A moment of financial clarification (2013) | Hacker News Reader

A moment of financial clarification (2013)

whatever.scalzi.com

30 pointsbobbiechen27 comments

Here, found where the problem is

> The thing I do best in the world in a professional sense is writing, so if I were to become rich, getting rich through writing seemed like the most likely way for me to do it.

Sad because a simple error in reasoning completely determines this guy's professional life. Rarely are cause and consequence this closely related.

Let me spell it out. Just because X is the thing you're best at, it doesn't follow that doing X maximizes your probability of getting rich.

He is not making a general but a very specific statement about himself and even more specifically about his professional self, i.e., being good at professional(!) writing makes writing for him the most likely way to become rich.

What should he have done given his skillset etc. to maximize the probability of getting rich/why was writing wrong/not a high probability move for him?

He’s pretty successful.

Did it work financially for him? He has quite a few books out, and they're OK, but they're not best-sellers. I've read more than half of them. His first book, "Agent to the Stars", may have been his best work. In that genre, "First Contract" (Greg Costikyan, 2001) is better.

He has a few novels that were pretty popular (redshirts, old man's war) and a bunch of novels that are more mid-level popularity. I assume he's probably made a reasonable amount off all that. You probably make more money off a lot of mid-level novels than having a single really popular one (unless it is something ultra-popular like harry potter)

Huh I enjoyed some of is books but they were generally quite meh and the pricing model on Amazon started to seem a bit much.

Guess now I know why.

I remember reading collapsing empire and feeling less like it was book 1 of a trilogy and more like it was one-third of a novel abruptly cut-off.

Kind of makes more sense now.

He got a quite large deal book deal back in 2015 (https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-john-scalz...)

Redshirts was great.

I think I tried to read Old Man’s War but it got kind of mixed up in my brain with, and I think almost entirely eclipsed by, The Forever War.

Maybe I should give it another try though. Scalzi seems like a good guy, and if I remember correctly he’s got a nice light pulpy style.

Old Mans War series is great, I read all 6 and highly suggest them all.

I think the Interpedency books are his best so far.

I don’t think anyone will accuse him of being original, but Harry Potter sure wasn’t either, and Scalzi isn’t a shitbag, unlike Rowling.

The end of the Interdependency Trilogy (The Last Emperox) was an unfinished mess, but the first two books were very good.

Starting a career in something you love is a good way to poison your love and mess with your self image. Starting a career in something you happen to have some talent for is the way to go.

Talent isn't worth much; a body might be in a career for 20+ years; any advantage talent gave will be ground down. The trick is finding the best remunerated point in the Venn diagram of things they are willing to do and things that people are willing to pay for.

Oh definitely. I think by talent I just meant “not a constant struggle”

As someone whose love was poisoned and self image messed with, I think it was mainly my job.

It was a brain drain.

I think my life is healthier now. I still love what I do.

I was told that as a young man, and I almost followed the advice and started a career in metallurgy instead of my actual love, programming. Fortunately I became a programmer, and I've loved doing it for 30+ years, made a pile of money, and my self-image is fine.

So, there's 1 anecdote in favor of following your love.

Yeah, if your love is something you can make money off.

Few people love programming. If your love is uncommon you may be able to make money at it.

You have no actual idea what were consequences on your self-image, only a very close person who has seen whole transition, can be critical thinker and brutally honest with you can at least potentially tell some balanced evaluation.

Ie judging by your comment your ego seems a bit inflated here to keep things polite, and that in turn distorts literally everything you perceive, about yourself and everything else.

Also, its trivial to reason that rocket rise of over-compensation of basically all IT work in past few decades compared to literally any other engineering science twists this reasoning, but it fall apart quickly in almost every other scenario. (not arguing against high salaries, there are reasons for them, but at the end anything-IT is just another engineering/science branch, stellar people are everywhere but usually a bit more humble).

"The thing I do best in the world in a professional sense is writing, so if I were to become rich, getting rich through writing seemed like the most likely way for me to do it." And this is why kids should learn about bayesian probability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability in school. Otherwise, they will continue to make decisions based on such faulty logic

Being a good writer isn’t some useless skill in a basic office job. I think you are reading some implication into his statement that isn’t there, like he’ll only try to become a famous writer, indefinitely, into homelessness if he fails.

Maybe the plan was to take the unlikely but high payout chance (successful writer) and then the failure-path is basic office job or something.

I looked to his Wikipedia to get some context for what kind of background he was starting out with to "get rich" from; it claims he spent his childhood in poverty, but he went to private school? And did a philosophy degree?

This well-circulated essay explains in some detail what he means by "poor":

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

The Wikipedia article says that he got a scholarship for the boarding school: "He attended the Webb School of California, a boarding school in Claremont, on a scholarship." Perhaps he was talented enough to get a scholarship for parts of his college education as well.

I forget the details of Scalzi's scholarship, but many prestigious private high schools in the US are happy to admit talented-but-broke kids on scholarship.

Private high schools are judged based on how many of their graduates go to excellent universities. One easy way to improve those numbers is to look for people who are very likely to succeed, and to give them scholarships. And this fact is fully exploitable by ambitious broke kids with high test scores. I've seen many people actually pull it off. The culture shock can be rough, though.

I mention this in case there's an amibitious kid in the US reading these comments. If you've got test scores that compare well to Harvard or Standford's incoming classes, do some research and consider applying to a private school. Fill out the scholarship applications. You might get lucky.

He stands by that post 11 years latter - https://www.threads.net/@jscalzi/post/C4D9dFKrR1-

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