I share your enthusiasm about Abrash joining Carmack to work on the Rift.
But if I may pick nits, any billionaire -- nerd or not -- is most assuredly not "one of us". The rest of us have to worry about paying the bills, driving ourselves to our jobs, working in less-than-stellar offices, worrying about the cost of gas, food and medical bills, the education their kids receive, etc.
I'm not trying to stoke the fires of class warfare, but billionaires are not shackled for financial reasons like the rest of us. They can vacation in paradise, make cool things happen at a stroke of a pen, and if they choose to spend hours per day doing nothing but daydreaming and speculating...they can.
Some people are just extremely lucky (I'm guessing here. I hardly believe this happens).
Some people are technical geniuses, care little about the money, and end up having truckloads of them, being at the right moment with the right skill. Carmack his an example - read his writings, he's an amazingly humble person. Linus Torvalds, too, just to mention another person.
What about the rest of the billionaires?
We're talking about billions here, not just millions (!). The rest of the billionaires (must be) are A-type personalities who live for accumulating money and tearing the competition apart.
When you have such personality, and context, you never rest. Even when you're at rest; you're not on holiday, when you're on holiday. You need to be single minded and live almost single-dimensionally; being a psychopath is of great help. Steve Jobs is a perfect example.
Even if we take out the personality factor, we're talking about billions here - competition is extremely fierce.
As usual, of course, I don't mean that reality is black and white or "type-3" is every billionaire.
But it's important to have a clear understanding of how this works, to avoid daydreaming of being such a person (which by the way, I would never want to be).
This is a recurring theme in HN, and the usual agreed opinion is that after having a certain amount of money (upper middle class), there's very little gain in happiness by having more money.
And by the way, any middle class person has access to the best places on earth and best experiences out there.
I don't get what point you're refuting here. Why did you start this off "No, no, and triple no. Wake up call here." That seems like a really drastic response to saying "billionaires aren't like the rest of us" — which seems to be a fairly accurate statement, no? (unless everyone here are billionaire$).
So I'm guessing you were referring to maybe a different aspect of his post?
If you feel like a person's possessions define who they are, yes, a billionaire can never be like you. Don't you think that's a little limiting?
What about the millionaire businessman you meet at a conference? What about your neighbour who earns three times as much as you do? What about your other neighbour who makes half?
I'd say you are overestimating the day-to-day worries of a typical tech employee and underestimating those of billionaire founders.
Personally, I get a small PhD scholarship, but I don't worry about paying my bills and I like my humble office much more than facebook's open space. I have savings that could last me a couple of years and for all intents and purposes I feel plenty rich. I can also take a vacation free from worries, unlike the CEO of a big company.
Anyone with no kids and a full time job can spend hours per day doing nothing but daydreaming and speculating - most americans seem to waste their leisure time watching TV. If that's what you want, nothing is stopping you. You need not wait for the billions.
The only major difference between a super-rich person and an upper-middle class employee is the freedom to quit your job and pursue other things. However, I know a lot of people who made enough money to retire and none have stopped working.
> And what he is doing is aimed right at us.
No, most likely he isnt in this to make something for a maybe 100,000 tech/start up geeks.
> So saying he's "one of us" is partly a loyalty thing, he's not going to forget us or sell out because he made it big.
No, this is completely irrational view point
> It's also cultural: his priorities for where the world should be going are similar, and his ideas on how to get there are like ours.
No, his priorities probably are nothing like the majority of people here, and his ideas on how to get there are probably not like them
Because it's an erroneous analogy? FB's "content" is created by it's users. It is a platform for people to type whatever they want to share with their "friends" and they make their money via advertising and collecting and dissecting your personal data. I fail to see how that is 1:1 with television networks who, you know, actually create content.
"Why don't we call television networks advertising companies"
Seems a decent analogy, most network television and cable shows are glorified advertising. It's not a brag of any sort to see the lack of meaningful content in the glut of adverts, product placements, artificial "social" engagements.
> The rest of us have to worry about paying the bills, driving ourselves to our jobs, working in less-than-stellar offices, worrying about the cost of gas, food and medical bills, the education their kids receive, etc.
No, most people do not "worry" about these things. You make it sound so dystopian.
But if I may pick nits, any billionaire -- nerd or not -- is most assuredly not "one of us". The rest of us have to worry about paying the bills, driving ourselves to our jobs, working in less-than-stellar offices, worrying about the cost of gas, food and medical bills, the education their kids receive, etc.
I'm not trying to stoke the fires of class warfare, but billionaires are not shackled for financial reasons like the rest of us. They can vacation in paradise, make cool things happen at a stroke of a pen, and if they choose to spend hours per day doing nothing but daydreaming and speculating...they can.