urge to
| "fill in the blank" with an identity -- especially an
| identity that is tied to how one earned money. I'm not
| complaining about this and it's just an observation of
| what humans naturally do.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| It's also a low risk topic that can generate lots of
| follow up questions. It's regular small talk. Also,
| people here seem to downplay it, but doesn't it tell you
| a lot about a person what they do roughly half of their
| waking time? What they chose to do with their life? Sure,
| you're not your job or your career, but it's also a very
| normal part about getting to know someone and I'm not
| sure equating it to some way of gauging success levels is
| necessarily to right way to think about it.
| jasode wrote:
| _> It's regular small talk. Also, people here seem to
| downplay it, but doesn't it tell you a lot about a person
| what they do roughly half of their waking time? What they
| chose to do with their life?_
|
| Having a natural ebb & flow to conversation is all true
| but that's not the issue. Let me restate it differently.
|
| It's ok and natural to ask what people do/did for work.
| It's also natural to respond and share what was a
| significant aspect of their life.
|
| The meta-observation is: others then like to compress
| whatever life narrative they hear into a "shorthand" or
| "identity" -- even if the recipient never intended it to
| be his/her identity. Several parent comments mention _"
| their work being their identity is the problem"_. My
| point is that the identity we get tagged with is often
| outside of our control and we didn't create the problem
| of work being our identity.
|
| My neighbors know me as the "ex-consultant". For that
| identity to change, I'd have to do something new that was
| significant enough to override that ... such as... get
| into another career, open a restaurant, become founder of
| a startup, etc.
|
| How does one have "no identity related to their job"?
| Sometimes you can't unless one wants to be evasive about
| what one does to earn money.
| gen220 wrote:
| Situations like this work as a filter of sorts (If you're
| so obsessed with measuring relative status/prestige that
| you want to reduce me to a job title, we're probably not
| going to be friends?).
|
| The fact that you're neighbors with these people changes
| things. Maybe it's a wedge into a Socratic discussion
| about how work isn't and has never been your identity,
| where you come to some new and better mutual
| understanding.
|
| But yeah it's challenging. If people are so accustomed to
| viewing about themselves and others thru the conventional
| status/hierarchical lens... sometimes they can't
| understand that it's a lens and not reality.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You can often politely dodge probing questions about your
| employment. When someone, for the purpose of small talk,
| asks me what I do for a living I just say I'm an exotic
| dancer or a runway model. It's funny and breaks the ice a
| little. Then I'll ask them about their watch or
| something. If they insist "no, really, what do you do for
| a living??" I'll politely say I work with computers and
| again try to move on. Very rarely I'll get someone who
| won't drop it "come on, WHAT COMPANY???" and at that
| point I know they're really not interested in talking--
| they just want to stack rank me in terms of importance or
| salary or whatever and I politely dip.
| dpark wrote:
| > My neighbors know me as the "ex-consultant" ... How
| does one have "no identity related to their job"?
|
| The obvious answer is to have some other identifier that
| supersedes the job. Do you have some other interest or
| hobby that you spend your time doing? That you talk about
| all the time?
|
| People get associated with their job because it's
| probably the thing they spend the most time on and it's
| also a common topic of conversation. If every time
| someone asked you about your job you said, "it's good"
| and steered the conversation into a story about your
| latest epic ski trip, you'd probably be the "guy who
| skis" instead of the "ex-consultant".
| pixl97 wrote:
| >It's also a low risk topic
|
| In modern life, yes. I wonder if it was such a low risk
| topic as we moved towards the past? For example the fear
| of the stranger is something that is very common in past
| writing across a number of cultures. If you met a
| stranger and they said they were a soldier it would have
| different ramifications than if they said they were a
| baker. Also in smaller social groups that required the
| work of everyone to survive it was a way of measuring the
| resources available in said group.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is not just about assigning identity to others.
|
| I am probing for topics of mutual interest, or topics
| that make other people passionate, to learn more about
| them generally.
|
| In some people, this is completely orthogonal to their
| careers, but most of the time, there is an overlap. Like,
| I haven't yet met a railway engineer who wasn't a raging
| railway nerd at the same time.
| yibg wrote:
| > People are naturally curious about your rough level of
| success, wealth, expertise, etc.
|
| I definitely find this more true in some cultures. e.g.
| silicon valley, it seems people want to know where you're
| at on the "hierarchy". Many parts of Asia too, you get
| treated differently if you're a low level worker, regular
| worker, executive etc.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| It's like when people say their pronouns, but for nouns.
| weinzierl wrote:
| > _So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of
| <business>" [..]_
|
| Risking a stereotype. In my experience from traveling the
| world it's a tell-tale sign for being from a culture heavily
| influenced by the Protestant work ethic. Introduce yourself
| like that in Spain, Italy, or Brazil and you'll get strange
| looks.
|
| On the flip side, I've found that people who do not define
| themselves through their work primarily often do so through
| family. My younger self is certainly guilty of giving someone
| a strange look when within the first five minutes of meeting
| them, they told me whose cousin they were.
| throw101010 wrote:
| In a business/formal context it would be normal to
| introduce yourself like this in the countries you've
| mentioned.
|
| Do people introduce themselves like that in informal
| contexts in the USA? If so that's indeed a bit weird, and
| more a topic you would start talking about for small talk
| or if someone asked about it.
| dopidopHN2 wrote:
| Depends on where. In big city yes
| abraxas wrote:
| Americans don't usually have friends. Just "contacts".
| Working age "parties" are often just cloaked networking
| events.
| endemic wrote:
| I would find it strange if someone introduced themselves
| to me with their business title. I sometimes ask "what do
| you do for a living?" as small talk, but that's
| solicited.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Even when it's solicited, I think it's weird. I don't
| tell people what I do for a living when I introduce
| myself. And when they ask, I tell them I'm an exotic
| dancer. It's a silly joke (since I'm a fat 50 year old)
| that tends to break the ice and lighten up the
| conversation. In general, I think small-talking about
| what you do for a living is not really interesting to
| people, and just allows them to silently put you
| somewhere on their mental totem pole of importance.
| Better to talk about actual interests.
| dpark wrote:
| > Better to talk about actual interests.
|
| For many people, what they do for work is by far their
| biggest interest.
|
| Many people have few to zero hobbies. They fill their
| days with work and then distraction.
| Mc_Big_G wrote:
| Correct. If you said your title in Spain, you'll get a
| strange look and someone might respond with "why would you
| tell me that?". No one there cares what you do for work.
| xfalcox wrote:
| First time I was in San Francisco and someone introduced
| themselves like that, going even beyond, was indeed a super
| weird experience being a brazilian.
| yibg wrote:
| Not very common as the intro, but pretty common around here
| (bay area) to get asked that pretty soon after the intro. I
| don't like it, and I wished people didn't focus so much on
| it though.
| blitzar wrote:
| > So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of
| <business>"
|
| Tech bros would mock Finance bros who would open a
| conversation with anyone who would listen with "Hi, I'm
| Marcus, I work at Goldman Sachs" and yet here we are now ...
|
| "Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Google"
| rwmj wrote:
| Make up a name, print some business cards, and be a
| "director" (or whatever title you like) of your own Potemkin
| company.
| triceratops wrote:
| > "what do you do?"
|
| "Whatever I feel like"
| QuercusMax wrote:
| When I lived in the bay area for a few years, everybody would
| tell you where they worked, and if you didn't tell them,
| they'd ask. Since moving to Portland, I've definitely noticed
| that people are much more interested in what you do during
| your leisure time.
| jonfromsf wrote:
| After a decade, "founder of X that I no longer work at" is
| considered a lame answer. People want to know what you are
| doing now, not your highest claim to status of your entire
| life.
| scotty79 wrote:
| [flagged]
| stavros wrote:
| When you define yourself solely by work, you lose your entire
| identity when you retire. Most people don't have hobbies, so
| work is literally the one thing they have in their lives.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| This is why people should have an opportunity to semi-
| retire when they are still young. A year or two. United
| States safety net does not really allow that unless you are
| loaded already.
|
| It's very helpful to zoom out and do LIFE for a change. I
| got laid off three years ago, started my own project.
| Didn't take off, but also two mini-mes showed up during
| that time, and I am infinitely grateful that I could punt
| on work and just be there.
|
| Hashtag blessed and all. That backrent I owe now, well,
| that's a bitch.
| le-mark wrote:
| English surnames would seem to indicate being identified by
| one's work has a long history (smith, miller, cooper, ...)
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's really interesting that my comment here where I said
| that employment can inflict brain damage got flagged even
| though previous comment described behavior that would be
| obviously significant clinical symptom if it was caused by
| anything else as it is irrational and detrimental.
| amelius wrote:
| I don't get this. Just find a coworking space and work on a
| FOSS project.
| cheschire wrote:
| Seriously. There are so many opportunities to give back to
| society. One does not need formal employment to be fulfilled.
|
| I will say in Sergey Brin's case, he had the unique
| opportunity to go back to work with the best and brightest
| without any friction, and nobody could tell him "hey maybe
| your credentials don't quite stack up high enough for this
| department yeah?"
|
| But for the rest of us, there's FOSS, there's computer
| repair, home automation, day trading a small fraction of your
| wealth, volunteer work at hospitals and libraries, gig work
| apps like taskrabbit...
|
| If you are bored after being away from work for even a month,
| I'm not sure I could be friends with you.
| wslh wrote:
| I think it's difficult for a normal brain to live with the
| low impact of another project while you created Google. Also,
| the speed of a personal developer is nothing compared with
| the speed of a software engineering area or company. You can
| easily feel like a turtle even working on an interesting
| project.
| jart wrote:
| I left Google to build an open source project a long time
| ago. A big part of the appeal was being able to have
| something to work on that's truly mine. Sergey already has
| something that's his and it's called Google. So I think he
| belongs there.
| fragmede wrote:
| The world thanks you for your work. Which one of yours is
| your favorite?
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| > _drive up in his Porsche to the parking lot_
|
| I wonder if that'd still be the case should he drive a Ford
| Focus.
| freehorse wrote:
| If he drove a Ford Focus and did this everyday, I bet they
| would have called the police.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Wasn't sergey forced out for hitting on employees? It seems
| pretty reasonable for him to be unhappy with a forced
| retirement and ultimately unwind it now that meeto is pretty
| much over.
| YeahThisIsMe wrote:
| That must be what it's like to have a job where you feel like
| you're doing something interesting and meaningful.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Mental illness. They tied their entire sense of self to some
| job at some company. Their body belongs in some parking lot on
| somebody's schedule.
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| I hear what you're saying, but routines, especially long-
| lived, are difficult to break/change. It's normal to have
| phantom limbs when they are cut off.
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| A mentally healthy person wants to be helpful. They want to
| be seen as helpful and they expect others around them to be
| helpful as well. This is the foundation of "pro-social"
| behavior: I benefit the group as much or more than the group
| benefits me.
|
| Tying your identity to the place where you're helpful and
| where that help is appreciated and acknowledged isn't mental
| illness.
| WJW wrote:
| But this person was laid off. His help was (apparently) not
| appreciated, and he's not helping anyone by sitting alone
| in his car on the parking lot.
|
| Do you think it is healthy behavior to go to a parking lot
| at 0900 every day and do nothing because you mentally
| cannot face the idea of not going to an office?
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| Coping mechanisms are complex and diverse. The individual
| in question lost a major source of meaning-making in
| their life and was struggling to cope with that loss. I
| don't believe this is any less healthy than other common
| responses, which range from societal withdrawal to
| substance abuse.
| fragmede wrote:
| > His help was (apparently) not appreciated
|
| That's just your take. We don't know where he sat in the
| team, so we can assume the idea that he wasn't
| appreciated by his teammates as incorrect. He didn't make
| the cut based on unknown metrics from upper management,
| but they have their own reasons for doing things.
|
| Getting in to the parking lot of the old office sounds
| way healthier than not making it out of bed at all.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > Getting in to the parking lot of the old office sounds
| way healthier than not making it out of bed at all.
|
| Missing your ex and lying around depressed in bed is less
| unhealthy than getting into the car and sitting outside
| their house.
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| You've cherry-picked a situation where there is an
| obvious social norm being broken. A better example would
| be going to the park and sitting on the bench you used to
| sit on with your ex. I agree with GP that this is
| healthier than lying despondent in bed.
| Melatonic wrote:
| They could go anywhere though - why not go to a coffee
| shop at 9 with a laptop or on a morning hike? I agree
| sitting in bed depressed would be bad but it seems like
| avoiding the issue to specifically sit in the parking lot
| of an old employer.
|
| At minimum I think it would be healthier to tie part of
| your identify to an aspect of your career you enjoy
| rather than a specific employer itself.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| That is really not healthy.
| kshacker wrote:
| I took a four-year break from work (2009-2013) and moved to
| India. The reasons were simple: some family health issues
| required downtime (though probably not as much as I ended up
| taking), and I could afford to do this in India in a way I
| couldn't in the US. This happened to coincide with the market
| bottom, but I wasn't laid off--it was entirely voluntary.
|
| I didn't experience an identity crisis for a single day. I
| didn't feel insecure or anxious about not working. The only
| real friction came from my family.
|
| One big difference was social life. In India, I was constantly
| meeting people--connections were easy and organic. In the US,
| maintaining a daytime social life felt much harder. Everyone is
| on a treadmill--insurance, income, careers--often not by
| choice. I know there are ways to build community here, but in
| India it just happened naturally.
|
| My extended family struggled more than I did. Once it became
| clear the break wasn't temporary, there was a kind of quiet
| depression around it. I initially framed it as "taking a
| breather" by doing an executive MBA, but the break never really
| ended.
|
| What eventually brought me back wasn't overt pressure, but
| practical limits: my spouse's mental health, and the
| constraints of India's education system for our partially
| disabled, special-ed child. Those realities mattered more than
| any career concern.
| janandonly wrote:
| I am 1,5 years into a break. Haven't had time to feel bored
| yet. But I do look forward to a 9-5 job again, just for the
| structure it provides.
| kshacker wrote:
| If you can afford it, why get back? Now after a dozen years
| I am bored of my 9-5 but running the race to make my FIRE
| numbers plus provide some cushion for my son with
| disabilities but if I had a choice I would quit again ( but
| I am much older now )
| ericmay wrote:
| > One big difference was social life. In India, I was
| constantly meeting people--connections were easy and organic.
| In the US, maintaining a daytime social life felt much
| harder. Everyone is on a treadmill--insurance, income,
| careers--often not by choice. I know there are ways to build
| community here, but in India it just happened naturally.
|
| The primary reason for this is the built environment we live
| in here in the United States. It's very difficult to
| organically build connections when you have to drive a car
| somewhere to have basic social interactions. Even some of the
| items you mention, like insurance and income are very much
| informed by the requirement to have a car to participate in
| society.
| geodel wrote:
| I don't know if it is build environment or cultural thing.
| In US showing up at friends, or neighbors unannounced and
| spend hour or two would be very odd if not downright
| impolite. But in India it is something everyone would do or
| at least used to do a 15-20 yrs back when I was there.
|
| One simple reason I think is overall US is very rich so
| people just can have anything they need on their own and
| sharing small things which lead to more interaction is
| simply not needed.
| ericmay wrote:
| It's a little of both but the built environment is the
| primary issue.
|
| We have neighbors - sometimes we need someone to grab a
| package, or we make too much food and we share, &c. or we
| run into each other walking to a restaurant or through
| the park. But this isn't the norm. We live in a
| neighborhood built before the introduction of cars, so
| homes are built a little bit closer together, but not too
| close, and we have mixed-use developments and a good
| level of density to support restaurants and other
| amenities.
|
| You can't have spontaneous interactions like that easily
| in the United States because we build too much sprawl,
| visiting people or showing up to a bar requires a drive,
| and in the end you wind up just staying at home
| participating in surrogate activities like social media.
|
| It really comes down solely to cars and car-only
| infrastructure that degrades our social interactions to
| an extreme extent.
|
| -edit-
|
| I do want to mention, at least when I was a kid/teenager
| I recall we used to show up to people's houses
| uninvited/unannounced too. But we did _not_ talk to our
| neighbors. That was a _weird_ thing. There are some
| cultural things here. But also even if we wanted to visit
| someone, well, gotta hop in the car. Maybe stop and get
| gas, and the next thing you know, eh it 's too much
| effort. Might as way stay home. That's kind of how that
| works. The car-only model that is implemented in most of
| America, particularly the cities not so much rural areas,
| is a leading cause of cultural and social malaise I
| believe in the West.
| massysett wrote:
| I don't think the built environment is that
| determinative. I live in a car-dependent suburb. Walk
| Score 2.
|
| My neighbor knows the whole street. She knows the garbage
| men. It's because she wants to. When I run into her
| outside, she chats. She walks her dog and chats with dog
| owners and anyone else she sees.
|
| Easy relationships are available at the grocery store,
| post office, etc. I've been seeing some of the same
| people working at Costco for years. I don't know them.
| It's not the built environment. I'd need to take effort
| to build a relationship with them. My neighbor would. I'm
| simply not so inclined.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is an incredibly important point - you could remove
| the car entirely, even make you dependent on others (as
| you're dependent - or were before self checkout - on the
| Costco clerk) - and you still would have the disconnect.
|
| Hardship can _force_ it more often, perhaps, but that is
| accidental and secondary.
|
| In all the times I've traveled on forms of "mass transit"
| (airplanes, subways, trains) the only time I've ever
| really _talked_ to someone was at the seat-together
| dining on a long-distance train. Otherwise you can sit
| next to someone for 20+ hours and never say much more
| than "excuse me" if you need to use the restroom.
|
| (Another counter to this is kids, if you have kids and
| there are kids anywhere within screaming distance, they
| will find each other and immediately be best friends.
| Parents get dragged along -
| https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-2/cafe/ )
| ericmay wrote:
| It's absolutely the built environment. Your Costco
| example is a clear example. you drive to Costco, you walk
| in, grab generic packaged goods without needing to really
| talk to anyone, and then go to the checkout and use the
| automated kiosk to make your purchase.
|
| There's no reason to have a human interaction, so why
| would you bother getting to know the cashier? You're
| never going to build a relationship with the cashier
| precisely because of the environmental structure.
|
| Contrast that with walking down the street to a local
| store that one of your neighbors owns. I bet you would
| already have a relationship unless you chose not to. Why?
| Because you'd also see them at your kids birthday party,
| or you'd see them at the bark down the street, or out on
| a walk.
| palmotea wrote:
| > One simple reason I think is overall US is very rich so
| people just can have anything they need on their own and
| sharing small things which lead to more interaction is
| simply not needed.
|
| That's a very interesting observation!
|
| I have a theory that reducing "friction" is actually a
| net negative after a certain point, and US society is
| _way_ past that point. But everybody keeps doing it,
| because they 're myopically focused on little problems
| and don't see the big picture or down have a full
| understanding of all the alternatives.
|
| People need external constraints, because those are the
| things that keep certain internal drives under control.
|
| It's like when food was scarce it made sense to gorge
| yourself on calorie rich things and avoid physical effort
| unless absolutely necessary. Now that food is abundant
| and it's actually possible to nearly completely eliminate
| physical activity, we have an obesity epidemic, because
| those drives no longer hit external limits and are now
| out of control.
| compsciphd wrote:
| he should have carved into the parking lot "Brooks Was Here"
| looperhacks wrote:
| It's not THAT bad for me, but I really can't take vacation days
| for "nothing". I struggle if I don't have plans and work really
| forces one to have some structure. If you need the structure
| and don't have any plans post lay-off, I can believe the
| struggle to "let go" and do something better.
| tempsaasexample wrote:
| These people could have bought a dirt bike or mountain bike and
| had the time of their life. I don't get it.
| melling wrote:
| I think I'd take directing big things at Google over riding a
| dirt bike...
|
| I'm not actually sure what you don't get.
|
| I'm all for not living a lower level grind and riding a dirt
| bike. Most jobs simply aren't interesting.
| throwaway132448 wrote:
| It's the lack of imagination that's sad.
| Xiol wrote:
| Regretting not being able to create more shareholder value
| on your deathbed.
|
| So very sad.
| fragmede wrote:
| Depends on the shareholder. At Sergey Brin's level, that
| shareholder value shapes the future of humanity, a legacy
| affecting many more people and will last far longer than
| spending time with single, or even double digit number of
| children.
| __jonas wrote:
| I can't really tell what you're trying to say, do you
| really think the shareholder value of Google is
| positively aligned with the future of humanity? As in: If
| Google builds a really good AI and makes a lot of money
| from that, this will be a net positive for the world?
| Melatonic wrote:
| If you're a director at Google you can probably afford a
| pretty damn nice dirt bike if that's your jam
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Human beings tend to enjoy patterns. Being pushed out of a
| pattern engages a _lot_ of survival instincts.
| twalichiewicz wrote:
| I recently rewatched a Tested Q&A where Adam Savage discussed
| his post-Mythbusters life; his framing of that duality was very
| similar: https://youtu.be/2tZ0EGJIgD8?t=322.
|
| It aligns with a common design principle: constraints often
| make a problem space easier to navigate. I suspect life is
| similar. Having limited time creates a "specialness" that is
| easily lost when you suddenly have an infinite amount of time
| at your disposal.
| skeuomorphism wrote:
| What a sad way to live life, for a man to miss the chains he
| wears in enslavement, for he knows nothing else
| jaden wrote:
| It's interesting to hear about his experience, but I'm not sure
| if it's typical. There are millions of people retiring each year,
| presumably many are happy to be done with the drudgery of work
| and excited to spend time on hobbies and projects they enjoy.
|
| I'm curious to know how many retirees end up like Sergey and how
| many you don't hear about because they're too busy enjoying their
| retirement.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I will say that this topic is a common one among people talking
| about FIRE "financial independence, retire early" -- folks who
| are saving as fast as they can so they can quit working. There
| are a lot of people who already got there who come back to warn
| people they won't necessarily be happy and fulfilled just
| because they quit the day job. Like, that's an amazing feeling
| at first but it probably won't carry you for 30-50 more years.
|
| The article actually includes some of these examples, but I get
| the feeling that a lot of readers did not make it past the Brin
| part.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It works much better for most people if you replace "retire
| early" with "recreationally employed". You can select the
| work you do without optimizing for income or status-maxxing.
| piva00 wrote:
| The few cases I know of people who retired in their early
| 30s they really didn't want to even be "recreationally
| employed", they diverted their efforts to causes they
| believe are bigger than usual work. They help communities,
| they started projects in their free time that enhances
| others' lives in direct and meaningful ways which had
| nothing to do with their past day job.
|
| I believe I'd do the same, forget about coding yet another
| little project/library, and go into the real world dedicate
| part of my time to causes that can't pay much but have
| meaning to others.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This is entirely within the scope of "recreationally
| employed". There is no implication that what you spend
| your time on has anything to do with your former career.
|
| In most cases I know of recreational employment has
| little to do with their former employment. They often put
| in a lot of hours and it is still "work" in the ordinary
| sense but it is entirely self-directed.
| piva00 wrote:
| I believe it's a misuse of "employment" then, I do not
| understand employment as something you do without
| payment, to me it is necessarily related to paid labour.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| If you obligate yourself to significant and consistent
| labor when no such thing is necessitated by your life
| then you are effectively "employed". You have to show up.
| Absent external motivation, like feeding your family or
| staying out of prison, it is purely a lifestyle choice.
| It is the opposite of playing video games all day or
| sitting at the beach.
|
| The FIRE types are not working to survive by definition,
| allowing them to work at non-profits for a pittance, run
| a farm with no meaningful market, do thankless
| maintenance on FOSS, or travel around the world saving
| the whales. The lack of a meaningful paycheck doesn't
| make these things not "jobs" for all practical purposes.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's easy to eye roll at billionaire guy wanting to go work, but
| it's a real thing, I recall my dad struggling with retirement,
| after having planned so long.
|
| He did a bit of consulting, was a rural mail carrier for a year
| and ended up managing a county program for a few years. He also
| discovered teaching as an adjunct professor, which he loved
| deeply. At some point, he was ready, and he had several good
| years of retirement with grandchildren and travel.
|
| With a story like this, I choose to see what we have in common
| with a very successful, very rich person. Many people think "If
| only I had a more, everything would be grand."
|
| Well... Brin is a billionaire controlling one of the most
| powerful corporations on the earth. He found meaning in his work,
| or chose his work because of the meaning to him. Either way,
| given the ability to do anything, he made his choice. Don't
| worship the guy, but perhaps see the humanity that we all share.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The problem with famous people unretiring and doing something
| different is they are kind of the nepobaby children of their
| former career arc selves. I both feel bad for him but am glad
| he's happier now.
|
| Would I would really like bored FIRE people to do is advocate for
| shortening the work-week. The world needs to chill the fuck out,
| and leisure should be more abundant. Bored retirees have a unique
| credibility in advocating for this, and the time to do both
| grassroots and grasstops advocacy. (Think tanking and lobbying
| are descendants of the original retirement project, if you think
| about aristocracry as the original governmance system.)
| FatalLogic wrote:
| I wish he'd brought back "Don't Be Evil" to Google, as well as
| himself.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _" Don't Be Evil"_
|
| That ship sailed a long time ago. It then proceeded to sink,
| ending up a haunted wreck that we might see in a new _Pirates
| of the Caribbean_ film.
|
| Problem is, Captain Jack Sparrow these days isn't what he used
| to be either.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Sergey is brilliant but it's really the lightsaber that is super
| voting shares that make him uniquely empowered to slash through
| Google's immense bureaucracy.
| fragmede wrote:
| I think being the founder of Google gives him more political
| capital at Google than anything on paper. As a controlling
| member of the board there's a variety of things he can do with
| that hammer, but just simply being who he is, not even just on
| the org chart, has got to be worth way more.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| this seems an idealistic view, my cynical view is that if
| King Lear gives up all his legal paper power he will find out
| nobody cares who the hell he is and take advantage of him
| without remorse.
| taneq wrote:
| In my experience (at a much smaller scale than these guys,
| of course) the legal papers power is more of a formality.
| It's the soft power tied up in knowledge, relationships,
| trust and goodwill that really count.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Right up until the point that the person with the legal
| power yanks the rug from under you.
| intended wrote:
| Looking at the two as separate parts ends up forcing the
| dance apart from the dancer no
| mpweiher wrote:
| The ghost of Steve Jobs would like a word with you.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Are you referring to his firing in the 80s? That was
| because he was supposedly a jerk at the time and no one
| wanted to deal with him.
| taneq wrote:
| The very fact that he (or anyone in a similar position) holds
| the hammer is enough to guarantee that he will very seldom
| have to swing it.
| mycall wrote:
| What you describe is a benevolent dictator.
| leoc wrote:
| Brin wasn't bothered to wield any of that power to try to
| arrest the decline in Google's search quality. He wasn't
| bothered to direct the Chrome team to support MathML, or to
| bring back Google Reader, or do anything about a hundred small
| insults like, say, the deletion of YouTube comments with URLs
| to keep the rubes inside the casino. But he was able and
| willing to come back and wield his clout because he was bored
| and wanted to play with AI. As someone who's old enough to
| remember how much leeway Google used to get from governments
| and the public at large on the basis that Page and Brin were
| nice young men who could be relied on to be responsible
| stewards it's a little galling. Don't give Mr. Brin any belly-
| rubs until he tells us when Reader is coming back.
| skibidithink wrote:
| He saw AI as an existential threat to Google.
| leoc wrote:
| Right, though it's also reasonably clear that part of the
| story there is that he finds a high-stakes AI race
| personally interesting and exciting on a technical and a
| business level. Conversely it's also fairly clear that he
| finds doing anything about the steady encrudification of
| Google to be a big snooze. (Even though it may also be a
| long-term, though less dramatic, problem for the company's
| future health, exactly the sort of long-term issue which
| Google's dual-stock structure was supposed to empower Page
| and Brin to care about and act on.) But in any case,
| whatever his mix of motivations are, he's able to act
| within Google on things he cares about. He is also
| perfectly able to act on a number of the issues at Google
| which have significantly bad effects on its users and on
| the population of Earth at large. (Not all of them, to be
| sure: there are clearly some problems which would be very
| hard to fix, alongside a number of no-brainers.) He
| evidently just isn't willing, because he doesn't care about
| them.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Enshittification of existing money making activities of
| Google independently of AI is also an existential threat.
| Parts of the threat are codependent on AI, but there is
| little reason to open the door wider as they have.
| skibidithink wrote:
| There are no obvious threats to AdWords (aside from LLM
| chatbots) and YouTube.
| bigyabai wrote:
| That's great and all, but you're anthropomorphizing the
| advertisement company.
| OJFord wrote:
| Where?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Maybe a spin on "anthropomorphize Larry Ellison at your
| peril"?
| elictronic wrote:
| Everything you are mentioning are user issues. AI search
| myspacing googles ad business is an investor issue.
| lionkor wrote:
| They're all Google issues.
| bell-cot wrote:
| When you're the 900 lbs. gorilla, you can get away with a
| whole lotta shit.
|
| And "Don't Be Evil" was a long time ago in a Google far,
| far away.
| jacquesm wrote:
| User issues have an annoying habit of eventually becoming
| investor issues so you better deal with them while they are
| still 'just' user issues.
| alex1138 wrote:
| Not just links, either
|
| Youtube comments are completely censored in real time with
| some sort of AI, it's horrible
| SXX wrote:
| Yet Google cant remove porn bots with 99% similar usernames
| or avatars.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I do think about this in the context of other tech
| companies, the "bidirectionality of enforcement", or
| whatever you want to call it
|
| Let's say you have Facebook, which is notorious for
| banning people yet never seems to ban the things people
| report that should be banned. That's a real life example,
| but take any hypothetical company
|
| If someone posts x bad thing and doesn't get banned, do
| we immediately take our torches and storm the premeses to
| protest? Maybe, maybe not; "look, scale is hard" (and
| sometimes calls to remove things outright get
| politicized, as seen in the last few years, so sometimes
| it's a tricky line)
|
| That would be... not fine, but more fine than it is now.
| The lack of fairness in the bidirectionality ensures that
| you, Joe Schmoe, get a month ban for calling someone a
| jerk _while_ the most egregious hate or racism or...
| anything... gets a quick check followed by This Does Not
| Violate Our Community Guidelines
|
| (And of course because these services are monopolies,
| well, too bad, you just have to suffer. Hope you don't
| _need_ the information from that Facebook page, because
| Facebook will tend to make it borderline impossible to
| view something _public_ without an account)
| SXX wrote:
| I think companies like Google dont even try like they are
| "Too Big to be Regulated".
|
| Facebook is much worse because everyghing on there is
| user gemerated. Any small company would be just crushed
| by governments if they would have similar issues.
| scottyah wrote:
| I think they are similar to FedEx. FedEx knows that
| millions of packages per day are transporting illegal
| goods, any bad enough accident shows it. However, FedEx
| would absolutely go bankrupt if they tried to open every
| package and make sure the contents were good. At the end
| of the day, that's the government's job.
|
| If the DEA and ATF wants to staff every shipping hub with
| people checking every package, that's fine by them
| (though admittedly it would hurt revenues).
|
| For Google and Facebook and all the other user-content
| sites, it's just impossible to actually, fully uphold the
| law themselves, so their best bet is just to try to make
| it a pleasant experience for the users and leave
| upholding the law to the upholders of the law.
| rapnie wrote:
| The videos too. Geopolitical commentators cannot show e.g.
| an explosion in Ukraine caused by a drone, and they say "T"
| instead of "terrorist", and "kaboomed" instead of "killed",
| etc. Doing so may see the vid demonetized or even taken
| down.
|
| OTOH deep fake gepolitical commentators are all over the
| place, and it is allowed (sometimes Youtube shows a label,
| _sometimes_ the channel itself describes itself as a "fan
| channel" of the commentator, and not the real deal.
| Sometimes e.g. for Shorts you can see in the info whether
| things are AI generated).
| alliao wrote:
| I loved google reader, many people were blogging and social
| network was "ick" as people immediately associated the term
| with okcupid/friendster(myspace?) and reader was
| decentralised and encouraged all walks of life to
| participate... maybe I just missed the vibes back then, gosh
| I was so hopeful
| jmyeet wrote:
| This article reads like propaganda to keep the worker bees
| slaving away until they die. But I have a few things to say about
| this and Sergey Brin in particular.
|
| In the early days, many considered Sergey Brin to be the soul or
| the conscience of Google. He was reportedly the driving force in
| Google originally pulling out of China rather than capitulating
| to the censorship regime [1]. This was also after the apparent
| state-sponsored hack of Google in China [2] so perhaps the
| motivations were mixed? I don't know.
|
| But Sergey I think is a good example of someone for whom his
| creation outgrew him. I'm reminded of an old Jeff Atwood blog
| post where he quoted _Accidental Empires_ [3]. Sergey was a
| commando. By 2010 Google needed an army. Now? Police.
|
| GoogleX has Sergey's playground but if you look at the track
| record, possibly the only success I think is Waymo. Glass
| (mentioned in the article) was not a success and his affair with
| a subordinate also destroyed his marriage [4].
|
| To me it felt like Sergey was drifting many years before he
| stepped away. His stepping away felt more like formalizing
| something that had already happened.
|
| I'm not a billionaire. Not even close. Honestly, I think I'm glad
| about that because it seems like despite being surrounded with
| unimaginable wealth, many such people end up isolated and
| rudderless, desperately dsearching for meaning and connection. Or
| maybe that's just cope (from me).
|
| The article mentions Gates and how he keeps busy with his
| philanthropy. Well, there's another piece of common ground
| between Gates and Brin: Jeffrey Epstein [5]. That's not intended
| as an implicit or explicit accusation of child predation by Gates
| or Brin or even of either having knowledge of such malfeasance,
| to be clear.
|
| But even with a fraction of the DoJ's documents disclosed as well
| as from the Epstein estate, we can begin to paint a macabre
| picture of the connections between rich and powerful people that
| for some reason always seem to have Jeffrey Epstein at their
| nexus and that means something though we don't really know what.
|
| Has Sergey had a substantial impact on Gemini? Will he? I have no
| idea. I do wonder if someone worth $100 billion really has the
| perspective and drive to move something like this. Google has a
| deep bench of talent and one thing Google is very good at is
| optimizing code that runs at scale by making their own
| networking, servers, racks, data centers, data center operating
| system (ie Borg) and code and efficiency is going to be a huge
| deal in the LLM space for the foreseeable future.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704266504575141...
|
| [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11920616
|
| [3]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/
|
| [4]: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-
| amanda-...
|
| [5]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/lolita-passports-
| and-m...
| whatever1 wrote:
| Oh boy, everyone accomplished paid a visit to the lolisland?
| Unbelievable.
| paganel wrote:
| Not everyone, just the nounces, like Gates and Brin here. Do
| you take their defence? Seems like you do. Why would anyone
| with solid moral values jump to the defence of nounces?
| whatever1 wrote:
| No it is a real question. You have access to EVERYTHING
| material & service related this world can offer. Why do you
| also need to torture children and completely ruin their
| lives?
| liveoneggs wrote:
| He's in the files - including photos - and is named by a
| victim as being present at a "party". It doesn't necessarily
| mean he did anything untoward but he did fly to the island
| and attend an event.
| chihuahua wrote:
| About a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience
| at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this
| shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the
| spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things
| to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit
| more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour
| indoor cycling workout at home, then went for a short plunge in
| the lake (41 F). Then an hour in the hot tub.
|
| It's pretty cool doing whatever I want for now, but I don't think
| I can do this for another 40 years. I feel like there's something
| missing - the sense of accomplishment whenever I finish a task.
| Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when it's
| either before work or after work.
|
| So maybe at the end of summer 2026 I'll wait for recruiter emails
| and start responding to some of them. I'm done with applying to
| 100 jobs to get one response. Maybe I'll try a startup job to
| experience working in a place that doesn't have a 50-page
| document describing level expectations.
| siamese_puff wrote:
| Mind me asking general location and how much savings? Wouldn't
| mind doing similar at some point
| scotty79 wrote:
| I haven't worked in about 7 years. Only recently I started
| helping out a friend with a software project semi-regularily.
| And it wasn't really out of boredom. It's just that the project
| has some cool stuff, people on the team are cool and he's a
| friend. I passed 7 years with gaming, internet, talks, walks
| and mixtures of any subset of those. Only occasionally doing
| some coding just for fun or out of curiosity or to occasionally
| help someone. AI is a big game changer for me now. So much more
| fun to be had with coding.
|
| I don't think I un-retired but I'm performing some commercialy
| valuable tasks for someone.
| seer wrote:
| I highly advise traveling - went a similar experience - had
| some savings that could last for a few years (much longer if I
| stretched them)
|
| So just decided to get a motorbike license and go check out
| Asia.
|
| Ended up finding a partner (totally unexpected) selling
| everything, moving abroad, marrying them and now expecting a
| child (planned), all in a manner of 3 years.
|
| Has been quite the joyful and interesting experience, all after
| I had the deeply depressing feeling of having "solved life" at
| my nice position in the EU.
|
| There are so many places in the world where you can feel you
| are actually doing great service to the community, on a
| shoestring budget and feel happy and fulfilled.
| arkmm wrote:
| Maybe a bit off-topic, but how'd you meet your partner while
| on your adventures?
| nelblu wrote:
| > Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when
| it's either before work or after work.
|
| This comment reminded me of a book I read recently - Dopamine
| Nation by Dr. Anne Lembke. She talks about how pleasure and
| pain and experienced by the same region of the brain and they
| need to be balanced. I'd highly recommend reading that book.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Retirement isn't quite applicable to billionaires.
|
| They never have to work. They do it because they want to.
|
| Retirement implies there was work you didn't want to do. You did
| it because you had (or wanted) to make some money. Now you have
| enough money. You've retired.
|
| Hell, it isn't even applicable to many wealthy software engineers
| who got rich from tech startups. Many are coding as much as when
| they were working.
| tock wrote:
| It was interesting to see my dad retire. He struggled a lot
| initially and even went back to work for a while. He had to
| actively work on learning to enjoy his hobbies and time once
| again.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I don't find hobbies to be a replacement for work. Maybe it
| depends on the hobby but many hobbies are solo. work, or work
| that I enjoy, is not. Accomplishing things with others and for
| others has its on motivation for me at least
|
| Of course maybe your hobbies or your dad's hobbies are social.
| when someone says "hobbies" to me I generally think of things
| done mostly alone and I know for me, that's not enough
| OJFord wrote:
| That's definitely just how you're thinking of it - any team
| sport can be a hobby, for a start.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Yes there are hobbies that are socially. Many are not and
| will not sub for work
| tock wrote:
| Hobbies are just anything you truly enjoy doing that isn't
| mandated by your job. If you would continue doing your job
| even if your employer drops your salary to 0, then yeah your
| job is your hobby too! It is up to the individual to figure
| out what works for them.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Good point. if work is your hobby you retire then you
| aren't at work and will find it harder to get the same
| satisfaction
| senorqa wrote:
| > Sergey Brin's lesson for the rest of us
|
| Is it? I know people who are really happy without doing much in
| their retirement. Probably because they weren't workaholics.
|
| To my mind, if one doesn't have hobbies during the working years,
| then they will struggle to find purpose when they retite.
| awendt wrote:
| This! People need to get a life. I wouldn't have any trouble
| keeping myself busy after retirement. I do not have nearly
| enough time for the things I really WANT to do beside work.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I think that's the one silver lining of the pandemic's
| lockdowns; some people were at home again for extended
| periods of time, finding themselves with a lot more free time
| and in a place that wasn't just for eating and sleeping.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I also have think that's a substantial reason behind the
| RTO push: some people found their lives empty without the
| office social environment, even after two years, and enough
| of them had the power to change it.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| This is also my sentiment.
|
| I am saving up to retire early. If I mention this to friends,
| most look at me with big eyes and ask "But what will you
| spend your day on then!?" in a sceptical tone.
|
| I imagine they think I want to drink beers and play golf all
| day every day, or something like that.
|
| I'm a bit heart broken, that so many of my friends cannot
| imagine being masters of their own time, without thinking it
| would be bad for them and/or unproductive.
| deepvibrations wrote:
| Yes, I have experienced exactly the same with friends and
| find it bizarre - essentially having total freedom seems to
| scare some people. Is it because we have been told what to
| do our whole life and so the thought of having to determine
| our own destiny each day is too much for some?
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Well, my friends immediately assume I want some luxurious
| self-indulgent perpetual vacation/holiday-thing.
|
| They seem relieved when I explain it's more of the
| perpetual weekend I'm aiming for: sleeping till I wake,
| reading, cooking, hanging with friends and family, coding
| on my FOSS projects etc.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| I think it's also a uniquely American thing. We are so
| defined by our work and our careers here. It's kind of
| sad, in my opinion, but that's the reality.
| trueismywork wrote:
| Why? Why can work noy be your retirement plan as well? I have
| benefitted a lot from professors who have kept teaching
| (voluntarily) till physically possible.
| Draiken wrote:
| Putting all your eggs in one basket is one big reason.
|
| As a developer if, let's say, AI does make my profession no
| longer a viable option monetarily, what would happen if my
| entire identity is tied to it?
|
| You cannot fully control your career no matter what. Many
| external factors can affect it and you deeply if that's
| your identity.
|
| What if you can't even teach after retiring because nobody
| else cares about it?
|
| For me it's about risk/reward and unfortunately in our
| current system the fact that all my efforts reward someone
| else disproportionately more completely taints it.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Yes. People are so much more enjoyable and interesting when
| they have a life, go out, have hobbies, do things a little
| different to everyone else.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| Yea I've noticed this is the singular difference between
| those that enjoy early retirement and are successful doing it
| and those that aren't. Many ambitious people end up wrapping
| their entire identity up with work and feel completely lost
| with that gone. It's why so many successful founders throw
| themselves into new startups right after an exit, despite
| having way more than enough to retire. Personally, I've taken
| some time off since selling my startup and I've been so busy
| learning new things and building new hobbies that I can't
| imagine going back! Maybe I will one day, but it will likely
| involve something I've learned from during this time
| DannyBee wrote:
| This is kinda right, kinda wrong. I was a workaholic - I was a
| VP of engineering at Google. I'm doing fine retired.
|
| You don't have to find purpose when you retire
|
| At all.
|
| Instead, you just have to be willing to face each day when the
| day has no expectations. You can do anything you want, and
| decide you love it, hate it, whatever. You can do it again the
| next day, or not. you can hate it one day and love it the next.
| It's completely up to you.
|
| For some people, this lack of structure is crushing. For
| others, it's liberating.
|
| It's similar to having spent significant time alone as an adult
| - some people can't deal with it, some can.
|
| I meet a lot of people who are like "I haven't figured out what
| i will do when i retire". These are the people i worry about,
| because there isn't anything to figure out. They want a
| structure that probably won't exist. They will likely tire of
| trying to force their own structure on it, and seek structure
| elsewhere (IE work).
|
| In the past 3 weeks i've done the following:
|
| Building powered paper airplanes with the kids
|
| Mentoring high school and college students
|
| Advising startups.
|
| Woodworking
|
| Hacking on CNC machines
|
| Hacking on minecraft mods.
|
| Hacking on compilers.
|
| Playing video games.
|
| and a lot more.
|
| The next 3 weeks may be the same or different, depending on
| lots of things (mood, energy, schedules).
|
| There are also days i do nothing cool or useful at all, and
| feel great (and unapologetic - nobody gets to judge my
| retirement but me, my spouse, and my kids :P) about it
|
| The world is really big, and has lots to do. You just have to
| be able to drive yourself because you aren't being forced into
| doing anything at all.
|
| In the end - for some i also feel it's similar to divorce -
| lots of people don't get divorced because they don't want to
| deal with being alone.
|
| Retirement similarly forces you to spend a lot of time with
| yourself (even if you have an SO and even if they are retired).
| Lots of people don't like that, at all, for various reasons.
| Work lets them ignore it.
| plicense wrote:
| Just wanted to say, one of the exciting things I realized
| when I joined Google was that the maintainer of GDB was my
| org's director at that time. Not sure how much it matters,
| but it gave me confidence in the leadership to know that
| someone who knows the details is running the show at the top.
| It made me trust the leadership chain much more than I
| normally would otherwise.
| mattlondon wrote:
| I too would very happily do just the bits of my job that I like,
| when and how I want, and have any requests or comments or
| complaints I make get immediate attention and responses.
|
| All in the knowledge that no one is going to be time-tracking me
| or doing performance reviews, and I can just _not_ do work at any
| moment I don 't feel like it or have something better to do that
| day, like go to my private island or take my private jet to
| burning man etc (or as it turns out do a talk at Stanford). All
| while you have so much money that the price of anything from
| clothes to cars to houses is just some arbitrary number that has
| no meaning to you it is so absolutely tiny number... not that you
| actually buy anything _yourself_ any more, mainly your team of
| personal staff deal with that grubby reality.
|
| As for the rest of us, well we need to pay the bills while
| playing "the game" and politics and cowtowing to keep the money
| coming.
| taneq wrote:
| Exactly. If you work in a field that's close to your interests,
| there are probably parts of your job that you'd do for fun even
| if infinitely wealthy. It's the other stuff, the boring
| annoying grind, that makes it a job and not a hobby.
| aatd86 wrote:
| He was in your spot at some point I've heard. Nothing is
| impossible.
| black_knight wrote:
| Dreams and hopes are powerful weapons of suppression.
| Everyone is a millionaire just down on their luck at the
| moment...
|
| In our advanced society, with incredible automation, we
| should _all_ have vastly more freedom and control over our
| time.
| tempestn wrote:
| That attitude is the weapon of suppression. Yes, it's true
| that life isn't fair. But it's also true that people have
| agency and can make material improvements to their own
| quality of life through smart decisions and dedication. Of
| course most of us won't start the next Google, but that
| doesn't mean dreams and hope are bad in general.
| black_knight wrote:
| I am not saying we should be defeatist! I making the
| argument that it does not, and morally should not, have
| to be so that we all have to toil when we have such a
| wealth of technology.
|
| How we go about changing this, I do not know, but
| everyone just playing along nicely in hope of one day
| being the one who strikes gold seems not to be working!
|
| "Life isn't fair, suck it up and get good!" is another
| form of suppression/delusion. Well, if life isn't it
| fair, let us at least try to counteract that with
| cooperation. It seems to me that we have all the tools
| and technologies we need to make it a lot better.
| tempestn wrote:
| This framing I'm on board with. The original comment took
| it too far for me, and even if not intended as defeatist
| I think could encourage that response. I'm all for people
| working not only to better their own conditions, but
| society as a whole.
| vidarh wrote:
| We have no evidence that people have meanginful agency,
| or even agency at all. It is an assumption that to start
| with requires that the universe is not largely or
| entirely deterministic beyond what we can measure, but
| even in the case of some "hidden variable" that provides
| agency (try to even define it in a way that doesn't make
| it either deterministic, random, or a combination that
| implies no _actual_ control) we have plenty of evidence
| that events outside our control ( "life isn't fair")
| means that the vast majority of people, while they may
| make decisions - with or without agency - that will make
| material improvements - still are not able to get
| anywhere near a position that makes it meaningful in this
| context.
|
| Dreams and hopes are great - I believe we have zero
| actual agency, but that doesn't mean I lie in bed
| despairing, because not doing the work and trying will
| still have negative effects whether I have agency over
| that decision or not.
|
| But the point is that dreams and hopes are also often
| used to play up the idea that "anyone" can achieve
| something everyone clearly can't, and so for most people,
| their most ambitious dreams will never be reached, and so
| a better gamble for most people would be to work for a
| society that improves everyones odds at reaching at least
| some of them.
| aatd86 wrote:
| If you think you have no agency why do anything at all?
| You could choose to stop doing anything. Or you could
| decide that your partial knowledge(unrealised futures)
| gives you agency.
|
| It's a matter of metacognition. Being able to compute
| possible futures gives you artificial agency at some
| level. At a meta level even if that compute can be
| deterministic at a higher level, but you should not care.
|
| It's a nested universes system just like in type theory.
| The meta of the meta. Agency is only defined within a
| single universe at a time.
| vidarh wrote:
| > If you think you have no agency why do anything at all?
|
| I addressed that in my comment, but let me address it
| again since it's _the_ most frequent objection to this:
|
| > You could choose to stop doing anything.
|
| In the mechanical sense that an "IF ... THEN ... ELSE"
| statement makes the program "choose" which branch to
| take, you're right, yes I could.
|
| But then I'd also suffer the consequences.
|
| As I pointed out, if I were to life down in despair and
| not go to work, I won't keep getting paid just because I
| didn't have agency over the "choice" of whether to lie
| down and sulk or get up and go to work.
|
| But for "agency" to have any meaning, we can't interpret
| choice that way. If we don't have agency, then while I
| may have an artificial "choice", that "choice" can't
| change the outcome.
|
| In that case every "choice" I make is just as
| deterministic as that IF ... THEN ... ELSE: The branch
| taken depends on the state of the system.
|
| > Or you could decide that your partial
| knowledge(untealised futures) gives you agency. > > It's
| a matter of metacognition. Being able to compute possible
| futures gives you artificial agency at some level. At a
| meta level even that compute ca be deterministic but you
| should not care.
|
| What you are describing is compatibilism: The school of
| thought on "free will" that effectively says that free
| will is real, but is also an illusion.
|
| Personally I think that is basically brushing the issue
| under the carpet, though I also think it is the only
| definition of free will that is logically consistent.
|
| I do agree with the point that you _mostly_ should not
| care:
|
| You need to _mostly_ act as if every "choice" you make
| does matter, because whether or not you have control over
| it, if you do lie down in despair, your paychecks will
| stop arriving.
|
| Cause and effect does not care whether or not you have
| agency.
|
| Where I take issue with compatibilism is because there
| are considerable differences in how you should "choose"
| to act if you consider agency to be "artificial" or an
| illusion (compatibilism) or not exist at all (for this
| purpose these are pretty much equivalent) vs. if you
| consider it to be real.
|
| E.g. we blame and reward people or otherwise treat people
| differently based on their perceived agency _all the
| time_ , and a lot of that treatment is a lot harder to
| morally justify if you don't believe in actual agency.
| Real harm happens to people because we assume they have
| agency. If that agency isn't real, it doesn't matter if
| we have an illusion of it - in that case a lot of that
| harm is immoral.
|
| To tie it back to the thread: Whether agency is not real
| at all, or just significantly constrained by
| circumstance, it changes the considerations in what we
| should expect ourselves and others to be able to
| overcome.
|
| E.g. it makes no logical sense to feel bad about past
| choices, because they couldn't have gone differently (you
| can still feel bad about the effects, and commit to
| "choosing" differently in the future). You also then
| shouldn't feel bad if you haven't achieved what you
| wanted to if you believe the context you live within
| either have total control over the actions you take, or
| "just" a significant degree of influence over it.
|
| And so we're back to my original argument that for most
| people, acting as-if they have agency by "choosing" to
| bet on making the surrounding conditions more amenable to
| good outcomes is a better bet than thinking they have
| agency or enough agency to achieve a different outcome.
|
| But again: The fact that I believe we have no agency,
| does not mean I won't _try_ to do things that will get me
| better outcomes. I just don 't assume I could act any
| other way _in a given instance_ than I end up acting in
| that given instance, any more than a movie will change if
| you rewind it and press play again.
| aatd86 wrote:
| I think we agree. The subtelty is that, it is about
| closed and open systems. Your partial knowledge makes
| things a locally open system. You are processing new data
| and then acting accordingly. That's dynamic agency. The
| better you can get knowledge, the better you can
| influence the next step.
|
| That realization happens at the meta level and gives you
| agency in your actual universe. Even though at the meta-
| meta level, that realization itself can be deterministic.
|
| Not to be confused with someone who would be external to
| the system and could watch your life as if it was a video
| tape, being omniscient. They would not have agency in
| your system as they can't interact with you and for them
| everything is predetermined, and they could compute the
| next state of the system from the past state. You can't
| but the system is impredicative enough that by
| recognizing this, by self-consciousness, the system
| effects itself toward its own favored state. And in fact,
| the more knowledge you have, the less agency. Because the
| fewer choices.
|
| The meta level person doesn't just observe how the video.
| It observes the fact that people realize they are
| characters in a video and how that realization affects
| the choices they make. Given the initial conditions.
|
| Should you have regrets in life? You had the choice of
| knowing more and be more able so it makes sense. Could
| things have happened differently given that they did and
| obviously you wanted back then for them to be different
| and wish they had been? Or did it happen because the
| conditions were set to happen?
|
| Basically the question is whether we control our odds?
| Doing anything is controlling some odds so I'd say yes.
| Requires increased self consciousness. Being able to
| imagine what is not there. Animals seem to have that
| capacity. Especially humans. We can make sure that
| certain things don't happen by virtue of our own
| existence. This is our agency. Are we biased by
| construction toward the best odds of we can recognize
| them? Yes. Are their really things with the exact same
| odds in the system? Wouldn't that block us? Probably. But
| the system is already made in a way that it wouldn't
| happen by virtue of having (at least local) asymmetries.
| In practice we wouldn't be blocked. Someone perfectly
| symmetrical in a system that also is, would perhaps. But
| there might not be any two same most desired odds then so
| no. Unlikely.
| vidarh wrote:
| So again, this is basically the compatibilist stance. To
| me, it rings hollow because it glosses over whether you
| actually made a decision in a way that is qualtitively
| different from how a clock "chooses" to move the minute
| hand one minute further.
|
| And so I would answer to your question about regrets that
| I don't believe you had that choice. That you couldn't
| have chosen differently given the same inputs and state.
| Your "choice" followed the preceding state with the same
| predictability as a well functioning clock.
| tempestn wrote:
| Honestly I don't disagree with anything you wrote, I
| don't think. It is worth remembering that if we were born
| in someone else's shoes, with their genes and their
| environment, we would literally _be_ them and would act
| as they act. In that way, yes, agency is an illusion.
| Remembering this can help us to have empathy for others,
| potentially even those with whom we vehemently disagree.
|
| But, as you said, we still all make decisions every day,
| and those decisions do affect our lives. So by acting as
| if we have agency, we can still have a positive impact,
| both on ourselves and others.
| jama211 wrote:
| The attitude that we should all have access to more
| freedoms and that inequality has reached extreme levels
| is suppression? Then sign me up to be suppressed.
| aatd86 wrote:
| This is very true but the path to that seems to require a
| weird optimization where it is concentrated among a few
| before being being widespread. Technologic improvements
| should help. Help decouple time and money.
| black_knight wrote:
| Why though?
|
| And when does this start being for everyone? We have had
| agricultural machines for ages, but I still have to pay
| an ever increasing part of my salary (and hence time here
| on earth) not to starve.
| krelian wrote:
| So was the last lottery winner. I can certainly improve my
| chances but there is a huge amount of luck involved.
| Traster wrote:
| And importantly, in this analogy - most people here aren't
| even able to play that lottery. He founded a company based
| on the research he did whilst studying for a government
| funded PhD. Most people are not in a position in their life
| where they could even spend time trying to do research that
| would result in this type of eventual wealth.
| aatd86 wrote:
| This is one of the easiest paths to gain a competitive
| advantage that can be monetized. You are much less likely
| to fall into a pool of money.
|
| Just like becoming a MD has much better odds at getting
| you some amount of money than dropping out of school.
| About the same path by the way.
|
| But you can keep playing the lottery if you think it has
| better odds or even the same odds...
| aatd86 wrote:
| If you don't try you are sure to not win. The rest is about
| being able to put the odds in your favor. You obviously
| can't do that with lottery. There is no logical lever.
| pyrale wrote:
| https://ergodicityeconomics.com/2023/07/28/the-infamous-
| coin...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not for long; he was 25 when Google was founded, it was a
| billion dollar company not long after. He could've retired
| when Google went public in 2004.
| aatd86 wrote:
| AI replacing workers and launching the post-money economy
| aside, it should probably not be about age or actual
| networth but outcome. That should still be a worthy and
| attainable goal. He is not the only rich person out
| there...
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| It sounds similar to people living long-term on welfare in
| Denmark. They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of
| meaning.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Then it's the best incentive to change your life and find a new
| meaning.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mole:_Undercover_in_North_...
| lionkor wrote:
| If I was in this situation, being a centibillionaire (or just
| having enough money for me and for my kids and their kids to
| never worry), I would write so, so, so much software. I have so
| many ideas for businesses, too, I just have no time and funds
| and I'm too risk-averse.
| Cupprum wrote:
| Why do you think their life is devoid of meaning?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think there was a bit of a jump-to-conclusion there.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Do you know a lot about the welfare situation/program in
| Denmark?
|
| The welfare program (kontanthjaelp) is difficult to join and
| you are ineligible if your net worth exceeds 15.500 DKK
| (~EUR2000).
|
| From my point of view, you have to be very creative to live a
| fulfilling life in Denmark, with such limited finances.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> They have food and housing, but their life is devoid of
| meaning._
|
| I find it difficult to relate to such worlds. I make up all
| kinds of explanations like, "well, it must be because while
| they have food and housing, they don't have any funds to
| entertain themselves". Or, "well, it must be because they
| simply haven't had sufficient education to reach an activation
| level where the higher tiers of Maslow's come into their line
| of sight".
|
| And then I read about plenty of counter-examples, like wealthy
| offspring living the textbook aimless/dissolute/pick-your-
| adjective life, or the ennui of able-bodied welfare recipients
| with quite reasonable spending cash from generous Scandinavian
| welfare regimes when one considers the mind boggling amount of
| free media, free libraries, free parks, free entertainment in
| general in the developed world. Perhaps this is just part of
| their human condition for people suffering from this malaise.
|
| And here I sit, drowning in ideas of what I would be interested
| to pursue to know our beautiful universe if only I had the
| time. So much so I write them down into a file just to quiet
| the cacophony in my head like a dog seeing squirrels everywhere
| he looks, just so I can get real work done on a timely basis,
| haha.
|
| When once asked whether I'd ever be bored with eternal youth
| and boundless resources, I immediately replied an eternity is
| still too little time to satisfy my curiosity.
| esafak wrote:
| They lack curiosity. It can be nurtured, or starved.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Considerations of a poor billionaire being bored apart - why is
| it that we still consider work and retirements as "black or
| white" things ? It might have made sense for physically
| exhaustive works, but for anything intellectual, wouldn't
| "progressive retirement" make much more sense ? As in, starting a
| certain age, provided you're physically and mentally able, of
| course, you get to work 80% of your time (in civilized countries
| where retirement is payed by states from taxes, you would get
| "about" 20% of your pension, but your employer would keep paying
| taxes), then 50%, then 25%, then 0 ? Would that be easier to
| finance given life expectancy increase (barring WW3, of course) ?
| lionkor wrote:
| *centibillionaire, above Mark Zuckerberg in the list :)
| leonhard wrote:
| This basically exists in Austria as "Altersteilzeit" [0] ("old
| age part time"). You even get 50% of your loss of income back
| through social security. So e.g. when reducing work by 40% you
| still get 80% of your salary. I'm guessing this is to
| incentivise employers to keep people near retirement employed
| as it would be much more expensive for the state to finance
| them if they were unemployed.
|
| [0]
| https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/de/themen/arbeit_beruf_und_pen...
| (only in German unfortunately)
| jll29 wrote:
| Medically speaking, your proposal would perhaps prevent a lot
| of heart attack deaths. It has been shown that not working is
| not just unpleasant, it's a strong stressor [1,2].
|
| [1] https://academic.oup.com/geronj/article-
| abstract/46/1/P9/638...
|
| [2] https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/234818
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... wouldn't "progressive retirement" make much more sense ?
|
| Of course it does. I've seen it in my parents' generation: many
| wanted to reach retirement do _" do nothing"_ and, well, they
| just lost their marbles. Doing nothing is neither good for the
| body, nor for the mind. Endless TV watching or endless pina
| colada drinking in the pool (or both at the same time):
| idleness brings absolutely nothing good.
|
| But my parents' friends who kept working a bit (like my
| godmother who kept supervising her real estate agency): she
| stayed sharp and fit.
|
| People think they're going to read and do exercice etc. but
| truth is: most are going to do jack absolutely shit. And turn
| to the latter.
|
| So keeping partially active is the best thing possible.
|
| I see it with my mother-in-law: 70 y/o, still working, daily,
| with my wife (they own a little SME). It keeps her in the loop:
| she still knows how to use a computer, her mind is quick. She's
| not idling.
|
| The financial aspect of it all is something else: but people
| doing nothing is not what a society needs.
| lionkor wrote:
| Do you think he can still spend time on his $450 million yacht or
| is he too busy writing prompts?
|
| Snark aside, good for him. Absolute non-news though, as is any
| extraordinary individual action during and contributing to a
| bubble. It'll be interesting to see what stays when, or if, the
| bubble ever pops.
| lanthissa wrote:
| i never really understood the billionaire yacht hate.
|
| Once you buy a yacht 450 million dollars of ownership in a
| company you had goes to people who built a beautiful thing that
| exists in the real world and you're on the hook for employing a
| lot of people to maintain it.
|
| I take a lot more issue with accumulation and hoarding of
| wealth than the spending of it.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| Holding shares in a company (or dollar bills) is not
| depriving others of something. The fisherman will go catch
| fish tomorrow, the wheat in the fields will keep growing, the
| builder will build a house.
|
| If someone starts paying the fisherman, farmer, builder, more
| to stop doing what they are doing and start building mega
| yachts, then there will be less fish, bread, and houses for
| others.
|
| That said, I assume it's much simpler than that and it's just
| about the hypocrisy of the climate change billionaires to be
| bellowing out carbon while demanding the selfish greedy
| commoners cut our emissions.
| ncruces wrote:
| An economy that wasted resources building mega yachts for
| billionaires is more unequal than one that builds cruise
| ships that high income families can go on an holiday.
|
| https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/imagine-130000000-washing.
| ..
| matwood wrote:
| > i never really understood the billionaire yacht hate.
|
| Once someone reaches that level of fame and fortune it's
| almost a requirement if they want to travel or have some sort
| of 'vacation'. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely a great
| problem to have, but it's one of the only ways to find
| privacy at that level of wealth.
|
| If I'm ever super wealthy, I hope I can also stay somewhat
| anonymous so that I can walk down the street like any other
| person.
| jll29 wrote:
| You can very well write that prompt from the top deck or from
| one of the office cabins on said yacht (no, not speaking from
| experience).
|
| I'm not envious of anyone's big yacht, but I wouldn't waste my
| money that way (you can probably rent one for special
| occasions) - as long as there are still children hungry or
| without schooling.
| lionkor wrote:
| I'm definitely envious of the yacht. Like, come on, how
| awesome is that! It's HUGE! I've been invited on tiny yachts
| with "only" a couple staff onboard and that was already
| fantastic to just be on for a day.
|
| That said I don't think I could ever justify spending THAT
| kind of money on it.
| jll29 wrote:
| How about finishing off that Ph.D., Mr. Brin (alas, you would
| need to find yourself a new supervisor, given Prof. Motwani's
| tragic drowning)?
| kenty wrote:
| It is clear that Alphabet is his baby and neither he not Larry
| ever fully left. He is still in his 50s so maybe just too young
| to play golf and chill on superyachts all day. While him being a
| billionaire makes any lesson derived have to have an asterisk him
| enjoying technical work even after long having won the rat race
| is a pretty cool role model.
| fergie wrote:
| Proposal for new word: "employtainment"
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| This might rub some people on HN the wrong way but what these
| people call "work" isn't really work in the sense of what most
| people consider work. They jet here and there, intervene wherever
| they want, and everybody listens to them all the time. They can
| cancel and postpone meetings as they wish, and so on and so
| forth. It's work in the same sense as buying another house is
| work -- you have to get together with lawyers and plenty of
| people but in the end these people all work for you and you can
| also change your mind and not buy it.
|
| That's also the reason why these multi-billionaires never retire.
| They've retired from real work a long time ago.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It's work in the sense of exchanging their attention, energy
| and the hours of their lives towards a goal, while in the
| moment they'd rather be somewhere else doing something else.
|
| Same way that dusting your cupboards is work.
| rambambram wrote:
| Was looking for this comment. Cutting meat in some factory is
| considered 'work', running a global tech business is also
| considered 'work'. Both 'work', different requirements from the
| 'worker'.
|
| One is doing lifework, the other is doing labor.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Plenty of work isn't manual labor. That distinction is not at
| all what I've talked about, you've missed the point entirely.
| rambambram wrote:
| Ok, I might have made a mistake then.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| it doesn't quite work that way. Once you do this what you call
| "work", you can't just extricate yourself in the middle of
| dealing with complicated situations or drop things where others
| depend on you. So it's still work in the sense that you can't
| just literally do what you want the way you do when you lounge
| around your house.
| falloutx wrote:
| > The tech founder's return to full-time work is a reminder that
| even billions can't guarantee a happy retirement if you don't
| also do this.
|
| Is this generated by AI? English is all over the place in the
| article.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I got a sense that it was written partially by AI.
| g947o wrote:
| As soon as I saw that I lost interest in reading it. Asked
| ChatGPT to summarize it for me.
|
| (If they used AI to create the article and put these baits in
| there, I might as well skip all the nonsense and let AI consume
| it for me.)
| IMTDb wrote:
| It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment,
| it is in the happiness of pursuit - Denis Waitley
| Aeolun wrote:
| As in, playing tag is always going to be fun?
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Grandfather in village still farms at 90+.
|
| Retirement is a scam. Figure out what you want to do and do it
| until you drop.
| SarahC_ wrote:
| I look forward to the sweet kiss of death to solve the retirement
| funding issue, and forever declining health while working
| struggle. Working for "The man" takes everything someone has.
| glimshe wrote:
| After FIRE I started building my own small to medium projects.
| Emulators, tools, games, some available to the public. I tell
| people I'm a full time software developer who does remote
| consulting gigs (the last not true but justifies my FIRE income)
| CatMustard wrote:
| Would you mind me asking what age you were when you retired?
| I'm 28 and five years into my boring corpo career and need
| something to lust after lol
| glimshe wrote:
| 47. I didn't wait for FIRE to plan the projects, I had a
| notebook of ideas I collected over the years and had studied
| the necessary skills to put them in action throughout my work
| life.
|
| Additionally, I could see myself going back to work at a
| company if I saw a truly exciting project. But that excludes
| around 98% of the jobs I see out there.
|
| No, the next generation of privacy management experiences
| that will impact billions of users configuring their privacy
| settings isn't interesting.
| valiant55 wrote:
| I'm not doing FIRE, I have children and just live below my
| means. I'm hoping to retire around 55 assuming the AI bubble
| doesn't nuke everyones portfolio.
| dhdaadhd wrote:
| If that's a real concern of yours, maybe park what you
| think you'll need in money market funds / gold (FX hedge)?
| kshacker wrote:
| The typical FIRE requires compounding growth. You start
| with portfolio worth 25 years of expenses but if expenses
| keep on growing due to inflation and portfolio shrinks
| because of expenses and zero growth, it can get hairy
| quite fast.
|
| There are various ways to look at numbers but my thumb
| rule is 4% inflation 9% growth keeps you perennially
| happy with some choppy years of course. 4% inflation 9%
| growth implies you can withdraw 4-5% every year and still
| have equivalent portfolio in inflated money.
| ilamont wrote:
| Typical FIRE also requires access to affordable
| healthcare. In the US that is going away with ACA
| subsidies.
|
| Five years ago I paid for "market rate" insurance through
| my business for my family because we did not qualify for
| ACA subsidies. The cost was about $40,000 per year.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| If you want something to lust after, I recommend you find a
| project you care about getting involved in right now,
| literally today. The things that make us happy are doing
| something we care about every day, not seeking long-term
| goals.
| coldpie wrote:
| Nothing will make a boring corpo job not-boring, but one
| thing that can help mix it up is to change which boring corpo
| job you're doing once or twice a decade. Five years is a
| decent stint at one job. Worth taking a look around and
| seeing if an opportunity catches your eye.
| paganel wrote:
| PR-piece for the Epstein thing, isn't it? Just in time. Brin also
| likes them young, the nounce that he is, and no legal entity in
| the US is going to do shit about it.
| bflesch wrote:
| It is definitely a well-timed story. It's notable that even
| though they are billionaires they care what people think about
| them so much that they have to do this PR nonsense.
|
| As no governmental authority is actively investigating the
| allegations, Sergey Brin might never have the opportunity to
| clear his name from the Epstein child abuse allegations in the
| court of public opinion. If there would be an investigation
| and/or court case, Sergey Brin's lawyers would at least be able
| to legally clear his name. As long as evidence is being
| withheld, any association between Microsoft and Google
| leadership and Jeffrey Epstein will bring up rumors about their
| involvement in the child abuse, even though they might have
| been "only" clients of the JP Morgan private banking services
| for high net worth individual which was managed by Jeffrey
| Epstein.
| cornonthecobra wrote:
| I really don't buy his explanation. Here's one of the world's
| smartest guys, with more money than Smaug, and he really couldn't
| come up with anything better than going back to Google to work on
| Gemini?
|
| What's the point of all that money if you won't even hire someone
| to help you find hobbies.
|
| So many STEM universities have online courses. The art world
| froths itself mad over smart people with stupid money. Local
| projects beg for angels like him.
|
| Hell even just doing the AI schtick but for free open source or
| as a pet startup.
|
| My mind reels with ideas. Why didn't his?
| rullelito wrote:
| Having the best AI is prestigious for billionaires. It's that
| simple.
| cornonthecobra wrote:
| Then why did he go back to Google /s
| Dlanv wrote:
| To me those are all either inferior to working on AI or can be
| done outside of work. And for the founder of Google, probably
| Google is the best place to work on AI.
| posed wrote:
| Hiring someone to find hobbies defeats the purpose of hobbies.
| Why would you want to pursue something that someone else finds
| enticing rather than you discovering it yourself?
| cornonthecobra wrote:
| You hire such people to introduce you to ideas and projects.
| You try some stuff, see what sticks.
|
| It's something you can do when you have money and time but no
| ideas.
| axus wrote:
| He's probably tired of grifters by now.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| he has a phd in CS, hes probably always been interested in AI,
| you dont think getting to play with AI with essentially
| infinite resources is more fun than collecting stamps or skiing
| or something?
| nusl wrote:
| Really weird clickbait subline
|
| "The tech founder's return to full-time work is a reminder that
| even billions can't guarantee a happy retirement if you don't
| also do this. "
| stoneforger wrote:
| Hustle culture sociopaths
| boringg wrote:
| The article hits on something that I believe everyone is at least
| aware of. Id argue the next generation is best suited for not
| having this issue that the current generation does have as they
| at least seem to think about everything and are very careful
| about tying their identity to work which prior generations seem
| to do without much thought (for better or worse).
| LatencyKills wrote:
| I'm in my 50s. About two months into retirement I fell into the
| deepest depression of my life because I couldn't shake the "who
| am I without my job?" question. It took almost a year (and
| therapy) to accept that I still add value without working.
| mettamage wrote:
| I'm a person that wants to learn anything and everything. So
| guess what I'd do if I'd retire?
|
| Work feels pretty stifling to me.
| LatencyKills wrote:
| > I'm a person that wants to learn anything and everything.
|
| That is _exactly_ what I do now. Every question I 've ever
| had I now have the time to devote to answering it. I take
| classes, I volunteer, I mentor Comp. Sci. students. But,
| more than anything, I still write code. I spent the last
| few months creating an LLM from scratch which was
| incredibly fun.
|
| That said, I have a friend who will probably work until he
| dies. His only real interest in life is his job. I'm not
| suggesting that is a bad thing; its more to the point that
| "retirement" isn't a panacea for everyone.
| thefaux wrote:
| I do see this as a bad thing and an abdication of taking
| responsibility for one's own life. As was recently put to
| me after the sudden death of a friend's father (who lived
| an unusually rich life): everyone dies, but not everyone
| truly lives.
| LatencyKills wrote:
| Ah... we found the person who thinks they can pass
| judgement on how people choose to live their lives. I
| didn't say that my friend doesn't love his job (he does)
| - I said that he'll probably die before retiring.
|
| Stephen Hawking, Einstein, Marie Curie, and Linus Pauling
| never retired. Did they not "truly live"?
| bradley13 wrote:
| I totally understand. I "retired" last summer, but I continue to
| work about 50%, mostly at a new place that needs my help. I
| _like_ what I do. Anyway, gaming /reading/etc. are fine and
| dandy, but not something I want to do 24/7.
|
| The only thing I don't quite get about Brin is going back to
| Google. Since he doesn't need the money, why not support open
| source AI projects?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Because it's what he knows.
|
| People often like doing the things they're good at and not
| necessarily because they're interesting.
| Aeolun wrote:
| If I already know a great team, one where I know all the people
| involved and they listen to me. Why would I make a new team?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Probably because he knows the people and frankly, the team
| that's getting paid billions collectively are the top talent.
| dainiusse wrote:
| Because in google he can be a "dictator", while he wouldn't be
| in open source.
| itsfseven wrote:
| There is an element of the years long conditioning to work that
| the article points to. But I think people do find it important to
| have various means to engage with life, and building and creating
| is a dominant outlet.
| cryptica wrote:
| I was kind of retired, earning passive crypto income for several
| years after 2019 throughout COVID. Best time of my life. I was
| living on a Mediterranean island, splitting my time between
| snorkeling and open source work.
|
| Then I got cheated out of my position in the crypto project.
| Literally scammed by the project founder with the full support of
| government regulators who are supposed to be preventing this
| stuff and lost all my income overnight. The regulators literally
| facilitated fraud instead of preventing it... And I had the
| pleasure of being gaslit about it while also being gaslit about
| COVID by a different set of regulators. I became a conspiracy
| theorist during this time! Now I'm forced to work again...
|
| It's especially infuriating in this age of perma-bailouts where
| the system is basically bailing out everyone with assets.
|
| I figured out that the system is a scam. I can prove it to anyone
| in excruciating detail, with citations. If anyone should be
| bailed out, it should be me. I shouldn't be forced back in the
| hamster wheel. It's hard to compete against others who think the
| system works a certain way and don't realize how the hamster
| wheel works. I shouldn't have to compete with delusional fools
| who think that their effort spent on the hamster wheel is going
| to yield any rewards.
|
| Anyway it drives me nuts how the only people who can afford to
| retire, choose not to... And those who are desperate to retire,
| can't! This is so pervasive, it feels like a psyop.
| brador wrote:
| Imagine if they locked Serg out of the protected quantum research
| he loved reading as it was department employees only and the only
| way he could continue his access was returning to work at a
| senior enough level to cross read. Imagine.
| h1fra wrote:
| The hard truth is most people don't have hobbies. It's even more
| true with billionaires that dedicated their whole life to their
| job
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Hard to believe he did it "out of boredom".
|
| It lines up with the AI arms race kicking into overdrive around
| ChatGPT's triumph in late 2022. Brin pops out of hiding right
| then, admitting Google "messed up" and starts coding, analysing
| losses, and basically playing dictator with his super-voting
| shares to shove the company back on track.
|
| Rivals like OpenAI yanked him in and now he's in the office daily
| because the "trajectory of AI is so exciting" - translation: his
| ego couldn't handle watching his empire get outpaced, and with
| those voting rights, he can bulldoze through bureaucracy to keep
| the throne.
|
| Ultimately, it's less about some profound quest for purpose and
| more about a control freak safeguarding his legacy and billions
| as the tech world burns. He never really let his kingdom go.
| largbae wrote:
| From observing my parents and other elders, it isn't "work" in
| the job sense that we all need. It is feeling needed by others.
| This can be accomplished by being an active grandparent,
| charity(active volunteering not just allocating money), open-
| source contribution, mentoring.
|
| It can be something other than a job. It just can't be done
| alone.
|
| We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other.
| Luckily there are plenty of people in need.
| jjice wrote:
| Totally, it's "work" in the sense that you're doing something
| to contribute to the world, even if it's something small or
| mostly unimpactful. Those kinds of things provide internal
| fulfillment, in my experience.
| ebergen wrote:
| My grandmother said it like this, "sometimes people need to
| help more than people need help" in the context of a much
| younger me asking effectively why she bothered (I forget the
| context). That has stuck with me for years.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Exactly, the prevalence of the word "work" in this conversation
| is such a telling indicator of what 'western' culture-at-large
| has been taught to focus on
| huhtenberg wrote:
| > _It is feeling needed by others._
|
| A more general need from what I see is to engage with and to
| accomplish non-trivial things.
|
| For some it might be helping others people, for others it might
| be learning, researching or creating.
|
| To each their own.
| bsoles wrote:
| > It is feeling needed by others.
|
| My perspective on these things have changed when I saw a
| successful old friend of mine thank his friend for asking his
| help. I feel like being asked to help by a friend might
| actually be a privilege sometimes.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I think it definitely is - simply because it means you are
| approachable enough (and knowledgable enough) that people
| feel both comfortable enough to ask and see you as a reliable
| resource.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| To nitpick a little bit, it's not just feeling needed by
| others, but also doing things that are meaningful.
| aaronrobinson wrote:
| This is a common misconception. I'm quite happy not being
| social and have absolutely no need to be needed.
|
| I FIREd 3 years ago and don't miss working one bit.
|
| I think leaving work becomes more difficult for those who do
| need to feel valued and especially if they don't have interests
| outside of it. There are many people like that.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other.
|
| I think this was illustrated well in the movie I Am Legend with
| Will Smith. He creates artificial situations where he is
| interacting with mannequins in order to fulfill this very basic
| need.
|
| Its interesting that this part of the movie was missed by a lot
| of friends and family until I pointed it out to them.
| Melatonic wrote:
| "If you want to stay youthful stay useful!"
| howdyhowdy123 wrote:
| I agree with this, although I prefer to phrase it as "being
| useful to others (and appreciated)".
|
| I'd think this is universal but it's interesting to see others
| in this thread that disagree.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| It's interesting that he's returned to work on Gemini and that it
| has been central to Google's rejuvenation in that time. I am
| curious how much of this marries up with traditional founder
| driven companies being successful (Jobs returning to Apple,
| Jensen Huang, etc) compared to being adrift without their
| original founders. How much was he driving as part of Gemini? Or
| was he just chipping in?
| longhaul wrote:
| This was my thesis as well but only insiders can confirm how
| much of it is true
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's funny when people ask you what you want to do after you
| retire, and you tell them you are going to sit behind your PC and
| do exactly what you are doing now.
| shevy-java wrote:
| What a horrible promo-article - in particular when we look at the
| damage caused by Google in total. I actually think it would be
| better if the two original Google guys would, while shamefully
| admitting to have failed, stop working altogether. Others can fix
| the problems Google caused.
|
| > "Going back to work just for fun might sound like a uniquely
| billionaire move."
|
| Ah yeah? Can be boredom too. I fail to see why this article wants
| to promote this.
|
| > Like many people, Brin had a relaxing vision for his post-
| working life. "I was gonna sit in cafes and study physics, which
| was my passion at the time," he told the Stanford audience.
|
| Any why would anyone take this at face value? How many of the
| guys there were paid to go there by the way?
| 1a527dd5 wrote:
| I would have never believed this is a thing until I saw it happen
| near me.
|
| Company got sold, the owners were great and made sure everyone
| was taken care of.
|
| Almost all the owners are now back working in one way or another.
| It's about +5 year since the sale.
|
| - 1 spent the first year travelling
|
| - 1 did loads of house stuff
|
| - 2 got really deep into woodworking
|
| Still the same people; I just think they got bored of the
| banality.
| motbus3 wrote:
| He could start by reverting the removal of "Don't be evil" from
| Google.
| oytis wrote:
| I like how his return is casually being presented as a failure to
| retire properly. We need less lionizing and more texts like this
| plesn wrote:
| No wonder he returned: he can focus on meaningful work without
| direct financial pressure, with full access to people, decisions,
| and resources.
|
| If only we all had a time in life to do what we love, get paid,
| and face no paywalls. I call that "liberated work". If only at
| least retirement was like that.
| lazarus01 wrote:
| Pursuing goals that are intrinsically motivating, genuinely
| interesting, that give you a strong sense of purpose with healthy
| integration into core values leads to high life satisfaction.
| pzo wrote:
| > Adherents of the popular financial independence, retire early
| (FIRE) movement scrimp and sacrifice to retire early. Only for
| many of them to discover their dream of post-work life does not
| match reality.
|
| I think the more important goal in FIRE is the 'FI' part -
| financial independence. Something that _allows_ you to retire
| early - not necessary that you have to use this privilage.
| Something that allows you to next day take a day off or week off
| or 1 year sabbatical to recharge without asking anyone for
| permission or worrying if you will be able to pay the bills.
|
| I think even in 4-hour-workweek Tim Ferriss called it taking
| mini-retirements throughout your life rather than at the end of
| you life.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| FIYNTBOM
|
| Financial Independence, You're Not The Boss Of Me.
|
| Once you're financially independent, at a level that you're
| comfortable with, you don't have to put up with crappy bosses.
|
| If you're Sergey Brin, you kind of don't really have a boss, do
| you?
|
| If you "retire" into working at a hardware store, or
| volunteering at the Humane Society, or just shifting into a
| lower-stress job...
|
| Well, that's the dream, isn't it?
|
| I was so happy when I realized that, unless there were dramatic
| shifts in the markets, I would always be able to find "decent"
| work for great wages. And maybe I could be patient and find
| "good" work for "pretty great" wages.
|
| Once I had that level of comfort, I was way, way more brave at
| work. I thought, "Well, they could fire me for their own
| reasons, any day. So, I might as well do The Right Thing(tm).
| If they fire me for doing The Right Thing(tm), well, I didn't
| really want to work there anyway, did I?"
|
| And then there were dramatic shifts in the markets, lol. But
| fortunately for me, I had built up a nest egg, and now I've
| shifted into a lower-stress job.
|
| I honestly don't know what advice I'd give to younger folks.
| Move to Norway?
| pkos98 wrote:
| I think this is just an extension of "Fuck you money"
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I think you're very close to being right...
|
| But I think "Fuck you money" implies, "I honestly don't
| have to worry about money, ever again."
|
| Now, we all have different definitions for that, but the
| kind of thing I was talking about is definitely not "Fuck
| you money," to me.
|
| I think if I had "Fuck you money," my best friends and
| close family would all have their medical debts paid off. I
| think my parents and in-laws would have their mortgages
| paid off.
| jayd16 wrote:
| That is what they call "fuck me money". As in, fuck me
| I'll just pay it.
|
| FUM is the freedom to walk away. FMM is the power make
| your own terms.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| It's more than just money, it's how you set up your life to
| be resilient to contingencies. For example finding a
| compatible life partner. For example finding happiness
| without lifestyle inflation and breaking free from the
| hedonic treadmill. Or perhaps having a good lifestyle
| business for some people. Or having extended family support
| nearby. I call these things unfuckwithability. Money is a
| big part of it, but may not be the biggest missing piece
| for many people.
| exographicskip wrote:
| Your username checks out re: moving to Scandinavia haha
| snake42 wrote:
| I might have missed it, but I don't see this quote in the
| article. Either way, it feels disingenuous when a place like
| business insider posts these criticisms of FIRE like it is the
| ultimate gotcha.
|
| Finding a purpose outside of work seems like the main issue
| most people struggle with when doing FIRE. Once you get going,
| the saving is automatic and addictive to some, but figuring out
| what to do with your life to give it meaning outside of a
| traditional work context is not just an issue with FIRE.
| loeg wrote:
| The quote is in the article. You may have to click to expand
| below the jump.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| One time Sergey asked me: "Can you juggle?"
|
| I said "Yes! If you don't mind that all the balls land on the
| floor."
|
| Sergey found someone else to juggle with.
|
| That person became CEO of a major Alphabet company.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Has someone collected all of these classic Silicon Valley
| nepotism stories anywhere?
| shimman wrote:
| I mean they are no different that the trash stories you'd
| read about robber barons in the 1800s (poor orphan got
| offered a job, smart worker talked to railroad tycoon, etc).
| triceratops wrote:
| I can juggle. Where's my CEO job?
| tester756 wrote:
| Do not retire without hobby, things to do because sitting at home
| without anything to do will kill you faster than anything else
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Retire early != Don't do anything. Instead, retire early == you
| can do whatever you want, and NOT do whatever you don't want.
|
| FIRE is sick. Go for it as soon as possible, before marriage.
| dubeye wrote:
| My doctor had a renowned research record, retired at 68 but got
| bored, and went back to work. Whilst I was in hospital, I got to
| observe him throughout the work day.
|
| I don't mean this in a creepy way at all, but I got the
| impression the greatest source of joy was hanging around with
| younger people. A hungry grad, a cleaner, a nurse, male, female,
| whatever.
|
| I'm sure he enjoyed his peers as well, but I could detect a shade
| of boredom of those interactions, which inevitably had stress and
| responsibility attached.
|
| I think what I'm trying to say is that work isn't just about
| challenge, it's about socialization and having fun. And one of
| the greatest benefits of being financially independent is being
| able to navigate to those kinds of moments without the pressure
| of being on the make.
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| I was semi in retirement.
|
| Actually just jobless, but I was doing side projects here and
| there
|
| Retirement gets boring fast --- and you lose connections to the
| rhythm of society fast.
|
| For the vast majority of humans, an idle mind is depressing and
| destructive
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Reminder: Sergey Brin is a creep who believes in hiring women so
| he can sleep with them.
|
| The fact he's allowed back inside Google means Google still has a
| massively unresolved workplace sexual harassment issue.
| tezza wrote:
| this is truly bizarre.
|
| It's as if they've never heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
| before and further did they don't know Self Actualizing is right
| at the very top.
|
| Without that key stone on the top the human being is still a
| wanting animal. And if you somehow "mission complete" one Self
| Actualizing, then you immediately start to want something fresh
| "purpose" etc.
|
| And obviously Self Actualizing doesn't have to come in the form
| of work, although often it does.
| krapp wrote:
| Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been widely criticized as being
| too rigid and simplistic and too biased towards an affluent
| Western cultural context. It also hasn't been tested and
| validated by science, and is based on hearsay rather than
| empirical data.
|
| "Self Actualization" being a primary universal human need is
| just one guy's personal opinion, it isn't a law of nature or
| physics.
| thefaux wrote:
| At the end of life, Maslow became convinced that self-
| transcendence was the pinnacle of the hierarchy. Strong
| identification with work will not get one to that final step. I
| am not sure if ai is a path to self transcendence or self
| annihilation, but it's interesting to ponder in the case of
| some like Brin.
| ausbah wrote:
| im probably just projecting but going back to work when youve
| amassed enough to live off to an enormous fortune feels like a
| failure of imagination. sure everyone needs to keep their hands
| busy, feel valued by others, etc etc but surely there's some
| other hobby, interest, or unprofitable passion project you would
| invest time into?
|
| but maybe being in a corporate environment (any any env) shapes
| your thinking in such a way that it's really hard to think
| outside tha conditioning. feels like that to me only a few years
| int working
| geodel wrote:
| Well, XYZ rando going back to work after RSUs are vested is lot
| different from Google founder going back to work because he
| sees his 'baby' is in trouble.
|
| Those hobbies, interests etc sounds like middle class thing
| where people take upon gardening, cooking, hiking, surfing or
| some such that they couldn't do enough while working. For
| people like Google founders they would've had any adventure
| they seek outside work anywhere in they world every weekend.
|
| People forget Bill Gates advised (maybe still consulted) by MS
| long after he formally moved away from any official position in
| company.
| tormeh wrote:
| If I became financially independent tomorrow I'd go straight to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A9delon_Castle to help build
| that. I don't think we've evolved to be healthy and idle. In
| retirement you can choose what to do, and volunteering on some
| nerdy construction project sounds amazing.
| jniles wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this link! I'd never heard of it before, and
| it is fascinating.
| jraedisch wrote:
| I would like to read more about Larry Page, too.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I took a moment to participate in an ARIN (https://www.arin.net)
| call. They drive policy for IP addresses that run the Internet.
| Anyway, one thing that stood out to me was during a portion of
| the conference the organization was holding elections for open
| seats. The seats are open to anyone, I'm pretty sure.
|
| There were a bunch of people, from across the country, MANY in
| retirement, trying their best to sell themselves that they are
| the right candidate.
|
| Sergey can just make a phone call and he gets to build Gemini and
| run a billion dollar organization and have meaning in old-age.
| This is what wealth buys you. The rest of us, I guess, we will be
| arm-wresteling for the few open oppertunities to make an impact.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-01-07 23:01 UTC)