If you get rich, you won’t quit working for long
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Some stop working, some continue working, and some decide to get together and create a startup incubator :-). Pretty much everyone I know that has gone through that process though are engineers. And engineers got to be engineers because they had a passion for building things or solving problems. Many people who have been engineers for a few years also realize that a group of talented engineers can solve bigger problems as a collective than any single engineer can. So the thing that really gives you satisfaction, solving some huge problem, can be best accomplished on a team.
There are three ways you can do that, you can work on a volunteer basis, you can start a company, or you can join an existing company. I've been playing around with some ideas around an experimental fourth way but so far have not found the right balance for that.
[1] Rich is such a subjective term but we'll use the article definition of having enough savings to never work again.
Oddly the challenge can be where do excess profits go. (I have to presume that some of the projects the group or subgroups work on would achieve a modicum of income or value) trying to have a plan for that.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/dining/a-collective-lets-s...
At the University, Stanford’s vision of an education to support worker cooperatives never became established. To a large degree, this might be due to Stanford’s death two years after the University opened. [...] Leland Stanford’s vision was not only forgone, but over time was entirely forgotten by the Stanford University community. This forgetting appears to have been fairly rapid, occurring within the first decade of the University. Undoubtedly most of the faculty and administrators knew of Stanford’s wishes, but they ceased to speak and write of them, and thus the knowledge was not transmitted.
That is in some ways like a maker space where paying your dues not only gave you membership it also gave you an office, shared access to expensive equipment, and medical/dental benefits. The stuff a "real" job gives you but without the (now unnecessary) salary.
The presumption is that the work would yield economic returns and if so, those returns would go back into the organization to offset the cost of membership. Of course if the cost of membership became negative then you'd effectively have an entirely employee owned corporation and that is where things get different. Some of the people I've talked to about this concept have created very valuable things in the past and they expect to again, if they did that in the collective's space how does that work? Does all that value flow to everyone, even people who didn't participate? How about to people who did but were only tangentially influential in the outcome. That is the "success disaster" that one has to create plans for so that what happens at that point has already been agreed to by everyone and we don't start suing each other.
There are other models, places like law offices which share expenses. Things like movie studios which essentially do a vfork(2) to create an entity to "own" a production and the results of that production, groups like the Royal Society (although I've been cautioned against creating something along those lines), and alternate forms of venture incubating[1]. There are interesting examples to look at like Willow Garage to see what worked and what didn't.
[1] One thought was to have this group of seasoned engineers get a project off the ground and proven then hire in a team to be the company, transition it to the team and move on to the next thing.
As a project becomes successful, it grows to about 20 people, then spins out into a for-profit commercial enterprise.
So, IMO it's more complex than just 'builders'.
I'm the kind of person who writes code for fun. I like solving puzzles and coding is the ultimate puzzle solving game, not only do you get to solve the puzzle you get to make up the pieces you are going to use to solve the puzzle and so can solve it in infinitely many ways. Paid or not I'll spend my "free" time writing code and designing circuits.
I have more time for family and friends. I can tinker with new ideas in software, and eventually find new projects to work on, (I have one now). I have started teaching again, on and off. I get to sleep late, go out more, both at night and on vacations.
However, I have done less than I thought I would, and honestly, I am sometimes bored. However, I absolutely will not work again if I don't have to. Why? Because going to work for someone else is an admission that I don't know what the hell to do with myself, so I might as well fill my time sacrificing my precious time for someone else's dream. No thanks. Not only does that re-introduce the problems mentioned above, but it masks the real problem of not knowing what I really want to do.
Also, I'm really tired of the startup life. Charismatic startup founders who use their charm to extract what they need from you, VC lemmings, "this is the most important release ever", open floor plans, ...
However, the "outer wrapper" is not the main story nor is it the TLDR.
Instead of journalists just presenting it like this:
<main story about research or science>
<human-interest as color prologue>
<main story about research or science>
<human-interest as color epilogue>
I do concede that if your only takeaway was "Keith's story", it's possible that imprint was deliberate by the editors. (In other words, they know that psychologically, most audiences will remember a character's struggles and triumphs more than the abstract facts & figures.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interest_story
[2] and also mentions Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Karen Gorden
[3] http://www.wealthlegacygroup.net/wlg-about/documentation/jam...
Run, bike, hike, camp, cook, read, walk, have coffee, relax, etc.
But it's possible there's a sample bias; people who get rich are the kind of people who can't stop working, even if/when they can. Other people would totally stop working if they got rich but it's hard to prove, because they never do get rich.
In their case, making a lot of money was a pleasant side effect of their preexisting strong work ethic, not the driving force.
(...and don't get me wrong, these guys also play hard when they're not working)
"Play hard" after 72 hours of working? They must be super-human. What about, you know, er, human contact? Like spending time with your family and friends?
Family gets neglected in that case, or nepotism'd so you can see them.
The act of doing business for those sorts of people is play.
That's probably how Marissa Mayer was "working" 130 hrs/week :-)
That's exactly the problem I think. If you're driven enough to get rich you're too driven to stop. If you'd be happy stopping, you're not driven enough to get rich.
Spending on these things pretty much comes together with being "employed".
> I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.
In trying to rationalize the article to myself, it occurs to me that, after a lifetime of measuring your own success/pride in dollar-denominations, a complete, instantaneous loss of income represents a likewise complete collapse of pride and an ensuing inability to even measure one's own perceived happiness.
Perhaps the restless retiree from the original story could use his dissatisfaction as a driver to find another means of self-fulfillment, rather than allow it to shock him back into (imo) tycoon-esque distraction.
That's because he didn't have the right personality and nothing prepared him for it. Others have absolutely no problem not going back to the routine -- and can find any number of small personal projects and hobbies to keep them occupied.
Of course nobody just sits on a beach old day, because it gets boring in itself. But there are tons of other endeavours to try that are not work.
However, I agree. I'm constantly coming up with new projects, ideas and activities for myself. At this time I am convinced that I would not be bored never having to work a formal job ever again in my life. I would assume that is true for many HNers.
The answer is, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation.
You're not motivated by a job's salary, you're motivated by the nice things you can do with money--things you decided are intrinsically more important than the things you can do while broke.
We're not talking about the same kind of motivation, obviously.
We're talking about motivation in the work itself vs being motivated to work because of others things you want to do with the money.
To make it an extreme example, in the first case you'd do the work even for free, or even pay to do it (like many people pay to do some hobbies), even if you had all the money you need.
In Germany for example health care insurance for start-up founders costs like 200€/month more than for unemployed (assuming they have savings and low income), because they set this fee by law and people do not like rich business owners there.
Or last week a court decided that commercial webpages must not link to potential illegal sites and it is their responsibility to check if it illegal, e.g. if the other site contains a CC-ND photo that was modified. From your hobby webpage you can link to it as you please, but if it is a start-up webpage you can get sued for 6000€, even if you do not know there is that photo.
You can spent all your time on an oss project and it is no job, since you do not get paid.
Do they have to work? Nope. If they live leaner, they needen't work another day in the rest of their lives. If they have hobbies, they can master those instead. They could be the best at them.
But instead, "society" says they have to work to have a worth. That's puritanical garbage that we need to nip at the bud. We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
Most people aren't like that. Their hobbies don't coincide with "acceptable business practices". And frankly, awesome. There's plenty of things to do that are enriching for all, and that have no discernible business value.
As for me, I wouldn't do the job I currently do now (systems engineer for a network operations). I'd much rather work in research and development discovering new things, or new ways to do things. I already do that in my spare time. But making money in my position is required, so I do things to survive, and fill in time of my hobbies. That would change, and bloody quick if I ever ran across fuck-you money.
Most of us are the same way. I think this is ultimately the point being made.
With hobbies, I can start and stop them as I choose. My livelihood is not bound to the requirement that I do X to get money $Y.
If I want to do the hobby of "drink whiskey and watch all of netflix", so be it. If I want to take up surfing, awesome. Or if I want to dabble in the arts, there's noone to stop me. My hobbies would bounce around as to what's interesting, fun, or neat stuff to do.
Right now, what stops me, is that I am working class. I have to work in order to live. 40 hours a week is "theirs", and I have the rest of time to eat, sleep, and do whatever else.
(Edit: and wow, the stockholm syndrome is strong. So many people, trying to reclassify what work is and isn't. And then saying, oh yeah doing something is work. We're not talking work in the physics sense here, but in the capitalistic sense of "if you no workey, you no eaty and no livey".)
Most people have to work on things they don't necessarily find fulfilling. That doesn't mean certain wealthy people don't find hobbies which also happen to make them money.
I understand that you wouldn't work to make money, but you would still work in the sense of undertaking an effortful activity.
So again, you would work, albeit not for money. Lest you continue with the (frankly rude) accusations, this is precisely what I would do as well. I just disagree with the notion that these hobbies don't constitute work (in the sense of 'not rest/leisure').
For all your railing against puritan work ethic, you have a very puritanical definition of work.
The idea of Work, in a Capitalistic sense, is activities you do for someone else, that make money for them above and beyond what you are paid for, and that you are compulsed to do with the threat of "no money, no food, no home".
With what I am talking about, I can change freely to whatever I wish to do, right now. I have no specter hanging over me threatening "no access and utilization of basic resources". If I want to chill and do nothing, I do precisely that. If I want to develop stuffs with electronics, I can do that as well. And when I'm bored, I can walk away with not a care. Try that in a "corporate setting".
And my "frankly rude accusations" match up pretty well with the original stockholm situation itself. In the end, if you don't "play nice" with capitalism, it threatens to end you as well, albeit slower than what the bank robbers wanted to do. And yet, so many people bounce to capitalism's defence. Hence, Stockholm Syndrome.
So it seems like you're both arguing whether definition 1 or definition 3 of a word is the right definition.
So by that definition, independently wealthy people never "work" because they could always quit without financial worries.
The rest of us, don't have that luxury.
(I personally think this is an excellent choice on your part and you should be proud of yourself.)
Sure, folks would do some things that require effort. That's just most people, of course they are going to do some things they find enjoyable, even if it has some effort involved.
But that might be that they discover a new love for video games. Maybe they will start going for speed records, even though they are 45 years old. In between sessions, they'll smoke weed and eat and entice their wife, who has similar passions for similarly lazy activities. Neither works, as they are wealthy enough not to. They take breaks as wanted, leave on a whim, and drop it for a month before coming back to it.
This is hardly the same thing as work: You could replace this with any other hobby, and it still wouldn't count as work. Something might come of it, and they might enjoy life immensely, but hardly work and hardly puritanical.
But weirdly enough, it is effortful under your definition. Unfortunately, yours doesn't actually meet people's expecation of daily work or the sort of work the article eludes to.
I don't think that's true for most wealthy people. By and large, every wealthy person I know is working on things they find deeply interesting and challenging. The problem is with people (who have to work to live) assuming that people who don't have to work to live are working in the same kind of roles just due to some social pressure.
Yes, that's the type of people the article is talking about. A good example is somebody like Apple's Jony Ive with a net worth of ~$130 million[1]. He doesn't have to work another day in his life, and yet he still does. And he's not just working every day remotely from home in some ceremonial role. He still goes to the Apple office and is actively engaged with leading the design teams.
His "hobby" seems to be designing materials into products millions of consumers will like. He happens to express that hobby at the Apple office instead of his hoe garage.
If you walked up to him and told him he's only continuing to work because he's brainwashed from Puritanical Stockholm Syndrome, I think'd he'd rightfully feel insulted.
We can acknowledge that you wouldn't do systems network engineering if you didn't have to work for money but that's not Jony Ive's situation. For him, hobby==work.
[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/11/03/does-ap...
Perhaps, but what's fulfils one's life is in no way necessary to be labor -- which, especially in its modern form (9-5, desk work, meetings etc), is a highly constructed cultural artifact as opposed to anything inherent in how people as a species need.
Pretty much all lower level software development is no more remarkable than working on an assembly line. Code I've written helped streamline testing for a tiny bit of code that's a tiny part of a single piece of software that's part of a massive software hardware system that can be used make it harder to slip an IED under a dead camel without anyone noticing. Is that really any less important than the guy checking bearing tolerances before shipping the bearings to the manufacturer of the machine used roll the threads on the bolts that will affix to the airplane the hardware the software system uses?
We're all just a tiny part of a bigger machine on some level.
It's a physiological/psychological need to be involved in some activity with a purpose, connect with people, etc
Of course there might be new occupations around the corner, but given that most of every material and cultural need is already satisfied, except for eternal life, I don't see what occupations billions of people could transition to that people or businesses would pay money for.
Couldn't that be said in every point in history?
Were the farmers losing their jobs in the early 1900s thinking to themselves, "man, I could really go for an interconnected network of computers right now"? I'd be surprised if it even crossed their mind. But eventually, with not having to work on the farm anymore, they had the time to sit back and come up with the idea and implementation. Now, in 2016, it is difficult to imagine living without it.
I find it hard to believe we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement.
For the vast majority of humans, what they can reasonably accomplish in their lifetimes is surpassed by automated systems today, at least that which pertains to the things that in the past were requisite for everything to function (farming, transportation, common services like cooking, cleaning, etc).
It's not hard to imagine the need for paying jobs will drop to zero as everything humans normally need is captured by monopolistic automated systems. From whence comes the need to take care of our own? What's to stop most humans from becoming like the horse, that which no longer has capitalistic meaning? Our overwhelming love for each other (/sarcasm)?
This friction starts when the 100s "push back." You don't have to be a genius to raise hell, do you?
Previously we just shifted from the fields to the factories, and when that was done, to the offices and service industry.
If those are done too, there will be few, or no, replacements.
There's no contract we signed with the universe or the "laws of economy" that there will always be new jobs found to replace automated ones.
Certainly there is no contract with the universe, but seeing as how people have pretty much worked most of the time for all of human history it seems like the height of hubris to think that RIGHT NOW things are going to fundamentally change.
Lets take horses. They were essential for many areas, for a very long time. Once a horseless carriage was constructed, horse ownership declined. After a tipping point, the cost for a horse, in terms of food, water, lodging cost more than the horseless carriage.
Eventually, horses were unemployable. They were still animals - strong animals at that. But the cost of maintenance and upkeep was more than they could output. So many went to the sausage and glue factories.
Some people still have them, and they are huge money-sinks. Their owners know it, and budget accordingly. But none use them for actual labor - machines are much more efficient.
So, what do we do when human labor is less than the resources to keep said human alive? Sausage/glue factories for them as well?
(edit: spelling)
The Soylent factory for me, please!
But to answer your question: there's going to have to be a rewrite of taxation and laws - see experiments with basic income - to cater for a world in which wealth is still being created but is being distributed less as the labour isn't required.
Whomever commands the robots of the future is probably looking at a big tax bill.
Nah. There will always be demand for people to do things. People want all kinds of goods and services. Not all of them will be automate-able. People will do those things. And they'll get paid for it.
Humans are not just tools. Thinking of them in that way leads to conclusions that don't make sense.
Capitalism views humans as a resource to be used and exploited. When that equation no longer makes sense for that person/group, they are gotten rid of. Look no further than factories that move elsewhere to lower their costs.
I'm from Indiana, and I'm sure you've heard of that Carrier factory debacle. They initially made the decision to move because it would make them $2 billion more per year. It was a purely numbers-driven solution. That's all that capitalism can "see".
And frankly, humans are "unquantifiable". No measurement, no data, and no decisions on that. It's the same with the environment as well - if there's no data that ties directly to me, who cares (even if we all take part). It's the tragedy of the commons. And we in the end, all suffer.
There are a lot of people out there who want to limit reproduction. And these days, they have better arguments.
To continue your analogy, "put them out to pasture". It could be argued that what is good for us as a people, is not always good for our conscious. What to do?
"There are things we can't conceive" is not a very convincing argument.
Sure.
There are also things we can conceive fairly well.
It's not that automation will eliminate all jobs, just that automation will eliminate most jobs in every field faster than humans can be trained to do them.
The worry is that humans will become the horses of the 21st century -- and we seem on track to be. Understandably, many humans are concerned by this prospect.
AI is not just tools. AI replaces brains as well. This breaks the cycle. You know what they saw about past results and future returns? Apply that heavy and frequently.
Is the feeling that you are withering away if you are not progressing in life merely a "society" thing though?
Any specific ones that you have in mind?
I disagree. The drive to work and/or be productive is one of the reasons we're the apex predator, and not our prior evolutionary human-like variations. It's not "society" that says you have to work, but your DNA.
Example... do you notice the drive among the powerful/wealthy individuals, governments, and corporations - to get to space and colonize our solar system and beyond? That drive does not exist if we sit on our laurels. Those are the people pushing the species forward - it would be simple to do nothing, and for them to sip very expensive coffee and entertain themselves until their life expired.
> We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
This isn't about "human" labor, it's about working in general. Perhaps your occupation is designing, improving, or repairing these machines you speak of. That is work, and has a noticeable impact - opposed to camping, hiking, sipping coffee, and existing for the sake of existing.
tldr; if/when a society meltdown occurs, I don't want you on my team.
I agree we have a drive to improve but our current system is a long way from efficient by design.
Whereas most anthropological and genetic studies indicate that homo sapiens did not "win", but instead we mated with them and joined the disparate species.
> Example... do you notice the drive among the powerful/wealthy individuals, governments, and corporations - to get to space and colonize our solar system and beyond? That drive does not exist if we sit on our laurels. Those are the people pushing the species forward - it would be simple to do nothing, and for them to sip very expensive coffee and entertain themselves until their life expired.
Sigh. And here we go, with moralizing capitalistic thought with expansion and growth.
You pack in the assumption that capitalism pushes society forward and will continue to do so. I also seem to remember the Wright bros story. They patented the aeropane in the US, whereas it was free to use elsewhere. They locked down the industry so it was their way or no way. Eventually, the US military had to step in, due to WWI, and end their protections.
In the end, capitalism is great at looking that it furthers science and the arts. But the bad sides are that it: 1. retards cooperation between different entities 2. pits person against person 3. encourages to maximize money against all other means
> tldr; if/when a society meltdown occurs, I don't want you on my team.
Don't worry. You wouldn't be on my "team" anyways. It'd be your loss, given I know many things, including many arts and sciences from the SCA.
As for the anti-capitalism rant please tell me that you have visited Russia, east Europe, Venezuela and the awesome places in the world where the capitalist evil has been destroyed for some time. And once you go there please feel free to stay if you enjoy it so much.
I have seen some of those places and, thanks a lot, but I prefer the evil capitalism by far.
I disagree. The large amount of mooches, bums, alcoholics, and freeloaders around clearly points out that the evolutionary hypothesis you posit is wrong.
In general, any time you find yourself trying to justify something with evolutionary psychology, you are probably wrong. I really hate the abuse of the field and the trendy brainless use of "DNA-this" "in-our-DNA that" in popular jargon. Evolutionary psychology is just Social Darwinism for the 21st century with a new name. Unless there is a study that tested and confirmed an evolutionary psychology hypothesis, consider it wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psyc...
Can we agree that your DNA(and most species) does give you an innate drive to reproduce? Past(last 100000+ years) and present mating suitability in a male is perceived by his ability to feed/defend/nurture their mate and offspring. The large amount of "mooches, bums, alcoholics" you reference would be poor mates, yet they continue to reproduce. They do so [mostly] with the assistance of another willing member of the class of "mooches, bums, alcoholics". However, the people that are not "mooches, bums, alcoholics" make more desirable mates, because they have a higher potential to feed/defend/nurture their mate and offspring. That means that yes, your biology is still telling you that you need to work, even if it is only to achieve higher mating success, and fulfill your biological imperative.
Hrm...I really don't like the direction my own thought is taking as I write this down. It ends with "well, then those (people) should be eliminated for the good of the species", and no one wants to hear that, whether it is correct or incorrect. It can be interpreted in a very dark and nasty context, and that is absolutely not what I'm trying to promote or champion.
In a nutshell, I'm arguing that I will win at the biological imperative because of my drive to work and succeed. Those people that don't want to work and succeed would contribute to their species by going off somewhere quiet, and avoiding consumption of the resources needed by their fellow species members that are grinding away at "life" in the evolutionary sense - not in the "pursuit of happiness" sense, which is subjective and altogether distracting.
It's also similar to Phrenology, the "science" of skull size, weight, and shape that indicate intelligence. Of course, non-whites were all inferior.
There were many interests all surrounding Margret Sanger, with Planned Parenthood and the original intentions of that group. Ideally, blacks, Jews, "retards", and any other undesirable were sterilized as to not continue their genes.
But talking of eugenics, even in a roundabout way has a lot of baggage. Is there a way to do it right? I'm not sure. I'd think voluntary methods could work, but only if they were truly voluntary. Remember, the kind of people we have coming in government believe that one can electrocute the gay out of someone (Pence).
Maybe he means it in the tongue in cheek "there's no disease that can't be treated with a 12ga slug" way. /s
Erm...is it? I thought that groups' entire mindset came from some religious interpretation of doing a deity's work. Maybe I'm wrong, but when a bunch of people(such as those that you mention) are so ridiculously self-destructive, I can only assume some-or-other <insert-religious-stupidity> is behind it.
I'm not making a case for any of the things you mention(sterilization...really!?). I'm making a case for the working people building a working civilization and non-working people can't participate or benefit.
No, you are just using the same flawed reasoning over and over again. The way it can also work is that a bigger and more aggressive man comes along, kills you, and takes your woman.
Even the words you use come from Social Darwinism: "success" and "imperative" at some goal. The innate drive you talk about has nothing to do with reproduction - it is a set of instincts that makes mate finding and mating pleasurable. Goals and even establishing the causal connection between mating and reproduction requires reasoning faculties that not even most apes are capable of.
> Those people that don't want to work and succeed would contribute to their species by going off somewhere quiet, and avoiding consumption of the resources needed by their fellow species members that are grinding away at "life" in the evolutionary sense
And these people would listen to you tell them where to go and what to do because ...?
It is quite obvious that you are trying to use a single evolutionary psychology argument without having any knowledge of the field. Human mating strategies are incredibly diverse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_system#In_humans. You have some kind of Puritan mental hangup about work that you are trying to justify with flawed reasoning.
No - you're assuming what I mean from text that I never wrote.
> The way it can also work is that a bigger and more aggressive man comes along, kills you, and takes your woman.
Precisely that. That's exactly how evolution works. At some point, we eschewed evolution for "feeling good". I have a problem with that, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.
> And these people would listen to you tell them where to go and what to do because ...?
They won't, and I wouldn't tell them to do anything, given that random humans have no reason to obey my forum-written thoughts.
> You have some kind of Puritan mental hangup
I'm not a puritan. Don't lump me in with people that search for meaning and invent a bearded one in a sky/sun/moon/long-dead-arab.
Sedachv, I get the impression you really want to argue with someone about something puritan-related. If you want to get together and rant about everything wrong they have done to our civilization and way of life, you would find I'm quite agreeable to that viewpoint. At the root of it all, I hate that I have to "work" so that other people can "not work". I want the "not work"-ing people to go away. Unfortunately, I can't go off and chase those ideals, because I am still taking care of my own biological imperative's fruit until they can are grown and capable of taking care of themselves. When people stop working early(most of them do not do so because they have become rich, as in the article), we have to take care of them. I don't want to take care of them.
And what's the alternative? Evolution has no effect on psychology? Our perfect mind came from divine inspiration?
Evolutionary psychology is threatening as a concept to many liberal ideals we've worked hard for. Men and women are equal. People are rational and can be trusted to make their own decisions, or vote intelligently. Liberalism can be boiled down to a kind of "faith in humanity", and like the earlier faith, thou shalt not question it, especially with science.
But like before, it's better in the long run if we face the uncomfortable truths, whatever they be.
edit: everything I'm trying to say here has been better said in The Blank Slate.
The alternative is the same as for every theory: do not assume your hypothesis is correct until you have empirical evidence, and do not assign your moral values to theories.
Obviously the idea of evolutionary psychology follows from evolution. Neither evolutionary psychology nor social Darwinism are wrong - they are just names for a particular class of consequences of evolution and natural selection. They are falsifiable because the theory of evolution is falsifiable. As far as we have evidence, evolution is true, so saying that evolution has consequences is true. What those consequences are is not for you to decide based on your prejudices.
Saying things like "your DNA says you have to work" and poor people deserve to die out "because evolution, duh" is wrong.
I left the business I founded 11 years ago 6 months ago - not because it was failing - they go from strength to strength - but rather because it was making me miserable - the fun freewheeling startup completely metamorphosed into a serious organisation complete with office politics and all the rest.
I cashed out for a relatively meagre sum - halved my net worth in the process, which now sits at about £1m 40:60 cash:assets. I'm 33. I plan to see every nook and cranny of the world and to take my time about it - bought an old Land Rover, driving everywhere.
A big part of the reason I left was identity. I had come to realise that my company was my identity, my life, my entire existence, and that I had remoulded myself continually to embody the company as it morphed and grew. Eventually I could no longer identify myself within the layers of inherited identity, and had lost all passion for the things that once drove me. I was CTO, not human, not alive.
Since leaving I'm slowly remembering life - despite having had time off over the last decade, there was only one one month period five years ago when I was uncontactable - other holidays were consumed by me staring at my phone and muttering curses as I'd hammer out emails.
It's going to take years to shed the burden, but already after six months I find myself slowly becoming less neurotic, less anxious, although I still have nightmares every night like clockwork.
The capital I have is not enough to retire on in the uk, but it is enough to retire in many other parts of the world.
Then again, I've always been pathologicallly lazy, and status has always been no more than a game to me, and I derive my identity (well, I did before I drowned it) very idiopathically, so perhaps I am an oddity rather than the norm.
This has ended up a ramble. I suppose my gist is that I currently believe it better to derive identity from something other than a manufactured corporate persona, or a job role. I just smile and say I'm unemployed.
I want to write. I want to be highly impractical and live in the mountains away from the madness. I recognise that what I want may well change, and that's OK too.
I'm advantaged financially but I've paid for it with far more than time. I suppose it all balances out.
£1m may not be "enough" in the UK, depending on how you want to live, but it's not that far off even in the UK if you structure your life accordingly (I recently reviewed my finances, and realised I spent more on trivial luxuries than what I used to live off total 10-15 years ago..).
In any case, it's "close enough" even in the UK - at least outside of the most expensive areas -, that it can get someone that big step from depending on a job to being able to take work now and again or pick more fulfilling options that might not be able to pay the bills on their own.
If you're in tech, as well, there's a lot of flexibility in picking up occasional well paid contracts. I just took on a contract from a guy in a similar position who'd just randomly travelling and doing contracts now and again to replenish his funds, who left the contract in question because he's going to spend 6 months somewhere he can't depend on getting an internet connection...
For my part I'm working my ass off at the moment, largely because I finally see an end-goal of a "modest" early "retirement" like yours in sight. For my part, I'll probably still keep "working", as I enjoy a lot of what I do, but there's a huge difference between "working" on projects that feel like you're playing and where there's no pressure to make it pay off, and having to deliver or not be able to pay the bills...
Reminds me, I once tried a 36 hour day routine. What drove me nuts and eventually to quit was not eating lunch at noon everyday.
It has been a fairly... tough is the wrong word... diplomatic? discoursive? few months, but despite having just started a promising career, she's game for trying something completely different - if it all goes pear shaped then she can start afresh, as she'd invested only six months and emotional energy, as can I - but while we're unburdened by sprogs and gammy hips or what have you problems of age we agreed on taking the opportunity.
So it takes compromise, but even were I alone, I'd likely be doing the same - when you travel, particularly alone, you meet kindred spirits - some of my fastest friends are fellow travellers I've met in the damndest places.
Life doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can both continue to work at a desk and also take unaccountable breaks - in fact, if you're rich enough, you can do whatever the hell you want. To be fair, the article does seem to insinuate people will return to like a totally normal 40-hour workweek, but you can also return to a 10-hour part-time job or start a non-profit or something.
However, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time - I have loads of plans which would make the world a better place, for example: launching an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids in the poor area where I'm from. I only need maybe 1 or 2 millions to do that.
Why would I go back to working for a company where I have way less power to change basically anything, really?
Congratulations, you now have a job and you belong to the ranks of "millionaires who didn't quit working for long" :)
It's also a blocked opportunity for someone else. For every millionaire who clings on to his senior executive job even though he doesn't need to, there's a non-millionaire who is not getting that senior executive promotion this year.
The work-to-live types generally tend to pursue careers involving working for some employer paying them salary plus benefits. With a few exceptions (the early employees of some of the bigger IPO successes), these people will mostly go on to earn middle-class or upper-middle-class incomes and live lifestyles in line with their income. Very few will ever come across life-changing sums of money.
Then you have the live-to-work types. Of course not all such people will become rich, but if you were to look at successful entrepreneurs, it'll be a long hard search before you find one who leaves the office every day at 5:00 PM on the dot to go home and loaf on the couch watching the game. These are the people who, if they are successful at building their company (and that is, of course, a huge if), will be able to walk away from the IPO with a fortune.
So why is it surprising in the slightest that the live-to-work types can't rest on their laurels?
There are corporate jobs in tech where you can spend almost all of your time working on the things you enjoy (say research, product development, or solving hard technical problems) while letting others take care of the things you don't. You don't really have that option if you're an entrepreneur. And the fact that you can get a salary that places you in the upper-middle class is an added benefit.
It would give you structure and deadlines, but without a 9-5 grind. Give you an active social life. Give as much, or more, of an intellectual challenge as a job. And since you'd be rich, you wouldn't have the same money worries and pressure to achieve that other students have, and unlike a job, the only person you can really let down is yourself.
My job will probably be 60 hours/wk for the next year, then up in the 65-80/wk range for the following three years, but after that, I'll be back down to 40 or even fewer. And I'm going to take advantage of all that free time a lot better on the second go.
Who knows where I'll go from there. Realistically, my wife and I could get along perfectly well on her working part time, and in medicine that's not too hard an arrangement to get. Neither of us particularly trust the economy on its current (last 70 years) trajectory, so we'll probably aim to put ourselves in a partial homesteading setup closer to home in the next ten or so years.
Wow, I don't know where that went. TL;DR -- I want to read my textbooks and start gardening.
Getting rich might help you in having comforts without monetary considerations, and have more time with things you enjoy. All of it won't subdue the need to fulfilling work. While I can imagine some people who would happily spend all the riches on exorbitant possessions, the people who have a higher probability of making that amount of money might not have propensity to spend their lives in that manner.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/jobs/bored-to-tears-by-a-d...
I don't care about 'fulfilling' work, money, things. I love being physically active and improving in my hobbies.
Or you need better hobbies and job substitutes than "idling all day, browsing your favorite sites"...
A job where you idle all day sounds terrible because that's still 40 hours that just goes poof.
Rather, those 40 hours could go towards hobbies. And there's a lot of those.
After a grueling year of work ending in a layoff in 2007, I took a full year off in 2008. Played a lot of games, but also watched 4 films a day, became competent with several instruments, read a lot and started myself on the path to changing careers.
I have a stack of technical books on topics I'm deeply interested in that I don't have time to read. At this point, I see work as a major impediment to doing what I want with my life. It's a problem that I desperately want to solve, but I don't really have hope for a solution. I'm on the low-end of developer salaries.
The kind of stuff I want to focus on now though requires deep, focussed effort over an extended period of time.
I enjoy what I do but not as much as what I could be doing, if that makes sense.
My personal plan incase anyone cares:
1. Take a lot of time to take care of things I've neglected like my health. Honestly, I would be working out a hour a day and trying out lots of new recipes.
2. Once I'm in the best shape of my life. Take my family someplace nice for vacation so I can show off my new beach body ;) joking, about the beach body part not the vacation
3. Start turning my side project ideas into actionable ideas.
1. quit my day job and travel the world (and I mean all over - south america, middle east and so on).
2. get a couple of houses (one for my parents, and another for me)
3. start contributing back to the community (If i get that kind of money, It's probably because I would have IPOd or sold my business - in which case, I would love to work on open source - no strings attached - MIT).
4. buy a few toys (cars and what not) that I've always wanted.
5. leave the rest for my kids/family/future.
Of course there are plenty of other things that can make a well-paying job unpleasant. But the very idea of "job-satisfaction" presupposes a job in the first place. Why would anyone who didn't need a job care about how satisfying a particular job is? There are many ways to achieve a sense of self-worth besides grinding away in a cubicle to make someone else rich.
I kind of read it that many people don't know of any other way to achieve a sense of self worth. They've worked for so long and it has become such a big part of their identity that they don't know what else to do with their time.
I stayed with my corporate job for about a year, but ultimately the effort of playing board member to the family company and making informed investment decisions about the rest clashed with amount of work they wanted from me as I kept rising at my corporate job. When I told them I was leaving, they offered me a big raise and to double the team under me. I countered by asking for part-time and, if they wanted, a smaller team or none at all. Ultimately that didn't work for them, they needed a creative and driven manager, not a good but expensive individual contributor.
Like a lot of people, I took the next year off, convinced my girlfriend to quit her job too and we traveled. But I'm back to work these days, not a in normal job though -- I really think of myself as a full time investor.
I think there's a big thing people miss in this situation is that they can't see the forest for the trees. You have so many opportunities to create jobs, create products, create places to live, or drive charitable change when you have a lot of assets. Why work 2000+ hours per year in a normal job just to add a drop in the bucket? There's a lot of spilled ink in the linked article and elsewhere talking about, roughly, Maslow's theory of self-actualization and how you can get there doing your old job or similar. Jeez, you finally got to the pot of gold and now you're out of ideas? Swing for the fences, or at least, try and hit a few singles. And the best part is you can spend 8 or 80 hours a week doing it, you're in charge after all.
Me? I'm going Warren Buffet style from here on out. Sure I doubt I'll ever be a famous investor, but I'd love to take the amount I have and turn it into a lot more. My long term goal is to shore up the future generation in my family before I give the rest away. I think the happiness maximizing amount of work for each person varies, but for me I know it's more than zero.
So now i'm focused on social issues. Fixing small social problem arising due to bad laws with a bit of automation. I'm on my second startup (or rather NGO) in that area and it brings me a lot of satisfaction.
But not having to do stuff can be sometimes as hard as having to do stuff.
So as automation / AI creates a larger and larger class of the permanently unemployed, what does this statement mean to them? And to us (i.e., fellow citizens, unemployed or not).
This was THE BIGGEST issue of the election that never was. We're extremely unprepared. Again.
It's a huge problem in Japan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
And in other countries (not as big in mine, but it's growing):
Where overnight is defined as 5+ years building up the value of the company so the equity is worth something.
Reminds me of the Mark Cuban quote:
"It doesn't matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success."
There was a TV show once, that interviewed rich people. Some lottery winners, some who made company money, etc.
One of the lottery winners made 2m and started his own business, some car workshop stuff and went bankrupt 2 years later.
A couple made ... I don't now >10m and the first time they visited them, they told that they will keep working in their normal jobs because they like them. Half a year later, when they got interviewed, they both quit their jobs and were building a house and the guy was always talking about that he fears it wouldn't get big enough.
One guy made big money by renting out building equipment, he had a big nice house which he let build completely to his wishes, but lost everything to bad investment. They even visited his old house and the new owner let the camera team in.
The new owner also said, if he would get rich again, he would sell him his house back, which I found kinda nice. But I always have the feeling that people who got rich are simply lucky, even if they didn't get it through the lottery. So he probably knew that guy wouldn't get rich in this life again.
I did a sabattical in 2014 and had plenty of stuff todo.
I didn't even know how I could start working again, because I didn't have any free time left for work.
Eventually I had to work again, because I needed money, but I tried to get it done remote at home.
edit: formatting
Sure, you'd want to diversify, but I'm just making the case that it's more than enough to live off of for the rest of your life.
You could also buy 4 or 5 McDonalds restaurants or 20-25 houses and watch them appreciate while living off rental income.
Then poof, 2 years later that money is all gone.
Like, I seriously doubt that my first thought after winning the lottery would be to go and talk to an investment banker.
An average McDonald's franchise makes between $500,000 and $1 million in profits per year as of 2013, according to McDonald's Franchise Disclosure Document. For restaurants open at least 1 year in the United States, average total revenues are $2.6 million.
The franchising royalties would be deducted before that net income. $150,000K * 5 is enough to live "high on the hog", especially since you wouldn't have to save it given you own 5 McDonalds you could sell, probably for a large profit down the line too.
I can't find the link you're referencing, since the first return on Google isn't linked to McDonalds directly, but McDonalds franchisees and managers refer to one measure of "profit" as profits after controllables (PAC). This is nothing like net operating income.
Please refer to the parent thread, where we're talking about what you'd do with $5M. You really should read the conversation and get background on it before you jump onboard and try making others look stupid. You make yourself look dumb, or a troll, or both.
Even better would be the Chick-fil-a. They only cost 4K to start and it will give you something to do for 3 years while they put you through training and you work at various locations. It is a lot cheaper than other franchises but could pay out close to as much.
When it comes to money, HN is often unbearably pretentious.
If you can't "retire comfortably" on 5 million USD, then you've got a hole in your heart that more money won't fill.