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> I see a lot of psychic pain in my peers about how hard work is or the labor market is so difficult, but to be frank the failures I see are directly attributable to plain laziness in a generation addicted to easy and inane pleasure.

You probably live in a bubble then. Yes, we all know these people, but they are the minority of those affected by the current economy. Unemployment is vastly higher in groups without college (or high school) degrees, meanwhile in many places there was barely a recession in the tech sector, and if there was, it was over very quickly.

I feel like every HN thread about a successful startup, or a reminder of the excellent salaries we get for doing things that we love, should include someone behind us, whispering in our ear that the majority of bankruptcies are from people with unexpected medical problems, 75% of whom had insurance, and that last year 20% of children in the US grew up in households making less than $22,000 for a family of four.

This is overly personal and about to be a little Horatio Alger, but it's a relevant anecdote to the bubble comment so I'll throw it out there -- I personally don't come from a household making more than 25,000 a year, I lived in the esteemed estate of 'Mountain View Trailer Park' just a few years ago and have always attended public school, My stepfather was a construction worker and my mother taught ESL.

My insistence on refusing to believe that you are the result of forces beyond your control perhaps comes directly from this experience. Plenty of people told me that escaping my class was impossible because of the various capitalist systems of control, yet here I am today, hobnobbing with high HN society (kidding).

I'll accept that our medical system imposes undue stress upon those within it, but equally so, it's tough to not concede that many medical problems are ultimately self-induced through poor diet and exercise habits spanning over many years.

I'll reiterate -- your life is yours to create.

Well I guess your anecdote beats statistics, let's all go home now!

Come, come. I'm just saying that even if you come from a low-income household, you're more than just a gear in some deterministic machine. I'm not saying these statistics are invalid whatsoever.

Statistics is dangerous in the sense that some use it to frame their potential for success, adopting “Well I guess statistics says I won't get a nice job in the current state of economy considering my social position, so why bother doing things”-like attitude.

Leaving aside the fact that an ESL teacher even working part time somewhere near mountain view should probably net 25k pretty easily (there's always unemployment to factor in, and I have no interest in going too personal either), do you really see no advantages of attending public school in Mountain View vs a town in, say, Mississippi? Or having a teacher for a mother vs, say, a migrant worker?

It's a pretty fundamental error to assume that you are a good sample for that kind of conclusion. My examples were deliberate. It's nice to think that exercise and eating right can avoid medical issues, and you certainly can influence your chances of needing 20 years of kidney treatments or needing early joint replacement. But the leading causes of death in the US are heart disease and cancer, even amongst the physically fit, and that still doesn't preclude that latent heart condition, or getting hit by a car while on your bike, and suddenly facing hospital bills of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Your life is yours to create in many of the same ways that your startup's success is yours to create. You just have to make sure you define success as including adapting to and (most importantly) living with failure. Meanwhile, don't assume those that are hurting right now didn't dream or work hard enough; far better to start from the assumption that in addition to those qualities you also had good timing and incredible luck.

Whew, quick assumptions -- That would be Mountain View Trailer Park in lovely, rural, Durango Colorado [ http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=37.229004,-107.8021... ] (Although in that shot you can't see the sign, I assure you it's called Mountain View Trailer Park, because of the view of the Mountains )

However, I spent the majority of my youth in New Mexico, with close to the lowest public education ratings in the country.

Outside of that, I guess we're simply in fundamental disagreement about the nature of success. Sure, doing groundbreaking work might be impossible or at least very unlikely for the average person, but I believe that anyone can be successful (in a pragmatic sense) for the same reason I believe in the central limit theorem. The most successful scientists are not necessarily the smartest, but the ones who publish the most -- the same can be said of any discipline. In short, unrelenting persistence is key, and depth always beats breadth.

I'm willing to concede that maybe I'm young and dumb and haven't been jaded by the world yet. Maybe I'm Malcom Gladwelling myself into thinking that there's some rhyme or reason behind the (personally qualified) success I feel I've achieved. Still, I am of the firm conviction that if you put limits on yourself, it will spread from your life into your work. There are no real limitations to what you can do. There may be temporary periods of plateaus or even deep valleys, but you can transcend them. I have seen this too many times to declare our ultimate fate and legacy of our work entirely accidental.

> Plenty of people told me that escaping my class was impossible

Then those people are idiots. However, the statistics don't lie. It is very, very difficult. It's called a cycle of poverty for a reason. Having said that, I commend your passion and attitude as someone who came from a family of four well below the poverty line. It really is key to getting anywhere.

> I'll accept that our medical system imposes undue stress upon those within it, but equally so, it's tough to not concede that many medical problems are ultimately self-induced through poor diet and exercise habits spanning over many years.

This is true, but it's only in the US where medical crises lead to financial ruin, increasingly so with the revised (personal) Bankruptcy laws of the last few years. Personal responsibility is something I think everyone can get behind, but the system is plain broken, and that is the far bigger problem.

> I'll reiterate -- your life is yours to create.

I fundamentally agree with this, but it dangerously ignores certain realities and systemic problems in our society. Be very careful of adopting the attitude "well I made it, so therefore everyone should be able to." Everyone's individual circumstances are different and there's more random luck involved then anyone cares to admit.

Not everybody is a creator at heart though. And even among creators, programmers are the ones with the best opportunity to create something out of nothing.

The non-creators, or the creators-in-high-entry-fields, are the ones losing jobs and opportunities. So yeah, if you have a CS-related degree and a passion for programming, you have amazing opportunities that should not be wasted.

I think you're absolutely correct, I also think there's a lot more people making decisions that optimize for short-term satisfaction rather than long-term happiness. It's true that my deepest happiness comes from creation but I believe I'm far from alone (especially amongst college attendees, who are supposed to be the endlessly curious!).

Even still, maybe not everyone is a creator, but we are the result of 6 billion years of evolution -- act like it.

Can you elaborate on how video games are more detrimental to human wellness than certain drugs?

Many video games these days are designed as Skinner Boxes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_box). Drugs have some of the same effects, but their addictive powers are often limited by adverse side effects (e.g. get too drunk, you vomit) and the build up of tolerance (e.g. a heroin addict continually needs bigger doses for the same effect). Since video games play directly on psychological reward centers, they can push a person much farther into a response/reward cycle than drugs can.

What a weird and incredibly false dichotomy. I smoke a bunch of pot, play a bunch of Halo, have had internships with 3 major corporations, worked as an independent contractor last summer and have a 6-figure job lined up when I graduate. On top of working 12 hours a week with 15-18 credit hours during my Junior and Senior year, I also have 5 side projects that will either make nice additions to my open source portfolio or could potentially become products if I gave them the attention they need.

I think ZephyrP is blinded by his good fortune to not understand that: one, software developers are in crazy demand compared to, for example, "creative writers"; and two, that the economy IS quite bad right now and that this is a generalized extension of the unemployment problems across the country.

That having been said, when it comes to things like video games and drugs, I think Zephyr's point about "you have to make your own luck" logic is right (granted I have no idea why there is a pot-shot in there about video games). A person's work ethic is the root cause and "video games" and "drugs" are silly remarks for people that don't understand or see that there are plenty of us who can indulge and still live perfectly productive lives.

Further, I don't know of any indication that "video game" playing is trading off with employment. At all. On the other hand, there are probably thousands of statisticians and economists who could give you very specific reasons for the downturn in employment and show a trend that will probably make it's way across all segments of society including college grads.

Also, people need to understand that they need marketable degrees and they need to understand that employers are learning that all degrees are not equal and you ABSOLUTELY MUST have the skills that your degree assert and you must be able to communicate well and articulate why you deserve a job.

You're right, it's somewhat unfair of me to demonize video games. I most certainly did not mean to demonize drugs, our society places an unfair stigma on them that is entirely a result of some rather ancient belief systems.

To be direct, I take this pot shot at video games because I see so many peers, filled with unbelievable intelligence, ambition and ideas waste everything they can give the world and themselves by spending their lives in front of video games. Video games are not bad, they are an interesting artform and provide unique cultural dialog. They are however something that people have moved beyond using to relax, contemplate or fill the boring spaces in their life, it becomes them.

As the other poster stated, because of their reward systems they can suck very intelligent people incredibly deep into what amounts to a terrible vice.

I think I agree with you about human behavior and things being drains on peoples' productivity, but frankly I'm sure not if it's anywhere near "big enough" to be relevant in this particular conversation.

I have some friends that are extremely intelligent that fall into "addictive ruts" that I think cater to their ADD. In my opinion, it's embarrassing for them (the ones I have in mind) because they run their mouths about these big ideas and then play "Tiny Tower" on their iPad (which I suppose qualifies as a video game) and don't really excel as much as they could. I mean, they're doing fine for themselves but I'm floored at how I can write 500 lines of code for something and they've not moved from their chair/iPad.

At the end of it all though, I still don't see anything to make me believe that this is unique to our generation. Anything can and often is a distraction, whether it's video games, drinking, being out doors. I know people that fail classes they were more interested in their rec football game than studying. I don't think these things account for this enormous gap in employment.

I'm just imagining the line-graph of "overall unemployment in the US", on top of the linge-graph of "job availability in the US". I'm sure if you placed the graph of "college grads with jobs exiting college" you would find a very large correlation between these three graphs.

> As if somehow our work is simply just a confluence of forces far beyond our control... In short, I'd encourage any young person my age to not write themselves off as a victim of societal forces. It's always our decision who we are and what we do with our lives.

You are wise. Please write a book for our generation.

Thank you for your gracious words, but I'd ask you to thank Robert Solomon and Sarte.

>I see a lot of active rejection of the ideals of hacker culture, perhaps epitomized by my generation's obsession with video games (which, incidentally, I think could be argued as more detrimental to human wellness than even the most societally hated and destructive addictive stimulants like methamphetamine or cocaine)

I'd be interested in reading this argument.