Comment by dools | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dools | Hacker News Reader

This type of thing frequently annoys me:

Larry Ellison: "There, he held odd jobs for eight years before founding a software development company in 1977"

If he started with nothing, holding odd jobs, no savings, etc. how did he found a company?

These "start from nothing" tales are like graphs: when the scale on the Y-axis is sufficiently large you lose all detail at the bottom end of the scale - the all important details that happen very early in someone's "career" that make all the difference in the long run.

The minor things like having your parents pay for you to go to college (if you live in a country that doesn't supply you with free education) or finding an angel investor or getting a scholarship to attend the right school etc. are all to do with being fortunate - and all of them classify, in my opinion, as "starting with something".

Whilst it's true that generational inheritance is not the only way to become successful and every single one of these people have worked very hard to achieve their well deserved success, there are people who have truly nothing and despite being as ready and willing to work and as bright and dilligent as the next person, just happen to never be in the right place at the right time.

And yet we re-tell these glorious stories of the tiny tiny fraction of people that enjoy stellar rags to riches stories and it reinforces the greatest lie in capitalism: that if you're poor, it's your own fault.

Poverty is very much a social problem and needs to be dealt with on a social scale - not by taunting the poor by saying "Look!? They did it, what's wrong with you? Why can't you do it?"

According to Wiki Larry founded Oracle in 1977 with his investment being mere 1400$ (even inflation adjusted that is a small number) of his own money.

He was also aged 33 at the time, which makes it the more awesome if you compare him to the many other self-made men who managed to create sizable fortunes by their early twenties.

You picked an awful example.

You're right, Larry's is an inspiring story and it's well told on his Wikipedia page. My objection is to the style of reporting in the original article.

I see it very frequently, especially in more traditional forms of news media which have a broader audience consuming information more passively.

In this context it's obvious that one can use the story above to then go and look up each individual story to see the details but as a "news meme" I think this type of story needs to die.

Really? So the success story is only valid if they start with zero dollars, crippled, and recently diagnosed with a terminal illness?

These are people who grew up in a rich country sure, and used every advantage they could. However, their daddies didn't fund their dreams. They only had the same resources that everyone on this board has. The fact that they took it, and turned it into a billion dollars is something to be respected.

No one here is taunting the poor.

I didn't say that these success stories are invalid, but I do think that they're told in a disempowering way.

The focus of the story is not "The amazing story of 20 billionaires and how they found success" but the fact that they started with nothing.

However this (and every other story I've seen like it - at least that I can remember) glosses over the true practicality of those early stages.

Larry Ellison had some odd jobs then founded a software company. My original post complains that about the "scale" of the story - because it ends at 1,000,000,000 the differences of $10,000 or even one or two million dollars sometimes that people were fortunate enough to have in order to fund their enterprise are too small to register but they're incredibly important.

Also in response to:

They only had the same resources that everyone on this board has

My guess is that the majority of people on this board aren't as poor as the people I'm referring to when I say "taunting the poor".

I don't by any means consider myself poor and I'm not complaing that I feel taunted by this, but perpetrating this rags to riches story over and over again and saying that people start "with nothing" is demoralising to the truly disempowered.

I think it would be more appropriate to tell these stories in an empowering way: where very minute practical details of day to day survival were addressed whilst telling the story of how Larry Ellison "founded a software company" after "starting with nothing" then "having odd jobs".

These are people who grew up in a rich country sure, and used every advantage they could. However, their daddies didn't fund their dreams. They only had the same resources that everyone on this board has.

Maybe, maybe not. I have had many advantages in my life mostly given to me by chance. My family is fairly wealthy. I attend an extremely and prestigious and expensive college which is paid for by my parents, leaving me with no student debt. Most importantly I have won a genetic lottery purely by chance. While most studies say that there is a very large component of environment in innate intelligence, most also say that there is a significant genetic component, both of which influence my testing in the 99th percentile of most standardized tests. Bill Gates seems to have had some similar advantages.

So, if my daddy does fund my dreams, does that make my hard work worth less?

So, if my daddy does fund my dreams, does that make my hard work worth less?

Just the opposite! I'd say your hard work will be worth far more than average :)

Nope, hard work is appreciated from both rich and poor. But your advantages in life means that no one is going to write an article about how you overcomed obstacles to succeed.

It's sad, but I'd take your position and the tradeoffs any day.

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