Comment by matte_black | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matte_black | Hacker News Reader

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Once you finally break free of the startup/entrepreneurial mentality, suddenly the world opens up. The possibilities are so vast (but not all possibilities mean freedom).

Breaking free from the gold rush (or in my case, app rush), you start to realize that huge exits and lots of users really doesn't matter as much as comfort and stability. And then you might even consider doing work that doesn't give you equity or has potential for huge payoffs. That's actually freeing, because it means you're allowed to do your job, then go home and relax. You stop thinking about how much work you could get done if you weren’t relaxing (which usually sucks you back to a computer to chip away at a never ending todo list).

I envy the people who are simply happy in serving others. They may or may not become super wealthy or travel as much, but they usually do not start with the idea of “the only work worth doing is for a company I own”. Instead, they seem more likely to take jobs with an expectation of being useful rather than an egotistical view of time/benefit. They will surely have more boring times, but they also have much greater chance of both being happy (living a normal life) as well as actually filling their years with meaningful accomplishments.

Is it just me or is this style of comment, where you replicate someone else's comment and change some words to make them appear foolish, tremendously irritating and not conducive to good discussion?

Imagine having a conversation in person where someone parrots back your phrases changing a few nouns. Would you do that?

It is also such a derivative style of commenting, I've seen it many times on HN and I wish people would not recycle it any further.

>Is it just me or is this style of comment, where you replicate someone else's comment and change some words to make them appear foolish, tremendously irritating and not conducive to good discussion?

It is useful in some contexts, but pointless in this one. Where I think it is useful is where the original person is stringing together a set of statements which (s)he then claims leads to a conclusion (when it doesn't). So you then construct a similar set of statements, string them together, and make the opposite conclusion. Or string together the opposite statements and make the same conclusion. Presumably the original person will not agree with the conclusion, and the hope is that it becomes apparent that as a result, his original set of statements do not lead to his claimed conclusion. It's hard for that person to debunk your statement without pointing out the flaws in his own logic.

In this case, the original commenter wasn't trying to make a point - just expressing his opinion. It makes no sense to use the tactic here.

It is a fairly common way to show the opposite (or near opposite) opinion has a weight of its own. It works best when the the original comment is extreme and definitive. It is also not a half bad way to do a self critique of what you are writing to see if you are pushing (although, I must admit when I'm pushing I'm probably not in the mood for self critique :( )

I don’t thunk it makes the OP appear foolish. The replace-the-word technique facilitated seeing the argument from a different perspective.

When done right, it is quite enlightening.

The not-snarky version is "should you reverse any advice you hear?" http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-...

You need to use the right commenting style for the right situations.

This particular style of comment is best used when you want to emphasize that what a person just said is only one perspective and that there exists an equally valid opposing perspective. It works even better if the original post was written with a tone of superiority, though it’s not required. It wouldn’t be surprising to find it commonly used on HN.

You could also just write a regular comment arguing that point. Your approach risks coming across as condescending, and depends upon the reader having the patience to read essentially the exact same comment twice, keeping an eye out for whatever clever substitutions were made.

edit: that being said, I'm more than happy to move on. To each their own

It is quite possible that one may judge a statement as being superior when in fact it was not written as such. In that case, the reader could perhaps have some other emotion (inferiority?) coloring their perception.

Who is to say how the echo style of reply is generally seen, but I find it snarky. It seems less like saying, "I have a quite alternate point of view" and more like saying, "the originally presented view is backwards - here let me show you".

But this is all meta, and HN isn't a forum for us to be debating communication skills. Doing so is more futile amongst a group often known for lacking in communication skills in inverse proportion to their intellectual skills.

Complete tangent:

Most studies I’m familiar with find that intellectual skills and communications skills are very correlated (highly g-loaded) in the general population.

Your phrasing using “lacking” and “inverse proportion” could actually be interpreted as agreeing with that in a circuitous fashion, but the rest of the tone makes me think your “lacking” was an editing mistake, you meant the two skills are inversely correlated (apologies if I misunderstood your intent).

But you may be right that HN appeals to the outliers whose communication skills/maturity/desire for internet points don’t match the general population.

>But this is all meta, and HN isn't a forum for us to be debating communication skills.

It's as important as any in society, as well as the workplace. You're generally not going to get very far with technical brilliance alone.

>Doing so is more futile amongst a group often known for lacking in communication skills in inverse proportion to their intellectual skills.

Given the number of submissions on the topic in the last month or two, I think the HN crowd would disagree with you.

Not if it's got substance to it.

If it's sarcastic and rude, then yeah, but this wasn't that.

The other side of a coin is always bound to be the same size as the first side. A counter point to a point is necessarily similar, rhetorically, to the original point it's refuting.

Also, if you're wishing Internet conversations were more real, perhaps looking somewhere besides the Internet may benefit you Makerspaces have hackers, as do hackathon meetups, conventions, hell, sometimes libraries have resources for computer scientists or enthusiasts.

I like the hn format because of the density and accessibility. If I want to talk to another hacker in meat space I gotta go out, make an appointment with them, inevitably buy them coffee, survive the subway, it's inevitably late, so now this guy thinks I'm a jackass, and I have a urge in the back of my head to check my phone for hn while we are small talking before we can appropriately arrive at the twenty minute chat about whatever before doing the entire routine in reverse.

Or I can just read hn.

I feel this. This is my viewpoint as someone who cannot realistically afford an "entrepreneurial" lifestyle. Similarly, I'd rather not see my savings dwindle every month rather than grow. I feel that concern only goes away when you are practically-speaking rich or FIRE.

When I see people talking about entrepreneurship on HN or quitting their X job to do Y project, I feel no different than it being the "minimalist lifestyle" of tech. All this talk about how it's freeing you of all these things that tie you down and what not but it's only "freeing" because you're rich AF.

This article read like: "I'm a rich dude who worked at Big X and went to an Ivy League university. Fuck being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I live in one of the most expensive and desirable cities in the world. I'm gonna do whatever I want with my ridiculously large savings and I hope to make even more money with whatever I come up with! I'll probably go back to another FAANG if this doesn't pan out in a year and say I did some seriously cool stuff on my resume. I'll get an even bigger package. Wooooo!"

Ugh.

Trust me, there are a whole lot of entrepreneurs not like the ex-Google "I'm self-funded for several years" types.

I'm definitely not rich, and there are some months when I'm not sure I'll make it; but somehow I do, and then there are other months where things work out better than I expected.

But when I walk out of my house and go where I want, when I want, while most of the rest of the people are told when and where to be, I feel free. And when I do work for a client from a hotel room in the Caribbean, after my day of scuba diving, I feel pretty great.

If I continued with my old way of "every job must pay more than the last", I would still be in the oil business, in an office every day. Instead, I now see how much I was wasting on a new car, daily driving commute (time and gas), eating out because I'm too exhausted after a day in the office to cook when I get home, etc... turns out I don't need nearly as much money to live on as I did when I was working for $$.

This is what I find is most annoying - the traditional "more money more problems." I actually had the most savings I've ever had in my life while I was a student on $15k a year Government benefits.

Every payrise I've gotten has just gone into more mundane crap - more booze, more expensive food, more spontaneous frivolous holidays...

That's entirely a discipline and planning problem.

I doubled my income, downgraded my lifestyle and now I am sitting on a 49.5% savings rate on my take home pay. No car, I budget to eat out twice per month and even the food I eat I prepare myself.

My girlfriend also doubled her income, but has since doubled her expenses and not saved an extra dime. What has she spent it on? Clothing, jewelry, expensive organic food, new pet, etc.

Consider even getting a room mate if you want to save more.

You've only got one life, unless you have some strong beliefs, and if you calculate the weeks remaining assuming a lifespan of around 80... You can understand the reasoning of your girlfriend. Taking a step back, people are different. I'd rather slave away in a 9 to 5 than not be able to do things I enjoy, like taking advantage of good restaurants I can walk to.

I'd say that breaking free of either mentality is equally important. Everyone should recognize the choices they have in their careers, and in tech we have quite the choices indeed. At least for the time being, it's possible for skilled workers to join a company paying extremely high wages, but also to leave said company to pursue a big idea or to take a sabbatical.

While we praise companies for effectively pivoting after building a product that didn't seem right, we should also recognize that we too can pivot if we feel dissatisfied spending time in an office or if we feel a desire to join a team taking on a hard problem.

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