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Comment by saas_sam | Hacker News Reader

This is going to sound terrible to some but as someone who believes strongly in self-reliance, I get a little giddy when I see anti-self-reliance commentary get promoted in the media. It's the same feeling when I see advocates pushing shorter work weeks, more time off, more lax leave policies, and so on.

Why do I like these things if I disagree with them? Because it's convincing people they shouldn't have to work as hard as me! Which is making me so, so valuable to companies. My compensation is shooting up like a rocket. And I'm no workaholic either. I put in a solid 50 or so hours a week and take vacations and occasional personal days. I still ask for help when I need it. Yet, I'm becoming more and more of a rarity in the modern workforce.

This is going to get me downvoted, but I thought it was valuable to share my perspective. I suspect others are the same as me and are secretly cheering for people to buy into the notion that they aren't personally responsible for their success. We'll pick up the slack. ;)

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People obviously have to take responsibility for themselves in order to be successful, but this kind of article is a valuable corrective to the notion that individuals are solely responsible for their successes and failures. This seems self-evident to me on reflection; we are all products of the families and societies in which we grew up.

Rich people skew right-leaning. We can imagine many reasons for this, but I'll break it into two groups:

1. The same moral leanings that are identified with right-leaning parties are moral leanings, that when applied to your own life, can help make you more wealthy.

2. Having these moral leanings have no impact on your future success.

Considering that in absolute numbers the rich are more charitable and pay more taxes than the poor, and if you believe that the majority of the rich are strong value-creators (implying that they are generative, and are contributing positively to the economy rather than playing a zero-sum game), then for any portion of factor #1 above that is true, there is a moral argument to be made that adopting right-leaning values leads to a better world for both yourself, and for society as a whole.

All of this is speculative and stated in broad generalizations, but it's an argument that I've worked into my mind as a Pascal's wager of sorts and that I've found very convincing.

I think you make an interesting point.

However, I think there are some other considerations that should be factored in:

- The good that left wing policies would have done if they had been implemented.

- Situations where the economy is a zero sum game (e.g. desirable housing).

- The possibility that the good that comes from the rich is not evenly distributed. (In this case I mean distribution different between different segments of the non-rich. I don't mean distribution between the rich and everyone else.)

It seems to me that the logic that you present could act as a sort of social contract that basically say "in exchange for implementing right wing policies that make conservatives rich, you will benefit from their charity, taxes, and economic growth". In that case, I could see the increasing unrest and polarization in America being due to a growing segment of the population feeling that the contract has been broken.

It could also be that right-wing policies protect the interest of the rich and provides the ideology that this is fair and just. So if your are rich, right-leaning morals will make you richer and make you feel better about it.

But if you are not rich, it will do the opposite.

> This seems self-evident to me on reflection; we are all products of the families and societies in which we grew up.

And luck. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-... (If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.)

The idea is about increasing expected value.

I give you a machine, once per year say, and put it at the entrance to your home. It's broken. If you fix it, it will, with 5% probability, give you a ton of money. In the other 95% of cases you get nothing, it disappears, wait for next year.

Is chance a major component? Of course. But not tinkering with that machine is lower EV than tinkering with it.

If you stay in bed all day, ignore the machine and do something else instead, you're not going to get anything, ever. It will never spontaneously open by chance.

You post below that "you can do everything wrong and still succeed". No, you actually can't. If you're picturing a startup founder that makes a lot of seemingly silly decisions - well, they still made the (high risk) decision to start that company.

If you lay in bed all day, or work your corner shop job forever, then you are not increasing your EV.

I work in a field that is very heavily based on probability; I literally bet for a living. Luck is a considerable component, but if you want to tell me skill is irrelevant, then I'd like to show you what happens if I just tweak this parameter here...

The point is that the variance in actual value based on chance is larger than the variance in the actual value based on skill/talent/intelligence/effort.

This is not saying that there is no effect of skill/talent/intelligence/effort, but that the effect size is smaller than commonly thought and smaller than the variance due to luck.

That's only the case if you make nonsensical comparisons.

I wasn't born to an upper middle class family and I didn't get a ten million dollar trust fund. I don't have the correct muscle fibers to be an Olympian, etc. That's happened, it's done. That comparison is completely pointless and irrelevant for me.

From the perspective of decision making, what matters is the difference in expected value of different decisions that I make now, from T=0, not some time in the past that I can't affect.

(FWIW, 'skill/talent/intelligence/effort' are also part of that initial distribution).

The idea that success is primarily random makes no sense at all, because there are certainly paths that an individual can take that will not under any circumstances result in outsized success.

There are paths that an individual can take that will by definition result in failure, like if I went out and drove my car into a wall at 100mph.

> From the perspective of decision making, what matters is the difference in expected value of different decisions that I make now, from T=0, not some time in the past that I can't affect.

That still depends on the type of decision and context.

If you are talking about "should I play video game or should I study" that is a type of decision where valuing individual effort is absolutely beneficial.

If you are talking about making a decision based on evaluating other people/companies based on their life outcomes, then awareness of the role of luck is absolutely beneficial. You need to look beyond the results and also evaluate the decision making and luck that went into obtaining those results.

It's not an either or sort of thing. When we over-estimate the role of decision making in producing outcomes, we end up with a worse model of the world that will lead to worse decision making.

> It's not an either or sort of thing. When we over-estimate the role of decision making in producing outcomes, we end up with a worse model of the world that will lead to worse decision making.

Thanks for making my point better than I.

Pushing the idea of talent into a finite computer simulation like stats in an RPG can't replicate real life. The talent humans have doesn't neatly summarize as a one or a zero or a biological quantity. Pulling on the right conceptual thread in life simply isn't chance. It's a responsibility that can't be delegated to going with the flow or randomness.

Not just chance. You have to see the opportunities AND work to take advantage of them. Worries the work, they wouldn't happen.

You can still see the opportunity, attempt to succeed, and fail, through no fault of your own. And conversely, you can do everything wrong and still succeed. There's a reason we have the term "failing upwards", or businesses that succeed not because of their actions, but in spite of them.

Chance is a substantial (but not the only) component to success.

It's a matter of moderation. Yes, working hard and smart is great. But don't give yourself too much credit. There are people who helped you along the way, and you should recognize when you're in a position to give others a boost too when they need it. That's more productive and kind than putting yourself at the center of the universe.

Agreed. I appreciate the help of others and am considered by most to be a generous giver of help myself. I think the idea that self-reliant people don't care about others or don't genuinely appreciate giving & receiving help is cartoonish hyperbole akin to the cigar-smoking rich man bulldozing the youth community center to build a shopping mall. Like, okay, maybe that exists somewhere in real life, but it's usually an exaggeration under-achievers use to self-soothe.

> "[...] I think the idea that self-reliant people don't care about others or don't genuinely appreciate giving & receiving help is cartoonish hyperbole [...]"

Note this isn't what other people are saying. They are saying self-reliant people are not entirely self-reliant. It's not a matter of appreciation, it's a matter of understanding we're the products of society, family, luck, and the efforts of others, as well as our own merit -- i.e. we're not entirely self-reliant. The same critique can be made of the overestimated notion of "meritocracy".

Yes, but as saas_sam says, no-one actually believes they are truly completely self reliant in that cartoonish way.

When people speak of being self-reliant, they obviously don't literally mean that they were spawned from some sort of spontaneous reaction, that they farm their own cotton, sew their own shirts, invent their own scientific disciplines and produce semiconductors in their garage in the clean room they built from scratch.

They're referring more to building their own path in life and going out and getting what they want rather than waiting for it to be handed to them.

It's similar to how you or I might say we "need" something, when really it's qualified, because almost all use of language is.

Agreed about the use of language, and I wasn't being literal either. Nobody believes the cartoonish notion described by saas_sam. What they actually believe is that people who think they are self-reliant conveniently forget or downplay the other factors, i.e. they are not as self-reliant as they like to believe.

Ha. I have the opposite response!

I also believe strongly in self reliance and the power of the individual to affect their environment.

To me though, that makes the seemingly increased focus as of late immensely frustrating, because to me, it's seeking to take away agency from people.

Exactly the _worst_ thing you can do to someone who's in a bad situation is tell them that they're just helpless and that's how it's gonna be.

Feeling like you have no control over your life situation is not an ingredient that will produce a healthy mind. There's a fine line between having an awareness of your limits and fighting for what's right, and running around blaming all of your problems on others.

The article seemed to be more about appreciating the networks that have allowed the author to be successful (in her case especially the authors she has discovered in her neighborhood bookstore). I don't think anyone is telling people in bad situations that they shouldn't bother trying to help themselves; rather, we are suggesting that no successful person becomes successful alone.

Right, but that's completely self evident and thus pointless to discuss.

I'm typing to you from a screen that I couldn't produce alone, that's ignoring the 50 billion other objects in my life that depend directly or indirectly on the activities of others. An entire article isn't needed in order to make that viewpoint clear.

I address this in a post above - it's a strange cartoonish stereotype that there are people out there who think that they are completely 'self-made'. Those that advance it in public as a genuine belief are either mentally ill, or deliberately playing a character.

Working hard, working long, maximizing productivity, and maximizing value are all separate things. They do not necessarily correlate positively across the whole scale let alone perfectly at the peaks.

You should be optimizing for value. If you optimize for one of the other three you're making a sucker tradeoff by definition. You will have to work some hours with some effort to generate some productivity to maximize value for yourself, but anything past that more value is going to your employer than the opportunity cost for you of your time.

This is tautological but it's worth saying because your language fits the pattern of someone who chases productivity as a proxy for personal value. Or in other words you value the possessions money can buy more than the experiences you could have with free time. The tell for workaholism isn't always 80 hours a week or some numerical threshold, it's also that you look down on people who value free time more than you do. That's an indicator that you aren't adjusting your own values, that you've delegated that function to the companies you're so happy to please--which always optimize to extract from you rather than maximize value in your own life.

You find pleasure in the idea that your relative value is increasing due to the value of others decreasing? This sounds psychopathic. It is one thing to take comfort in the belief that you can control your own destiny, but to believe your control is diluted by the control of others is delusional and short sighted.

I think the argument is that relative value to an employer translates to absolute value to the employee.

The rewards of effort, ambition, and talent are absolutely diluted by that of others.

Its the same reasoning I support marijuana legalization. More people sitting at home high on their parents couch is less competition for me

I know plenty of very, very well off pot users. I also know several very, very unsuccessful pot users. I'm tempted to believe that the "high on their parent's couch" types would be otherwise on their parent's couch, irrespective of access to pot.

And I'm no workaholic either. I put in a solid 50 or so hours a week

Sounds pretty workaholic to me. I guess everyone thinks of themself as the norm.

For a variety of reasons, I learned early in life that I couldn't really count on anyone, and I had to learn/do everything for myself. Not sure I'd choose that for someone else, but it has indeed been an extremely useful work skill. In pretty much every job I've ever had, I've ended up being the final go-to person for the hardest problems. Especially with respect to computers, there's essentially no problem I can't solve/mitigate/triage at this point in my career.

That said, this skill doesn't seem to be very useful for getting hired. Maybe I'm not marketing myself correctly. Once I'm in, though, I'm generally gold after a few months. Once had a manager burst into tears when I gave notice.

It does feel like this is rarer these days. In my current org of about 5000 people, I'm not aware of a single tech person on par with me in this respect. That might sound like a boast, but it's very much a lament.

I struggle with this too. I think it's people applying the "jack of all trades, master of none" saying too far or too literally. To be a truly successful (backend, frontend, web, mobile, crypto, etc...) developer, it is a requirement to have firm grasp of nearly all technologies, methodologies, and practices at play in the ecosystem.

Not that this is exactly a massive disadvantage for you, but I routinely see guys such as yourself, not being exploited as such, but essentially never having their compensation match their productivity.

I believe the original poster in that they could be much more productive than their coworkers. However, in my experience, that has only a loose correlation with wealth, and playing the game right / nepotism take precedence for real earning.

do your thing!

i think having a variety of humans with different priorities and interests is absolutely a good thing. i think it’s amazing that you enjoy putting in that time at work and it’s amazing that others prefer to spend a bit more of theirs on family or other projects.

as a person who advocates for shorter work weeks (as long as we place a higher emphasis on _occasional_ crunch times) i totally understand both sides.

i do think the article makes some great points though–it borders on delusion how a subset of people convince themselves they “did it alone.”

your success is the mostly the result of a massive amount of luck and privilege you've received. just imagine that you had an accident that reduced your brain capacity by 20%... you could then have worked three times harder but sadly not achieved the same success. While your hard work is an element of your success, it is not at all the foundation of it. It's more akin to a chef putting the correct seasoning on a fully prepared dish. It's definitely needed, but it's not the basis.

That seems like a pointless argument.

Sure, I'm successful because I wasn't run over by car when I was 12.

it seems like you missed the argument entirely.

hard work means nothing if you are not fortunate enough to have the foundation with which to work upon. the person with 20% less brain capacity can do way more work than you, and not get anywhere, which proves that there is no linear relationship between hard work and success. something else has to be present for "hard work" to lead towards success. There are some people working much harder than you at their job at McDonalds, and they will not be as successful as you.

Your hard work did not create your success, your circumstances did most of the work in making the conditions right, just like human evolution would not have happened if there weren't a perfectly conditioned Earth present that took billions of years to create.

Your hard work was just one of many prerequisites for your success to occur (and of course, many people don't need to work very hard at all to be successful, due to their circumstances as well), and additionally, your capacity, desire, and stamina for such hard work are also things that you were lucky enough to have.

Your hard work did not create your success

Yes, but without hard work, your unlikely to be successful.

I don’t disagree that both play a role, but some people like to claim success is 100% luck, which I definitely disagree with.

A person with 20% less brain capacity would be aiming at a different form of success, with different tools. Dragging his place down to lower situations doesn't change the life changing potential of properly applied hard work.

We are not victims of our circumstances.

We aren't victims. But we are rather hemmed in by circumstances and budget with the exception of top 0.5%.

Feel like working 8h today? No? Too bad.

Need rest for mental reasons? Sorry you're out of holidays.

Want to work on rocket science? Unfortunately no positions are open and the longer you're out, the less likely you will get in. That if you even studied the right things.

Or maybe you feel like being a fireman but failing the physicals?

Perhaps a doctor? But you need those 6 years of education plus actual knowledge. And this have to weather those years. If you're not rich, you get to work some trash job in the meantime hoping it won't affect you or the studies. Etc.

And do not even get me started on social network you cannot begin to choose unless you have copious free time.

everyone is hemmed in by their circumstances. Steve Jobs got pancreatic cancer, and all his billions could do nothing to prevent his death. We are all in the same boat, it's just some of us don't really see it.

He turned down treatment early on that he later regretted. It's true he would die eventually anyway. Life and death can be used to describe anything that lives including the individual.

he did! but did Steve Jobs singlehandedly invent that treatment? nope! So even then, his reliance on existing constructs that were not created by him-"self" is quite obvious.

And the person(s) who made those treatments sacrificed collective opportunities to do so. We are all individuals, talking to crowds is best done by talking to individuals in the crowd. Dare I go too far.... The collective can't exist until we give up portion of our mind to others that themselves are individuals. The link doesn't exist outside our individual imagination.

Yeah, you are.

So when you're talking to someone who lost a beautiful person in their life because someone else decided they were fine driving after a night out of drinking, you can realize how arbitrary and random life really is.

Sorry for your loss.

Being alive is a pre-requisite for success, but doesn't make it guaranteed.

The fact there is no guarantee makes it inherently luck based.

How can you be both a strong believer in self reliance and also want to spend more of your time working for someone else?

Yes, essays like this give people like you and me a short term advantage. But these anti-work-ethic pieces also poison the minds of the next generation and justify political agitation on the part of the suckers who believe this stuff and squandered their time instead of contributing. There will always be a market for soft words that tell us that our vices are actually virtues.

This comment has nothing to do with the article. You responded to half of a headline.

Pick up some game theory, too! Your strategy works great when you're the only one who follows it. But if everyone follows your strategy, everyone gets screwed.

Most work is likely useless or counterproductive.

That’s kind of like saying “every employer is paying trillions in compensation and healthcare benefits for work that conveys no benefit.” It takes staggering hubris.

> every employer is paying trillions

Um, that's not how division works.

In seriousness, the argument isn't that employers are stupid, but that has some local value (and inertia) but far less global value because the nature of the economic distributed system.

Kinda like how micro services are often a terrible idea yet in some examples of that each service is justified given the others.

I believe this is a new talking point on cable news, probably going to receive a negative canned reply

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