I'm actually really looking forward to the day that technical people become more financially literate. There's a reason why Elon Musk is such an unstoppable force in the business world. Technical people have such a deep love of science and tech that they sometimes forget about the economic and political realities of modern western societies: capital rules all.
Understanding and managing time and capital is the most important task any individual is faced with in the western world. As I've said many times, every single person reading HN most likely undervalues their time, and ends up severely miscalculating their opportunity costs as a result. The nature of capitalism is such that taking risk is the only path forward, regardless of how many failures it results in.
As the commenters above have noted, very few become billionaires by working 9 to 5 for someone else. Work for yourself, and with equals (as co-founders). Never work as an employee. If you need to contract your services out, do it as a consultant on a milestone or hourly basis. Take absolute control of your time. No overtime, no crunch time, no favors.
Understand the system we operate in, and optimize for it. Don't be sucked in by stupid hype, marketing, "culture", free pop, ping pong tables, personality cults, or any such nonsense. Your time is worth just as much as the CEO's.
I'm hoping that once the tech world wakes up to this reality, we'll start exerting far more influence over big corps, big finance, and big government. This is the only way we can really change the world for the better. Not by being employees to big corps, but by running the show.
The Hacker mentality espouses efficiency and ingenuity. It's nigh time we applied this to our lives. It's not enough for me to do it on my own, everyone here needs to do this so that we can collectively exert influence to enact real change.
P.S. I know it may be hard to herd cats, but I've seen the community here rally around many great ideas. I want gigabit fiber everywhere, renewable energy cities, preventive genetic medicine for all, and colonies on Mars. Why haven't these happened? Because the people in charge have no vision, and are caught by the institutional quagmire of a country established 300 years ago. Just because this is the way it is, doesn't mean that it will always have to be this way.
> I've seen the community here rally around many great ideas. I want gigabit fiber everywhere, renewable energy cities, preventive genetic medicine for all, and colonies on Mars. Why haven't these happened? Because the people in charge have no vision, and are caught by the institutional quagmire of a country established 300 years ago.
I would argue that those things haven't happened because no one (including us technical people) have developed business models for those activities.
Understanding and managing time and capital is the most important task any individual is faced with in the western world. As I've said many times, every single person reading HN most likely undervalues their time, and ends up severely miscalculating their opportunity costs as a result. The nature of capitalism is such that taking risk is the only path forward, regardless of how many failures it results in.
As the commenters above have noted, very few become billionaires by working 9 to 5 for someone else. Work for yourself, and with equals (as co-founders). Never work as an employee. If you need to contract your services out, do it as a consultant on a milestone or hourly basis. Take absolute control of your time. No overtime, no crunch time, no favors.
Understand the system we operate in, and optimize for it. Don't be sucked in by stupid hype, marketing, "culture", free pop, ping pong tables, personality cults, or any such nonsense. Your time is worth just as much as the CEO's.
I'm hoping that once the tech world wakes up to this reality, we'll start exerting far more influence over big corps, big finance, and big government. This is the only way we can really change the world for the better. Not by being employees to big corps, but by running the show.
The Hacker mentality espouses efficiency and ingenuity. It's nigh time we applied this to our lives. It's not enough for me to do it on my own, everyone here needs to do this so that we can collectively exert influence to enact real change.
P.S. I know it may be hard to herd cats, but I've seen the community here rally around many great ideas. I want gigabit fiber everywhere, renewable energy cities, preventive genetic medicine for all, and colonies on Mars. Why haven't these happened? Because the people in charge have no vision, and are caught by the institutional quagmire of a country established 300 years ago. Just because this is the way it is, doesn't mean that it will always have to be this way.