I've thought about this a bunch.
I think the reasons are:
* Mediocre IQ.
* Lack of grit and persistence that I can't develop
* Natural lack of charisma
A combination of all of these make me very unhappy and very poor.
I think the reasons are:
* Mediocre IQ.
* Lack of grit and persistence that I can't develop
* Natural lack of charisma
A combination of all of these make me very unhappy and very poor.
I have no idea what my IQ is. I definitely know what my present limitations are, and I think about them a lot (I'm a little obsessed by the limits on my willpower that keep me from e.g. spending 8 consecutive hours studying abstract algebra, or learning Haskell). But I'm not alarmed by them. I am naturally "good at" some things (I'm coming to believe that "good at" is almost a synonym for "enjoys/gets a charge from") and other things are uphill climbs for me. I try to arrange my work so that my uphill climbs are always for a reason. I think this is a healthier attitude than trying to gauge some very-probably-fictitious intrinsic "IQ" attribute to find my place in the world.
If you can write in complete sentences and in a conversational tone, you're doing fine on charisma. Having organized and been involved in HN meetups in the past: you are almost certainly not anomalously inept in social situations. We are not the funnest cocktail party in the world.
I came across this post because I have a saved search for "IQ" (historically, "IQ" has been a reliably marker for seriously gross threads) and not because I clicked through on an "Ask HN" about "coming to grips with your own mediocrity". I'd gingerly suggest that the whole notion of "coming to grips with mediocrity" is a bit toxic and crazymaking.
That's probably a decent strategy overall but as someone that can't pass Google HC I don't see how that would help.
I think I'm pretty mediocre at all of the things that might be lucrative and really bad at everything else.
I can’t even leave. Everyone thinks I’m a joke because of my background and lack of pedigree. I’m never going to make up for my prior failures at this rate.
The reality is if you are earning 50% let alone 80% of $180k US as I have inferred by your posts you have enough money and you probably don't 'need' more. You are certainly earning alot more than me, and I have been software developer since 2001.
It sounds like it is the comparison with others, and being treated unfairly in your mind that is causing a lot of frustration. I had the same feelings in my 20's - I was suspicious and wondered why certain people got ahead and judged things as fair/unfair. Even at an older age with social media like HN I'll see all these super successful people in their fields and be jealous and angry that I didn't take 'their' path. But at some point it is good to be able to handle that we can't all be 0.01% ers (by definition or 0.01%er: only 1 in 10000 can attain it).
The only person thinking bad things about you is you.
Wait, what? How many of those do you have? That seems like way more work than abstract algebra.
"After a morning workout practicing his Fascism-Communism-false-equivalence combat katas, the Citation wonders what life would have been like if he'd chosen a more conventional path - perhaps teaching Spanish-speaking maths prodigies. A soft chirp from his watch interrupts his musings. The night's reports from Trollhunter, the autonomous threadoscaphe are coming in..."