Comment by cryptica | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cryptica | Hacker News Reader

Situation is quite ridiculous. People are working jobs they don't like and being low-performers on projects they have little control over while working on side projects that they like (for free) and not able to monetize their high performance on those projects. But no matter how good their side projects become, they cannot monetize them due to monopolizing forces. Earning money nowadays is all about having access to money which comes out of a safe money printer.

Yes, I could be doing all this useful stuff which makes 100x better use of my skills than my day job but those things don't pay because I won't be able to find any users for it. I don't have much time for it. I could find users but not users who are hooked to a money printer and can afford to pay. I'm sure most users would love it if they spent 20 minutes trying my side project, however, this is too high of a barrier.

The company I work for is already well hooked into a money printer and already has its own users but, unfortunately, I cannot produce my best engineering work there because there is too much legacy code and, understandably, my colleagues are as beaten down as I am over this industry so the will to innovate is severely limited. The best we can provide is stability.

I've (unfortunately) learned to perceive software complexity as a friend; in the same way as security consultants perceive hackers, as pharma companies perceive chronic illness and as those who build mouse traps perceive mice.

I already got burned badly for innovating at a previous company and experienced politics getting in the way in a mind-bendingly disturbing way so I'm not keen to experience that again!

Repeatedly in my career, I have seen the low-performers and outright saboteurs being promoted and the innovators being suppressed so my goal now is to emulate those people and engage in political bs. It's the only way. I'm a little bit older, I have to think about my finances now. I know how money flows through the economy and I just go straight for the jugular straight out of a money printer... Printing leafy, digital monetary goodness straight into my bank account. Oh that feels nice.

> Earning money nowadays is all about having access to money which comes out of a safe money printer.

I argue that's always been true. Most of the big tech we know today came from very privileged backgrounds that allowed them to take risks that'd be unthinkable for many of us. drop out of college early, run 2-3 failed business to the ground, being booted out of one company and come back later to the same company as an executive, etc.

It takes money (or a lot of your time) to make money, that's always been true. The money it takes these days are just so high.

Wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and I'm sorry you gotta navigate this way. I still have some decades to try and get something I can truly own be sustainable, so I want to at least make use of my youth while I have it.

We are also only counting the winners who all took huge risk. Many more took huge risk in the past and lost everything.

It strikes me as rather absurd to believe it was better in the past when capital was much harder to come by.

Imagine trying to get startup funding in the late 80s when a person with capital could get 9% annualized on a short term US government bill. Good luck with that.

> Many more took huge risk in the past and lost everything.

sure, but when you have connections or your own finances in the millions, it's a lot harder to truly lose "everything" in the same way a missed rent check can actually cost some working class person their home. They will lose a lot but not be out on the streets per se.

Many of these people aren't dumb, they won't use their own money to finance this. It just better helps them get investor money to potentially mismanage.

>It strikes me as rather absurd to believe it was better in the past when capital was much harder to come by.

it was arguably better for people who had capital to begin with. Money begets money, that's always been true in every time and society.

for truly scrappy startups, it varies. You could truly innovate with 2-3 buddies out of your garage and make a multi-million dollar business, "self made". Fewer would be chosen, but the line would be lower as well.

There's more money flowing, but you also need so much more to get off the ground c. 2024. But you can reasonably chance it an self-publish. I don't think it's objectively better or worse, just different. I argue that if you do need money than it is in fact worse though.

I used to have the same cynical feeling until I realized that there's very little overlap between the things that are actually cool to work on vs the things that other people need done. And if you prioritize the former over the latter, you're essentially trading off easy money for more stress

During the 9-5, the goal is to solve other people's problems. It's not pretty but it's what we're paid to do

Totally fair point, work isn't supposed to be fun. It's being paid to do something that provides something of value to the person doing the paying.

However, at some point, employers heavily leaned into the whole "work is fun/rewarding/meaningful" shtick in order to skimp out on actual tangible compensation. So I'd argue that an informal "contract" was made or implied, whereby I agreed that "job is fun/rewarding" would form part of my compensation.

And that's going away now as people are realizing they were duped. There's only so many free perks, parties and vending machines before you realize "this place is f-ing toxic, the clients treat us like shit, and my boss really isn't treating me like 'family' and being loyal to me."

There's a difference between work fun and side project fun

The way I see it: work stuff can be "fun" during the 9-5 and it will actually be kind of enjoyable. I don't think that that's bad for the employer or the employee, sort of like a mutually beneficial relationship

For side projects, they can't just be plain fun but have to be interesting also. A project has to push the envelope in some way. And that's a way higher bar that imo shouldn't be conflated with work

I too cared once about technical excellence, and was burned badly.

Good code ships, even if it’s dogshit. Works for everyone else, fuck it.

So quit.

Why? I'm not in it for myself anyway, I have a greater purpose now; to help create to inflation. I just have to get paid more than the value I provide to society.

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