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Comment by Otek | Hacker News Reader

Exactly this. Guy had a comfortable stable job for years. Probably knew codebase and technology enough to have lots of time for family/friends/hobbies. More than this story scares me how HN reacted

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Arthur was also able to purchase his large family home in the 1990s for $90,000 which is now worth $2.3 million.

Nothing in the article said Arthur lived in the Bay Area.

It’s not just the Bay Area experiencing this.

Maybe Arthur lived in Springfield, MO and worked at Bass Pro or O'Reilly Auto Corporate offices and lives here.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8057-W-Farm-Road-100-Will...

It’s not, but from the outside the Bay Area’s cost of living looks impressively bad. A typical house in my neighborhood in the Northeast goes for less than 1/4 of that.

I can only assume it's because HN is full of young, inexperienced people whose main wish is to stay on the cutting edge of technology rather than sinking into a stable profession

You may be right, but I don't think experience is what makes people prioritize stability over anything else. I'd be so depressed at a real job like the one described, it would be irrelevant that it was stable and gave me extra time. Some people are ambitious, some just like variety.

Variety for the sake of variety is foolish though. If variety is not required, injecting it where it's not needed is just called "breaking things"

Most jobs are like that though... Unless maybe if all you do is develop very small applications, that your company just sells and forgets.

The scope of ambition is larger than your job. Very ambitious people use a job as just the means to an end.

Some people like to either suffer or think they are so great that even their if statements will survive into the next millennia

>More than this story scares me how HN reacted

Projections, my dear Watson.

Having a comfortable, stable job for many years sounds like the worst version of hell one could possibly invent for people who live like I do.

There are better things to aspire to than predictability whilst making someone else rich.

Perhaps his aspirations had nothing to do with his day job?

Wait you mean life isn't a video game where my position in a company completely defines me as a person, and if I don't destroy all my colleagues (read: competitors)with cruelty and cunning schemes I still have value?

Only if you don't have other aspirations in life. My day job is solely to fund my personal projects that I actually enjoy. Not everyone is out to be insanely rich.

If you fairly profit from your direct efforts in a lifelong career as a productive programmer, you will merely become rich, not insanely so. You appear to have constructed a strawman.

Making someone else rich is the objection.

No, perhaps I was too subtle. My point is I don't care about the fact I might be making someone else rich. Life isn't about coming out ahead of everyone else you interact with. Some people simultaneously understand your point, and also don't care about it. Only within your own subjective opinion do you think they must.

This view may change as you get older and "unpredictability" starts to mean more negative experiences.

Your imagination is lacking.

Having no job or income and having to worry about how to afford food or rent is surely much worse than "just" having a stable job.

Or how about a super stressful job, like the Japanese salarymen who are literally killing themselves?

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