Here's something these posts never touch on: dealing with the inevitable routine and the boredom that comes with it. You always read that life is short, seize the moment, etc. and I call BS. I like to think I did all that, I'm well under 40 and have really travelled the world, succeeded professionally, lived in 10 countries, did everything I ever wanted to do. And now what? The problem with achieving things is that you run out of goals. I find it harder and harder to find things that excite me. I have no desire to network aggressively with "smart people" like these posts tell you to. What's the point, ultimately more opportunities i.e. money? That doesn't motivate that much anymore. I want that feeling back, the anticipation when I was about to go to a new place or have a new experience. That's the most precious thing there is and I miss it.
I feel you, there's a certain feeling of ephemeralness if you step back and think about it that way. Put another way, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away".
The thing that changed this for me is, no joke, having kids. This brought me away from the feeling that life is fleeting with little point to the minuscule things I may accomplish and showed me a grander scale. As an engineer, I'll never be a Maxwell, Shannon, etc., but I can raise the generation to come in a way that - though I may never know it - could have an incredible influence on the world.
That’s why there’s a biological impulse to procreate, such that by the time you’ve reached your 30s/40s your main drive is not to fulfill your own goals, but help tiny humans navigate the world and fulfill their own. That becomes your metagoal, and adding a 25th stamp to your passport or getting 100 more stars on your GitHub library doesn’t seem to matter as much.
How did you do these things, though? E.g. traveling is incredibly easy nowadays with smartphones and flying by plane. Have you biked across Euroasia with no internet access and and paper guidebooks? There's a good chance that magic of not knowing what comes next will come back when you ditch the GPS and internet.
btw, I know the other commenters mean well with sharing their experiences, but to be blunt, folks should not be having kids because there's something missing.
> There's a good chance that magic of not knowing what comes next will come back when you ditch the GPS and internet.
Of course, with everyone else having GPS and the Internet, it becomes much harder to find somewhere to sleep, because the amazing places you may have discovered fifty years ago will now be fully-booked months in advance.
The truth is that a dream isn't meant to be reached or achieved, it's meant to inspire people to do more than just sit around under trees smoking pot all day. It's a nice lie they tell themselves as to why they're trading time with their families for time at the office.
Should a prerequisite to every successful tech person advice list include "Be 99th percentile IQ or higher"?
All these people go to schools and work environments where they exclusively interact with incredibly intelligent people. Do they really know just how mediocre the average person is? Or is the average person implicitly written off with respect to any sort of prodigious success.
95th percentile wealth and 90th percentile IQ is probable better than the reverse or 99th percentile IQ alone, if you want to succeed in any business, including tech.
Eh, 95th percentile is probably more reasonable. You don't have to be super smart to be successful. In tech you probably have to be pretty smart, but I think being from a well-off family is more important in most cases.
Yeah, reading this advice as somebody in that percentile according to all The Tests and who started at around the same time Altman did (bit younger) but who was way, way further down the socio-economic ladder is interesting.
I did put some of this advice into practice. One thing it got me was an ODD diagnosis.
Well we can add a postulate that if you really were smarter then you would’ve been born to a wealthier family to resolve the quandary. Quite elementary. ;)
You can bust your ass all you want, but it's not going to make up for having an IQ of 100.
There is a lower bound, and I think it's around the 90-95th percentile if you want to excel in tech. This is based on 115 = 85th percentile, and I think <110-115 you're going to have a tough time in a top tech company as an engineer.
That one would assume these people are solely in the place they are due to exceptional intelligence and merit and not a combination of luck, connections and a degree of hard work and talent just shows how much of a bubble tech is.
If you are smarter than 99 out of 100 people, there are still millions of people as smart as you in USA alone. If someone said 99.999th percentile I would agree with you, but IME being smarter than 99 out of 100 people is not that high of a bar.
I am assuming that the advice given is not just to get any tech job at all, but to be highly successful in the field. Clearly, below some analytic intelligence level, being highly successful in engineering is not a realistic or useful pursuit. Where that threshold is would be up to debate, certainly. I think most would agree it’s above 90th percentile, at least. Calling it 99th might be hyperbolic, sure, but I don’t think it’s intensely out of touch or anything. It’s like if an NBA player is giving advice about how to succeed in a basketball career. Presumably they are speaking about succeeding in the NBA or at least college level basketball, not some rec league. And, if you are 5’5”, while it is not strictly impossible for you to succeed, it is probably not realistic for you to pursue it. The advice is implicitly aimed at people who stand any chance at all of making it into the NBA.
It’s funny that you use the NBA as an example. You are talking about a league with less than 1,000 players (aka less than .00001% of the population of the US, and players are recruited globally), and even still there are people who are that short who has lengthy careers.
As I understand it, and I’m not going to pretend to know everything about him, Sam Altman is not a successful programmer but a successful businessman. To assert that his success is even primarily due to IQ rather than being at the right place at the right time and having connections to the right people demonstrates a dogmatic deviation to the notion that IQ is all encompassing, when in reality is it consistently shown to be poorly correlated with success.
Depends on your definition of successful. Will these advice help make you next tech billionaire. Most probably no, that requires too many dices to land in your favour.
But all of these advice while not novel and may sound superficial, will make you more happier and more successful if followed.
e.g. a ~20%(adjust by country/age) CAGR in income will make most feel monetarily successful no matter what the start point is. Spending less time on TV and more with family/friends will for most give them more happiness. Working hard may not be enough but almost always a pre-requisite.
I'm always surprised by how often advice from extremely successful people tends to repeat itself, which tells me that there really is no "secret" to making it and living a great life that I don't already know.
This makes about as much sense as saying the same thing for advise on winning the lottery. The "implementing" part you're referring is nothing other than "being lucky" so there really isn't anything to implement nor anything to advise.
> How to succeed: pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored), focus, believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work), develop personal connections with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, and work hard. It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard.
You have to be somewhat lucky to be able to do this, but also you have to actually try. Your comment seems needlessly dismissive as well as inaccurate.
Hard work is absolutely an essential requirement. "He worked for years before achieving overnight success."
For many the secret of success seems to be something like:
0. Pick the right thing(s) to work on (ideally the thing that will result in #3)
1. Work really hard (ideally starting with as many advantages as possible - wealth, family, connections, safety nets, etc.) so you can
2. Buy as many lottery tickets as possible (ideally rigging the game in your favor if possible) to improve the likelihood that you will eventually
3. Win the lottery
This may seem flippant, but if you don't achieve #2, you're much less likely to achieve #3.
Since #3 is so luck dependent, you need to increase your luck - which means increase your chances of possibly winning - usually by increasing the number of trials, or by rigging the game somehow. However in most of these games (lottery tickets, startups, etc.) there are many more losers than winners.
The best way to get more shots at winning is to be born into wealthy family and network so you can take lots of tries with support for both the endeavours and a soft-landing if/when they fail.
It is accurate in the sense that you don't have to implement anything specifically. You should simply act according to the circumstances, and if the circumstances are positive (i.e. you are lucky) you can succeed.
In the hindsight the "act" might look like the thing that made you succeed, but most of the time it's actually the luck. The "strategy" is just a normal reaction. For example:
"I invested half of my money in stock market and half in property. That made me a billionaire. You should do the same."
vs
"I won $1M from the lottery, and I invested half of it in stock market and half in property."
Obviously if you omit the lottery part the advise doesn't make any sense (i.e. you won't be a billionaire by investing half of your minimum wage every fortnight). This may be an extreme example, but demonstrates my point.
It's like combining the advise of Schwarzenegger, Dr Phil, Yoda, a random tech bro's substack, life-hack Youtube stars, and more.
None of the advise is incorrect of course, it's just that the sum is unattainable and at times contradicting. It basically says: here's 20 balls. Now juggle them up in the air, don't let any of them drop.
That being said, your 20s are special. It's indeed the decade where you have the most energy versus the least responsibilities. Don't take your 20s in slow or tame mode.
I was not aiming at rich, instead at the concept that time is zero-sum.
You should work hard and also spend the maximum amount with friends. And your parents. Also, exercise, sleep well, and so on. Doing a long list of things very well might lead to exhaustion or one thing coming at the expense of the other things.
Like I said though, do live your 20s hard. Do not live it safely and slowly as if you're middle-aged already. It's a limited time opportunity.
On 5): The most transformative step in my journey up the class ladder was when money stopped being a source of problems and instead became a way to solve problems.
I have plenty of money (relatively speaking, I don't make FAANG money but I don't worry about paying the rent or saving for a rainy day). I have real trouble spending it though. It almost causes me physical pain to spend money on something I don't regard as essential. I don't like to travel, or eat expensive meals, or go to movies, concerts, shows, etc because I hate to spend the money on it. Don't know what the root of that is, but it bothers other people more than it bothers me.
The hobbies I have are similarly frugal: fixing stuff, repairing old cars, where I feel I've gained some value for the time spent.
This is awesome! Your attitude and values are only recently "out of date"; previous to the current generation of zero percent financed lifestyles many people achieved success through slow growth savings. I think it's great that you reject the value derived from common consumption because it's less than the cost. I wish more people felt this way
Thank you so much for those words, they are wise and re-fill my confidence level so much for today. Everybody should find it’s own way of “wining in life” as peer said, but probably not by listen and follow “typical advices” as a sole trueness.
It isn’t tho. You don’t win in life by having the biggest number in your investment account when they put you in the ground. Typical advice here is to spend money on experiences and not “stuff” but it sounds like gp cant even do that
I think feeling it painful to spend when you have lots of money is not a good thing.
I save money by not buying much stuff in general. So when I do have to spend it’s not a big deal. It’s not like saving $80 by not going to a concert would have some profound impact on my future financial situation. Same with vacations or buying clothes. I don’t do that stuff often, so when I do, whatever. Why ruminate so much on it.
I used to be more of your mindset but realized it was stupid. And you end up missing out on opportunities if you’re too frugal just for the sake of it (rather than necessity). People I’ve met on trips, random books I’ve bought, etc have changed my life in lots of positive ways.
Set aside a fun budget, and then spend it frugally. Just don't carry over from one year to the next. Developing non-monetizable skills is the best kind of fun there is ;)
I think a lot of people are like you described (say 5 per cent), but not many dare to admit, fearing of coming across too boring or greedy or whatever.
I think being content with what you have and what you buy, the fulfillment of fixing things has much more value than fancy stuff that is fancy today but gets outdated quickly.
Also "experiencing things" seems overrated these days. As if scratching things off a bucket list has lots of value.
I'm similar, but it has probably cost me more in happiness then the money is worth. I am trying to counter it by framing more things as investments into myself (happiness as its own goal, but also the ability to more easily make that money back).
There's a saying in my language that goes like "he'll be the richest person in the graveyard". Spend that surplus money, have fun, enjoy it. What else are you going to do with it anyway?
But, a lot of this advice like “take risks” is much easier to do when your failures don’t result in losing everything. If a poor person starts a business and fails they might not be able to afford to eat. If Sam Altman failed would he have been pushed to a similar place on the socioeconomic ladder? My guess is no. It’s much easier to fail when your failure state is that you can rely on your well off family with relatively little hardship.
I don't think anyone is suggesting to start tech startups directly from poverty. Once you are in tech it doesn't really matter what your parents make; you can save enough from the generous paycheck at your corporate job to buy a laptop and pay the rent for a while. When your startup fails, you go get one of those again.
No, it's great. I hope to help my kids start on the same rung, but I think I'll caution them against giving advice about "having enough money so that you don’t stress about paying rent," something a person who started in that income bracket has never once had to meaningfully worry about, obviously.
> Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom
This is true outside of your work but not so much during it:
- when you makes lots of money you feel less free to resign than for a shitty interchangeable job. It’s even more true as the shitty job has less chance to be intellectually interesting
- building your own business usually means you’re even less free mentally as you got more responsibilities
- if you’re got employee it’s even worse : you’ve got more legal obligations and probably moral implications.
Money can buy a lots of thinks but certainly not freedom.
Don't know if Sam has young kids, aged parents or dependents who require extra help but if you do #1 will consume pretty much 100% of your life, if you're not independently wealthy. Good luck with anything else from this list.
It all comes down to being in the right network. When his Loopt startup failed he had to be in the right network to fail upwards. Most people lack that network. I think the IQ and the hard work bits are common.
It's a bit silly for me to raise this stance on this website, but I'm so sick and tired of tech luminaries giving life advice.
It's all so flat and tasteless. It lacks character, it assumes such basic goals for human beings as happiness or money. They all write like they're handing in some kind of flavorless college freshman's book report.
I don't know where the truly philosophical individuals are these days but they certainly aren't heading up tech companies.
Want life advice? Start looking into the history of philosophy and read it widely and deeply. The words are powerful and there's no underlying assumption that life is reducible to making it out the best way we can in the current dominant socio-economic structure; they actually suggest that, gasp dominant systems and structures might not be serving people well. People actually believed in this thing called meaning and thought about how to pursue it beyond fulfilling prescribed roles and desires.
It's so arrogant of these founders to suggest that their personal experience in capitalism is extractable to some set of general principles worthy of moralization. Worse, they do it with the literary style of a lemming. At least the moralists of the 16th and 17th centuries knew how to construct a pithy, catchy aphorism when they were dolling out vague advice. Sheesh.
The trick is spending a decade or more of your life inside of an office to the exclusion of virtually every other activity.
Your success will convince you you’re a genius, qualified to comment on anything, but you will have completely killed anything inside yourself that doesn’t involve corporate advancement.
One time at work years ago, at our group meeting our manager said "and these are the things we'll be working on this summer".
It sort of stopped me in my tracks. I looked out the window at the green outside and thought of being stuck indoors working on a bunch of milestones and goals and... sigh.
The thing about Meditations is that it's advice from a Roman Emperor, and, at first blush, more important than the advice of a 30 y.o. tech bro.
But only a few years later Altman has more influence and power than even Aurelius in his time.
We should all read Montaigne instead, the reflections of a man 1400 years later, isolated, considering his influence and how he lives/lived in the world.
I strongly disagree. Sometimes just experiencing the passage of time is a requisite and that has nothing to do with you not being appreciated for your talent.
