Ironic that people who make the money to quit and live a life of quiet pleasure and relaxation, are incapable of doing it! That CEO brain won't just turn off.
It’s not because the “CEO brain won’t just turn off.” It’s because they either keep doing CEO things or because they keep thinking CEO things. People have a much larger ability to change than they often believe. It’s just that change is hard and it’s easier to say, “This is how I am” than it is to put in the work to change.
I'm fortunate enough to be close enough to the beach that I'm able to go most weekends, or even immediately after work. Man.... when I'm at the beach, I am at the beach an no-where else. I'm sure it would get old over time, but it has a great way of turning my brain off from my day-to-day.
Very fortunate. We have to make a weekend trip each time we want to go to the beach, and that's to go to a beach off Lake Michigan (we're nowhere near the coast) and it still takes us about an hour and a half drive each way to get there.
Last week, we finally went for the first time this year, and were rained out one day, and then it was overcast, windy, cold, and no swimming because of intense waves the other day (we still went, but it was less than ideal).
If we're lucky we might go one more time this year, although that's mostly because last week wasn't great. We usually only make the trip once a year.
I did used to live in an apartment that had a nice outdoor pool on the premises, and I'm seriously missing that now that I live in a house. I used to spend an hour out there about 3 or 4 days a week each summer.
I took it for granted for years. I make a point to get out there frequently now because I realized that I'll probably be priced out of this area within the next few years.
Interesting. I live 1.25 hours from another great lake and I have made the trip after work some days and weekends too. Totally worth it for me to leave work a little early, get there for 5 pm, enjoy the beach for a few hours and go home.
Generally speaking the kind of person who doesn't find work enjoyable will not spend enough of their time on it to achieve the success necessary to acquire the money that would let them live a life of leisure.
The workaholics are running things and they can't believe everyone else doesn't want to be like them, which is why I'm spending 40 hours a week at a job where I do actual work maybe 3 hours a week.
Isn't this the end goal for the vast majority of us? What's the point of having a bajillion dollars if you can't go do the things you want to do in life? Why are we all spending 80 hours a week grinding away at a startup or busting our asses in the corporate world if not to elevate ourselves beyond the need for money?
I think this was from a movie or something, but it was along the lines of:
"The guy then asked the tycoon, whose net worth was 300 million dollars, 'Why do it? Why work so hard to get 300 million dollars? Why not just stop when you get to $30 million or something?' To which the tycoon replied 'And that is why you'll never have 3 million dollars'"
Point being, the type of folks who want to work super hard to become uber rich are generally not the type of folks that pine to lie on the beach. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration (I mean, Jeff Bezos seems to be "living his best lift" right now), but I think there are some kernels of truth in the type of hyper-driven personality that causes one to become super rich in the first place. If you're just concerned about becoming "moderately wealthy" so you can relax, there are a lot easier ways to do it.
I don't think I buy that argument at all. There are a lot of hyper-driven people stuck in poverty or drudgery because the dice rolled poorly in the past (or at birth), and there are a lot of not-driven people who just kind of aimlessly slipped into their wealth. Daddy paid for Stanford and then they just kind of rode the pre-laid train tracks to their executive position at a tech company. The more I live, the more I no longer buy the whole "be driven and work hard leads to wealth" fantasy.
Yes, when you get up to the level of Bezos, Musk, Gates, and so on, they're both very lucky and very hyper-driven. But when you're talking about the "mere" 10-30 millionaires, I'm not convinced it's much more than good luck and connections. When I think back to the few VPs and SVPs and whatnot I've encountered in my own work life, I don't recall many that seemed to have that driven "Bezos/Musk" personality. They were bored in meetings, golfing, and occasionally sending E-mail announcement to the division. They were not writing code until 10PM and waking up at 5AM to do a code review with the offshore developer team, all while watching their checking account and wondering whether the whole division would be laid off next month.
People will read this as him jumping before he's pushed, but even if that is the case we should still celebrate this action. Everyone is entitled to say "Yeah, I'm retiring now. I don't want to work any more.", and go and sit on a beach and do nothing.
Most of us will never have the resources to actually do it so when someone does I'm truly happy for them. This guy really is living the dream.
>Most of us will never have the resources to actually do it
Mehhhh. Unless you get married before you have a job (and women usually are careful to prevent that) or are very loose with your money I don't think this is really true in our industry.
> Clients have pulled cash from Jupiter for four years in a row and the firm has failed to stem the outflows this year. In the first three months of the year, investors yanked another £1.6 billion, according to its latest earnings report.
How can it be viewed as anything else?
Clients have pulled cash from Jupiter for four years in a row and the firm has failed to stem the outflows this year. In the first three months of the year, investors yanked another £1.6 billion, according to its latest earnings report.
> Most of us will never have the resources to actually do it
I've done it via funemployment and it gets boring after a while... I needed to recover from a decade of grinding and get finally get some much needed medical procedures done (in the US no less), and the biggest hurdle was my inability to actually 'unplug,' it took nearly a year. I had mild to severe anxiety for no explicable reason other than not being used to being 'calm,' and I would be on edge thinking the worst was was about to occur and I started to just look for fires to put out.
It was incredibly unsettling but therapeutic in a way; luckily I'm better now, and I feel like I'm capable of getting back to things that require more effort than what I've been doing as of late. I got back into to school in that time and started to venture outside of Fintech, which is the only domain of tech that I know.
> Ever heard of Sandstorm by Darude? Yeah that has nothing to do with this
Yes, I have. I still remember some girl I dragged into my student slum shared house widening her eyes and asking "Do you have an older brother or something? Why is your library a bunch of Nine Inch Nails or whatever? That's a very old album." and I immediately shot back something to the effect of "I pirate everything because I'm not some rich bitch from Fox Chapel -- I just look at what's well seeded, those weird Russian pill vendors have good taste in EDM, and your stupid CD store got too good at spotting shoplifters."
(Yeah, that also has nothing to do with this, but HN needs to have more creative nonfiction and less "Uh sir, this comment is not appropriate for LinkedIn" energy.)
> good taste in EDM … HN needs to have more creative nonfiction
So …
“Sandstorm was fucking inescapable in the SoCal rave scene in the late nineties, to the point that it became sort of a joke. Even if you went to an event where you could be reasonably confident that it wouldn't be played (a jungle or gabber event, for instance), you'd still hear some asshole blasting it from his car while you were in line.”
”I heard it being played from art cars twice at Burning Man this year. I'm choosing to believe that the perpetrators were doing so ironically, because the alternative is to despise/pity them.“
Thanks for this. I had a friend who used to dance to it at parties. We would then all take turns ding the same. But this was in like... 2009.
I don't think he was in the SoCal rave scene, but he was a huge gearhead. Big fan of his "vee dub".
(I never could grok anything mechanical, and never really had stable housing, so I turned into a weird little cyberpunk so I could keep everything on a laptop or hard drive I carry with me)
Good for him. I think this is what most normal people would do if they had a many millions of dollars -- at least for a while. If he gets bored he can go play with an open source project or start a soup kitchen.
I'm pretty sure if I could afford it, I could retire today and never be bored. I wouldn't be doing nothing, except on those days or weeks where I choose to do that (e.g. doing a silent retreat), but I certainly don't need a job to give myself a purpose or to stave off boredom.
The people who made enough money to do whatever they want, are typically the type of person who are mostly motivated by work and would also not have gotten there without being motivated by work.
I understand the people at the very top have different motivations - i.e. musk, bezos, gates, zuckerberg etc - but I am more thinking about the average 'successful' person - i.e. the ones that are never going to be in that very top class, but have managed to accumulate enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, travel, volunteer, or do something else, and still don't.
Not criticizing them, just can't relate.
I for one have plenty of ways I would rather spend my day.
You do not make "live comfortably off of it" money (lets say a couple of million in the bank, couple more depending on where you want to live) when not motivated by/leaning towards wanting to work in 99.9% of the cases either.
I'm not one of these people but I can say that it's probably because your life would get really boring really fast. As shitty as work is, you can actually get quite a lot of purpose-in-life out of it. Wouldn't be surprised if this person started working again in the near-future.
I find this kind of comment very sad. Work is easily the least meaningful thing in my life and I never have enough to invest in the things I actually want to do because work takes up so much of it.
I think this is usually a false projection. If you have the right work-life balance, work is a great asset. It provides social validation and meaning. Not everyone is a creative with an interest in pet projects. Most like to collaborate and feel useful, and aren't really invested in the big picture. You can quibble that this isn't entirely contingent on "work", but whether you're paid for it or not, the desired activity is the same.
Most of my 43 years in work was making computer systems. I was good at it because I enjoyed it. Now retired and full of years I can't stop. I just do stuff because it's the thing I think about. Mostly it never comes to anything but who cares. Lying on a beach would not suit me at all.
Yeah, I'm sure after I retire I'll laze around for a bit, but it won't be long before I'm writing software again of some sort. But it'll be what I want to write, instead of what I'm paid to write, which often aren't exactly the same, if at all.
I mostly want to retire so I can work on the things I actually want to work on, all the accumulated ideas for side projects I've only been able to take so far in my spare time.
Like I have five video games still pretty much in prototype form I keep having ideas for but no time or energy to implement, so I can't do much more than write them down on paper and maybe put a few hours into them a week when I'm not feeling so run down from my day job/maintaining the home/cooking.
I don't really want to work on yet another enterprise-level healthcare/finance/insurance system. I'd consider switching back to the game industry full time but it still sounds like it's a shit show for how it treats its employees (some video game company employees are forming unions recently, though, which is a much overdue change), and would almost certainly be a significant pay cut, also I've been out of it long enough it'll probably be difficult to find a company that would hire me again.
Also I'd still have the problem of working on games that aren't my own ideas, plus it could be a contractual conflict of interest if I ever did release my own games as it would be the same industry then.
I went to the article, but everything after the first sentence was faded out and they wanted me to sign in to read it. Instead, I made up my own fictional back story about how this happened:
Rich CEO meets young sexy tattooed gen-X intern, they date, she takes him to a rave, the smoke weed after and listen to jazz. They fall in love. He quits... now fade out.
The youngest millennial is roughly 26 (depending on whose numbers you use), so probably not an intern (though still possible). The oldest Gen-Z are old enough to have been out of college for a couple years now.
And with that level of inequality it would be much less interesting to elope with someone that age.
Some people think “I like relatable people and I cant relate to people under a certain age, what do you talk about” which simply means they tried the hot younger person first/eventually like everyone else and if they had any game or tolerance they would be with that younger sexier person
sexier by the definition of improved utility of sex henceforth making them more sexually attractive at all
Maybe it is science fiction, and the intern had been part of a suspended animation experiment which went horrible wrong... until it went wonderfully right?
Formica, who has been in the UK for almost three decades, said in a telephone interview that his departure was down to personal reasons, including wanting to be closer to elderly parents. He plans to move back to his native Australia.
“I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing,” he said in the interview. “I’m not thinking about anything else.”
We used to have a running (offline) joke in the G+ days among my photog friends that Tom Anderson "doesn't care about anything but women and architecture, and it's reflected in his art", but more founders should be willing to quit while they're ahead.
(It was a joke from a place of love, since unlike Mark Zuckerberg, who we'd joke is literally a spy for the Chinese, Tom seems just want folks to use his website and have a fun time, versus feeling entitled interaction or observation.)
Also, I seriously doubt this Jupiter CEO is "doing nothing". He's probably reading novels, maybe doing some swimming, or mindfully consuming so kind of coconut based beverage? Who knows -- it's not my business, and at least I'll be honest that I'm jealous I don't have the economic security to do the same -- authenticity is rare these days.
One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish.
About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman. “You should be working rather than lying on the beach!”
The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?”
“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer.
“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling.
The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!”
“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.
The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said.
“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.
The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!”
Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”
The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”
The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”
The problem being, of course, that if the rolls of the die are ever slightly unfavourable life without funds will be really miserable
Oddly enough people mentioning that parable never actually spend their days lazily on the beach. People who don't put their money where their mouth is always rouse my inner cynic
One never quite values money until they can't afford to pay for the roof above their heads or the meds that keeps them alive
> Oddly enough people mentioning that parable never actually spend their days lazily on the beach. People who don't put their money where their mouth is always rouse my inner cynic
I work from home for a small company with people I like, I get to spend my day with my partner and dog, get out walking every day, have time (and money) for the hobbies and activities that I and we want to do. I don't need to climb and push harder to achieve the life that I want, because I'm content with what I have and where I'm going.
It’s great but what if the small company gets outcompeted by a competitor? Or management changes and environment deteriorates? You lose your steady salary, and if you don’t push hard to achieve then when you try to look for new jobs you find you are outcompeted or your skills outdated.
If might sound dumb to work hard to achieve but those people at the top have very little trouble finding jobs, ie they are not as dependent on a specific company to make a living.
What if the big company decides that mass layoffs are happening, or cancels your project? What if investors lose confidence and my division is folded into another and I'm stuck competing with another person with the same qualifications as me for one role?
> you don’t push hard to achieve then when you try to look for new jobs you find you are outcompeted or your skills outdated.
Who said I don't work hard, or that my skills are outdated? I can work hard and keep up to date without chasing the next step and forgetting about what I already have. It doesn't really matter what jobs there are in the future if I get too burned out on my current job, for example.
If one and only one company is the be-all and end-all of your career, you're doing it wrong. F*'em, go get another job. Nobody owes us a living. It's up to us to be worth hiring.
I've had my employer essentially go bust twice, and left another company that was in dire straits but managed to keep going. It's all been fine, of course you need to keep your skills up to date but the idea that one employer going to the will is the end of my career is just daft. No.
Having said that I have had a close friend get his career badly derailed by health problems. That really sucked, but after some tough years he's back rebuilding his career and loving it. He's in the film and TV production industry and just loves what he does.
I think the moral is, do what you love and be good at it. I honestly have no idea what I'd do if I wasn't in IT, but I love the tech and I'm decently well paid, so it's all good. Not everyone is so lucky, for sure.
Certain Spanish people especially those in bureaucracy come really close to not doing anything.
I've asked for a certificate at my local town hall that takes them 3 minutes to print. This was 20 days and three in-person visits ago. They just don't want to do it.
I told them I needed it to pay taxes, and they just shrugged their shoulders. Pretty crazy.
This is still the case? My mother told me she used to take a bottle of some alcohol to drink with them and after spending an hour or two with them she would usually get what she needed. That was in Andalucia which I guess might be a special case even in Spain...
I (from NL) have been in ES and PT for a long time and noticed that Spanish natives make a scene when it is urgent; crying or shouting or both with certain types of (semi) gov employees. It works; I get whatever I want, fast. I don’t like it so I only do it when it actually is urgent; for most things I don’t care if it’s a week or a year so I just wait.
I lived in my country's capital for almost ten years, and since a huge part of the population there are in public service (you get in through a selection exam and once you get in you pretty much can't get fired, and the pay is pretty good). While I lived there, some of my friends would do this at work:
Use most of their work hours to study for a higher paying public service exam.
Play online multiplayer games. Everyday. (don't know if only within their department or connected to the outside)
Do nothing 60% of the time.
Work half the hours they were supposed to, because the whole department decided that they had enough people to turn an 8 hour shift into 4 hours and get everything done. When a new boss decided to end this and made everybody work their 8 hours, they rebelled and the department couldn't get anything done. And no one could be fired.
*etc
Not everybody did this, of course. I had some friends who worked their hours, and put their effort to it, but the culture was definitely messed up.
Yeah, that parable only works if you don’t have children and you live in a country with a large social safety net with a large economy to support it. Of course, if too many people take the fisherman’s route, there won’t be a large enough economy to support that social safety net.
That's a very literal interpretation of the story. Another interpretation is that there are multiple paths to your goals that can be very very different and lead to the same destination.
This reminds me of the life in the country side. If you watch a documentary or movie it may see like a great/no-stress life but in reality it's quite the opposite.
Life in the countryside is a lot of work, sometimes backbreaking work, it ain’t easy peasy. But life is simpler and more in tune with nature. Some prefer that, there is really nothing wrong with it.
I don’t think that parable is necessarily saying you should go live on the beach, but it does effectively point out the absurdity of (American) work culture.
It’s not cynical to admit that your situation is absurd without changing it, especially since our society punishes anyone who doesn’t go with the absurdity.
Also, the parable is terrible because it tries to equate the businessman's planned end state with the fisherman's current state. But they are not equal because the parable ignores risk and options for the future. The businessman finally enjoying life on the beach also has the resources to weather a surprise injury or sickness, to raise children, to find a different hobby or to change his mind and decide he'd rather travel than sit on the beach. The fisherman doesn't have any of these options. If the beach town gets wiped out in a hurricane, the businessman has the resources to move, but the fisherman does not.
I agree with you that almost everyone in my life who told me "Hey, money isn't everything" was already very wealthy.
And the businessman said, "Gotcha. Now imagine your doctor telling you that you have a disease and in order to continue to live this carefree life, you need a million dollars for the surgery..."
Exactly, and if we keep idolising "the fisherman", the system becomes unstable. Also why would anybody? It's essentially stealing from other people. A welfare state should strive to provide for those who can't, not those who won't.
Before you misunderstand, I am totally in favour of universal healthcare, my country (India) has it. Pretty sure if we can afford it with a population of our size, the wealthy nations sure can.
The only question is if the number of fishermen grow too great. I've never seen evidence that a significant number of people want to be like the fisherman in this parable.
Have you been outside of US? For example in Germany, good luck using "free healthcare". If you need a surgery, you will be on a long wait list and will really need a luck to live until your turn.
Universal healthcare systems, at the moment, have very bad supply/demand problem, especially in developed countries, where population getting extremely old. And it's unclear how it can be solved.
Having lived in Europe all my life, I have yet to find one country with a well-working universal healthcare. Almost every single universal healthcare worker I met is overworked, rude, or straight up not even showing up.
I keep hearing stories on a weekly basis in my friend circle that people are turned away and/or not given adequate care. They just treat you like an interruption of their day and not the reason they are there for.
Have you tried a concierge medicine service? While I agree that health-insurance-based providers have a lot of service problems, concierge medicine services seem to have better experiences since they're entirely choice-based.
Statistics presented there doesn't necessary show healthcare system performance. Life expectancy will be dependent on a lot of other things, like population genetics/diet/lifestyle.
Also, regarding healthcare system quality, one of related statistics from this article are in favor of US: "30-day mortality for heart attacks and strokes is lower in the U.S. than in comparable countries". Same with ischemic stroke(and it's better in US by quiet much, 4.1 vs 6.1 30-day mortality rate per 100 patients in other countries).
I have excellent experiences with public healthcare; worst run-ins were in NL (where I am from); best experiences I had in HK, ES and PT. Fast (much much faster than NL) for routine tests (ct, rmi, scopes, radio) and everything else. And no deductible like in NL or with private.
I guess it depends where and what and how but me and my friends experiences are very different from what you say, especially after having had experiences with private healthcare in other countries with colleagues where I was present.
Having lived in Europe all my life, I don't recognize that qualification at all. Yes, medical professionals are people too, so they can be overworked (especially since Covid), rude or absent. But on the whole, they come across to me as friendly, caring and professional.
Do doctors sometimes not give patients what they demand? Absolutely. But that's the way it's supposed to be - it's hard to make rational decisions when your own health, or that of a loved one, is on the line. That's why doctors consult doctors too.
If you lived in EU you would know you can't really trust public healthcare.
It's the same story everywhere: they introduce it, it works ok for a couple of years, it's a socialist success, yay... then it experiences a very sharp decline, but the government doesn't care
It just seized a good portion of private economy and they're the good guys because they pay your plasters with your tax money, no matter how shitty the service is.
What country are you talking about? Public healthcare isn't exactly a recent thing in most European countries. And it's still working okay, with ups and downs of course.
How country with these values will motivate someone to work as a doctor/nurse/etc? These are extremely stressful jobs, so someone working them need to have, as well, extremely high motivation.
I would rather work as an engineer building stuff than sit on a beach all day.
Also, there's good stress and bad stress. Treating someone with an acute cardiac arrest is probably quite stressful, but also very meaningful. Dealing with your boss having an 'episode' and needs some slide set reworked by 12 o'clock is stressful but also pretty devoid of any larger meaningful purpose.
Countries with good social safety nets need good economies to support it. Good economies are created and maintained with high productivity from hard work.
And a good social safety net helps the workforce maintain the productivity by keeping it healthy and educated. Furthermore, it removes concerns about health care insurance, sudden unemployment, education for the kids, etc.
I see the tax I pay as an investment in the people and society. Society helped me get good health care and take a good education, even though I come from what would be a lower class home in much of the world. I pay that gift forward to someone else - very likely to be people in my own family.
The fisherman replies: "nah I'm good, I eat a mediterranean diet instead of a poisonous american diet, get plenty of vitamin D and am not stuck inside all day, have a genuine community that I'm a part of rather than being socially isolated and chronically stressed, anxious, and depressed like you are, and have a spiritual connection to nature so I'm not existentially terrified of death like you are. I'll take those odds."
There's a concept used to compare alternatives called a "quality-adjusted life year": basically people like living in ways that make them happy, dislike hard years. There are many places where you'll get very solid treatment as part of social insurance, but even in places where you would not I think your premise is flawed. If you halve your quality of life in order to extend a...60 year lifetime to 70 years it would not be a good exchange.
The fisherman seems to like his life, but I'd find it tedious. Plus, if everyone lived the life of the fisherman, then we'd find it difficult to maintain all the things our society provides.
Maybe that would be better, but I doubt it.
Looking at the Jupiter CEO, his retirement sounds dull, although spending time with parents before they go sounds good.
If people valued that care-free lifestyle so much, they'd adopt it. It's possible to get by in Western society doing virtually nothing, if you're willing to sacrifice some comforts. People largely don't care to. More to the point, no one likes feeling stagnant, lost, completely unproductive. There are endless anecdotes to this point among those who've taken the FIRE approach. One guy's partner left him saying she felt "left behind" in their early retirement, despite ostensibly not caring about niceties like a house. They could be as "creative" as they want all day, but that wasn't what was lacking.
It's not really about the "stuff" accumulated, it's the reward of work itself. Mainly, a sense of meaning and social validation. You can quibble over the possibility of being "productive" without a job, but most people don't want to be fucking artisans - they want to get things done and feel useful. We're not all wired to be painters, make pointless software or boutique furniture out of our own volition. If you tell us someone needs to cut these pieces of wood and nail them, someone needs to teach, someone needs to clean, someone needs to fix this bug and ship this software, and banter all the while, and you get paid for the privilege, that's easily more motivating for most people.
Wonderful parable. But both the fisherman and businessman focus on the reward for themself. I don't have a parable, but for me, my reward has been sharing what I have with others.
"Clients have pulled cash from Jupiter for four years in a row and the firm has failed to stem the outflows this year. In the first three months of the year, investors yanked another £1.6 billion, according to its latest earnings report."
> Formica, who has been in the UK for almost three decades, said in a telephone interview that his departure was down to personal reasons, including wanting to be closer to elderly parents. He plans to move back to his native Australia.
> “I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing,” he said in the interview. “I’m not thinking about anything else.”
Slightly misleading / clickbaity title. It sounds like it was his response to "what's next" and he wants to enjoy some downtime. Not that he never plans to do anything else but sit on the beach and do nothing.
This is just covering his ass. I remember when the CEO of a popular startup decided to step down to "spend more time with my family" and it was picked up be the media as a nice story about a man who feels it's OK to stay at home, etc. It was a total fabrication made up only to not make the struggling startup look bad and failing. Firing the CEO is a bad look.
They brought in a new CEO, the company went public years later and is doing splendid, but it was contentious for awhile.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 291 ms ] threadLast week, we finally went for the first time this year, and were rained out one day, and then it was overcast, windy, cold, and no swimming because of intense waves the other day (we still went, but it was less than ideal).
If we're lucky we might go one more time this year, although that's mostly because last week wasn't great. We usually only make the trip once a year.
I did used to live in an apartment that had a nice outdoor pool on the premises, and I'm seriously missing that now that I live in a house. I used to spend an hour out there about 3 or 4 days a week each summer.
The workaholics are running things and they can't believe everyone else doesn't want to be like them, which is why I'm spending 40 hours a week at a job where I do actual work maybe 3 hours a week.
Isn't this the end goal for the vast majority of us? What's the point of having a bajillion dollars if you can't go do the things you want to do in life? Why are we all spending 80 hours a week grinding away at a startup or busting our asses in the corporate world if not to elevate ourselves beyond the need for money?
Etc. etc.
"The guy then asked the tycoon, whose net worth was 300 million dollars, 'Why do it? Why work so hard to get 300 million dollars? Why not just stop when you get to $30 million or something?' To which the tycoon replied 'And that is why you'll never have 3 million dollars'"
Point being, the type of folks who want to work super hard to become uber rich are generally not the type of folks that pine to lie on the beach. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration (I mean, Jeff Bezos seems to be "living his best lift" right now), but I think there are some kernels of truth in the type of hyper-driven personality that causes one to become super rich in the first place. If you're just concerned about becoming "moderately wealthy" so you can relax, there are a lot easier ways to do it.
Yes, when you get up to the level of Bezos, Musk, Gates, and so on, they're both very lucky and very hyper-driven. But when you're talking about the "mere" 10-30 millionaires, I'm not convinced it's much more than good luck and connections. When I think back to the few VPs and SVPs and whatnot I've encountered in my own work life, I don't recall many that seemed to have that driven "Bezos/Musk" personality. They were bored in meetings, golfing, and occasionally sending E-mail announcement to the division. They were not writing code until 10PM and waking up at 5AM to do a code review with the offshore developer team, all while watching their checking account and wondering whether the whole division would be laid off next month.
Doubt. Working to provide doesn't automatically make you "hyper-driven".
I'm planning to retire soon and I won't stop working, I'll just stop working for idiots and start working more on my own ideas.
Most of us will never have the resources to actually do it so when someone does I'm truly happy for them. This guy really is living the dream.
(edited "FIRE" to "FI")
Mehhhh. Unless you get married before you have a job (and women usually are careful to prevent that) or are very loose with your money I don't think this is really true in our industry.
How can it be viewed as anything else?
Clients have pulled cash from Jupiter for four years in a row and the firm has failed to stem the outflows this year. In the first three months of the year, investors yanked another £1.6 billion, according to its latest earnings report.
> Most of us will never have the resources to actually do it
I've done it via funemployment and it gets boring after a while... I needed to recover from a decade of grinding and get finally get some much needed medical procedures done (in the US no less), and the biggest hurdle was my inability to actually 'unplug,' it took nearly a year. I had mild to severe anxiety for no explicable reason other than not being used to being 'calm,' and I would be on edge thinking the worst was was about to occur and I started to just look for fires to put out.
It was incredibly unsettling but therapeutic in a way; luckily I'm better now, and I feel like I'm capable of getting back to things that require more effort than what I've been doing as of late. I got back into to school in that time and started to venture outside of Fintech, which is the only domain of tech that I know.
Yes, I have. I still remember some girl I dragged into my student slum shared house widening her eyes and asking "Do you have an older brother or something? Why is your library a bunch of Nine Inch Nails or whatever? That's a very old album." and I immediately shot back something to the effect of "I pirate everything because I'm not some rich bitch from Fox Chapel -- I just look at what's well seeded, those weird Russian pill vendors have good taste in EDM, and your stupid CD store got too good at spotting shoplifters."
(Yeah, that also has nothing to do with this, but HN needs to have more creative nonfiction and less "Uh sir, this comment is not appropriate for LinkedIn" energy.)
So …
“Sandstorm was fucking inescapable in the SoCal rave scene in the late nineties, to the point that it became sort of a joke. Even if you went to an event where you could be reasonably confident that it wouldn't be played (a jungle or gabber event, for instance), you'd still hear some asshole blasting it from his car while you were in line.”
”I heard it being played from art cars twice at Burning Man this year. I'm choosing to believe that the perpetrators were doing so ironically, because the alternative is to despise/pity them.“
https://www.metafilter.com/145171/Ubiquitous-Sandstorm
// Welcome to MF.
I don't think he was in the SoCal rave scene, but he was a huge gearhead. Big fan of his "vee dub".
(I never could grok anything mechanical, and never really had stable housing, so I turned into a weird little cyberpunk so I could keep everything on a laptop or hard drive I carry with me)
Jupiter has beaches?
I must have had a few too many.
Anyway, I give him two weeks before he stands back up and buys a big boat to do nothing around the world with influent friends and hookers and blow.
Maybe I'm just projecting.
Not criticizing them, just can't relate.
I for one have plenty of ways I would rather spend my day.
After you're super duper high level, you just do it to see the numbers go up and you enjoy working.
It's your employees who have their souls sucked off from working for you earning a fixed amount every month.
There are some countries where you can live under $500/month [1].
At a 4% withdrawal rate, $150k would take care of your needs for a very long time.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cheapest-...
Like I have five video games still pretty much in prototype form I keep having ideas for but no time or energy to implement, so I can't do much more than write them down on paper and maybe put a few hours into them a week when I'm not feeling so run down from my day job/maintaining the home/cooking.
I don't really want to work on yet another enterprise-level healthcare/finance/insurance system. I'd consider switching back to the game industry full time but it still sounds like it's a shit show for how it treats its employees (some video game company employees are forming unions recently, though, which is a much overdue change), and would almost certainly be a significant pay cut, also I've been out of it long enough it'll probably be difficult to find a company that would hire me again.
Also I'd still have the problem of working on games that aren't my own ideas, plus it could be a contractual conflict of interest if I ever did release my own games as it would be the same industry then.
Rich CEO meets young sexy tattooed gen-X intern, they date, she takes him to a rave, the smoke weed after and listen to jazz. They fall in love. He quits... now fade out.
I am not sure I care what the real story is.
They would be the same age
And with that level of inequality it would be much less interesting to elope with someone that age.
Some people think “I like relatable people and I cant relate to people under a certain age, what do you talk about” which simply means they tried the hot younger person first/eventually like everyone else and if they had any game or tolerance they would be with that younger sexier person
sexier by the definition of improved utility of sex henceforth making them more sexually attractive at all
and she laughs at the absurdity because she’s actually “taking a break from her communications major this semester” (for the past 5 years)
or loves how progressive I am to accurately assume she navigates the Western STEM world while being visually appealing
Only upside so far
Just nod, play along
What gen is it then?
Gen Z ?
And would also likely be the interns you described
A re-imagining seems a good compromise.
:)
just kidding, all in good fun.
Elon Musk did this (and left a few babies along the way) but didn't retire.
If you substitute "musician" for "intern", this is basically Elon Musk and Grimes.
“I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing,” he said in the interview. “I’m not thinking about anything else.”
(It was a joke from a place of love, since unlike Mark Zuckerberg, who we'd joke is literally a spy for the Chinese, Tom seems just want folks to use his website and have a fun time, versus feeling entitled interaction or observation.)
Also, I seriously doubt this Jupiter CEO is "doing nothing". He's probably reading novels, maybe doing some swimming, or mindfully consuming so kind of coconut based beverage? Who knows -- it's not my business, and at least I'll be honest that I'm jealous I don't have the economic security to do the same -- authenticity is rare these days.
About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman. “You should be working rather than lying on the beach!”
The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?”
“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer.
“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling.
The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!”
“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.
The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said.
“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.
The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!”
Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”
The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”
The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”
Oddly enough people mentioning that parable never actually spend their days lazily on the beach. People who don't put their money where their mouth is always rouse my inner cynic
One never quite values money until they can't afford to pay for the roof above their heads or the meds that keeps them alive
I work from home for a small company with people I like, I get to spend my day with my partner and dog, get out walking every day, have time (and money) for the hobbies and activities that I and we want to do. I don't need to climb and push harder to achieve the life that I want, because I'm content with what I have and where I'm going.
If might sound dumb to work hard to achieve but those people at the top have very little trouble finding jobs, ie they are not as dependent on a specific company to make a living.
> you don’t push hard to achieve then when you try to look for new jobs you find you are outcompeted or your skills outdated.
Who said I don't work hard, or that my skills are outdated? I can work hard and keep up to date without chasing the next step and forgetting about what I already have. It doesn't really matter what jobs there are in the future if I get too burned out on my current job, for example.
You're the businessman after succeeding with his plan, not the fisherman
The businessman does too.
Having said that I have had a close friend get his career badly derailed by health problems. That really sucked, but after some tough years he's back rebuilding his career and loving it. He's in the film and TV production industry and just loves what he does.
I think the moral is, do what you love and be good at it. I honestly have no idea what I'd do if I wasn't in IT, but I love the tech and I'm decently well paid, so it's all good. Not everyone is so lucky, for sure.
Not everybody did this, of course. I had some friends who worked their hours, and put their effort to it, but the culture was definitely messed up.
That's a very generous interpretation of the story that ignores the adjectives used to describe the businessman and the fisherman
It’s not cynical to admit that your situation is absurd without changing it, especially since our society punishes anyone who doesn’t go with the absurdity.
I agree with you that almost everyone in my life who told me "Hey, money isn't everything" was already very wealthy.
Before you misunderstand, I am totally in favour of universal healthcare, my country (India) has it. Pretty sure if we can afford it with a population of our size, the wealthy nations sure can.
Universal healthcare systems, at the moment, have very bad supply/demand problem, especially in developed countries, where population getting extremely old. And it's unclear how it can be solved.
This is typical of how the US does things: other countries don't have a perfect solution, therefore we will stick with our much worse solution.
[0]: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...
Also, regarding healthcare system quality, one of related statistics from this article are in favor of US: "30-day mortality for heart attacks and strokes is lower in the U.S. than in comparable countries". Same with ischemic stroke(and it's better in US by quiet much, 4.1 vs 6.1 30-day mortality rate per 100 patients in other countries).
I guess it depends where and what and how but me and my friends experiences are very different from what you say, especially after having had experiences with private healthcare in other countries with colleagues where I was present.
CT scan (ct), RMI scan (rmi), endoscopy/colonoscopy/etc (scopes), radiography scan (radio)
Do doctors sometimes not give patients what they demand? Absolutely. But that's the way it's supposed to be - it's hard to make rational decisions when your own health, or that of a loved one, is on the line. That's why doctors consult doctors too.
But what "inadequate care" are you talking about?
If you lived in EU you would know you can't really trust public healthcare.
It's the same story everywhere: they introduce it, it works ok for a couple of years, it's a socialist success, yay... then it experiences a very sharp decline, but the government doesn't care
It just seized a good portion of private economy and they're the good guys because they pay your plasters with your tax money, no matter how shitty the service is.
Together with millions of other highly specialized and trained people that effectively pay for the social safety net?
I can only speak for my own country - but becoming a doctor is highly attractive here in spite of it being hard work.
Nurses, not that attractive, but they are paid a decent middle class salary as compensation for the hard work.
Also, there's good stress and bad stress. Treating someone with an acute cardiac arrest is probably quite stressful, but also very meaningful. Dealing with your boss having an 'episode' and needs some slide set reworked by 12 o'clock is stressful but also pretty devoid of any larger meaningful purpose.
I see the tax I pay as an investment in the people and society. Society helped me get good health care and take a good education, even though I come from what would be a lower class home in much of the world. I pay that gift forward to someone else - very likely to be people in my own family.
Maybe that would be better, but I doubt it.
Looking at the Jupiter CEO, his retirement sounds dull, although spending time with parents before they go sounds good.
Still, I'd need to do more than sit on a beach.
It's not really about the "stuff" accumulated, it's the reward of work itself. Mainly, a sense of meaning and social validation. You can quibble over the possibility of being "productive" without a job, but most people don't want to be fucking artisans - they want to get things done and feel useful. We're not all wired to be painters, make pointless software or boutique furniture out of our own volition. If you tell us someone needs to cut these pieces of wood and nail them, someone needs to teach, someone needs to clean, someone needs to fix this bug and ship this software, and banter all the while, and you get paid for the privilege, that's easily more motivating for most people.
"Clients have pulled cash from Jupiter for four years in a row and the firm has failed to stem the outflows this year. In the first three months of the year, investors yanked another £1.6 billion, according to its latest earnings report."
> “I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing,” he said in the interview. “I’m not thinking about anything else.”
Slightly misleading / clickbaity title. It sounds like it was his response to "what's next" and he wants to enjoy some downtime. Not that he never plans to do anything else but sit on the beach and do nothing.
They brought in a new CEO, the company went public years later and is doing splendid, but it was contentious for awhile.