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Comment by yanilkr | Hacker News Reader

You have to take such studies with a grain of salt.

The most important one that put hacker news on the map was "Working for yourself" is missing from the list. Paul graham in the early days of hacker news wrote great things about miracles happening when people worked for themselves in small teams.

That kind of philosopher leadership has been missing in tech community as a whole. Look at comments and topics discussed on hacker news. These aspiring engineers are talking about how some one else should pay them basic income so they could innovate and many other lame excuses. very sad.

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You've taken the thread off-topic in a rather trolling way (unintentionally, I'm sure, but that's how most trolling works nowadays). And I'm pretty sure your reading of HN is wrong. The vast majority here talk about basic income because they find the question interesting, not because they want it for themselves.

I'm a fan of http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html, too, but I wouldn't say it was what put HN on the map. It was one of many essays pg wrote, and IIRC it got a controversial reception at the time.

I think people are talking about how there should be basic income so they can innovate freely without having to fear decimating the economic lives of others.

I'm fine. I'd like to pay everyone else basic income so we can finally rid ourselves of the absolutely ridiculous state of poverty and hunger in a country of absolute plenty.

That, and no fear of becoming financially ruined by choosing to be a stay-at-home-mom, or needing to care for an ailing relative more than part-time, or any other emergency that might separate you from employment and healthcare and screw you financially for life.

What I find sad is anyone that thinks people in a lower class than themselves are "takers" or that poverty is a deserved result of some arbitrary moral line - or that anyone in 2016 should be homeless or hungry.

Working for yourself will often be fulfilling, because it can provide many of the six things we list that matter:

* Work you’re good at * Work that helps others * Engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow (freedom, variety, clear tasks, feedback) * Supportive colleagues * A job that meets your basic needs, like fair pay, short commute and reasonable hours * A job that fits your personal life.

Disagree. Working for yourself would provide none of these but allows you to create all/many of these out of your sheer will. These things are not a pre-condition.

It doesn't necessarily provide those things certainly. But inasmuch as it makes people fulfilled, it will mostly be because working for yourself is providing those things. :)

or there is a simpler explanation. Those 60 studies made assumptions about what a job is and that definition would have excluded working for yourself.

The study would still make perfect sense if you look at job as an employment working for some other employer.

I believe robertwiblin et al.'s point is that ceteris paribus working for yourself that features these characteristics will make you happier than working for yourself and focusing on other things.

In the original article, they clearly identify that some things (e.g. competence) can change over the course of a career. Hence "pre-condition" is a strange way to look at the research.

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