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Comment by United857 | Hacker News Reader

Not sure how much Acton had, but Koum had $400000 when he left Yahoo. Respectable but hardly "winning the lottery".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/02/19/exclusive-...

What kind of sad the world we live in when someone would seriously believe this. There are plenty of Lotteries whose pot sizes are not in the millions that people play. For the vast majority of Americans having that sum would be life changin and the equivalent of winning the lottery. Even if you're making a low six figure salary that sum is more then respectable, considering the likely expenses you have and that after taxes your take home pay will be way less. Seriously, for me to be like, man that's whatever I would have be making closer to a 7 figure salary, and even then I would still be conscious of the general socio-economic issues at hand to know that's still a large sum of money. Many people retire on less, give me a break.

What's even more sad is, from nearly all the child posts, the assumption is made that the guy "won" $400,000. The article states:

"Koum was eating into his $400,000 in savings from Yahoo, and drifting."

Sure it's a lot of money. But the guy didn't win the lottery. He earned it.

According to TFA, he grew up in Ukraine in a house with no hot water, immigrated to the US without his father, stashed 20 notebooks in his suitcase so he would avoid paying for school supplies, was on food stamps and then on disability assistance when his mother was diagnosed with cancer.

What kind of sad world would draw a the conclusion that he wasn't "conscious of the general socio-economic issues at hand to know that's still a large sum of money"?

I may have read these posts incorrectly, but I don't think anyone made the claim that he won this money. There was simply a poster who stated that 400,000 is comparable to an amount of money you would receive if you won a lottery.

I was attacking the flipant attitude towards $400,000 by the OP. When I refer to being ignorant of socio-economic issues I wasn't talking about Koum, I've never seen him make any statement like that for me to judge his attitude by and I thought the context of my comment was clear in that.

But, in terms of Koum, he comes from an immigrant family that was lucky enough to have the ability to move to the US, this alone hints to me while they might have been poor by our standards they must have been doing well enough to make such a big move and afford it, people who do that are usually more well off then the general population they are immigrating from. Clearly he suffered some hardship when he was young and moved through it, that's commendable. But at 18 he got what seems like a pretty good gig at Ernst & Young and post that a good job at Yahoo, enough of a good job to save up almost half million dollars over 9 years, enough to basically take a year off from working and get to travel around a bit ... not too shabby. I'm sure plenty of people wish they had the ability to do this, but probably never will.

I'm not trying to detract from what he earned, and he certainly had a humble background and hardships while young with his mother being sick, but the idea he went from rags to riches really rubs me the wrong way. There are people who live in rags and I have a feeling most of them haven't had the opportunities Koum had. Whether the man himself is humble about it I don't know, I can't say because I never met him and I don't know his views, but I do know that the media portrayal of his background seems over the top. Let's give up this false narrative, humble beginnings isn't the same as being dirt poor and he certainly was quite rich when he started WhatsApp.

In what universe is having a $400,000 bank account not winning the lottery? Holy hell, dude.

San Francisco

We are so insulated from our community.

I guarantee you that for the vast, vast majority of San Franciscans, suddenly having $400,000 would be a truly life-changing event.

In the sense that they would have the down payment on a condo in the Mission, yes. But that's not what "winning the lottery" implies.

Put another way, $400,000 - over 100x the per capita GDP of Ukraine - is a pretty massive windfall for a guy who grew up in a village outside Kiev. Sure, he chose to stay in the Bay Area and double down on his earnings, but it's not like he didn't have other realistic options that involved never working another day in his life.

You're suggesting he should have taken his $400,000 and gone back to living in a village in Ukraine?

I'm observing that he could, and been accepted as successful for doing so, if he'd wanted to.

The key word in your comment is 'suddenly'. I'm sure it was nothing like waking up one morning and finding $400000 in a bag outside his front door.

I see at least two universes:

1. The sort of universe where winning the lottery actually means winning multiple millions of dollars.

2. The sort of universe where having $400,000 is something to be proud of having earned.

I imagine the average lottery winning is far less than $400,000.

Dunno about average, but certainly the median.

According to my fast and very plausibly flawed analysis of Powerball odds, I think the average winning should be about $300, using the gracious assumption that all Powerball jackpots are $600,000,000 (the largest Powerball jackpot ever was $590,000,000).

http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp

Well, considering the minimum jackpot for Powerball is $20 million and the average jackpot is $141 million, the answer is this universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball#2009_changes_include_...

Is Powerball the only game that qualifies as winning the Lottery?

I think Powerball and MegaMillions are the two people usually think of when they think "the lottery", at least in the states that I've lived in.

Word. I was looking at the numbers for MegaMillions - seems like one of the payouts is 1 million dollars - which I think can easily turn into 400k if you took a lump sum. There are also a few payouts that are smaller sums.

This is a sort of silly question, but does one only 'win' the lottery if they get the jackpot?

You can usually win something by matching a subset of the numbers. Matching all 7, for example, is the 'jackpot', but matching, say, 5, might net you $10k. Matching 4 might net $100. Usually matching < half the numbers in a lottery drawing gets you nothing, from what I recall.

We've got a bunch in North Carolina - the 'cash5' game has you pick 5 numbers. If you match any 2, you get $1 - I think that's the ticket price. The winnings for matching 3, 4 or 5 are dependent on how many tickets are sold and how many other matches there are. http://www.nc-educationlottery.org/faq_cash5.aspx That approach may be more common for lotteries - I'm no expert :)

$400k would let me quit my job and run a startup. So... yeah, that would be pretty life-changing.

It's not an exceptional level of wealth for this region. Not even top 10%.

Except the subject wasn't "the wealth of this region" but a poor immigrant living on food stamps.

The subject I'm responding to is "winning the lotto." That's why it's a poor comparison.

We should just be happy HN has moved beyond Flappy Bird. Now we're back to watching The Social Network movie again, and talking about how pathetic $400K is over $18 lattes.

In what universe is having a $400,000 bank account not winning the lottery?

Silicon Valley. Remember the guy talked about at the beginning of "The Social Network" who commits suicide because he exited with "only" 3 million?

$400k is performing well at a BigCo for about a decade. I banked $100k in 4 years at MSFT, and I was not frugal. Surviving, let alone excelling in a large software company for 10 years is a demanding, sustained effort. In what way is it like the lottery?

really? I'm obviously at the wrong BigCo

I saved $40k my first year out of college making quite a bit less than fresh grads get at big companies. I was sort of frugal--I ate out a lot and lived in a really nice apartment, but I did share it with a roommate, I didn't have any expensive hobbies besides the occasional video game, and I did own a paid off car and had no other debts of any kind. Anyway, with no income increases and no investment appreciation of any kind (i.e., just putting 100% of the money under your bed, or in a checking account), that would be $400k in 10 years.

Super-importantly, incentive pay increases extra-linearly, at least in the MSFT reward game. So, e.g. in your 7th year you might be getting drastically more in bonus pay than in your 2nd year. Much more than you might expect just from raises. I assume that other large companies have somewhat comparable games, but I don't know first hand.

$400,000 is a life-changing amount of money for the vast majority of people on the planet, let alone Americans.

That is not how to use "let alone."

He grew up on food stamps. He wasn't on them in his adult life.

And what do you think how much is 20% downpayment for a decent house in SV?

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