Laid Off or Lonely, You May Be Lucky | Hacker News Reader

Laid Off or Lonely, You May Be Lucky

startupsopensourced.com

36 pointschengyinliu7 comments

Am I missing the point here? There are a few people who did get lucky by being laid off or alone. What about all of the other unemployed or lonely people who do these same things and don't get the same breaks?

I suspect the intended message is that one should look for opportunity in such things rather than just seeing the bad part. The reference to "luck studies" makes me think that. I tend to be "lucky" in some ways. I also am someone who tries to view life experiences in neutral terms rather than "good" or "bad" and to look for what positives there are in a situation. I don't think those two details are unrelated. Does it suck to be laid off? Sure. Does that mean you have to surrender yourself to just feeling like a victim and loser? No. Those folks who do well in life tend to see opportunity where others only see adversity. Sharing that insight is typically intended to help others succeed, not intended to pooh-pooh their very real suffering and hardships. Unfortunately, it seems to often be interpreted negatively.

Of course, I could just be mistaking my own belly-button for someone else's motives. <shrug>

I think you summed it up pretty well. The post started with the idea of "how to find cofounders" as one of the most difficult things founders deal with. I'm challenging the notion that you have to be out there and aggressive about it; instead, take your time with it and allow serendipity to work in your favor. It's a different way of thinking and hopefully something biz students will try out (keep in mind, the main audience for my book is high school and college students).

There's also the idea of negative circumstances happening to you which may end up being positive (back to the serendipity theme). The point of this is to try and show people who are in seemingly negative situations that it could turn out very well for them (Steve Jobs reference to connecting the dots). Bad things happen to good people, but luck still has a big role to play, and sometimes it might be beneficial to experiment here: pause your agenda and just go make some friends and be normal instead of trying to control everything. See if it works out better.

You don't have to be lonely and laid off. I think the point is you've got to go through life thinking the glass is half full instead of half empty.

Getting laid off/being unemployed or being depressed by the status quo (your existing job) are all the same. Once you are so desperate, you can take any risk because any risk is better than the bottom line.

when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose

Getting laid off cam be a blessing in disguise.

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