What I learned while 6x-ing my income in 4 years | Hacker News Reader

What I learned while 6x-ing my income in 4 years

swizec.com

33 pointsallenleee19 comments

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> Lesson: Don’t run out of money.

Oh, of course, how come I didn't think of that?

I'm actually more interested in this footnote:

> I even sold “get on HN frontpage” as a service to local startups. I charged a whopping $100 per essay

Is good to have independent confirmation that people have moved from gaming Reddit to gaming Hacker News.

That was many years ago. It doesn't actually work anymore.

"gaming" is also a strong word. It was more like "Get 5 upvotes to hit the bottom of the frontpage, then if content is good enough it floats up, if it's not it doesn't"

The trick was that I was reliably able to guess the taste du jour of the HN crowd.

Beer please

In the same 4 years that I 6x-ed my income, I also 9x-ed my expenses. I’m really bad with money, and people keep giving it to me!

He needs to be more frugal... Net income (profit) is important.

$100k income / $90k expense vs $20k income / $10k expense. Reminds me of Ecommerce vs SAAS.

> He needs to be more frugal

Turns out mum wasn't lying when she said the fridge doesn't fill itself.

Swizec, don't be so hard on yourself. You just need to separate your needs vs wants. Save today's wants for tomorrow's needs.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

24k in Slovenia sounds equivalent to 125k in the Valley though, ...

The bottom line might also be "migrate to a richer country"

It's always relative. On my UK salary I would starve in SF. In Poland, where I am from, I could afford to buy or build a house in few years, outright, without a mortgage. But where I am now, I can maybe apply for mortgage in couple years time then pay it off in 15-20 years.

Does that mean I should move? If yes, then surely, the answer would be to move to the "poorer" country if I could maintain the same salary as I have now, since my standard of living would be a lot higher than it is now.

And that seems to be the basis for claiming the EU smoothing out wage differences across the member nations.

Problem is that while it may rise the wages in a poorer country some decades down the line, right now it suppresses the wages in the richer countries because of an onrush of foreign workers that are undercutting the local workforce.

I'm very confused why would it be undercutting the local workforce. I certainly would not accept to be paid any less than any of my British coworkers. I didn't move here for work - I came here to university, finished my BSc, then MSc, and then I got a job - I don't feel like I'm being paid any less because I'm a "foreigner".

Thats because you are educated and are directly hired.

Tradesman jobs on the other hand...

It helps.

But with 24k in Slovenia you save maybe 1k/year. With 125k in the Valley, you can save 10k/year.

That's a big difference.

Reminds me of the hoopla over gasoline prices.

Ran into a chart showing those pr liter across Europe, and Norway came out as most expensive. But almost as a footnote they also included one that calculated liters pr average wage. And all of a sudden the table was reversed.

Bit of bad advice. You could summarize it as "kid gets a job in SF programming while moving. 6x'es his income TO 140k (before tax)"

Okay ... so far I understand that that's possible (although may I say you got royally screwed every year except the 4th).

What most people here want to know is how to multiply that income from this point forward.

Reading this is somewhat painful thanks to the social sharing buttons on the left which hover on top of the text.

Sorry. HN made the database go kaput and somehow that meant the text loads but the CSS does not. There's normally a margin there.

Interesting that you were able to get the O-1 with such an "average" career.

I guess that's a hidden advantage of writing a few books, hem? You're able to send them a polished application :)

> Last year, I spent $125,535. I don’t even know where that money went. I certainly don’t feel like I got much out of all that money.

Really? I lost all confidence in whatever this person is trying to sell us, when I read this. Indicates a very financially-irresponsible person.

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