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Comment by kscaldef | Hacker News Reader

I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after reading the second paragraph:

> Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now?

I'm sorry, but that's just offensive. The fact that you can't imagine a "wage-slave" contemplating these questions is probably closely linked to why you can't imagine a successful startup founder getting off the treadmill either. If you were willing to take your $4.2M or whatever and be happy, you'd also be able to understand that you can live a good life without that kind of money too. (Free hint: it's not the 48-inch TV that makes your life fulfilling.)

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I think perhaps you're interpreting what he wrote too harshly.

I took it to mean that once you have FU money, you have to confront these questions because there's nothing left for you to worry about. Much of our time and mental effort is spent dealing with and worrying about survival. (Not survival in the hunter-gatherer sense, but making sure you have enough money in the next few days/weeks/months/years to live on.) When you worry about that every day, it's easier to not think about the big stuff. When only the big stuff is left, it's hard not to think about it.

Scott, that's exactly what I was getting at.

My only fear about making it as a startup is having to one day answer that existential question myself. I frankly don't know what I'd decide to do.

Fair enough, I respect that you're willing to admit that. But please don't call me a "wage slave" because of your fears and uncertainties.

"wage slave" is a pretty well-known, long-standing term for someone that works for another. It's not intended to be depreciating towards those enslaved, it's attacking the idea of using your labor to enrich someone else's life rather than your own.

Now, you may disagree with that, and that's fine...

"Wage slave" is always, in my experience, used in one of two derogatory ways:

1) In the original usage, as a condemnation of the whole capitalist system, or

2) In the sense that's more common in this crowd, to describe anyone who doesn't want to be a startup founder.

Applied to technology workers (typically privileged & upper middle class), the term is offensive on multiple levels.

Even if tech workers are upper middle class, that doesn't mean that they're not bound to their job. The conditions may be better, it's true, but if they lost their job, they'd end up just as destitute.

I only say this because it's something I've though a lot about recently, mostly while investigating the arguments of usage #1 up there. My parents are solidly middle class; but for most of my childhood, they basically lived paycheck to paycheck. When times get tough... things start to get ugly. Granted, not as ugly as 'real' slavery... but I think that the analogy is a good one.

I could quit my job right now. I'd need to get another one eventually, maybe in 6 months, maybe in a year, depending on how tightly I budgeted myself. I've chosen to live within my means; to build up enough savings that I don't need to be terrified of losing my job. I'd venture to say that virtually any other tech worker could do the same. If you feel bound to your job, and that you're at imminent risk of becoming destitute if you lose it, that's because of your own choices. The slavery exists only in your head.

Just because your in a better situation, and are on the way to pulling yourself up out of wage slavery doesn't mean that you're not still in the situation that you're in.

I had an analogy here to drug dealers working their way out of a ghetto, and decided it was slightly hyperbolic.

So your definition of wage slavery is anyone who is not independently wealthy?

THE definition of 'wage slave' (from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery) is:

> Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially in a total and immediate way.

So, yes, someone who's independently wealthy is not a wage slave, but someone who is self-employed or who owns a significant stake in the business they work for is also not a wage slave. It's about the boss/worker relationship, the power an employer has over an employee.

You're still a cash slave. But calling people these names is silly.

It's not silly. It's important to think about the situation that you're in, and try to improve.

What technology worker spends all day worrying about survival? It's not hard to save up a couple years living expenses on a software engineer salary, and it's not hard to find another job (or even found a successful company) if you have a couple years to do it.

With or without kids + family? I don't worry about those things, but 'it's not hard to save up a couple years living expenses' depends a lot on your ... dependents.

My experience is without kids, but it applies with kids as well. Half of American families manage to get by on $50K/year or less. If you make $100K/year and live like that, then for every year you work, you've saved up a year of security. That even assumes that your spouse doesn't work.

Whether you will do this depends a lot on your priorities. Some people want to get their kids the best toys, clothes, and vacations that money will buy. Others would rather give them the gift of parents that are not totally stressed out and have time to make it to their soccer games. There's not a right answer to this, but as someone whose family's household income hovered around the $50K mark for most of my childhood, I can say that you don't really suffer from not being able to afford a trip to Europe every summer.

$50k a year in salary doesnt sound like enough to send your kids to college with their tuition paid for. Being able to do that enables them to not have to worry about student loans and decades of debt after they graduate. IMHO, that is something to strive for.

It's not - I had virtually no college savings when I went to college, my parents borrowed almost the full amount (mostly in their names, so that my sister and I would be mostly debt-free when we graduated). Five years after graduation, it's paid off in full.

$50K/year is, however, low enough that you can get some really generous financial aid if you manage to get into an elite college. Nowadays it'll give you a full ride at Stanford/MIT/Amherst; in my time it was more like a 2/3-ride. Or a full-ride merit scholarship at a state school, if you could otherwise get into an elite college.

Also, weren't we talking about making $100K/year and spending like you have $50K/year? If you do that, in 4 years you've got your kid's college education fund.

Keep in mind that taxes and such scale non-linearly with income: if you make $100k a year, you'll take home less than 2x what you'd take home making $50k a year. It doesn't invalidate your argument by any means, but it's something worth mentioning.

You'd be amazed at how fast everything can change.

I was always someone who made more money than I could figure out how to spend. Even when I was a starving grad student. Then my wife and I grew up, we had kids, and she got injured.

Do you have any idea how much it costs for full-time childcare when you're working and your wife is unable to take care of the kids? (Luckily most of the medical bills were taken care of by worker's comp, and now medical insurance. Not all, but most.)

Family could be a great help in a situation like mine, but you can't choose your family, and in our case that hasn't worked out.

Yeah, I know how fast things can change.

My father got sick and died last fall. For that whole time period, my bank account (which had been monotonically increasing since I got my job) just stayed flat and even decreased a bit. Airline tickets are remarkably expensive when you're flying between coasts every couple of weeks and often don't know the days when you'll need to jet out. Plus I wasn't working for much of that period; I'm lucky that my employer has a generous family leave policy that continues to pay, though at a reduced salary.

The point of this thread, though, is that what could've been a financial disaster was merely a financial inconvenience. I was set back by roughly a quarter financially; big whoop. If I'd been living paycheck-to-paycheck, I'd have to dig myself out of debt for a while afterwards, or worse, wouldn't have been able to go home when my family needed me.

That's the type of security I'm talking about here. For many people in America, a family medical emergency means that they're screwed. Their life completely comes apart, and if they ever manage to dig their way out, it can take decades. That's not the case - or shouldn't be the case - for most people working in technology, where most jobs come with health insurance and salaries are well above the median. You can cover the vast majority of emergencies with a few tens of thousands in the bank, and knowing that you have the security of being able to do so is often worth a lot more than other uses for those few tens of thousands.

For a short time, yeah. But when you have a long-lasting change in life circumstance, as I did, your savings cushion suddenly changes dramatically for the worse. A cutback in the 2008 financial crisis cost me a few months of paychecks.

The result? A decade ago I had your attitude. I now have a very different view of the world.

There are insurance policies that cover a lot of these situations. Depending on your coverage they can go from reasonable to ridiculously expensive but it's really a question of how much risk are you willing to take?

Edit: This assumes you will find work while capable of working. But, 6 months of savings does not have to be a ridiculously large number and six months of savings + low paying job can last you for a long time.

How large a number 6 months of savings is depends greatly on your expenses.

But, 6 months of savings does not have to be a ridiculously large number and six months of savings + low paying job can last you for a long time.

How large a number it is depends on expenses.

What would have been 6 months of savings back for my wife and I when we were in our 20s might last us 2 months now. Adding a low paying job would not help much since I'd be paying more in child care than I am earning. Getting rid of the child care I have would make finding new good child care very difficult - been through that already, don't want to do it again.

At this point we have several months of savings and are slowly saving again. But what used to be a good cash surplus fund now isn't.

Many people with wage-based jobs adjust their lifestyle so that they're always living, roughly, paycheck to paycheck. Also, I tried to get across that I mean survival in the sense of "What do I need to do in the short and long term to make sure I can get by?"

I have found my spending has decreased as my salary has increased. Granted, I have not gotten any major pay bumps in the last few years, but having bought a lot of the things I wanted to buy and I don't need to keep spending money getting a better version of the same thing. But, it's more than just stuff, spending 60$ at a restaurant is fun the first few times, but after a while there is little novelty in it. You also build up equity, I went from an 18 year old car 100$ trade in value to buy a new one and now that my new car is almost paid off I don't see a reason to replace it anytime soon or get an upgrade with my car “equity”.

PS: IMO, unless you have children there is little stopping the average developer from retiring at 45.

Except that he then goes on to argue that the people who get FU money won't confront those questions because they can't be happy that much money, they'll have to keep going because of their "insatiable hopes of yet greater scores". And, if that's how you think, you're just as trapped as any "wage slave".

(Incidentally, I think the author is wrong, and skewed by his time at Goldman. I personally know substantially more people who have either had "small" payoffs, or have lifestyle businesses or passive income streams, and their desire doesn't seem to be to collect still more money, but rather to spend their time travelling or backpacking or what have you. But, I'm probably just as skewed by living in Portland as the author is from living in Manhattan.)

I think your argument here almost supports his hypothesis though - he argues that there is a correlation between large payouts and a desire to continue and earn even better. So the idea that those people who have smaller payoffs don't still have a burning avaricious desire is consistent with his suggestion.

The question is, /if/ his hypothesis is true and there is a correlation, what is the causation? Does winning big give you a taste for it and make you want to try again? Or is it (more likely in me eyes) that only those with such a strong drive to beat out the odds will ever make it to the really big payouts without cashing in early for less.

I remember one of my favorite philosophy professors talking about the various philosophers' ideas of "first philosophy", where first philosophy meant which philosophy is the root of all other philosophy (e.g. for Aristotle it is Metaphysics). Midway through the lecture the professor finally said something along the lines of "...this is nice and all, but what really should be first philosophy is figuring out a way to live in this world such that you can concern yourself with philosophy at all." I agree.

Philosophy is all about "figuring out a way to live in this world" at least the philosophy I have studied anyway, which includes Aristotle.

This line irritated me too.

Every now and then, I read another article about how we're slaves to money. Has anyone else noticed that these articles almost always use some variant of a television (plasma, 48 inch, etc...) as an example of an unnecessary material comfort that distorts a person's view of what is truly important.

I'm definitely a wage slave, and I assure you, I don't do it for a big tv. I don't have a big tv. I don't want a big tv.

What I do have is a family that depends on my continued employment for such trivialities as a place to live (my two small children share a room with a bunkbed in our small 2br house), trips to the pediatrician, and preschool (education isn't "free" in the US until kindergarten, though one of my children now in public elementary school).

The "stuff" like tv's isn't even a rounding error in the brutally high cost of living in SF. I could have the "big tv", nor not, makes no difference in my life. A bigger difference would be leaving San Francisco and moving to a cheaper place, but by living in SF, I get to live where I grew up, and my kids and I get to visit my parents and siblings almost daily. That's worth it.

But no, it's not the tv. I don't think anyone puts up with this for a tv. These writers need to stop about the tv.

Lol. Gee dude you really are angry about the telly huh?

I think the TV is just a symbol to communicate a bigger picture. It is not about the TV per se, but the fact that you can afford the TV. So if you can afford such telly, then you can afford a great house too, so that your kids won't have to share a room, you would not have to worry about making trips to the pedriatician or pre-school education, basically, finances would not be a problem.

Having one problem less is not such a bad thing. Sure life is more than money, but not having to worry about money gives you more time to develop friendships, send your kids to a good school, etce...

  Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
  None but ourselves can free our minds.

Bob Marley

EDIT: Based on a speech by Marcus Garvey

I accidentally downvoted this on my phone, meaning to upvote. Sorry about that, the quote is really appropriate.

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