Silicon Valley founders who grew up poor can’t shake “mindset inequality” | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley founders who grew up poor can’t shake “mindset inequality”

qz.com

17 pointsnaveensky6 comments

Self-sabotage and buddy-sabotage are pernicious flaws of attitude, belief and habits that exist in all people to varying degrees. This baggage is likely the greatest source of failure when fundamentals aren't an issue. I can't prove it, but this is my belief based on qualitative experience.

> Self-sabotage [..] is likely the greatest source of failure

People who got rich quickly often feel (deep down) that they do not deserve it and go to great lengths to self-destruct. Also just my private observations.

I feel that probably they feel that they can repeat their past performance because it came easy to them, lose discipline around their gains and later when they can't repeat it, just lose all of it.

This long rambling piece(I couldn’t finish it) reminds me of a documentary I saw a while ago about morbidly obese patients who went through bariatic surgery and ended up losing hundreds of lbs. but even when they lost their extra weight, they saw themselves as ‘fat’.

I guess that’s what growing up poor is like...

> I guess that’s what growing up poor is like...

Basically yes. Some skills are only available to those who grew up rich (on average, of course exceptions exist)

But this person is one of the success stories. It was difficult for me to feel sympathy. I didn’t get the point of this piece.

Fine. Ok. I read the whole thing. This person should have gotten a ‘lucrative job’...so he can become comfortably well off, lose the baggage and then should have gone the entrepreneurial route. Too early to become an entrepreneur. He isn’t ready for it.

ETA: this article is from 2016. I looked him up now https://rickyyean.com/2019/11/01/single-serving-friends/ :

[..] Whenever people talk about the loneliness epidemic, I can’t help but nod my head in agreement. For people who know me, that may seem odd because I’m constantly surrounded by friends and loved ones. But loneliness is felt in the soul rather than in physical space. I guess that’s why there’s the idea of soulmates. In fact, sometimes I feel even more lonely when I have friends but no one I feel like I can really talk to.

I’ve been exploring ways to build safe spaces online where we can be vulnerable when a friend shared this:

I’ve been looking for someone else to be vulnerable to because it’s not been helping my relationship with my girlfriend. The problem is that people form an impression of you with every interaction. If you have a lot of these vulnerable, messy, incoherent interactions, then they will look at you in a way you may not want. Even my girlfriend who has seen me as a sharp communicator gets too much of the rambling thoughts when I have to work out something big, and I can feel her perspective of me shift.[..]

ETA: https://techiesproject.com/ricky-yean/ : and there is more online to gain insight into this person..this interview around the same time as the article mentioned above.

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