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Comment by ldjkfkdsjnv | Hacker News Reader

True story, as an american, most people I grew up with are not working corporate jobs. Of my cousins, probably 60% are willfully unemployed and refuse to work for anyone. They make money through odd jobs, day trading, selling online products. Anything to not have to work. The crazy thing is they are generally very happy and have had not trouble dating. Its the people day in and out in their 150k-300k a year corporate job that seem the most miserable to me.

For reference I'm white upper middle class, and all the people spoken about above are college educated.

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I know people like that. Typically they make passive income from their assets (stocks and real estate). But they don't want to admit it, so they make up fake jobs like "day trading and selling online products".

Keep an eye out on these people. Lots of things were possible in a 0% interest rate environment that aren't now. This could be brilliant people working an incredible job they don't need to work full time on, or they may be the individual version of a corporation surviving only because the interest rate environment is 0%.

They don't even have to be directly taking out loans to do it themselves, only taking advantage of economic conditions created by cheap money.

"Stocks" haven't been a great source of passive income this year, and "real estate" is showing signs of having just passed its peak. These easy jobs may not survive these things contracting.

Of course, if they're walking off with cash rather than debt, they may still be among the winners of the whole 0% interest regime.

I haven't worked for the corporate world since 2004. When I got back from a trip to Europe I realized I was working myself into the ground and decided to take the hit and start my own business. Now I set my own hours. I think that the time off from work during the pandemic is making others reconsider working for someone else. I laughed out loud when I read some corporate slave droning on about people don't want to work. Stop treating people like cogs in a wheel and create something that society values thats ethical. And maybe, just maybe, you will retain people who actually care about what you do.

Well, it worked out for you, but starting your own business is usually exactly the wrong move for someone who doesn't want to work themself into the ground.

I guess it would depend on the venture. Do something you love to do, and you never work a day in your life.

It takes time and dedication, but I didn't work myself into the ground doing it. But I did have part time jobs when I was starting out.

I think its something you create for yourself that grows over time, when you work at a job, you are enriching someone else's vision. That's ok if your visions are aligned, but if you are working at a job that doesn't align with your value system, there is only so much of that you can take.

This can certainly be true, but the catch is when you say I love to do x so I will start a business to do x, it's not so simple. You now have to do x + sales + customer service + management, etc. And while it is possible that you love to do all of those things, in the great majority of cases, you don't, and it will be a grind. That's not to say it's not worth it, though.

You wont know until you try. I found that doing something you love, you will try anything to make it happen. It starts out small and its not like it requires one to be solid in every area of the business right away like the areas you mentioned. Some times people want to compete against well established markets and that is a recepie for disaster. But again, it depends on the niche you have decided on. Also it takes time and people cut you slack if you are delivering value to them that's authentic. I found this source great for starting new business: https://fronterablog.com/

That's actually orthogonal to my point. Plenty of people have "lifestyle businesses", but if they generate true value, it's not a mystery as to where the money is coming from. Consult for 20 hours a week, just as an example, and I'm not even slightly mystified at how you can live on that income. I'm not advocating a suit-and-tie, 40hour/week desk job as the only alternative. Were I single I'd probably work half-time myself.

I'm talking more about the Amazon drop-shipping businesses where "you can earn $5K/week!!1!" where if it's really that easy the market should already have been consumed, or even the ones you just plain can't figure out where the money is coming from. There's a lot of "businesses" that work in a 0% interest environment that won't work in a 5+% environment. If you've been doing it since 2004, you are almost certainly not in such a space because you started in a non-0% interest environment.

I mean, basically, it's just like how the crypto business space is completely collapsing now. They are the first big things to topple over in a non-0%-environment. Smaller analogs to that can happen too, it just won't make the news that Joe-down-the-street's business of importing bulk cheap IP-pirated stuff from China and distributing it to local parents who want cheap Disney-branded stuff went out of business because it turns out that even though he didn't take loans himself, every other company involved in his business was offering subsidized, not-truly-sustainable prices because of the cheap money environment. (If you don't know, that's a real thing, not an outrageous fake example I'm making up. I have a particular acquaintance in mind who did that as a side hustle for a while.)

Yea generating value is really important. I think that trying to make money with out creating some kind of value is a dead end in more ways than one.

Kind of funny that it's the well-off that are "doing the jobs Americans can't afford to do"

It's been that way for most of history. Most great artists, philosophers, scientists, and politicians were either born into wealth or had wealthy patrons they met by networking with the wealthy at e.g. country clubs, concert halls, or elite universities.

Yeah it's almost certainly this.

In Western culture, and probably others, your job is closely tied to your identity. Even if you don't feel so yourself, it greatly affects how others perceive you. After all, when you meet a new person, one of the first things you ask them is, "What do you do [for a living]?" If you're living off passive income, answering that question can be complicated. So you just make up something like "being a consultant" or "doing online sales."

It's pretty similar with generational wealth. I know someone who has been working doing script reviews in Hollywood for 10 years now. It's definitely paid work, but maybe a few thousand a month; the rest of their lifestyle is financed by their parents, who run a real estate business. But it's a lot easier, socially, to say "I'm a script writer and reviewer" than to say "I don't work, my parents pay for everything."

Who are they fooling? No one buys that you can have a brand new Mercedes and live in a high rise apartment by "reviewing a few scripts" every few months.

Sure, but he has a Civic from the mid-2000s and lives in a typically-priced LA low-rise rental apartment in an okay-but-not-amazing neighborhood. Funnily enough, he's dating a girl in a very similar situation who currently has an occupation of "pet sitter."

If you actually sat down and did the math, it'd be obvious. But most people don't think that hard about it, and will accept an answer of "I'm a script writer" in the context of e.g. telling a Tinder date what you do for a living.

And script doctors etc. can actually make quite a bit of money so a vague working on scripts isn’t an obvious red flag.

This is making a likely wrong assumption and then philosophizing about how our society is bad and this false assumption proves it.

I grew up poor, most of my friends are not college educated and they come from dirt poor areas and have never had a decent job. Yet they fall into this category as well. It’s really easy to make money hustling in the day to day. For instance one friend builds picnic tables, scraps metal and does the occasional moving/painting job.

> I grew up poor, most of my friends are not college educated and they come from dirt poor areas and have never had a decent job. Yet they fall into this category as well. It’s really easy to make money hustling in the day to day. For instance one friend builds picnic tables, scraps metal and does the occasional moving/painting job.

The key difference is that if you offered any of those people a $100k/year office job they would take it in a heartbeat. The kind of people we're talking about can support their upper-middle class lifestyles without a fulltime job because of passive income or generational wealth.

> After all, when you meet a new person, one of the first things you ask them is, "What do you do [for a living]?"

Not in my part of the US. I've rarely been asked, and have never asked unless it was pertinent to an ongoing discussion.

Nah they have almost no savings for retirement/in general. They may inherit their parents home, but thats a long ways off. But when you hang with them, you realize that when working full time you are missing out on psychological states and experiences that are taken from you by having a full time job.

> But when you hang with them, you realize that when working full time you are missing out on psychological states and experiences that are taken from you by having a full time job.

In my experience, the "experiences" that single, underemployed people of working age (20s to 40s) have are largely watching shitloads of Netflix and YouTube.

After all, even if they aren't working a fulltime job, most of their friends are. And even if they find friends who are also underemployed, finances will be tight for both of them, so what exactly can they do together? Usually just hang out at each others' places and watch Netflix and YouTube.

Admittedly this could look a lot different for those with kids, though.

Maybe?

My kids graduated and I moved to SW CO. I have a lot of friends in their early 20s and look at them with the perspective of someone with children that age.

I know a whole lot of ski bums, dirt bag climbers, rafting guides, semi-pro slack liners or whatever. Sound healers and yogis.

To be clear, I'm sure there are plenty of folks watching shitloads of video, but I don't know them because of selection bias. And I know that some of them are trustifarians and others are sociopathic scammers.

Personally, I like my remote coding job. I'm also underemployed but the job is easy and has gentle requirements on me. So I'm a bit removed from what these folks are doing.

However, the folks I know are generally having a much better time than just sitting around watching netflix, and the comment about having experiences taken from us by having full time jobs is a real thing from my position:

being able to just go on a 3 month climbing spree sounds really fun and I know folks doing that, I just don't want to have to re-acquire a job in the aftermath.

Pure cope. They’re out socializing, making friends and memories, developing their personalities and finding their future life partner, while we’re cooped up inside leaving comments on an orange tech forum in between meetings.

For the trust fund kids masquerading as "influencers" and "journalists" who have a circle of other trust fund kid friends, yeah, sure, their lives are especially Insta-worthy.

Much less so for the underemployed 30 year old making $5k/month off passive income, or a mom&dad stipend, who still has to occasionally look at their bank account.

Pretty common for people in these situations to fall into depression and/or alcoholism.

"They make money through odd jobs, day trading, selling online products."

...Is this not working?

Its barely working. Maybe 5-15 hours a week. The income is actually surprising though, can range 5k-15k a month

Can't deny that while I work full-time, I certainly produce the vast majority of the value I produce in a fraction of that time. 5-15 hours seems about right; if anything, closer to 5 than 15.

Sounds pretty smart, if they can get so much money for only so little time.

>The income is actually surprising though, can range 5k-15k a month

Is that gross, or after paying income and Social Security & Medicare tax, like wage earners do?

I am really curious what gigs at 5-15 hours a week is paying out 5k-15k a month. I can think of some potential lucrative consulting?

Nigerian Prince?

Day trading, a big one is advertising agencies. Basically call every doctors office etc and offer to run FB ads for them for 1k-2k a month pay + ad costs. Then find a few other clients and just relax.

This is your regularly scheduled PSA that day trading is essentially a high-effort casino and <1% of day traders make money reliably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhHOmZVAqBE

Day traders work way longer hours than that, the clue is in the name. I think your friends are you just BS'ing you about where their income comes from. The amount of "day traders" who are just wealthy gambling addicts who in reality lose money long term is too damn high.

But people who could make 250$ per hour don't want to work lol. Scalability of work on output is definitely not linear. If I had to work 10 hours a week on anything I want I would definitely perform much better in 4 weeks than a person working 40 hours a week for someone else can perform.

There's also the reverse in team size. 2 people @ 20 hours a week < 1 person @ 40 hours a week. Obviously depends on the task.

Exactly. I can make hundreds per hour flipping heavy machinery. I can't make a day job out of it because the local market doesn't have enough volume to support that unless I incur a bunch of cost that reduces my hourly profit in an attempt to scale to a point where I can reach a broader market (i.e. start a real used machinery selling business).

So they are actually creating maybe more added value that way. Working as intended.

The idea of making half that with those kind of hours seems insane to me. I know these people exist, but have no idea how. If anyone has any specific examples of what they're doing, I'd greatly appreciate it

If I could consistently make $5k/month working 5h/week I'd quit my job in a heartbeat.

and this is a bad thing? sounds like micro-entrepreneurs to me

If they make 5k-15k with that amount of work and freedom I’d say they are the smart ones and people working the 40h+ corporate job are the suckers.

I made decent money swing trading stocks with python for a while. I became a better programmer, but it was soulless and lonely so I went for a job at a startup where I get the same freedom plus get to be with people who are more/less experienced.

There is more to a job than just money. The lonely financial gig is not for everyone

Also, day trading isn’t some way to make you money.

It’s a great way to lose money while you think you’re working though.

It is working, but I think the distinction is you don't have a boss you're working for.

> Of my cousins, probably 60% are willfully unemployed and refuse to work for anyone. They make money through odd jobs, day trading, selling online products. Anything to not have to work.

They don't have to work conventionally, with a micro-managing boss from hell, with a rigid 9-to-5 ass in seat mentality, no way of ever getting that wage raise carrot their upper management holds in front of them for years, dystopian corporate bullshit (anything from spyware on the computer to waiting days for a simple IT ticket to be resolved) and most importantly: large parts of the profit they generate never ever ending up in their own pockets.

Instead, they work on their own risk, have a way better ratio of "amount of money per profit generated" and have a way better quality of life.

i know people who do this. But, ironically, they work way harder than i do at my corporate job and my job is pretty demanding. Also, they don't have any kind of health isn nor retirement plan or anything else except cash to pay bills and whatever is left over.

Yeah this is accurate of their situations. Very little savings, no retirement. But I will say, alot of them are early 30s now and have fulfilling lives and good relationships/friendships. They have developed themselves along avenues that are hard to do when working full time. Really makes me wonder

Duck syndrome. You aren't there when they can't pay their rent because they didn't sell enough widgets on Amazon that month.

> and have had no trouble dating

That's the part I find most fascinating. I just can't fathom how that will work out down the road.

Given what I've seen based on how subreddits like r/purplepilldebate talk about desirability of a random Google researcher making 300K a year, the average FAANG engineer should take their current total comp and divide it by 5 to understand how they will be treated by women.

Women in the dating market know "the odds are good" (that he is a good provider) and that the "goods are odd" (this guy interacted with 5% of the women that his peers did in university)

The phenomenon of the lonely cringy dating posts on blind will only get worse.

It will work out just fine, the only thing that matters when you date is your physical appearance and social skills. Money has no bearing at all, you know how many women broke dudes in bands pull?

> They make money through odd jobs, day trading, selling online products.

That sounds like working to me.

Then the Covid abusive and indiscriminate restrictions happened.

The freelancers and small businesses owners and workers were forced to shut down and isolate while the managerial class could remote work on their laptops near the pool side or in their chalet.

Who was the most targeted and impacted? Who benefited the most? Who enacted, supported and profited from the measures?

Really makes you think.

The huge disincentive to work is the amount of tax you have to pay. In my country, if you are successful, you can easily get to a point to pay over 50% tax on what you make, which effectively means you work most of the year for the tax man and not yourself. It may sound selfish, but if you look at the poor quality of public services and if you need to see a doctor you still have to go private, because NHS is crap, you'll feel miserable. People simply don't want to be cheated by the state, so they rather choose odd cash in hand jobs.

> which effectively means you work most of the year for the tax man and not yourself

That would be true, if we lived in a world where your gross salary corresponded linearly to the amount of work you did. In that world, the hardest-working CEO would make 3x (maybe in some extreme cases 5x) what the laziest server made. But instead we live in a world where the "successful" make 100x-1000x, because that money isn't coming from their effort, it's coming from a combination of government subsidies (you may not be using the NHS, but the poor people who make your job possible certaintly are) and extreme power imbalances in market conditions that allow them to pay the people on the ground creating the value very little.

Not sure how your point makes any sense.

Worker is contracted to work 9 to 5. Regardless if they WFH and put their feet up for the entire year doing nothing, or they work their bottom off, the majority of time they are required to commit is paid to the tax man.

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