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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

I really want to see more articles like this on HN. However, this is really "career advice for people at struggling companies." The luck part doesn't get discussed in the way I expected. To me, bad luck is things like:

- You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ex. you graduated in 2008-2010/now or your business sector got wiped out by COVID

- Despite your best efforts at networking, you simply never meet that magical person who can strap a booster rocket to your career/company

- You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in the form of good friends/family early in your career that enables you to take risks, or you got dealt a bad hand in the form of things like dependents or health issues and simply can't afford to take risks

- Despite all your work, you get blindsided by things completely out of your control. Ex. a big company straight up rips off your product/service/side gig or an executive at your company guts your project/department

- You don't have the magic paper credentials to get you through the doors at places you want to go because you didn't know you needed them earlier in life when they were practical to get

These are the kinds of things I want to see tackled with real-world career advice since I think they apply to a lot of people. For every lucky executive or entrepreneur there are many who were unlucky.

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I suspect it's because there isn't much advice to give.

My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime wages are going to be lower than many of your peers. This is unlikely to change. Adjust your worldview accordingly. Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable.

By all means, keep trying, but stay level headed. Success for most is not always right around the corner. Prior to SV eating the world, the only people that said that we all should be entrepreneurs really just wanted you in their Amway downline.

Society doesn't like to show the magnitude failures out there, or worse, the getting-by'ers. There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo, IN.

Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard place to look.

> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment. Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard place to look.

I'd recommend the following:

1. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson

3. Letters from a self made merchant - John Graham

After my working life had induced anxiety, panic attacks, and a host of other issues which really started to rear their ugly head I’ve become a much more religious person. On top of the professional help I’ve sought out for these issues, it has also helped a lot in my case when you internalize deep that work/money/material success really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme and there’s a greater goal to work towards.

What is this greater goal you speak of?

In my experience, religions are happy to hand out pre-baked sets of objectives. Live a life like X. Stay away from Y. Put your money in Z. If you have trouble deciding what direction you want to go, religion can point you somewhere and surround you with a community that will encourage you to keep moving that way.

For some people, that’s really valuable. You see this especially with people who’s prior independent experience didn’t work out very well. Maybe they grew up in an abusive home and want instructions on breaking the cycle and raising their family better. Maybe there was criminal behavior, substance abuse, relationship or career stagnation. For many people, a pre-packaged world view from Religion X can be a big step up from their prior experience, ESPECIALLY when it comes with a supportive community.

The problem, of course, is two fold.

First, life isn’t one-size-fits-all. Eventually the pre-packaged beliefs will be sub-optimal for your personal situation. The better religious communities are flexible enough to accommodate this. The uglier ones lock you down or cut you out.

Second, the pre-packaged beliefs usually assert their own universal and exclusive validity. Even if the one you pick happens to be correct about this, it encourages toxic behaviors that will isolate you from non-community members. And of course the claim is preposterous on its face; The interchangeability of religions undercuts their claims to universal truth.

So, to summarize: Religion is a reasonable place to get a default world view and community, especially if you’re existing beliefs/community aren’t serving you well. Long term they are suboptimal because they don’t adapt to your personal circumstances very well.

I've actually taken an essentially opposite view, interestingly enough. As a younger person I read widely, rebelled in a very thoughtful way against my religion (in my opinion! haha!), took things very seriously, tried to really understand both atheism and other religions, etc. I think all of that was important. Through life experiences I've come to appreciate, strangely, the rituals of religion and the not-making-sense-ness of it. So I find it useful to consider the pre-baked objectives as a sort of rough draft I can push against, but more importantly, I've discarded the world view and taken the concrete. For Christianity, that's bread, wine, the holidays, the rhythm, the community, the directive to support charities generously. The concrete actions do something on a primordial level, as they're what my ancestors have done for oh about eight generations.

The actual pre-packaged beliefs? Meh. I'm less interested than I ever was in arguing the particulars of Paul with anyone. So, to summarize, for me religion is a reasonable place to get a default set of rituals and perhaps community, and long term that's the useful part because the rituals can continue even as my beliefs and circumstances change.

This may also be worth thinking about with respect to healthy eating, exercise, etc. Don't get sucked into a cult, but if signing up for (now-virtual) CrossFit or Pilates classes, or following Starting Strength, gets you doing something, it's a concrete physical ritual that can stay with you even as you change :)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I’m glad you’ve found a fulfilling spiritual practice and community. I hope they are supporting you in this difficult time.

> I find it useful to consider the pre-baked objectives as a sort of rough draft I can push against, but more importantly, I've discarded the world view and taken the concrete. For Christianity, that's bread, wine, the holidays, the rhythm, the community, the directive to support charities generously.

That’s pretty interesting to me. I certainly agree that the rituals and community are the best part of organized religion. I’ve enjoyed them in the past and I miss them now. I actually considered returning to the church when I had a young family for exactly these reasons.

I just can’t untangle the practical from the philosophical. The community is great in and of itself, but it exists explicitly to advance a particular set of beliefs. It’s hard to take the community without the beliefs. At least, I haven’t been able to do it successfully. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I could have, but I would have felt like a fraud. I think that would limit my ability to integrate.

> This may also be worth thinking about with respect to healthy eating, exercise, etc. Don't get sucked into a cult, but if signing up for (now-virtual) CrossFit or Pilates classes, or following Starting Strength, gets you doing something, it's a concrete physical ritual that can stay with you even as you change :)

Absolutely. The principal applies to many places. Employers, even. Many start ups want you to drink the kool-ade, own the vision, play ping pong... you can opt out of that and just do the engineering and paycheck!

> The community is great in and of itself, but it exists explicitly to advance a particular set of beliefs.

No. The community is above the beliefs.

Humans benefit greatly from acting within a group. Yes, it always grows a "here are The Best Practices" division. (It's just a sad side effect.) But one can identify with a smaller and humbler subgroup with the wink-wink approach to rules: switch to the higher levels, seek new goals, etc.

As an atheist, I took me years to notice this minority. Talking with deeply religious people often reveals that stuff they are actively pursuing is not only very interesting, but it's far above what you can achieve just by pondering about some Nietzsche text in your armchair taking mental notes "oh this definitely goes on the top of my todo list now". The group is the magic ingredient to the real-life results.

On this forum, a good analogy is the difference between a huge Agile© event and a small team-only standup meeting.

Disturbingly big part of modern atheism is actually sheer laziness. If I've written my final conclusion "Therefore all religion is useless." it's easy to come up with hundred semi-honest-but-true arguments to reach that conclusion. There is a lot that goes under the radar, like supporting the self-improvement of your children/family and coping with bad problems in your own life, chiefly including suffering and death. Atheism mostly says: better be rich and be able to afford some good professionals.

Writing as someone who is mostly baffled by religion, this was a very useful and interesting post to read. Thanks.

On par w/ Meditations I'd also add Self-Reliance, an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Dunno about Jordan Peterson. Some of his advice may be OK but he's also profoundly weird / not very self-reflective .... only eats meat? Meat cures all?

IMHO the Socratic Dialogues, as basically the foundational text of all Western Philosophy, and being pretty friendly and approachable, are the right place to begin. Helps you figure out how to figure it out for yourself. You can make your own calls from there.

> Meat cures all?

When did he say that?

Come on, all you have to do is google "jordan peterson meat" and you get pages and pages of when-he-said-thats.

I've listened to probably hundreds of hours of JP and he never said that. He only said that, in his particular case, a lot of the terrible ailments he had went away after he switched to a meat-only diet. He doesn't say that meat is a cure for anything - his main theory is that he just has a ton of strong food alergies and, by eating only one thing he's not allergic to, he avoids them.

I’m making a point, not quoting the man.

He went on an elimination diet because his family has some nasty immune problems. It’s mundane, I don’t get the controversy.

It's controversial because it sounds pseudo-scientific. Why would removing all vegetables from his diet help with an autoimmune disorder? His daughter's blog called "Don’t Eat That" had the tagline "The food pyramid is a lie, fat is good for you, and many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone." (though, it does now say "Do not take this as medical advice. I am not a doctor. This is my story and this is what worked for me.")

https://web.archive.org/web/20180320101920/http://mikhailape...

His other health choices don't really help his case. He went to Russia to get weened off of an addiction because "North American hospitals had misdiagnosed him". The Russian doctors are "not influenced by pharmaceutical companies to treat the side-effects of one drug with more drugs," and they “have the guts to medically detox someone from benzodiazepines.”"

I have my own problems with his daughter’s profiting off his back. I don’t see what you posted there as more click bait than anything else.

Many research bodies and authorities on health have flipped the food pyramid around. The CSRIO supports a low carb diet over the traditional carb heavy food pyramid. She’s just repeating what the experts have said. That part is the opposite of pseudoscience, and it’s lazy parroting.

Jordan has reactions to foods we don’t normally have a problem with, as does his daughter. They share methods that work for them and hold up the idea of eliminating everything and then working foods back in as they prove to be okay for them.

There’s been countless documentaries about the effect of big pharmaceutical money on the likelihood of certain drugs being prescribed by doctors and the money the docs make. It’s standard fare in America, no judgement about that from me.

Apart from a few eccentric behaviours and saying dumb things occasionally like his comments on godel, Jordan states the obvious in an inflammatory way and people are surprised when he’s actually rational under the flames. Zzz.

His daughter:

“”I can also, strangely enough, tolerate vodka and bourbon.”

The idea that alcohol, one of the most well-documented toxic substances, is among the few things that Peterson’s body will tolerate may be illuminating. It implies that when it comes to dieting, the inherent properties of the substances ingested can be less important than the eater’s conceptualizations of them—as either tolerable or intolerable, good or bad. What’s actually therapeutic may be the act of elimination itself.“

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...

People used to believe that eating fat makes you fat, and eating sugar makes you sweet (okay, the latter is maybe an exaggeration), because it seemed so obvious. Later they realized that actually eating lots of sugar makes you fat. That's progress. The sugar producers want you to believe the old version; they love to emphasise how "low-fat" their heaps of sugar are. (Every time you read "low-fat", translate it mentally to "contains lots of sugar". Every time you read "low-sugar", translate it mentally to "contains lots of artificial sweeteners". Hint: the actually healthy stuff, such as fruit and vegetables, doesn't need to protest too much.) Education about this part is a good thing.

On the other hand, removing vegetables from diet goes completely against the currect best knowledge. You should eat a lot of vegetables, preferably raw. Like, okay, you can cook your broccoli; but then eat some other raw vegetable, and some fruit (uncooked, without extra sugar). -- However, I have never heard Peterson recommend removing vegetables as a general advice for others; it was always in context of finding out what works for his autoimmune disorder, because the standard medicine didn't help him much, so he experimented with crazy things.

So, these are two different things. One is highly controversial, the other not at all.

> 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson

yikes

Well some people need to be told.

In. Simple. Ideas.

Go tidy your room.

> 2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson

A note on this, since mentioning Peterson tends to spark controversy: I think I think the people who get the best out of Peterson don't treat him as a guru issuing rules written in stone tablets (in spite of the implication of the book title) but as a provoker of attention/reflection. This is probably generally true of anyone, but especially worth considering here.

I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame have something to do with it.

> I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame have something to do with it.

I've noticed the same thing. I think he's gotten into bad habits commenting on subjects outside of his area of expertise, but I did enjoy his YouTube lectures for the reasons you mentioned

Cut him some slack. When he's on JRE his conversations should be thought of as some guy talking about how he feels about events. Just like you or I.

He's smart and thinks. That guy also just happens to be an expert in an area of knowledge.

Whilst we're speaking philosophy... I think Pliny's "sutor, ne ultra crepidam" ("shoemaker, not beyond the shoe") might be the quip to match your comment.

>but as a provoker of attention/reflection.

Smart business choice, this is how you capitalize on ambiguity. Sarcasm as a business model.

Is that your model? Because Peterson is cited and sourced.

Heh. It’s true and I think Peterson is guilty of not only taking advantage of the attention provocation brings but cultivating it to some extent.

But I did have something more specific in mind that I didn’t articulate well: I think he’s successful at provoking attention to some genuinely helpful philosophical questions... and at least calling attention to a segment of knowledge from psych/neuroscience and then to some extent literature and mythology that are relevant to the questions. I can see why the provoke part sometimes overwhelms the rest and limits his audience, he is not without sin, but I think he’s doing more than trading in ambiguous deepities. YMMV, it’s possible someone better educated in those fields can point to something better.

He was always like that. His work with the UN and legal work had rough edges. The fame has made him bigger not different.

His lectures go more in depth and are not trying to hit a peak of condensed information. As much as Peterson likes nietschze, he can’t write like nietschze, with highly condensed sentences. Peterson has always been better in the long form.

Without opinion on the particular value of this list, I'll advise that if you are exploring philosophy (even of the pop kind), especially if this is new for you, you'll probably get the best results out of reading contradicting and contrasting results.

Be it foundational or just currently popular, following up a work by reading it's most talented detractors can multiply it's value to you. Learning about an entirely different philosophical approach will often be more useful to you than reading another book on similar ideas.

Oh, and really good popularizors are rare. Usually the original sources are far better - but by nature much less accessible. So you have a trade off to make.

I've read 12 Rules for Life and disliked that Peterson uses a lot of Disney movie and bible references to support his claims. He makes some good points every once in a while but the book is unnecessarily verbose. I recommend reading the cliff notes to understand 90% of the book.

He uses Disney quotes to support his contention that there are profound, yet universal archetypes and myths that pop up everywhere - even in Disney movies.

I don't think luck is as "random" of a factor as much as most people think it is. Checkout "Luck Factor" by Dr. Richard Wiseman.

I do think there are a lot of things you can due to get probability more on your side:

- Keep your eyes open for opportunities and look for the upside ("be optimistic" is the woo-woo version), but it's been proven in experiments that you'll catch things others won't

- Only keep friends around you that actually support you. It's really hard to try to make life changes when people are constantly telling you you can't or shitting on your parade.

- Start making analytical choices. Certain fields pay more than others. Certain businesses treat their employees better than others. A lower position at a better company will increase your probability of "bumping" into those people who might be life changing.

- Learn about probability (Fooled by Randomness is a good start). If you constantly expose yourself to more chances of success, _odds are_, you'll start to find more of it.

IMHO we are not only discussing luck but also our imperfect and fallible nature as people. All you say is excellent advice, but -- sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

I've said this before, so apologies for repeating myself:

Luck is making the better decision in a timely manner based on incomplete knowledge where each option appears equally valid. However, people generally are poor at calculating probability combined with risk/reward and simply make bad decisions. And sometimes, all choices lead to bad outcomes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308323

To expand on this; if you are a healthy, intelligent adult I don't accept the idea that sometimes you don't have a choice, that somehow it is all out of your hands. That thinking leads to victimhood which is really an avoidance of taking responsibility for your decisions.

Yes, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you - but you chose to take on the bear, whether directly or due to some previous decision (that didn't involve a bear at all).

Enjoyed watching "The Gentleman" the other night and a fan of films like Lock Stock, Two Smoking Barrels and the idea of events snowballing from the choices people make (and then the interaction of each individual's ongoing choices). But the situations that they find themselves in were a result of something they did.

Counterpoint: Luck (broadly seen, including your genetic disposition and where you’ve been born - you might not call it luck, but it’s certainly not something you’ve chosen or earned) plays a much bigger role than most people think it does.

Source and book recommendation:

Robert H. Frank: Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167404/su...

> In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine. In Success and Luck, bestselling author and New York Times economics columnist Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success—and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy.

Good summary in his article in The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luc...

I totally agree with your sentiment, but I wouldn't consider it a counter point.

I said luck isn't as _random_ as some people think it is. You're saying it plays a much bigger role than most people think it does.

These are not mutually exclusive.

It might even emphasize the point -- because it plays a bigger role than most suppose, it is important to understand how to best take advantage of poor (or superior) circumstances.

I doubt the person you’re replying to made a counter point and what’s being written about is really just semantics (when someone references luck instead of just acknowledging determinism).

The knowledge that’s statistically likely to benefit someone that’s poor, may not work from unfortunate circumstances and that happen precisely when it will hurt the situation. That happens as everyone has a fairly unique life.

We also have to rely on if someone misfortune at birth (in some way), happens to be “lucky enough” to encounter the knowledge to hopefully benefit them or as I should say fate decided to allow it.

Some people do everything right contrary to a person doing the opposite and life can reward whoever the unique conditions happened to favor for each person.

Everything is decided at birth if we were to break everything down into cause & effect.

I agree with your points but they don't really support "luck isn't random". I would say the argument is more "if you increase luck surface area the expected outcome will be higher". Not as catchy.

> - Learn about probability (Fooled by Randomness is a good start). If you constantly expose yourself to more chances of success, _odds are_, you'll start to find more of it.

A) You really want to identify gambles with positive expectation. If you constantly expose yourself to “more chances of success” with negative expectation (such as going to the casino for the chance of winning big), you’ll end up ruined.

B) Even if you can identify gambles with positive expectation, the more resources you have initially, the more you can afford to gamble. Thus, people initially deprived of luck might have less chance of catching up, let alone making it big.

Very much agreed on both points -- which is why I think studying that is important. The tide is definitely against you, but you have a greater chance of fighting it if you know how it works.

Speaking from experience, and also having known a lot of people with a deep understanding of probability, the kind of unluckiness described by OP isn't immediately resolved by a familiarity with probability. For example, it can work against a person where becoming aware of the number of small chance events, that you come to believe you're just wasting your time. But I do think understanding probability is useful in life and underrated.

So that is where good advice would step in to offer some guidance about how to actually apply this knowledge.

Thank you fellow Taleb reader.

Also: Scott Adams, in his book "How to fail..." has a chapter on increasing one's luck. Worth a skim if you haven't checked it out before.

This is all-around great advice. I heard some similar things on Ricky Gervais' show After Life, and I wrote them down:

> It's worth sticking around to maybe make my little corner of the world a slightly better place.

> Happiness is amazing. It's so amazing, it doesn't matter if it's yours.

> You may not like living much, but you can make the world a better place. So don't give up, because then they've won. And they grow in numbers.

>> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car.

As the proud owner of a 2004 Toyota Corolla and a 2011 Philosophy Minor, this line made my day. Honestly it is just plain good advice.

I love my 2001 Corolla. It's got 164k miles on it (had about 140 when I bought it), and I hope to get another 100k out of it!

Same here - except 220k. Still running great, but looking for a new-to-me car because i'm tired of driving it.

I feel like a used car underachiever right now, looking forward to 2025 when I get a back up camera and bluetooth.

You can always buy a new stereo and install it. If you buy it from Crutchfield, for like $19 extra, you can get it prewired/harnessed so you don't have to splice the wires. Pretty sweet deal.

Also, some stereos come with a backup cam. This has to be spliced in though.

HUGE NOTE: I bought a 4.5-star receiver on Crutchfield, but the receiver didn't have Sirius XM on it, so I basically don't have radio (unless I use an app on my phone to stream the radio). I don't listen to the radio often so it's not a huge deal for me, just something to be aware of.

I have two cars. 03 VW Jetta TDI with 270k miles and an 09 Nissan Altima with 260k miles. Though I do get plenty of chances to try my hand at being a mechanic.

1998 Honda Civic, 225k miles. Drove it to the Microsoft campus everyday, and parked next to Porsches.

How many miles does your Philosophy Minor have on it? I've heard they're not very reliable

In fairness it does break down constantly, but I can usually repair it on my own. I should mention that it handles well in difficult terrain, and it appreciates in value over time.

Philosophy will get through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no philosophy.

" Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." — Rumi

> Philosophy will get through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no philosophy.

Good quote!

I always feel philosophy is the abode for people who couldn't get sucked in by religion.

Isn't philosophy kind of like CS minus the computers? I remember my sister talking about how much she hated her philosophy class and what she described was essentially discrete math-lite.

This is interesting. Can you expand it a bit, please?

Since they said "philosophy class," singular, I suspect they're referring to the unit on logic: modus ponens, modus tollens, valid vs sound arguments, etc.

Philosophy major here (I jokingly tout myself as a trained philosopher). Philosophy is a big field with different schools of thought. In the US/UK, the primary school is known as "analytic (philosophy)" which is focused on tight arguments, precise language, and clarity of thought (see Russell, Wittgenstein, Lewis, Godel). This is contrasted by European -- in particular, French -- "continental (philosophy)" which waxes more poetic (see Nietzsche, Sartre, Lacan, Derrida).

The former deals quite a bit with logic (which was my area of focus in undergrad). Classes I took ranged from "baby logic" (predicate logic, first-order-logic), to second-order logic, to mathematical logic (mostly Peano arithmetic), to metalogic (learning how to prove things like Godel's incompleteness), to lambda calculus, to game theory. This was on top of ethics classes, history of philosophy, and other miscellaneous classes (took a very fun seminar by a Yale visiting professor -- I forget his name -- on the philosophy of food). Most of the graduate seminars I took were on philsophy of language and model theory.

Just about every philosophy class had a pretty strong "logic" undercurrent.

Just to clarify, and defend the old continent a bit: while it certainly originated German Idealism and its descendants all the way to post-structuralism and (gasp) “critical theory”, today of course you can find proponents of both schools (the continental/hermeneutic/postmodern and the analytic) on all continents.

And regarding the gp: most philosophy programs will have classes in informal and some even in formal logic, to Goedel’s incompleteness theorems and way beyond.

Also, the less logical bit of analytic philosophy is all about breaking down and understanding other people's arguments. It's a very similar process to teasing out business requirements from stakeholders!

From what I remember, her class involved a lot of logical proofs using propositional logic, but in the form of word problems, not logical statements. I.e., if Bob is larger than Alice, then... instead of P -> Q. They also discussed probabilities, but I'm not sure to what degree.

Those two topics are discussed in entry level CS courses as well. So I assumed that the fields might be semi-related if they require the same mathematical foundations.

This was my undergraduate degree, many years ago:

https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/philosophy/undergraduate/logic-...

Possibly it is because philosophy is a lot like being bothered by a bug in your code, and you stress and strain to resolve it which provides growth in wisdom after the objective is completed.

It varies by brand. Plato pretty much runs forever. Kant, even property maintained, will leave you scratching your head. People keep Aristotle running, but it’s not pretty. For what you spend Hume is a bargain—you can even take it off road in the forest...assuming there are unfallen trees. For the DIYer, Wittgenstein will keep you busy but Russell is known to have a computational design flaw. I recommend a late model Singer if you can afford it because they’re still making parts.

this was the best thoughtful chuckle I got in a while

Lots of good points about living below your means. Also define what you want. I'd hate for someone to live a safe and secure life and minimize risk only to get shafted by the system in the end. Some risk is worth taking. Taking on debt in certain situations is worth it. You just need to get aware of life in the event of failure and take that into consideration.

> There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo, IN.

Heh. Unrelated but I've been re-watching a lot of KOTH during quarantine and this line reminded me of a scene from the first season

https://youtu.be/bQfyCg0i8sU?t=1m0s

Great advice.

I see a lot of people in tech with inflated ideas of what success means, and they're almost all tied strictly to salary/net worth.

Yeah, having money is nice, but if that's all you base happiness/idea of success on, its going to be a bumpy road.

>There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest making $70k/year feeling like failures

I understand how this can point of view can develop, but one of the things I'm most grateful for in life is struggling through a slew of minimum-wage jobs out of college before transitioning into tech. That first bump to "tech salary" literally doubled my income over night and it was only 70k in a high COL east coast city. I learned how to live poor, and discovered I could still have a meaningful life while being broke.

Although I still pursue career advancement, it's not just for money. And if it were to all disappear over night (which is the case for a lot of people right now), I'm comforted by the fact that I've already had it "that bad".

You gotta dig deep first if you want to build a skyscraper, as I always heard.

> Yeah, having money is nice,

As someone who was broke for many years and now is less broke (cash is flowing, there's money in my accounts, but I'm deeply in negative net worth due to student debt), I think you're understating the issue, vastly.

Simply put, money is freedom. If you have it, you can do things people who don't have it can't. If you have enough of it, you can do just about anything. And, I'm not necessarily talking about luxuries, I'm talking about stuff like:

* If you have enough money in the bank, an unexpected car repair is a hassle, rather than a disaster.

* If you can afford to buy a home, then you don't have to worry about being evicted or not having a lease renewed.

* If you have enough money, you can send your kids to a good school and get them off to the best possible start in life.

* If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick.

As I said, none of these things are luxuries, but, to reach "don't have to worry about medical bankruptcy" levels, or even "I get to own a home and nobody can tell me I can't paint my front door pink" levels takes a huge amount of money relative to the median income today.

> I learned how to live poor, and discovered I could still have a meaningful life while being broke.

That doesn't mean being broke is great, good, or even not all that bad. It just means you've gotten used to it.

"* If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick."

Or you live in a country with a socialised medical system.

I see you caught my implicit punch line. None of those things above the level of "unexpected car breakdown" really ought to be things people in the country with the largest economy in the world ought to be worrying about. We need to do something about that, whether it's a move toward social democracy, or even full on socialism. But, there's such a "fuck you, got mine" attitude among our political class that we're never going to see it in my lifetime, I'm sure. If it hasn't happened in the face of a global pandemic shutting everything down, I doubt the elite are going to get the message that workers are the ones that create everything of value in the economy, so we should try to elevate the lot of the average worker, rather than keeping him so stressed, sick, and insecure.

I agree these things should not be what "people in the country with the largest economy in the world ought to be worrying about".

But Socialism is not the answer.

As Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

Socialism is great in concept. In class, which deals with the theoretical, it sounds great. For teachers, who can teach concepts and don't need to deal with the pesky nastiness of the real world, it is the thing to teach.

But in real life, Socialism, and partial socialism, and partial social by other names, are all TERRIBLE for the average dude.

Study history, for real. Look at the countries which have had all the "ism's". Democracy (and in many cases, even autocracy - which is also REALLY bad) are better.

I am not at all wealthy, live simply (no car, no smartphone, no whatever). I moved from the States to a socialy democratic country with an excellent public Medicaire system.

Even so, if I could make it more democratic and less socialistic, I would, and so would anyone else I know. A massive amount of my neighbors have moved to the States or are waiting for papers to do so. Everyone who can afford it has supplemental insurance.

It would be a shame if the States lost what they have right.

Money gives you the freedom to start over in one.

> If you have enough money, you can send your kids to a good school and get them off to the best possible start in life.

> If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick.

I don't know where you're from, but most rich countries, and even some poorer ones, have free, quality education for all, and health care tends to be nearly free... if you get sick, the government will support you for as long as needed. If you're from a very poor country, sorry about that... maybe you should consider migrating to a better country, if you have skills that are in demand, that's pretty easy nowadays!

Take a guess which rich country I'm from. Hint: look who's #1 in global GDP.

I was being sarcastic :) of course I know in which country people usually have the concerns you mentioned... being #1 in GDP means nothing to the majority of Americans who don't get to have the peace of mind to not worry about even the most basic human necessities.

Check out Man's Search for Meaning.

I have plenty of meaning. I’d just like some actual freedom.

Also, if you have an absurd amount of money, your days become 8-10 hours longer because you don't need a job to pay your bills, which effectively doubles your remaining (awake) lifespan.

Yeah, everyone knows that rich people live longer on average, but most people don't realize how much longer.

"Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable."

There is some good advice, for everybody!

"Adjust worldview" sounds deeply pessimistic to me. Anyone can do make life better, specially at time when degrees mean less, they just need to persevere. Stay level headed. If I have to suggest I wouldn't say "Adjust Worldview" at all.

This is not bad luck. This is the normal state of life. It may be depressing (non-clinical), it might be disappointing, it might be discouraging, but it is 100% bog-standard ordinary.

The feeling that you are suffering more than other people is the true harm caused.

Your points:

* Graduated at the wrong time: How many thousands of people graduated between 2008 and 2010? That is by definition ordinary. * Never met that magical person to makes your life magical: You said it yourself. Do you think most people meet magical people? * Resilient financial safety net: You've read the statistics, right? Most people don't have a month's income saved for difficult times. * Mental safety net/health issues: OK, there's some randomness here. But many people struggle with some form of this. * Having dependents: Well, blended choice and randomness, to some extent. But controllable usually, if you mean offspring. Adult dependents (parents) are harder, but far less common. * Large company rips off/Some exec derails your project: Normal and ordinary. This is how things work. Disappointing, but don't let it be discouraging. That part is your choice.

I think you're conflating "lack of unusual good luck" with "bad luck". They are not the same. Don't imagine that the lucky individuals for whom the stars aligned are in any way normal. They just get all the press.

Yeah, I think it's definitely worth remembering that the people and organisations making millions/billions of dollars and 'changing the world' are in the news because it's rare. Most musicians don't reach number 1, most film stars and YouTubers don't become millionaires, most startups don't become the next Facebook and most games on Steam or app stores just get buried.

A combination of press coverage and social media has basically convinced an increasingly large percentage of the population than the outliers are the norm.

I can speak to one of your points! I got dealt a bad hand in terms of health issues. However, a few years before I developed my health issues, I happened to have a long talk with a guy who had advanced MS. He told me that after his diagnosis, he tried to sock away as much money as possible and go for higher-paying jobs, as he knew that one day he'd become fully disabled and have to live on disability. Also, disability is pegged to your latest or average salary, so that's important to consider!

(SS is an average, LTD is your most recent)

During my 10 years of illness leading up to my eventual disability, I tried (with varying success) to do the following things:

- Looked for jobs with slightly under full-time work loads to allow me time to rest (found only one for 2 years, but the extra rest helped me slow down disease progression a lot)

- Looked for jobs with full benefit packages, including Short Term / Long Term Disability. If the job didn't offer it I signed up on my own

- Maxed out HSA every year

- Reduced my fixed costs as much as possible to prepare for living on a fixed income; moved to a LCOL area

- Moved to a climate that was better for my health

- Didn't have kids because I knew I wouldn't be healthy enough to bear them / raise them :-(

- Researched how long term disability / social security disability worked (this site is really good: https://howtogeton.wordpress.com/social-security-disability/ )

- Tried to do excellent work so my employers would still like me even with all my sick days

Very cool! Congratulations on your exceptionally clear-eyed approach to a major life challenge!

I’m sure this sounds sarcastic, but I’m genuinely impressed. It takes a lot of mental discipline to examine long term trends, make a correct projection, identify an appropriate course of action and then implement it even when its disruptive to your personal life.

I hope it worked well for you, and that you are living your best life despite your health challenges.

Thanks! Yes, it is especially challenging because my health problems are in the unfortunate category: extremely disabling + poorly understood. So until I found specialists I got a lot of "Well everyone gets 'tired' sometimes" gaslighting from medical professionals.

In other words I had to prepare for total disability being in my future, while also being told that nothing was wrong with me in my present by some doctors (not all, fortunately).

So psychologically the greatest part of the challenge was to prepare for an extreme event (disability) while being told that nothing was wrong. I just had to listen to my body and hear when it told me I wasn't going to be able to work full time until retirement age, and then plan accordingly.

So far, mostly due to the grace of God, I have turned out all right, thank you for your kind words. Getting approved for disability was brutal but I did eventually get approved.

Side note: Unfortunately / fortunately, dealing with medical gaslighting for all these years helped my BS detector spot the issues in the "just the flu" narrative this year way ahead of the curve, and prepare appropriately. Sadly.

> - Looked for jobs with slightly under full-time work loads to allow me time to rest (found only one for 2 years, but the extra rest helped me slow down disease progression a lot)

I think it's awful that such jobs are hard to find, considering the effect on disease progression of all things.

My own only very distantly related anecdote. I'd had an interview with a hiring manager, who would be my boss, who liked me and was keen to employ. But he didn't get to make the decision; he passed me to Head of HR who made the final decision on all hires.

The conversation with Head of HR seemed to go well, and I would have taken almost any terms (including a pay cut) because I really liked that job. But he (HR) wouldn't say how much they'd pay or give any clues about what level they operated at. He insisted on negotiating by insisting that I make the first move with no information, and say what would would make me happy. So I asked if they would consider a 4 day week. No pressure, I'd happily do 5 but 4 would be something I'd like.

That, it turns out, was a "red flag" for them, the idea that I might not be loyal enough to the company that I'd want to spend a day doing something else. This despite my evident eagerness for that particular job. There was no concern about not getting enough work done; they had enough people. It was all about concern that I might do something else with my time off.

I didn't get the job. Despite getting a message from the hiring manager that he was going to send me an offer the next morning, it was blocked by HR the following day with concerns about loyalty being given internally as the reason. Of course HR told me something else entirely.

This is exactly the reason why part-time jobs are so difficult to find. By saying "I don't want to sacrifice as much time as possible to this job" you send a bad signal. You working 4 days instead of 5 is frankly not a problem. But you wanting to work 4 days instead of 5 is. Why hire a guy who wants to sacrifice less, when you could hire a guy who wants to sacrifice more? Having a life outside of job is a red flag. Do you have hobbies? Dreams? Want to spend more time with your kids before they grow up and leave home? Go somewhere else; I want someone more loyal than you.

There are exceptions. Typically, women returning from maternity leave; with the assumption that the part-time is only for a year or two, followed by usual full-time. Also, students who work besides their school; again, with the assumption that after finishing school, the work becomes full-time. In both cases, there is a good excuse. "I'd love to devote my all time to you, but my selfish baby insists on my presence, and I need a few months before I can store it in kindergarten for the whole day." "I'd love to devote all my time to you, but this stupid school insists on me going to lessons and exams, but it will soon be over, I promise."

Maybe a health problem could serve as a sufficient excuse. "I'd love to devote all my time to you, but my doctor says 4 days a week max, otherwise I'll drop dead." It misses the "soon, it will be full-time" part, but at least it doesn't signal insufficient loyalty. I don't know; I never tried this. I'd like to hear a report from people who did.

I see where you're going with this, but a health problem which you are open about is often the kiss of death. Going by your theory, it means you'll never be able to make that sacrifice and you'll always have a different set of priorities...

But really what happens in corporate America is more brutal: "health problems" = weakness, and showing weakness is very bad.

A lot of employers prefer a mediocre employee who is there all the time to a stellar employee who has any sort of "defect." So actually it took me some effort to find employers who were "nice enough" to rate me only on my work output and quality rather than on some sort of law-of-the-jungle, survival-of-the-fittest thing.

Wow. That is nuts.

The thing is, for technical jobs like the ones folks at Hacker News tend to have, I find almost no difference in my output between 30 and 40 hour weeks. 30 hours / week I'm more mentally / physically refreshed and better able to problem-solve, so I get my work done faster.

The only advantage to a full-time schedule is that it's easier to coordinate / follow-up with other people.

Most opinions and suggestions are based on the "standard path of success". If we use beauty contest as an analogy of success, only one will be the winner and all losers. In case of North American perspective, success looks like this:

- Have good academic credentials - Have good big corporation names on your resume - Have good connections - Have nice car - Have nice house - Have kids, partner, etc. - Travel a lot when retired

If we based our life against that standard, then it is going to be easier to be depressed once a person's life deviates from it.

The other extreme, suggested by some others here, is to accept and be content about "c'est la vie" concept - life will suck and get over it, and its variations. I think that is wrong because it reinforces the idea there is only one way to succeed and have a good life.

My suggestion is simpler:

- Cover your base: do you have a place to live? do you feel safe where you live? do you have good quality food that you like to eat? do you have a group of friends to hangout and rely on? do you have an income source that is relatively stable?

- Then you can focus on whatever you want to do; free yourself from rigid standards and paths. You can even pursue the stereotypical success lifestyle knowing that even if you fail, you can recover fast and try again.

Well said. I was reading the responses, and seeing the implicit group consensus on what "success" looks like.

The thing though is, your entire life outcome is based on luck. There is nothing you can really do to compensate for that, besides getting back up, brushing the dust of your knees, counting your blessings and keep going.

List of things that are luck:

1) Where you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time. (think Afghanistan, North Korea, Venezuela, etc.)

2) Being born the wrong gender in the majority of the world by population (ie female).

3) Being born with the wrong sexual orientation in a huge chunk of the world.

4) Being born with a health condition (physical or mental), or with a learning disability. Even a mild one like ADHD or dyslexia.

5) Being born to the wrong set of parents. ie. belonging to the wrong community/religion/race... in the majority of the world.

Honestly, even your mental capacity and grit are to a large extent (if not completely) luck. If developed via nurture, you didn't pick how you were nurtured. If nature, you didn't pick the genetic combination you were born with.

So really, what is left? What percentage of your 'success' can you actually take credit for?

Luck presupposes different outcomes of what will be determined. How can a person have different outcomes from the origin of their conception?

I encourage you to read my essay On the Skill of Luck:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XKPJ9ZY/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_...

> If developed via nurture, you didn't pick how you were nurtured

You pick how you nurture yourself every day though. Nurture didn't magically stop on the second you became 18 (or 21 or whatever arbitrary number your country recognizes as becoming an adult).

This is so true! I wish more people would recognize it

>- You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ex. you graduated in 2008-2010/now or your business sector got wiped out by COVID

I feel bad for the higher class pizza restaurant that opened down the street from our house at the end of January after a long time of renovating the building.

Even though their pizza isn't really as good as the fancy pizza place at the mall (it's a mall in a rich area) down by the nearby harbor, which will upset me if it goes out of business because I could take my kids there or visitors and they were made happy by the quality of the pizza.

But this place down the street from me, that is textbook bad luck.

I have a similar story. There was a fancy pizza place about to open next to a park few minutes from my home. They were intensively renovating a pretty building. I was really waiting to see them open - I like pizzas, and this is a small town, so we don't have much of choice in them. COVID-19 lockdowns came just as they were readying to open. They had a market, they had a great location - but they also had really bad luck.

Something similar happened to me during this outbreak.

Got my CS degree from a no-name university in a third world country a few years back, got a job in one of those software sweatshops getting paid peanuts, moved to a new one an year later where I worked my ass off to learn things and generally be a good developer, but here too I was paid a pittance, mostly due to my education and previous job. I hated working here by the end and wanted to leave.

Somehow I got an interview from a company in [COUNTRY] who were willing to sponsor my visa along with good pay. I studied hard for it (coming home from work at 10pm, preparing for interview until the late wee hours of the night) and cleared the interviews. Finally something good had happened to me, but just before I was scheduled to move for the new job, this outbreak just fucked everything over.

The company still hasn't rescinded the offer, but I don't really have any high hopes, everyday I wake up in the morning expecting a rejection mail from them in my mailbox. Whats worse is that I had left my previous job since the joining of the new one was so close before all this happened, so here I am sitting jobless leeching on my family till god know when.

Sorry for the rant, I just wanted to get this out.

Edit: Any reason why this comment is dead?

Hiring is still going on in most of North America. Hedge your bets look at other companies and interview. Preparation for one interview is preparation for lots of them

Unfortunately US work visa for people from my country is not so easy. Though I've been applying at companies in EU, the visa process is much simpler.

Take a look at Japan as well, really easy to get in to work but money is not as good as NA. I don’t really know EU market

I'm a Dutchie, and I can't speak about the EU market as a whole, but as any European that travels around a bit, I have the following ranking in terms of lifestyle/pay:

1. Switzerland (90k or higher + mountains if you're willing to drive a bit)

2. Luxembourg (I just remember you get paid quite a bit)

3. Berlin (alright pay, low living costs, amazing city)

4. England + Scandinavia + The Netherlands (didn't look into Scandinavia enough but in most cases they're on par or a bit better than The Netherlands)

Englang is on #4, because while the pay is better, society seems to be more screwed. University is more expensive, the welfare system sucks more (compared to most of the other countries in this list, Scandinavia being Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland).

Take this with a grain of salt, do your own research of course.

Countries that I wouldn't want to go to:

1. Eastern Europe

2. Southern Europe

The pay is too low.

The thing is: higher pay is always better, even when living costs are always, let's say 50% in any country. The more money you safe, the more you can utilize it for geo-arbitraging strategies later on in life.

The issue with geo-arbitraging is that when you work somewhere for an extended period of time, you put resources into your life there. Retiring by leaving your home and friends etc. doesn't seem nearly as sweet.

Fair point, I'd still argue it's better to send money back home, if one comes from a 3rd world country.

You create a new home and make new friends (and eventually family if you moved somewhere single & got married along the way). I think you really underestimate how much easier life is in some places compared to others, even outside the extremes.

I can't speak for the rest of the countries in the region, but in Romania if you work in IT for a decent company you pay 0 income tax if you graduated from a local CS department and only a 10% flat rate otherwise.

A senior position at a good company in Bucharest will mean at least 3000 Euros net per month which means that you'll live like a king, since rent for a great apartment will be something like 500-600 Euros.

The downside is lower development you notice regarding infrastructure, education levels, pollution, etc.

> Countries that I wouldn't want to go to:

> 1. Eastern Europe

3-4k EUR net (after taxes) is pretty normal salary for senior enterprise dev in big cities in Poland. That's perhaps a bit less than in say Berlin (although I'm not too sure of that, given high taxes in Germany), but the costs of living are so much lower.

Fair point! Thanks for pointing it out. My knowledge on Eastern Europe is pretty bad.

How about not using Cold War era divisions.

Kazakhstan is in Eastern Europe. It's 2000 km away from Poland.

France is in Western Europe. It's 800 km away from Poland.

With the EU money and regulations pouring in, the Central Europe begins to feel much more Western-ish and quite disconnected with Eastern Europe.

It will take time till people start referring to Poland as Central Europe, Estonia as Northern Europe and ex. Slovenia as Southern Europe...

The best thing would be to move to a country with low living costs and work remotely for a company from a high living costs country.

Please consult with someone worked in Japan before you actually go. Japanese company culture is very different to us/euro style, and if you can’t speak japanese, you will not be able to blend into their company culture.

Also, Japan IT sector is notoriously messy, think again before you join them

comment looks fine to me?

It was dead for about 10 minutes after I posted it, I think it tripped up some spam/troll filter for new accounts. It's fine now though, but I can't edit the original comment and remove the last line.

Yes, new accounts tend to have their comments appear as dead until they are vouched for. For constructive posts this usually happens quickly.

It can be brought back to life if people vouch for it, so I assume that’s what happened.

In wich country did you decide to move? Some have more troubles than others during this period depending on sector.

For example, most companies in Germany/Europe working in the automotive sector froze hiring since nobody is buying cars anymore.

You probably already know that, but sometimes it helps to hear it again:

The world is a competitive place, and a lot of success factors are outside of your control. (timing, pre-existing resources, sheer luck)

What you can control is exactly what you are already doing: Work really hard and make the best of what you have. Come up with a good long term plan and execute it. Do life decisions that help with that plan.

This will make you more successful than your relative peer group and over time wash you into an upper percentile compared to others dealing with the same factors.

Keep up the good work! It's a long game.

So, why is this encouraging and helpful message being downvoted into gray? I can only assume some salty graduates are lashing out.

Don't do that to yourself, i.e. living bitter and angry. Engage with those you disagree with by conversing. Correct them or be corrected and learn.

I got to say I have given up worrying about why people are downvoting what I say, I do have a suspicion that I have a couple people who when they see my name automatically downvote - oh it's that guy again - although I don't think they search me out to downvote either.

on edit: at any rate I upvoted it as you're right, seems an encouraging nice message.

FWIW across ~10 years of HNing my sense is it's pretty hard to land on > 1 person's shitlist, and while it's unlikely you've garnered a coterie of haters, it is the iron law of HN that complaining about--or speculating about potential--downvotes attracts many downvotes.

Disclaimer: I don't know much about 3rd world countries other than my recent trip to Africa and talking to some locals there. In short I've learned: access to healthcare is completely and utterly fucked (this is why maximum age seems to be 40 in the villages that I went to), getting food is a struggle but doable if you know what you're doing (you just plant stuff somewhere and hope it doesn't get robbed), you'll have a mud house somewhere, you'll be living close with your family, you'll be relying a lot on your community and your community relies on you.

My point of this entire comment is to say: be a bit careful with your words when you're from a 1st world country and the person you comment to lives in an entirely different context.

--- My actual comment ---

You seem to be based in the USA. This person is from a 3rd world country. Your advice looks like its written for an American, not someone who lives in a 3rd world country.

For example, I can imagine that a lot of people don't think that the world is a competitive place but a criminal one. Why? Because there are a lot of mercantile practices going on. Your passport matters. There is no meritocracy in this world, only passports.

Make the best of what you have in some cases can be translated to: try to fucking survive and I'm sorry that your relative passed away from malaria and that we had no money for medicine, and even if we did have money the infrastructure would be too broken to bring it fast enough. Sadly enough, that happens quite often. Technically, that's still the same as "make the best of what you have". But I can imagine that it can be perceived quite negatively, as some might see that there's some implied sarcasm there.

> This will make you more successful than your relative peer group

So instead of having an average age of 50, you'll get to be 60? More successful for sure. Yet, I can feel the unfairness to 1st worlders who get to be 80.

> It's a long game.

I don't think everyone perceives life to be a game. I know I do at times. But I also happen to know family members that almost die from hunger (rare thing to happen in The Netherlands but it does). I am sure that to them in those moments life is not a game. Because of that, I also believe that enough people who suffer from poverty or are threatened by it don't perceive life to be a game.

---------

In closing: I think your comment was actually well meant. But since I see that you were downvoted I decided to take the time to explain how your comment seems to be missing the mark to me personally. I assume that other people have a similar enough interpretation of it.

FYI I didn't downvote, as I think your comment was well meant.

> I don't know much about 3rd world countries other than my recent trip to Africa

Thank you for stepping out of your comfort zone and actually visiting a non-touristy place.

It is unclear what the definition of a 3rd world country is. It has different meanings depending on cultural context. see also https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/third-world.asp

> your advice looks like its written for an American, not someone who lives in a 3rd world country.

My advice was written for someone with a university CS degree, years of experience in his profession, and an actual job offer that might still be honored. That goes a long way, especially in impoverished countries, where your odds of success are even more tied to the wealth of the family you were born in.

> that the world is a competitive place but a criminal one

Whether that's true or not, it's out of his control.

> There is no meritocracy in this world, only passports.

I agree. But a passport is a pre-existing resource, something you don't have a lot of control over. You can try to immigrate to another country, but that takes a long term plan again.

> Make the best of what you have in some cases can be translated to: try to fucking survive

That's true again. Families in Africa, who don't have a son with a CS degree, often pressure their strongest, smartest son, the future of the family, to embark on a very dangerous journey to Europe. The risk of dying along the way is fairly high, but the upside is huge for the whole family.

The person I responded to was worried about a job offer. He might need to work for less money in a job he hates again. It's all relative.

> I don't think everyone perceives life to be a game

My bad, I should have used an actual subject: career. And a career has many characteristics of a strategy game. Accepting the job offer was probably a good career move and it might still happen. It's not withdrawn yet. Even if it is, I can't think of a situation where it would help to stop doing the best you can.

> But since I see that you were downvoted I decided to take the time to explain how your comment seems to be missing the mark to me personally.

Appreciate that. It's interesting how people fill in context based on their own experiences and come up with assumptions. While it's true I'm currently based in the US, I wasn't born with this privilege.

Like many others in this thread, I posted some universal best practices you can apply in pretty much every part of the world to deal with inevitable setbacks. It worked for me in the past 2 recessions and I expect it to work again for this one. The person I responded to seemed to be in distress and I think building some resilience skills helps with that.

Many people think that if they work really hard it will pay off. But its the other other way, first you discover that something pays off, then you can start to work hard to get even better. So it should really say work smart.

While it’s true that working hard is not sufficient to have things pay off, I think waiting to find something that pays off to work hard would result in most people missing the opportunity they were given. To sustainably work hard is a skill, and unless you’ve practiced it in advance of an opportunity showing itself you’ll find yourself unable to work hard when you need to.

Its not a competition, but I can do you one better. I have excellent jobs get away from me 3 times, days before I join. First was due to 2008 recession, company shutdown and I came to know when I went to join on day ONE, fresh after graduation. The last was now due to covid, the company abandon plans and even fired some their own staff. So, no scope of getting there. Scores of shitty jobs in shitty companies. Couple of failed startups and pending payments I doubt to recover.

But unlike the last 2 times, now it didn't hurt much. May be i developed a tolerance. But its more of the fact that I accepted that many things are beyond my control. The fact it happens, shouldn't be taken personally by looking around and wondering why it "happened to me"? Shit happens, move on.

Focus on self-development like reading more, watching & listening to informative things like documentaries or well-written programs instead of time-killers. Stick to a personal routine and keep a clear head.

What is the fun if everyone has the same story? I story is unique to me, no claims of plagiarism. Your priority is to keep moving forward, whatever happens just think how to move forward.

I just talking this time and studying. What else can I do? I do spend about an hour applying for jobs. Learn new skills, in job & in life. I have a small garden now that was setup during this covid times. I contribute fresh leafs to the meals at home.

> so here I am sitting jobless leeching on my family till god know when. sitting jobless - that is you. Why sit simply, do something productive for you or the ones around you. Just washed some old unused vessels in the kitchen that my mom wanted to use now. leeching? as long was you not drinking or snorting drugs and actually trying to move forward its fine. Your time will come. You need to believe that to keep moving forward.

Dont resent or feel jealous of the ones who seem to have things better than you. You can never compare yourself to any one around.

The only person to compete with is yourself from yesterday.

Tangenting a bit. It saddens me to no end that this happens just after the unemployment rate for African Americans hit record lows. I'm not a SJW by any means, but it's so frustrating to see a whole class of historically mistreated people get punched in the gut the minute they start to get a good toehold.

Seriously! and the lowest poverty rates ever recorded. It is so sad. Just want everyone to get a break.

Ouch. Bad luck combined with an already risky venture...

> Even though their pizza isn't really as good as the fancy pizza place at the mall

They opened the "not best pizza option" and "nTH restaurant option".

Opening a restaurant is a good example of what to avoid if you want to be resilient in the face of bad luck. It's a fragile and brutal business even in the best of times.

Opening a restaurant is difficult even for professionals. I had a neighbor who was managing one of the more successful restaurants at the Mall of America, who decided he wanted to do his own thing. He bought a restaurant in the downtown of our small suburb and spent months renovating it. I don't think it was open more than 3 months before he threw in the towel and declared personal bankruptcy.

Another huge aspect of "bad luck" is just meeting unusual numbers of bad people. By that I mean people who have an intention to harm you in some way or another instead just being the typical look out for oneself or even the more empathetic caring kind of person. You dont really choose the people you run into but there are absolutely skills you can learn in order to deal with them in healthy ways.

A significant portion part of someone's career is based on politics and surprisingly little on skill.

>> You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in the form of good friends/family early in your career that enables you to take risks, or you got dealt a bad hand in the form of things like dependents or health issues and simply can't afford to take risks

I've found that success in life is correlated with how closely you hit on actual "truths" in the world. For example, you join company X on a rocket ship. Your equity value skyrockets - those assets were actually undervalued relative to what someone would pay for them later.

One of the hardest things in life is that we don't actually know the "truth", no one does. But what we can do is learn to spot ways we tell ourselves convenient lies - this is why Buffet + Munger did SO much work on studying human biases. If we had a perfect ability to spot every falsehood, we would be left with the bare truth.

Given it's an imperfect system, "bad luck" can be simplified to "you keep missing the truth". And it's often not our fault - how the hell could anyone have known about COVID-19, and impact on their company, far enough in advance to actually move to safer waters prior? But it's worth examining why you made the decision to do X - were there any truths you missed, or lies you told yourself?

Through that process, you can get better at spotting falsehoods or clarifying your values, so that even if you don't ever land on a rocket ship, you find a workplace you are happy at.

For example, one of my early jobs was at a turd of a company. I knew BEFORE that it wasn't a great opportunity. But I was desperate to leave my current situation so I took it. Within a few weeks, I KNEW it was still a turd. But I didn't want to pay the relocation bonus back if I left so soon. So I stuck it out, ended up being there for a few years, and it mostly was wasted time. So now I turn down jobs where I feel like that going in. I need to feel great about the company's situation.

But even that's not foolproof. I had another company where the company was doing GREAT. Fucking rocketship. Then literally within a few months of me joining, it went down the tubes and barely survived. So I also learned to be more wary of quickly growing, younger companies as well.

Now I'm at a steadily growing larger company, that's managed well, and I love it.

One last piece of advance - google "It works". It's a little book about writing a list of what you want and constantly looking at it. I did it during my last job search and literally got an (almost) dream job. Give it a try.

can you link directly to the book? thanks.

Perhaps it's this

https://www.amazon.com/Works-Famous-Little-Makes-Dreams-eboo...

It Works: The Famous Little Red Book That Makes Your Dreams Come True by RHJ

- Mentorship, and how to find it

Reflecting on my career of failure, unfulfilled potential, compared to the biographies of "successful" people, what they all seem to have which I lacked was a mentor.

That person who said "You can do this. I believe in you. Let's talk it thru."

To counterbalance all the people who actively or passively tear you down.

Finding the right people is a very important part of luck. At different stages of my life, I often had a person who made more difference than all other people combined.

(And, as far as I know, I was this person for someone else once. So, globally, I am still in debt. Should do something about it.)

Some things are outside your control, luck by definition is outside your control.

- Your business sector will come back post COVID.

- You can’t control other people

- Control who is dependent on you, and fix your health best you can.

- You can mitigate macro level risks. These techniques come at a cost.

- You can get magic paper at the wrong age, but it costs. Or find other ways in.

Frankly this discussion about luck is incredibly weak. You didn’t get everything you wanted, some things you can control and others you can’t. Appealing to luck might encourage some people to plaster over your mistakes and inability to eat loss with money and submission.

There is no advice to give because you have framed the conversation around what your heart wants and thrown any rational decision making possible into submission to luck.

You aren’t a victim of luck, it is by definition something nobody ever escapes and is a subset of randomness. An easy out for the unhappy. You are still ultimately responsible for your life, even the bits you can’t control. You make your own luck.

Read Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius.

There are some things that are in your control, while others that are not. Concentrate on the former. How can you improve your skills, learn new ones.

Lower your expenses, stay healthy, avoid debt.

It might take longer, because of all the dead ends you have encountered, but eventually you'll get there. But more importantly, don't let those things make you bitter.

When I think of the very successful people I know, all have gone through life events that would absolutely flatten most people. The loss of a child, a partner committing suicide, 6 businesses failing, 2 weeks in an induced comma.

And yet a stranger looks at their accomplishments and thinks that they just didn't have bad luck.

This is absolutely true. I've noticed most "unsuccessful" people go around with a view of "successful" people that they got lucky, never had to endure hardship, had something handed to them, and so on. It's a defeatist, whiny attitude.

I've put "un/successful" in quotes because I'm referring to the common interpretation of success/failure being purely financial. There are many other ways to lead an "unsuccessful" but fulfilling life, and I'd argue the place to start is to accept the hand you've been dealt. And to work with it rather than rail against it.

The one big thing I see missing here is the ability to increase your luck by networking and personal branding. You absolutely have to build your personal network. More exposure, more potential opportunity. Plain and simple - no matter what field you are in.

This is misinformation for people who are trying.

huh?

I speculate that the GP means:

For people who are already networking as much as they can, working hard on their personal brand, etc. and still finding it doesn't seem to be working out for them (probably most people), you're telling them to do what they are already doing and that it will make them more successful.

That's isn't useful. It's non-actionable advice, and empirically wrong in their experience.

For people in that situation, your advice is pointing them in the wrong direction, and that's what I read into "misinformation" in the GP comment.

For people with bad luck or from people with bad luck? It is often inspiring to hear from folks who haven't been on the success rocket doing just fine and having a great life.

The subtext here though is always "scoring" your success. There is the zen koan about one mans bad luck is another mans opportunity. But it really seems that the message is more "don't measure your own success unrealistically or you will always see yourself as having 'bad luck' when, in fact, you have a great life."

Depending on the interpretation, I've had between 3 and 5 out of these 5 things happen to me. I could have used the advice you're asking for about 10-15 years ago.

To paraphrase you are asking what should people who are not achieving their goals do?

I have read that the meaning of life is love and freedom and doing what you enjoy. What that means is different for everyone, but you have to ask yourself what that means to you. If that means have millions of dollars in just a few years, great. Read "think and grow rich" to see who you need to become. Otherwise don't waste you time following what others think success looks like.

> - You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in the form of good friends/family early in your career that enables you to take risks, or you got dealt a bad hand in the form of things like dependents or health issues and simply can't afford to take risks

The 'friends' part is something that I think can be potentially fixed. 'Friends' who can truly support you AND who are worthy of being supported in times of need are rare. But I think if one searches hard enough and find reasonable people to from an alliance with (without necessarily being friends) this problem can reduced. But it is needle in a hay stack endeavor. Most people in my observation are not worthy of receiving help ( for example they do not save enough money when they earn, so cannot be trusted to have the financial disciple to pay back) or conversely they are not in a position to help ( to cite the same example because they have not been saving enough money, they don't have enough money to lend to you).

As someone who got hit with several of those: the best advice is "Find good ways to deal with your frustration and start adjusting your expectations downward. Start by getting a therapist."

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to recover your losses besides "get lucky in the future". Your career advice is the same as everyone else's, just with worse expected outcomes.

> you graduated in 2008-2010/now

Any advice for that?

There was an article about "luck" a few years ago and how researchers really found "luck" was somewhat in our control. Graduating in a recession isn't, but being "blindsided" is - luck had a strong component of being attentive and aware to the world around them. This derived from a calm wellbeing. I used to know someone who always lamented her "bad luck." Stuff like car accidents, or getting physically injured. She was also the most profoundly depressed and anxious person I had ever met, like within minutes you could tell she was disturbed. You could tell her bad "luck" was her mode of being constant distracted, but there wasn't really any advice you could give other than "work on your mental state," which she already knew.

Her original bad luck over which she had no control was an unhappy upbringing, which is truly unfortunate, but that's not the last word on life.

Well, I definitely hit at least 3 of these things.

#1 (good luck landing a decent job in 2009) #2 (turns out no one cares about you when you're unemployed) #5 (not Ivy League and mediocre GPA)

Safety net was decent, so I was able to at least look for a job for some time.

#4 doesn't really apply.

Not taking it personal helps, though... we cast our net daily and see what emerges?

I graduated in 08 and that was a GREAT time to enter the work force and start earning equity at a very low strike price right before a decade of amazing economic growth.

The bad luck is thinking a company is having a good luck and then realize it isn't. Running into people able to manipulate you is also bad luck.

Companies are selling you during the interview. Sometimes good businesses hire bad people who are good at interviews (maliciously or not), sometimes bad businesses who are good at interviews hire good people (maliciously or not).

I found this helpful when I'm in a rut:

Recommit to doing everything right, with a focus on the little things. Not just work or life. Daily routine and small chores. If you loose focus, acknowledge it and move on.

Focus on what's most important. Don't do anything else until what's most important is done. This helps stop overworking, scrubbing every bit of the kitchen when you should be getting clients or spending time with family.

Once your confidence builds up, take a real look at the top businesses.

Rich and famous?

Or just the public face of a lot of other people's hard work.

That's good! You have to be happy for other people's success. It's a luxury.

A really good credit card makes up a lot of business today. One good client pays the bills. Everything else likely gets a no. Getting a look even if it ends in a no is quite an accomplishment.

It's a fight at the top. A bad one. Some people want to do horrible things. Our side convinces people to pursue peace and knowledge. Sometimes you're just not ready.

There's someone here talking about a 6 month gap in their resume. The job interview is not a court of law. Just say:

"I had my own clients." > "oh yeah? How that go?" "Good! I made more money with them." > "Huh. So why you quit?" "I sold it. I sold the business."

Don't sell yourself short. Don't cheerlead either. Hindsight always makes you feel bad. Decide, and stick to the script no matter what. Admitting to mistakes and relating to people are for the ones at the top of the food chain. They might as well be in a different universe.

Also, there's the killer cold outbreak. If you're willing to work, I think they'll take you. A lot of people well off are not going to risk it. They'll go back home and take care of their family.

>>> You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in the form of good friends/family early in your career that enables you to take risks

I did not takes risks per say, but I was lucky to have this in a limited sense during a period of bad luck (aka the recession of 2007) that really helped me pivot to a better place where today during the COVID Crisis I am providing that support to some of my family....

Go read Baltasar Gracian's art of worldly wisdom.

https://sacred-texts.com/eso/aww/index.htm

xxi The Art of being Lucky.

There are rules of luck: it is not all chance with the wise: it can be assisted by care. Some content themselves with placing them-selves confidently at the gate of Fortune, waiting till she opens it. Others do better, and press forward and profit by their clever boldness, reaching the goddess and winning her favour on the wings of their virtue and valour. But on a true philosophy there is no other umpire than virtue and insight; for there is no luck or ill-luck except wisdom and the reverse.

xxxi Select the Lucky and avoid the Unlucky.

Ill-luck is generally the penalty of folly, and there is no disease so contagious to those who share in it. Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it. The greatest skill at cards is to know when to discard; the smallest of current trumps is worth more than the ace of trumps of the last game. When in doubt, follow the suit of the wise and prudent; sooner or later they will win the odd trick.

xxxvi In Acting or Refraining, weigh your Luck.

More depends on that than on noticing your temperament. If he is a fool who at forty applies to Hippocrates for health, still more is he one who then first applies to Seneca for wisdom. It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it. For something is to be done with it by waiting so as to use it at the proper moment, since it has periods and offers opportunities, though one cannot calculate its path, its steps are so irregular. When you find Fortune favourable, stride boldly forward, for she favours the bold and, being a woman, the young. But if you have bad luck, keep retired so as not to redouble the influence of your unlucky star.

I second this.

- You have a habit of picking interesting work over jobs that will "strap a booster rocket to your career".

- You do everything right and, like most people, it still doesn't work.

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