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Comment by Retra | Hacker News Reader

Jeff Bezos doesn't need to work a single day for the rest of his life. So people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it.

Some of us have bills to pay and families to raise. Even if I am miserable because I have to spend my 8 hours of sunlight making CEO Von Richenstein wealthier, I can't just walk away and take the risk that my next job will be different. It's just stressful.

So work-life balance means... valuing your time as your own. It's pretty rich for someone who only works because they want to to suggest that the rest of us should do the same without any of the same security.

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>people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it

Yup. Regardless of the way it may be intended, it's almost impossible to ignore the optics of this as similar to the boomer 'bootstraps' cliché.

Q - given the need to take a boring, possibly bad/negative/stressful job that is needed to pay the bills and support the family, is it within one's power to choose between feeling that this is (1) a resentful, negative, bad situation, or (2) a nonideal, but necessary siutation, and to take satisfaction and pride in the fact that you're supporting your family? IDK.

(2) happens by leaving your work at work and doing what you enjoy at home. "Work-life balance", etc.

I don't need Jeff fucking Besos to tell me that there is something wrong with me if I cannot be happy making other people richer at the expense of my own time.

> Jeff Bezos doesn't need to work a single day for the rest of his life.

That's an interesting way to suggest that I should take what Bezos says even more seriously. He's worth $131 billion on paper and yet he's still working so hard and pushing to accomplish so much more.

> So people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it. Some of us have bills to pay and families to raise.

So you mean just like Bezos in the past - the first 40 years of his life - before Amazon survived several near death experiences, narrowly avoided going bankrupt, somehow survived Walmart's extreme dominance of retail (sales 2004: Walmart $285b, Amazon $7b; 40x), and after a decade plus finally brought his paper wealth to a sustainable level such that it wasn't susceptible to disappearing in a fiery heap and being obliterated by competitors that were all massively larger than Amazon. Whew, Bezos practically had billionaire status handed to him.

> Whew, Bezos practically had billionaire status handed to him.

Counterargument: he was in the right place, at the right time, and happened to be working in a sector that made it easy to pivot into online retail.

Not to say that his skill/leadership wasn't involved in going from say 2bn to 100bn, but he lucked out in timing.

Every major business did too.

Explain how Bezos was "lucky" that every other online bookstore failed to do what Amazon.com did.

Wouldn't luck work that specific outcome? One lottery ticket holder manages to do what others in the same situation didn't.

Of course he is talented, but I don't believe him to be somehow absolutely unique, rather just some suitable combination of talented, connected, and lucky.

That's moving the goalposts from "lucky", to "talented, connected, and lucky", which is a huge move.

Building a massive business is not something that anyone has the same "lottery ticket" chance to do successfully, even if given the same connections and support Bezos had.

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