17 ms·

If you get rich, you won’t quit working for long

203 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

lazyjones 10y ago
Why would anyone be surprised? Most people who strike it rich weren't working for the money anyway, so their incentives aren't going away. The question is whether (and how much) money will make the prospect of spending it instead of working for the rest of their lives more attractive than what made them work (presumably hard) in the first place...
misotaur 10y ago
Very interesting,I wonder how would this tie into a possible basic income scenario?Or the incentives of rich people are different from the average Joe`s?
- abrookewood 10y ago
  Well, the wealthiest people I know are all very motivated. I'm not surprised that they don't stop working completely.
friendly_chap 10y ago
Is this a feel good piece for the working class? Don't get me wrong - I have no experience with getting rich overnight (not that I'm not trying). However, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time - I have loads of plans which would make the world a better place, for example: launching an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids in the poor area where I'm from. I only need maybe 1 or 2 millions to do that. Why would I go back to working for a company where I have way less power to change basically anything, really?
- jon-wood 10y ago
  I don't think this is suggesting that people would go back to conventional employment, more that they're not going to just kick back and relax for the rest of their lives. You're example of going to do something useful would still count as work to most people.
  - mjn 10y ago
    For most people I know, when they say they wish they had enough money that they didn't have to work, what they mean is that they wish they had enough money to escape the wage-labor relationship with an employer.
    - gvurrdon 10y ago
      Indeed. There are plenty of things I could be doing, such as writing books or teaching martial arts, but there's not enough money in these activities to pay for food and accommodation.
  - friendly_chap 10y ago
    I see. I think the two are really not the same. One is essentially total freedom, the other (conventional employment) is on a scale of 'do as you are told' - 'you 've got some say in how things are being run'.
    - branchless 10y ago
      Freedom in capitalism is financial independence. Yet most will never be free. Isn't that a failure? We can do whatever we want! Oh but we can't afford it.
- michaelt 10y ago
  If you launch an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids, you'll realise you need a legal structure (company, nonprofit, whatever) and some employees. You want to control what's done with your money, and the structure needs a director/ceo/chairperson, so that should probably be you - right? Congratulations, you now have a job and you belong to the ranks of "millionaires who didn't quit working for long" :)
- TACIXAT 10y ago
  I have a similar (possible) goal when I hit financial independence. I would love to run a non-profit that helps level out diversity in tech by teaching kids how to use a computer, program, and hack. I was very lucky to grow up with my own computer in my room.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  > However, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time It's also a blocked opportunity for someone else. For every millionaire who clings on to his senior executive job even though he doesn't need to, there's a non-millionaire who is not getting that senior executive promotion this year.
ktRolster 10y ago
I wish the article quoted statistics on how many rich people actually quit (and I mean really rich, not $5million, which isn't really enough to retire comfortable for life these days).
- arithma 10y ago
  Some people don't make that over a lifetime. Problem kicks in when person switches lifestyle gear all the way up and spends it all in 5 years. $200K * 20 years...
- adrianN 10y ago
  that would be enough for me. depends on your comfortlevel.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    It would be enough for vast majority of people, but the problem is that if you suddenly get $5M, be it through inheritance or lottery or any sort of "sudden enrichment event", most people just go and spend it all in few years. There's a huge temptation to buy your way into a higher social bracket, but it only works if you have an income matching that bracket, otherwise that pot of money is going to run out sooner or later.
    - k__ 10y ago
      Haha, yes. There was a TV show once, that interviewed rich people. Some lottery winners, some who made company money, etc. One of the lottery winners made 2m and started his own business, some car workshop stuff and went bankrupt 2 years later. A couple made ... I don't now >10m and the first time they visited them, they told that they will keep working in their normal jobs because they like them. Half a year later, when they got interviewed, they both quit their jobs and were building a house and the guy was always talking about that he fears it wouldn't get big enough. One guy made big money by renting out building equipment, he had a big nice house which he let build completely to his wishes, but lost everything to bad investment. They even visited his old house and the new owner let the camera team in. The new owner also said, if he would get rich again, he would sell him his house back, which I found kinda nice. But I always have the feeling that people who got rich are simply lucky, even if they didn't get it through the lottery. So he probably knew that guy wouldn't get rich in this life again.
warcode 10y ago
Clearly Keith does not play video games.
- abrookewood 10y ago
  Have to agree .. I'm looking at my Steam back catalogue wondering how I'm ever going to find the time to play everything .. And it's almost time for another Xmas sale!
  - busterarm 10y ago
    I'm north of 550, about half unplayed at this point. After a grueling year of work ending in a layoff in 2007, I took a full year off in 2008. Played a lot of games, but also watched 4 films a day, became competent with several instruments, read a lot and started myself on the path to changing careers. I have a stack of technical books on topics I'm deeply interested in that I don't have time to read. At this point, I see work as a major impediment to doing what I want with my life. It's a problem that I desperately want to solve, but I don't really have hope for a solution. I'm on the low-end of developer salaries.
    - abrookewood 10y ago
      Well, you managed to take a year off work which is pretty impressive! I've never had a year off and don't expect to until I retire :( You could always try remote work + moving to a cheaper country. Alternatively, if you can make money doing something you enjoy, it won't really feel like work.
      - busterarm 10y ago
        I worked remotely for 5 years and that's how I managed to "level up" and change careers. The kind of stuff I want to focus on now though requires deep, focussed effort over an extended period of time. I enjoy what I do but not as much as what I could be doing, if that makes sense.
known 10y ago
aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
madaxe_again 10y ago
So, I'm only six months in the wilderness, and hindsight may well prove me naive, but I never want to sit behind a desk again. I left the business I founded 11 years ago 6 months ago - not because it was failing - they go from strength to strength - but rather because it was making me miserable - the fun freewheeling startup completely metamorphosed into a serious organisation complete with office politics and all the rest. I cashed out for a relatively meagre sum - halved my net worth in the process, which now sits at about £1m 40:60 cash:assets. I'm 33. I plan to see every nook and cranny of the world and to take my time about it - bought an old Land Rover, driving everywhere. A big part of the reason I left was identity. I had come to realise that my company was my identity, my life, my entire existence, and that I had remoulded myself continually to embody the company as it morphed and grew. Eventually I could no longer identify myself within the layers of inherited identity, and had lost all passion for the things that once drove me. I was CTO, not human, not alive. Since leaving I'm slowly remembering life - despite having had time off over the last decade, there was only one one month period five years ago when I was uncontactable - other holidays were consumed by me staring at my phone and muttering curses as I'd hammer out emails. It's going to take years to shed the burden, but already after six months I find myself slowly becoming less neurotic, less anxious, although I still have nightmares every night like clockwork. The capital I have is not enough to retire on in the uk, but it is enough to retire in many other parts of the world. Then again, I've always been pathologicallly lazy, and status has always been no more than a game to me, and I derive my identity (well, I did before I drowned it) very idiopathically, so perhaps I am an oddity rather than the norm. This has ended up a ramble. I suppose my gist is that I currently believe it better to derive identity from something other than a manufactured corporate persona, or a job role. I just smile and say I'm unemployed.
- kagamine 10y ago
  Well done on buying an old Land Rover, and welcome to the club. The satisfaction I get from the upkeep and tinkering with mine is at least as great as the satisfaction I get from work. Honestly, if I never had to work there would another Land Rover and full rebuild. And I'd get to work on those side projects if I had the time. I could be very productive if I wasn't having to earn a living.
kefka 10y ago
Hmm. This seems like a pretty textbook case of Stockholm syndrome, if applied to society and expectations. Do they have to work? Nope. If they live leaner, they needen't work another day in the rest of their lives. If they have hobbies, they can master those instead. They could be the best at them. But instead, "society" says they have to work to have a worth. That's puritanical garbage that we need to nip at the bud. We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
- morgante 10y ago
  Or maybe some people actually enjoy their work and find it fulfilling.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Of course you're going to find someone who wants to work. In those cases, the money is second to the actual stuff being done. It's most likely a hobby or something that they enjoy greatly, and probably would do for free. Most people aren't like that. Their hobbies don't coincide with "acceptable business practices". And frankly, awesome. There's plenty of things to do that are enriching for all, and that have no discernible business value. As for me, I wouldn't do the job I currently do now (systems engineer for a network operations). I'd much rather work in research and development discovering new things, or new ways to do things. I already do that in my spare time. But making money in my position is required, so I do things to survive, and fill in time of my hobbies. That would change, and bloody quick if I ever ran across fuck-you money.
    - omginternets 10y ago
      So then you would work ... you'd just do a different kind of work. Most of us are the same way. I think this is ultimately the point being made.
      - kefka 10y ago
petercooper 10y ago
I could perhaps sell my company for a retire-able amount in a few years but I'd just move on to another business anyway.. so why not instead develop my staff to run the current business independently of me, so I can do whatever I want anyway, but still own something for the long term? I'd be interested to hear from entrepreneurs who've wrestled with this one and came down on one side or the other :-)
- devoply 10y ago
  Why because even then business needs managing. It's not going to manage itself. Even if you have a staff trained to try to take care of business, they will fail, and fail often enough that you have to intervene or your business will be out of business in a year. People are difficult. Really difficult. And outside of that the market is difficult, really difficult. It's always changing, and you have to change your company to adapt or it will die.
  - padobson 10y ago
    One of the best measures of quality of a company is how well it does after its founder dies/leaves. If your company can't run without you, you weren't building a company, you were building a job.
    - kross 10y ago
      Agreed. But this doesn't mean you won't feel compelled to intervene and add value in difficult situations. I chose to cash out instead of continuing with the heavy burden of risking my net worth every day due to this. How is my old company doing? Fantastic, exactly because I focused on building a company and not a job. This is just to say that these two comments aren't mutually exclusive.
shubhamjain 10y ago
Longing for FU money sounds just like "getting a job where I have nothing to do" (maybe, slightly better). The idea of just idling all day, browsing your favorite sites seems so amazing, but when you do get that you realise the fulfilling-work imperative [1]. What you do everyday might be drudgery but it's more so when you have nothing on your todo list. Getting rich might help you in having comforts without monetary considerations, and have more time with things you enjoy. All of it won't subdue the need to fulfilling work. While I can imagine some people who would happily spend all the riches on exorbitant possessions, the people who have a higher probability of making that amount of money might not have propensity to spend their lives in that manner. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/jobs/bored-to-tears-by-a-do-nothing-dream-job.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/jobs/bored-to-tears-by-a-d...
- branchless 10y ago
  He could learn to paint! This isn't about idling, constrained by pretending to work.
- arghIdontwantto 10y ago
  If I didn't have to work, I would up my tennis time from 10 to 20 hours a week, boxing from 0 to 10, Go from 1-2 to probably 10 as well. That alone would give me about a 40 hour week. This is the time my kid spends in school, give or take per week, so it wouldn't change my family time, but I'm betting I would be much more fun to be around me after days like these than after 8 hours of development work. (ps: this is what I try to do at least one week a year, I take time off from work while my kid is in school and do this) I don't care about 'fulfilling' work, money, things. I love being physically active and improving in my hobbies.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Longing for FU money sounds just like "getting a job where I have nothing to do" (maybe, slightly better). The idea of just idling all day, browsing your favorite sites seems so amazing, but when you do get that you realise the fulfilling-work imperative [1]. Or you need better hobbies and job substitutes than "idling all day, browsing your favorite sites"...
branchless 10y ago
Sounds like Keith needs a personality transplant. Loss of status! Learn to play an instrument. Read Zola. Leave the uk!
geff82 10y ago
If I got rich, I would do the following: try to work "as I want". That means: shorter days in my most active time (like 10-4pm), go on vacation with my family often (in a rhythm of 6 weeks work - 2 weeks vacation). I think, for me the main point of being rich is not to work no more - but to know I don't have to. Maybe I would even work better then with that peace of mind.
- kross 10y ago
  This is almost exactly what I have done. I took enough time off to accept the change, lose the working habit, and shed the rest of that identity. I came to find I love working in tech. Sometimes I work long hours when I'm enjoying the problem solving struggle, sometimes I just take off and go racing. To each his own.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
necessity 10y ago
Why was this removed?
chiefalchemist 10y ago
Re: “I just felt unhappy at the lack of structure and not knowing what my purpose in life was. My skills were deteriorating and I was finding it difficult to interact with other people intellectually,” says Keith, now in his mid-thirties. “There’s a higher reason why we all go to work.” So as automation / AI creates a larger and larger class of the permanently unemployed, what does this statement mean to them? And to us (i.e., fellow citizens, unemployed or not). This was THE BIGGEST issue of the election that never was. We're extremely unprepared. Again.
- GFischer 10y ago
  One huge substitute is games: I know several permanently unemployed people who while away all the time on online games - there are some really addictive ones out there, the ones I know are hooked on League of Legends or DOTA or other games with e-sports, which give a substitute feeling of achievement (and it can be a real one if they get to the pro scene). It's a huge problem in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori And in other countries (not as big in mine, but it's growing): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET
n00b101 10y ago
"I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine." (John Adam, 1780)
rdlecler1 10y ago
If most smart and educated people in the west work, then quitting that world effectively cuts you off from those interactions. Think bout if you'd rather have every Saturday off or every Wednesday? First and foremost we're social creatures and we do what it takes to stay involved within a social society.
paulcole 10y ago
I stopped working for 2 years in my mid-20s (by choice) and only started again when I was running low on money. If I was rich, "working" would never be on my mind. Run, bike, hike, camp, cook, read, walk, have coffee, relax, etc.
- kylebenzle 10y ago
  I would never be going through the hell of getting a pH.d without the end goal being to find "work". I'd still be interested in the same stuff, but never would have had the motivation to drive down to this level of detail on my own.
- bambax 10y ago
  Of course. That's what people do when they retire, they don't "do" nothing, but they don't "work" either. But it's possible there's a sample bias; people who get rich are the kind of people who can't stop working, even if/when they can. Other people would totally stop working if they got rich but it's hard to prove, because they never do get rich.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
    Totally agreed. I know a few people who (financially) don't need to work for a living but still do, a couple of them regularly putting in 12 hour days 6 days per week. Of course, that's how they got "rich" in the first place. In their case, making a lot of money was a pleasant side effect of their preexisting strong work ethic, not the driving force. (...and don't get me wrong, these guys also play hard when they're not working)
    - jazzyk 10y ago
      "regularly putting in 12 hour days 6 days per week" "Play hard" after 72 hours of working? They must be super-human. What about, you know, er, human contact? Like spending time with your family and friends?
      - 10y ago
greggman 10y ago
For me it would really depend on how rich and what you define as work. There are lots of projects I would like to fund, supervise, produce, etc that with 10s of millions in the bank I would. I think I'd end up pretty busy.
coldtea 10y ago
>He stayed on at first, but soon stopped working. He spent a year travelling and spending money on “frivolous things” but found it difficult to enjoy his life, he says. That's because he didn't have the right personality and nothing prepared him for it. Others have absolutely no problem not going back to the routine -- and can find any number of small personal projects and hobbies to keep them occupied. Of course nobody just sits on a beach old day, because it gets boring in itself. But there are tons of other endeavours to try that are not work.
- serg_chernata 10y ago
  Of course, I think none of us really know till it happens. However, I agree. I'm constantly coming up with new projects, ideas and activities for myself. At this time I am convinced that I would not be bored never having to work a formal job ever again in my life. I would assume that is true for many HNers.
  - stult 10y ago
    Yeah, and then one of those hobbies becomes essentially full-time, and then you realize it has some marketable value, then next thing you know you're running a start up, completing the cycle of never-not-working-for-long.
    - jaggederest 10y ago
      What's the difference between a job and a hobby? The answer is, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation.
      - user5994461 10y ago
        I thought the difference was being paid.
      - tedmiston 10y ago
        (sustainable) profit
poilkjmnb 10y ago
Unless you like hanging out with stay at home moms, there's nobody around during the day. Might as well go to the office and work with interesting people and have somebody to go to lunch with.
ohstopitu 10y ago
if i had so much money that I'd never have to work again, I'd probably do the following: 1. quit my day job and travel the world (and I mean all over - south america, middle east and so on). 2. get a couple of houses (one for my parents, and another for me) 3. start contributing back to the community (If i get that kind of money, It's probably because I would have IPOd or sold my business - in which case, I would love to work on open source - no strings attached - MIT). 4. buy a few toys (cars and what not) that I've always wanted. 5. leave the rest for my kids/family/future.
jetti 10y ago
I've thought about this a lot, though I'm not planning on getting that kind of money any time soon. My plan would be to invest a lot of the money and then go back to school. I'd get a couple more master degrees as well as try for a PhD. I love learning and not having debt would make it better. On top of that, I would work freelance/consulting as a developer. I love programming and that is what makes me happy so I wouldn't want to stop doing that.
ryandrake 10y ago
This is an article about one person, Keith from Silicon Valley, whose personal story the author tries to extrapolate (through a few cherry-picked quotes) and apply to society as a whole, to fit a puritanical "employment gives you purpose" narrative: a narrative which mostly serves the interests of employers. I wouldn't read too much into it.
- jasode 10y ago
  No, your TLDR is not accurate. You're getting mislead by the common journalistic technique of adding a "human interest" angle to a story. However, the "outer wrapper" is not the main story nor is it the TLDR. Instead of journalists just presenting it like this: <main story about research or science> , they (or their editors) end up structuring articles like this: <human-interest as color prologue> <main story about research or science> <human-interest as color epilogue> Yes, the "<human-interest>" is Keith[2], but the main story is not about Keith. It's mostly a story built around Jamie Traeger-Muney[3] and her observations. There are also other observations from Timothy Judge's meta-analysis and professor Brooke Harrington. I do concede that if your only takeaway was "Keith's story", it's possible that imprint was deliberate by the editors. (In other words, they know that psychologically, most audiences will remember a character's struggles and triumphs more than the abstract facts & figures.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interest_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interest_story [2] and also mentions Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Karen Gorden [3] http://www.wealthlegacygroup.net/wlg-about/documentation/jamie-traeger-muney http://www.wealthlegacygroup.net/wlg-about/documentation/jam...
  - nacho2sweet 10y ago
    LMAO at this community and using wrapper tags to debate someones argument.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      considering that the average reader of this message board is XML literate, it's a fairly effective technique.
jlebrech 10y ago
and even if you're a billionaire on paper you have to manage those investment so that they cash out at the right moment. you can't just quit doing everything. at that level it's a reverse debt where you (or pay someone to) have to chase everyone for money
jlebrech 10y ago
if you get rich doing something you like, why not just start another venture with something you actually love.
codeddesign 10y ago
I believe this is a case where words don't reflect actual emotions. Many work because they have to in order to survive. However, when you know longer need to work it becomes a "hobby" in which you enjoy rather than an essential. You have your pick of what you want to do and how you want to do it. Completely different mentalities that the word "work" doesn't completely convey.
norea-armozel 10y ago
I think I'd be surprisingly busy and happy if I was financially free of 9-to-5 work. Especially considering that my biggest hurdles to my own personal happiness are naturally expensive (gender transition isn't cheap). Having those things covered on top of not worrying about my rent would take a load off my mind. It would mean I could look at doing work that feels meaningful to me. Maybe I would go back to college and get a degree in physics and maybe try to do research. Or maybe I'd continue with my work in programming but do it for a non-profit on a smaller salary. In any case, I would be freed up from chasing career choices if I knew the bare minimum was assured. That and I would probably try to explore the world because I've literally never left the country not even to go be an annoying tourist (like most) in Paris. It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is like before I die.
kmonsen 10y ago
I would still work, but probably not at the same job I have now (which is also my early retirement plan, I will still work just less and in a more relaxed environment).
kensai 10y ago
Let me be filthy rich overnight and I promise I will give the article some thought! :p
solatic 10y ago
You can generally stratify most people into one of two categories: the work-to-live types, and the live-to-work types. The work-to-live types generally tend to pursue careers involving working for some employer paying them salary plus benefits. With a few exceptions (the early employees of some of the bigger IPO successes), these people will mostly go on to earn middle-class or upper-middle-class incomes and live lifestyles in line with their income. Very few will ever come across life-changing sums of money. Then you have the live-to-work types. Of course not all such people will become rich, but if you were to look at successful entrepreneurs, it'll be a long hard search before you find one who leaves the office every day at 5:00 PM on the dot to go home and loaf on the couch watching the game. These are the people who, if they are successful at building their company (and that is, of course, a huge if), will be able to walk away from the IPO with a fortune. So why is it surprising in the slightest that the live-to-work types can't rest on their laurels?
- johnward 10y ago
  There's a group in between that slave away at their corporate job for 60+ hours a week. I don't know what to call them. They are basically doing the worst of both worlds.
  - jonas21 10y ago
    ...or the best of both worlds. There are corporate jobs in tech where you can spend almost all of your time working on the things you enjoy (say research, product development, or solving hard technical problems) while letting others take care of the things you don't. You don't really have that option if you're an entrepreneur. And the fact that you can get a salary that places you in the upper-middle class is an added benefit.
    - johnward 10y ago
      A remember the stories of people receiving paycheck and not having to report to anyone. I'm on the consulting side so I often forget there are people who don't track every second of their day and get scrutinized for merely working 40 hours.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I have known perhaps a hundred people go through this process. When Sun went public it made a bunch of people "rich"[1], when Sun released Java and the stock split 8 times and climbed over $100 it made still more people rich, when NetApp stock crossed a $100/share in the dot com days still more people crossed into that line of not having to work any more. The total number of people is going to be higher than that. Some stop working, some continue working, and some decide to get together and create a startup incubator :-). Pretty much everyone I know that has gone through that process though are engineers. And engineers got to be engineers because they had a passion for building things or solving problems. Many people who have been engineers for a few years also realize that a group of talented engineers can solve bigger problems as a collective than any single engineer can. So the thing that really gives you satisfaction, solving some huge problem, can be best accomplished on a team. There are three ways you can do that, you can work on a volunteer basis, you can start a company, or you can join an existing company. I've been playing around with some ideas around an experimental fourth way but so far have not found the right balance for that. [1] Rich is such a subjective term but we'll use the article definition of having enough savings to never work again.
- kennethologist 10y ago
  Can you share more info/insight on the fourth way you've been playing around with?
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    Its something along the lines of a collective. Trying to capture the feeling/environment of PARC. At its simplest everyone pitches in to cover facilities costs and shared healthcare under enough legal cover that it can be considered a "business" but entirely employee owned. Oddly the challenge can be where do excess profits go. (I have to presume that some of the projects the group or subgroups work on would achieve a modicum of income or value) trying to have a plan for that.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      This collective style has been particularly popular amongst independent coffee roasters in recent years. See, for example, The Pulley Collective in Brooklyn [1]. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/dining/a-collective-lets-small-coffee-shops-roast-their-own.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/dining/a-collective-lets-s...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tedmiston 10y ago
> When Keith, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, worked at a technology company that went public, he became rich overnight. Where overnight is defined as 5+ years building up the value of the company so the equity is worth something. Reminds me of the Mark Cuban quote: "It doesn't matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success."
stupidcar 10y ago
Am I the only one who would go back to university and take a variety of degrees if they got rich? It would give you structure and deadlines, but without a 9-5 grind. Give you an active social life. Give as much, or more, of an intellectual challenge as a job. And since you'd be rich, you wouldn't have the same money worries and pressure to achieve that other students have, and unlike a job, the only person you can really let down is yourself.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  When I was a young lawyer, one of our senior partners did just this as he faded into retirement. He audited nearly 4 years worth of coursework, mostly in philosophy and mathematics.
- FreedomToCreate 10y ago
  My Grandfather has been doing this with Coursera for the last 3 years. He has pretty much completed every available course in economics and finance.
- tbihl 10y ago
  I guess my goal is a version of this: all my textbooks are sitting on a shelf outside my bedroom, and I want to get back into them until I feel I've mastered them. I wasted university with that idiotic determination of "look how little work I can get by with", which of course is also "look how little I can know while still surviving," an idiotic goal if ever there were one. My job will probably be 60 hours/wk for the next year, then up in the 65-80/wk range for the following three years, but after that, I'll be back down to 40 or even fewer. And I'm going to take advantage of all that free time a lot better on the second go. Who knows where I'll go from there. Realistically, my wife and I could get along perfectly well on her working part time, and in medicine that's not too hard an arrangement to get. Neither of us particularly trust the economy on its current (last 70 years) trajectory, so we'll probably aim to put ourselves in a partial homesteading setup closer to home in the next ten or so years. Wow, I don't know where that went. TL;DR -- I want to read my textbooks and start gardening.
  - 10y ago
stupidcar 10y ago
Am I the only one who would go back to university and take a variety of degrees if they got rich? It would give you structure and deadlines, but without a 9-5 grind. Give you an active social life. Give as much, or more, of an intellectual challenge than a job. And since you'd already be rich, you wouldn't have the same money worries and pressure to achieve that other students have, and unlike a job, the only person you can really let down is yourself.
gloriousduke 10y ago
Sometimes I feel like work is the meaning life. From a certain (simplified/badly poetic) view, living existence exists just to, and because it can, battle against the 2nd Law of Thermondynamics, and that sort of just trickles all the way up to our complex social existence. If you're only increasing entropy by hanging out and resting on your laurels (again, simplified), rather than making/creating, you're sort of waste from the aforementioned perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life
throwaway2016a 10y ago
Sounds like it is about 50:50 here for people who would go back to work and people who think it's nuts. My personal plan incase anyone cares: 1. Take a lot of time to take care of things I've neglected like my health. Honestly, I would be working out a hour a day and trying out lots of new recipes. 2. Once I'm in the best shape of my life. Take my family someplace nice for vacation so I can show off my new beach body ;) joking, about the beach body part not the vacation 3. Start turning my side project ideas into actionable ideas.
geophile 10y ago
After 25 years in startups, with several of them paying out, I was able to retire at 55, so I did. I still love writing software, but I got tired of: not having a life, due to insane startup schedules; the stress of startups; working for idiots, (partly this is because we hired idiots, but also because my tolerance for idiocy has vanished). I have more time for family and friends. I can tinker with new ideas in software, and eventually find new projects to work on, (I have one now). I have started teaching again, on and off. I get to sleep late, go out more, both at night and on vacations. However, I have done less than I thought I would, and honestly, I am sometimes bored. However, I absolutely will not work again if I don't have to. Why? Because going to work for someone else is an admission that I don't know what the hell to do with myself, so I might as well fill my time sacrificing my precious time for someone else's dream. No thanks. Not only does that re-introduce the problems mentioned above, but it masks the real problem of not knowing what I really want to do. Also, I'm really tired of the startup life. Charismatic startup founders who use their charm to extract what they need from you, VC lemmings, "this is the most important release ever", open floor plans, ...
- blueatlas 10y ago
  Have you considered investing in or coaching a startup to guide them through (around) what you found so frustrating? It seems like that would be quite valuable to a young startup and would have a level of satisfaction for you ("I helped these kids avoid VC lemmings and other idiots").
  - geophile 10y ago
    I've considered and rejected the idea of investing. Coaching is an interesting idea. Any recommendations on how to get started?
    - dyim 10y ago
      Reach out to people who leave email addresses in their HN profiles! :)
    - postscapes1 10y ago
gnicholas 10y ago
I'm surprised more folks aren't mentioning spending time to raise kids. If my startup were suddenly acquired, I'd certainly spend a lot more time with mine. This would be partly to educate and enrich them, and partly to support my wife's career (pre-tenure professor at demanding institution). I'd probably pursue side projects and go back to working full-time at some point, but I'd spend the bulk of my time working/playing/volunteering/traveling with my kids.
zem 10y ago
interesting. i like to think that i would quit my job and just work on open source projects, but the article makes some good points about not being really challenged to work past the bits that aren't fun and easy without some external motivator.
elorant 10y ago
I don't know about working but no matter how much money I/will have I'll always write code. Even if it is for solving trivialities in my everyday life with no hope of commercializing them.
iUsedToCode 10y ago
I retired at 25 due to startup and some inheritance. Being free all the time can be depressing and i began to look for challenges. It's not so easy if you don't "need" to go through all the bullshit and hard work that gives you results in the long run. So now i'm focused on social issues. Fixing small social problem arising due to bad laws with a bit of automation. I'm on my second startup (or rather NGO) in that area and it brings me a lot of satisfaction. But not having to do stuff can be sometimes as hard as having to do stuff.
imgabe 10y ago
The argument is that money is uncorrelated to "job-satisfaction" which is believable, but using that to somehow conclude that you'd keep chasing "job-satisfaction" after no longer needing a job doesn't make any sense. Of course there are plenty of other things that can make a well-paying job unpleasant. But the very idea of "job-satisfaction" presupposes a job in the first place. Why would anyone who didn't need a job care about how satisfying a particular job is? There are many ways to achieve a sense of self-worth besides grinding away in a cubicle to make someone else rich.
- btkramer9 10y ago
  > There are many ways to achieve a sense of self-worth besides grinding away in a cubicle to make someone else rich. I kind of read it that many people don't know of any other way to achieve a sense of self worth. They've worked for so long and it has become such a big part of their identity that they don't know what else to do with their time.
throwaway43564 10y ago
I can add a different take -- I inherited a big chunk of assets a number of years ago. As opposed to a lot of tech cashouts, this included a family company, commercial office space and an investment portfolio. A big difference between myself and others in the thread is that I've had a lot of exposure to, and interest in, asset management. I stayed with my corporate job for about a year, but ultimately the effort of playing board member to the family company and making informed investment decisions about the rest clashed with amount of work they wanted from me as I kept rising at my corporate job. When I told them I was leaving, they offered me a big raise and to double the team under me. I countered by asking for part-time and, if they wanted, a smaller team or none at all. Ultimately that didn't work for them, they needed a creative and driven manager, not a good but expensive individual contributor. Like a lot of people, I took the next year off, convinced my girlfriend to quit her job too and we traveled. But I'm back to work these days, not a in normal job though -- I really think of myself as a full time investor. I think there's a big thing people miss in this situation is that they can't see the forest for the trees. You have so many opportunities to create jobs, create products, create places to live, or drive charitable change when you have a lot of assets. Why work 2000+ hours per year in a normal job just to add a drop in the bucket? There's a lot of spilled ink in the linked article and elsewhere talking about, roughly, Maslow's theory of self-actualization and how you can get there doing your old job or similar. Jeez, you finally got to the pot of gold and now you're out of ideas? Swing for the fences, or at least, try and hit a few singles. And the best part is you can spend 8 or 80 hours a week doing it, you're in charge after all. Me? I'm going Warren Buffet style from here on out. Sure I doubt I'll ever be a famous investor, but I'd love to take the amount I have and turn it into a lot more. My long term goal is to shore up the future generation in my family before I give the rest away. I think the happiness maximizing amount of work for each person varies, but for me I know it's more than zero.
mianos 10y ago
Same for me. I retired at 42. Once I spent the first few years with my new daughter the misses got sick of me having too much fun at home and kicked me back to work after just over four years of retirement. The only difference between now and then is my tolerance of fools. I have been working for start-ups as a senior engineer and like work as much as ever. People do treat you quite differently if they have no strings attached to you. Mainly pros, some cons.
hayd 10y ago
Alternatively: he's depressed but work provides sufficient distraction.

203 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

Why would anyone be surprised? Most people who strike it rich weren't working for the money anyway, so their incentives aren't going away. The question is whether (and how much) money will make the prospect of spending it instead of working for the rest of their lives more attractive than what made them work (presumably hard) in the first place...

misotaur 10y ago

Very interesting,I wonder how would this tie into a possible basic income scenario?Or the incentives of rich people are different from the average Joe`s?

abrookewood 10y ago
Well, the wealthiest people I know are all very motivated. I'm not surprised that they don't stop working completely.

friendly_chap 10y ago

Is this a feel good piece for the working class? Don't get me wrong - I have no experience with getting rich overnight (not that I'm not trying). However, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time - I have loads of plans which would make the world a better place, for example: launching an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids in the poor area where I'm from. I only need maybe 1 or 2 millions to do that. Why would I go back to working for a company where I have way less power to change basically anything, really?

jon-wood 10y ago
I don't think this is suggesting that people would go back to conventional employment, more that they're not going to just kick back and relax for the rest of their lives. You're example of going to do something useful would still count as work to most people.
- mjn 10y ago
  For most people I know, when they say they wish they had enough money that they didn't have to work, what they mean is that they wish they had enough money to escape the wage-labor relationship with an employer.
  - gvurrdon 10y ago
    Indeed. There are plenty of things I could be doing, such as writing books or teaching martial arts, but there's not enough money in these activities to pay for food and accommodation.
- friendly_chap 10y ago
  I see. I think the two are really not the same. One is essentially total freedom, the other (conventional employment) is on a scale of 'do as you are told' - 'you 've got some say in how things are being run'.
  - branchless 10y ago
    Freedom in capitalism is financial independence. Yet most will never be free. Isn't that a failure? We can do whatever we want! Oh but we can't afford it.
michaelt 10y ago
If you launch an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids, you'll realise you need a legal structure (company, nonprofit, whatever) and some employees. You want to control what's done with your money, and the structure needs a director/ceo/chairperson, so that should probably be you - right? Congratulations, you now have a job and you belong to the ranks of "millionaires who didn't quit working for long" :)
TACIXAT 10y ago
I have a similar (possible) goal when I hit financial independence. I would love to run a non-profit that helps level out diversity in tech by teaching kids how to use a computer, program, and hack. I was very lucky to grow up with my own computer in my room.
ryandrake 10y ago
> However, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time It's also a blocked opportunity for someone else. For every millionaire who clings on to his senior executive job even though he doesn't need to, there's a non-millionaire who is not getting that senior executive promotion this year.

ktRolster 10y ago

I wish the article quoted statistics on how many rich people actually quit (and I mean really rich, not $5million, which isn't really enough to retire comfortable for life these days).

arithma 10y ago
Some people don't make that over a lifetime. Problem kicks in when person switches lifestyle gear all the way up and spends it all in 5 years. $200K * 20 years...
adrianN 10y ago
that would be enough for me. depends on your comfortlevel.
- gambiting 10y ago
  It would be enough for vast majority of people, but the problem is that if you suddenly get $5M, be it through inheritance or lottery or any sort of "sudden enrichment event", most people just go and spend it all in few years. There's a huge temptation to buy your way into a higher social bracket, but it only works if you have an income matching that bracket, otherwise that pot of money is going to run out sooner or later.
  - k__ 10y ago
    Haha, yes. There was a TV show once, that interviewed rich people. Some lottery winners, some who made company money, etc. One of the lottery winners made 2m and started his own business, some car workshop stuff and went bankrupt 2 years later. A couple made ... I don't now >10m and the first time they visited them, they told that they will keep working in their normal jobs because they like them. Half a year later, when they got interviewed, they both quit their jobs and were building a house and the guy was always talking about that he fears it wouldn't get big enough. One guy made big money by renting out building equipment, he had a big nice house which he let build completely to his wishes, but lost everything to bad investment. They even visited his old house and the new owner let the camera team in. The new owner also said, if he would get rich again, he would sell him his house back, which I found kinda nice. But I always have the feeling that people who got rich are simply lucky, even if they didn't get it through the lottery. So he probably knew that guy wouldn't get rich in this life again.

warcode 10y ago

Clearly Keith does not play video games.

abrookewood 10y ago
Have to agree .. I'm looking at my Steam back catalogue wondering how I'm ever going to find the time to play everything .. And it's almost time for another Xmas sale!
- busterarm 10y ago
  I'm north of 550, about half unplayed at this point. After a grueling year of work ending in a layoff in 2007, I took a full year off in 2008. Played a lot of games, but also watched 4 films a day, became competent with several instruments, read a lot and started myself on the path to changing careers. I have a stack of technical books on topics I'm deeply interested in that I don't have time to read. At this point, I see work as a major impediment to doing what I want with my life. It's a problem that I desperately want to solve, but I don't really have hope for a solution. I'm on the low-end of developer salaries.
  - abrookewood 10y ago
    Well, you managed to take a year off work which is pretty impressive! I've never had a year off and don't expect to until I retire :( You could always try remote work + moving to a cheaper country. Alternatively, if you can make money doing something you enjoy, it won't really feel like work.
    - busterarm 10y ago
      I worked remotely for 5 years and that's how I managed to "level up" and change careers. The kind of stuff I want to focus on now though requires deep, focussed effort over an extended period of time. I enjoy what I do but not as much as what I could be doing, if that makes sense.

known 10y ago

aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

madaxe_again 10y ago

So, I'm only six months in the wilderness, and hindsight may well prove me naive, but I never want to sit behind a desk again. I left the business I founded 11 years ago 6 months ago - not because it was failing - they go from strength to strength - but rather because it was making me miserable - the fun freewheeling startup completely metamorphosed into a serious organisation complete with office politics and all the rest. I cashed out for a relatively meagre sum - halved my net worth in the process, which now sits at about £1m 40:60 cash:assets. I'm 33. I plan to see every nook and cranny of the world and to take my time about it - bought an old Land Rover, driving everywhere. A big part of the reason I left was identity. I had come to realise that my company was my identity, my life, my entire existence, and that I had remoulded myself continually to embody the company as it morphed and grew. Eventually I could no longer identify myself within the layers of inherited identity, and had lost all passion for the things that once drove me. I was CTO, not human, not alive. Since leaving I'm slowly remembering life - despite having had time off over the last decade, there was only one one month period five years ago when I was uncontactable - other holidays were consumed by me staring at my phone and muttering curses as I'd hammer out emails. It's going to take years to shed the burden, but already after six months I find myself slowly becoming less neurotic, less anxious, although I still have nightmares every night like clockwork. The capital I have is not enough to retire on in the uk, but it is enough to retire in many other parts of the world. Then again, I've always been pathologicallly lazy, and status has always been no more than a game to me, and I derive my identity (well, I did before I drowned it) very idiopathically, so perhaps I am an oddity rather than the norm. This has ended up a ramble. I suppose my gist is that I currently believe it better to derive identity from something other than a manufactured corporate persona, or a job role. I just smile and say I'm unemployed.

kagamine 10y ago
Well done on buying an old Land Rover, and welcome to the club. The satisfaction I get from the upkeep and tinkering with mine is at least as great as the satisfaction I get from work. Honestly, if I never had to work there would another Land Rover and full rebuild. And I'd get to work on those side projects if I had the time. I could be very productive if I wasn't having to earn a living.

kefka 10y ago

Hmm. This seems like a pretty textbook case of Stockholm syndrome, if applied to society and expectations. Do they have to work? Nope. If they live leaner, they needen't work another day in the rest of their lives. If they have hobbies, they can master those instead. They could be the best at them. But instead, "society" says they have to work to have a worth. That's puritanical garbage that we need to nip at the bud. We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.

morgante 10y ago
Or maybe some people actually enjoy their work and find it fulfilling.
- kefka 10y ago
  Of course you're going to find someone who wants to work. In those cases, the money is second to the actual stuff being done. It's most likely a hobby or something that they enjoy greatly, and probably would do for free. Most people aren't like that. Their hobbies don't coincide with "acceptable business practices". And frankly, awesome. There's plenty of things to do that are enriching for all, and that have no discernible business value. As for me, I wouldn't do the job I currently do now (systems engineer for a network operations). I'd much rather work in research and development discovering new things, or new ways to do things. I already do that in my spare time. But making money in my position is required, so I do things to survive, and fill in time of my hobbies. That would change, and bloody quick if I ever ran across fuck-you money.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    So then you would work ... you'd just do a different kind of work. Most of us are the same way. I think this is ultimately the point being made.
    - kefka 10y ago

petercooper 10y ago

I could perhaps sell my company for a retire-able amount in a few years but I'd just move on to another business anyway.. so why not instead develop my staff to run the current business independently of me, so I can do whatever I want anyway, but still own something for the long term? I'd be interested to hear from entrepreneurs who've wrestled with this one and came down on one side or the other :-)

devoply 10y ago
Why because even then business needs managing. It's not going to manage itself. Even if you have a staff trained to try to take care of business, they will fail, and fail often enough that you have to intervene or your business will be out of business in a year. People are difficult. Really difficult. And outside of that the market is difficult, really difficult. It's always changing, and you have to change your company to adapt or it will die.
- padobson 10y ago
  One of the best measures of quality of a company is how well it does after its founder dies/leaves. If your company can't run without you, you weren't building a company, you were building a job.
  - kross 10y ago
    Agreed. But this doesn't mean you won't feel compelled to intervene and add value in difficult situations. I chose to cash out instead of continuing with the heavy burden of risking my net worth every day due to this. How is my old company doing? Fantastic, exactly because I focused on building a company and not a job. This is just to say that these two comments aren't mutually exclusive.

shubhamjain 10y ago

Longing for FU money sounds just like "getting a job where I have nothing to do" (maybe, slightly better). The idea of just idling all day, browsing your favorite sites seems so amazing, but when you do get that you realise the fulfilling-work imperative [1]. What you do everyday might be drudgery but it's more so when you have nothing on your todo list. Getting rich might help you in having comforts without monetary considerations, and have more time with things you enjoy. All of it won't subdue the need to fulfilling work. While I can imagine some people who would happily spend all the riches on exorbitant possessions, the people who have a higher probability of making that amount of money might not have propensity to spend their lives in that manner. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/jobs/bored-to-tears-by-a-do-nothing-dream-job.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/jobs/bored-to-tears-by-a-d...

branchless 10y ago
He could learn to paint! This isn't about idling, constrained by pretending to work.
arghIdontwantto 10y ago
If I didn't have to work, I would up my tennis time from 10 to 20 hours a week, boxing from 0 to 10, Go from 1-2 to probably 10 as well. That alone would give me about a 40 hour week. This is the time my kid spends in school, give or take per week, so it wouldn't change my family time, but I'm betting I would be much more fun to be around me after days like these than after 8 hours of development work. (ps: this is what I try to do at least one week a year, I take time off from work while my kid is in school and do this) I don't care about 'fulfilling' work, money, things. I love being physically active and improving in my hobbies.
coldtea 10y ago
>Longing for FU money sounds just like "getting a job where I have nothing to do" (maybe, slightly better). The idea of just idling all day, browsing your favorite sites seems so amazing, but when you do get that you realise the fulfilling-work imperative [1]. Or you need better hobbies and job substitutes than "idling all day, browsing your favorite sites"...

branchless 10y ago

Sounds like Keith needs a personality transplant. Loss of status! Learn to play an instrument. Read Zola. Leave the uk!

geff82 10y ago

If I got rich, I would do the following: try to work "as I want". That means: shorter days in my most active time (like 10-4pm), go on vacation with my family often (in a rhythm of 6 weeks work - 2 weeks vacation). I think, for me the main point of being rich is not to work no more - but to know I don't have to. Maybe I would even work better then with that peace of mind.

kross 10y ago
This is almost exactly what I have done. I took enough time off to accept the change, lose the working habit, and shed the rest of that identity. I came to find I love working in tech. Sometimes I work long hours when I'm enjoying the problem solving struggle, sometimes I just take off and go racing. To each his own.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

necessity 10y ago

Why was this removed?

chiefalchemist 10y ago

Re: “I just felt unhappy at the lack of structure and not knowing what my purpose in life was. My skills were deteriorating and I was finding it difficult to interact with other people intellectually,” says Keith, now in his mid-thirties. “There’s a higher reason why we all go to work.” So as automation / AI creates a larger and larger class of the permanently unemployed, what does this statement mean to them? And to us (i.e., fellow citizens, unemployed or not). This was THE BIGGEST issue of the election that never was. We're extremely unprepared. Again.

GFischer 10y ago
One huge substitute is games: I know several permanently unemployed people who while away all the time on online games - there are some really addictive ones out there, the ones I know are hooked on League of Legends or DOTA or other games with e-sports, which give a substitute feeling of achievement (and it can be a real one if they get to the pro scene). It's a huge problem in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori And in other countries (not as big in mine, but it's growing): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET

n00b101 10y ago

"I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine." (John Adam, 1780)

rdlecler1 10y ago

If most smart and educated people in the west work, then quitting that world effectively cuts you off from those interactions. Think bout if you'd rather have every Saturday off or every Wednesday? First and foremost we're social creatures and we do what it takes to stay involved within a social society.

paulcole 10y ago

I stopped working for 2 years in my mid-20s (by choice) and only started again when I was running low on money. If I was rich, "working" would never be on my mind. Run, bike, hike, camp, cook, read, walk, have coffee, relax, etc.

kylebenzle 10y ago
I would never be going through the hell of getting a pH.d without the end goal being to find "work". I'd still be interested in the same stuff, but never would have had the motivation to drive down to this level of detail on my own.
bambax 10y ago
Of course. That's what people do when they retire, they don't "do" nothing, but they don't "work" either. But it's possible there's a sample bias; people who get rich are the kind of people who can't stop working, even if/when they can. Other people would totally stop working if they got rich but it's hard to prove, because they never do get rich.
- SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
  Totally agreed. I know a few people who (financially) don't need to work for a living but still do, a couple of them regularly putting in 12 hour days 6 days per week. Of course, that's how they got "rich" in the first place. In their case, making a lot of money was a pleasant side effect of their preexisting strong work ethic, not the driving force. (...and don't get me wrong, these guys also play hard when they're not working)
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    "regularly putting in 12 hour days 6 days per week" "Play hard" after 72 hours of working? They must be super-human. What about, you know, er, human contact? Like spending time with your family and friends?
    - 10y ago

greggman 10y ago

For me it would really depend on how rich and what you define as work. There are lots of projects I would like to fund, supervise, produce, etc that with 10s of millions in the bank I would. I think I'd end up pretty busy.

coldtea 10y ago

>He stayed on at first, but soon stopped working. He spent a year travelling and spending money on “frivolous things” but found it difficult to enjoy his life, he says. That's because he didn't have the right personality and nothing prepared him for it. Others have absolutely no problem not going back to the routine -- and can find any number of small personal projects and hobbies to keep them occupied. Of course nobody just sits on a beach old day, because it gets boring in itself. But there are tons of other endeavours to try that are not work.

serg_chernata 10y ago
Of course, I think none of us really know till it happens. However, I agree. I'm constantly coming up with new projects, ideas and activities for myself. At this time I am convinced that I would not be bored never having to work a formal job ever again in my life. I would assume that is true for many HNers.
- stult 10y ago
  Yeah, and then one of those hobbies becomes essentially full-time, and then you realize it has some marketable value, then next thing you know you're running a start up, completing the cycle of never-not-working-for-long.
  - jaggederest 10y ago
    What's the difference between a job and a hobby? The answer is, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      I thought the difference was being paid.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      (sustainable) profit

poilkjmnb 10y ago

Unless you like hanging out with stay at home moms, there's nobody around during the day. Might as well go to the office and work with interesting people and have somebody to go to lunch with.

ohstopitu 10y ago

if i had so much money that I'd never have to work again, I'd probably do the following: 1. quit my day job and travel the world (and I mean all over - south america, middle east and so on). 2. get a couple of houses (one for my parents, and another for me) 3. start contributing back to the community (If i get that kind of money, It's probably because I would have IPOd or sold my business - in which case, I would love to work on open source - no strings attached - MIT). 4. buy a few toys (cars and what not) that I've always wanted. 5. leave the rest for my kids/family/future.

jetti 10y ago

I've thought about this a lot, though I'm not planning on getting that kind of money any time soon. My plan would be to invest a lot of the money and then go back to school. I'd get a couple more master degrees as well as try for a PhD. I love learning and not having debt would make it better. On top of that, I would work freelance/consulting as a developer. I love programming and that is what makes me happy so I wouldn't want to stop doing that.

ryandrake 10y ago

This is an article about one person, Keith from Silicon Valley, whose personal story the author tries to extrapolate (through a few cherry-picked quotes) and apply to society as a whole, to fit a puritanical "employment gives you purpose" narrative: a narrative which mostly serves the interests of employers. I wouldn't read too much into it.

jasode 10y ago
No, your TLDR is not accurate. You're getting mislead by the common journalistic technique of adding a "human interest" angle to a story. However, the "outer wrapper" is not the main story nor is it the TLDR. Instead of journalists just presenting it like this: <main story about research or science> , they (or their editors) end up structuring articles like this: <human-interest as color prologue> <main story about research or science> <human-interest as color epilogue> Yes, the "<human-interest>" is Keith[2], but the main story is not about Keith. It's mostly a story built around Jamie Traeger-Muney[3] and her observations. There are also other observations from Timothy Judge's meta-analysis and professor Brooke Harrington. I do concede that if your only takeaway was "Keith's story", it's possible that imprint was deliberate by the editors. (In other words, they know that psychologically, most audiences will remember a character's struggles and triumphs more than the abstract facts & figures.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interest_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interest_story [2] and also mentions Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Karen Gorden [3] http://www.wealthlegacygroup.net/wlg-about/documentation/jamie-traeger-muney http://www.wealthlegacygroup.net/wlg-about/documentation/jam...
- nacho2sweet 10y ago
  LMAO at this community and using wrapper tags to debate someones argument.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    considering that the average reader of this message board is XML literate, it's a fairly effective technique.

jlebrech 10y ago

and even if you're a billionaire on paper you have to manage those investment so that they cash out at the right moment. you can't just quit doing everything. at that level it's a reverse debt where you (or pay someone to) have to chase everyone for money

jlebrech 10y ago

if you get rich doing something you like, why not just start another venture with something you actually love.

codeddesign 10y ago

I believe this is a case where words don't reflect actual emotions. Many work because they have to in order to survive. However, when you know longer need to work it becomes a "hobby" in which you enjoy rather than an essential. You have your pick of what you want to do and how you want to do it. Completely different mentalities that the word "work" doesn't completely convey.

norea-armozel 10y ago

I think I'd be surprisingly busy and happy if I was financially free of 9-to-5 work. Especially considering that my biggest hurdles to my own personal happiness are naturally expensive (gender transition isn't cheap). Having those things covered on top of not worrying about my rent would take a load off my mind. It would mean I could look at doing work that feels meaningful to me. Maybe I would go back to college and get a degree in physics and maybe try to do research. Or maybe I'd continue with my work in programming but do it for a non-profit on a smaller salary. In any case, I would be freed up from chasing career choices if I knew the bare minimum was assured. That and I would probably try to explore the world because I've literally never left the country not even to go be an annoying tourist (like most) in Paris. It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is like before I die.

kmonsen 10y ago

I would still work, but probably not at the same job I have now (which is also my early retirement plan, I will still work just less and in a more relaxed environment).

kensai 10y ago

Let me be filthy rich overnight and I promise I will give the article some thought! :p

solatic 10y ago

You can generally stratify most people into one of two categories: the work-to-live types, and the live-to-work types. The work-to-live types generally tend to pursue careers involving working for some employer paying them salary plus benefits. With a few exceptions (the early employees of some of the bigger IPO successes), these people will mostly go on to earn middle-class or upper-middle-class incomes and live lifestyles in line with their income. Very few will ever come across life-changing sums of money. Then you have the live-to-work types. Of course not all such people will become rich, but if you were to look at successful entrepreneurs, it'll be a long hard search before you find one who leaves the office every day at 5:00 PM on the dot to go home and loaf on the couch watching the game. These are the people who, if they are successful at building their company (and that is, of course, a huge if), will be able to walk away from the IPO with a fortune. So why is it surprising in the slightest that the live-to-work types can't rest on their laurels?

johnward 10y ago
There's a group in between that slave away at their corporate job for 60+ hours a week. I don't know what to call them. They are basically doing the worst of both worlds.
- jonas21 10y ago
  ...or the best of both worlds. There are corporate jobs in tech where you can spend almost all of your time working on the things you enjoy (say research, product development, or solving hard technical problems) while letting others take care of the things you don't. You don't really have that option if you're an entrepreneur. And the fact that you can get a salary that places you in the upper-middle class is an added benefit.
  - johnward 10y ago
    A remember the stories of people receiving paycheck and not having to report to anyone. I'm on the consulting side so I often forget there are people who don't track every second of their day and get scrutinized for merely working 40 hours.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I have known perhaps a hundred people go through this process. When Sun went public it made a bunch of people "rich"[1], when Sun released Java and the stock split 8 times and climbed over $100 it made still more people rich, when NetApp stock crossed a $100/share in the dot com days still more people crossed into that line of not having to work any more. The total number of people is going to be higher than that. Some stop working, some continue working, and some decide to get together and create a startup incubator :-). Pretty much everyone I know that has gone through that process though are engineers. And engineers got to be engineers because they had a passion for building things or solving problems. Many people who have been engineers for a few years also realize that a group of talented engineers can solve bigger problems as a collective than any single engineer can. So the thing that really gives you satisfaction, solving some huge problem, can be best accomplished on a team. There are three ways you can do that, you can work on a volunteer basis, you can start a company, or you can join an existing company. I've been playing around with some ideas around an experimental fourth way but so far have not found the right balance for that. [1] Rich is such a subjective term but we'll use the article definition of having enough savings to never work again.

kennethologist 10y ago
Can you share more info/insight on the fourth way you've been playing around with?
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Its something along the lines of a collective. Trying to capture the feeling/environment of PARC. At its simplest everyone pitches in to cover facilities costs and shared healthcare under enough legal cover that it can be considered a "business" but entirely employee owned. Oddly the challenge can be where do excess profits go. (I have to presume that some of the projects the group or subgroups work on would achieve a modicum of income or value) trying to have a plan for that.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    This collective style has been particularly popular amongst independent coffee roasters in recent years. See, for example, The Pulley Collective in Brooklyn [1]. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/dining/a-collective-lets-small-coffee-shops-roast-their-own.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/dining/a-collective-lets-s...

deleted 10y ago

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tedmiston 10y ago

> When Keith, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, worked at a technology company that went public, he became rich overnight. Where overnight is defined as 5+ years building up the value of the company so the equity is worth something. Reminds me of the Mark Cuban quote: "It doesn't matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success."

stupidcar 10y ago

Am I the only one who would go back to university and take a variety of degrees if they got rich? It would give you structure and deadlines, but without a 9-5 grind. Give you an active social life. Give as much, or more, of an intellectual challenge as a job. And since you'd be rich, you wouldn't have the same money worries and pressure to achieve that other students have, and unlike a job, the only person you can really let down is yourself.

gnicholas 10y ago
When I was a young lawyer, one of our senior partners did just this as he faded into retirement. He audited nearly 4 years worth of coursework, mostly in philosophy and mathematics.
FreedomToCreate 10y ago
My Grandfather has been doing this with Coursera for the last 3 years. He has pretty much completed every available course in economics and finance.
tbihl 10y ago
I guess my goal is a version of this: all my textbooks are sitting on a shelf outside my bedroom, and I want to get back into them until I feel I've mastered them. I wasted university with that idiotic determination of "look how little work I can get by with", which of course is also "look how little I can know while still surviving," an idiotic goal if ever there were one. My job will probably be 60 hours/wk for the next year, then up in the 65-80/wk range for the following three years, but after that, I'll be back down to 40 or even fewer. And I'm going to take advantage of all that free time a lot better on the second go. Who knows where I'll go from there. Realistically, my wife and I could get along perfectly well on her working part time, and in medicine that's not too hard an arrangement to get. Neither of us particularly trust the economy on its current (last 70 years) trajectory, so we'll probably aim to put ourselves in a partial homesteading setup closer to home in the next ten or so years. Wow, I don't know where that went. TL;DR -- I want to read my textbooks and start gardening.
- 10y ago

stupidcar 10y ago

Am I the only one who would go back to university and take a variety of degrees if they got rich? It would give you structure and deadlines, but without a 9-5 grind. Give you an active social life. Give as much, or more, of an intellectual challenge than a job. And since you'd already be rich, you wouldn't have the same money worries and pressure to achieve that other students have, and unlike a job, the only person you can really let down is yourself.

gloriousduke 10y ago

Sometimes I feel like work is the meaning life. From a certain (simplified/badly poetic) view, living existence exists just to, and because it can, battle against the 2nd Law of Thermondynamics, and that sort of just trickles all the way up to our complex social existence. If you're only increasing entropy by hanging out and resting on your laurels (again, simplified), rather than making/creating, you're sort of waste from the aforementioned perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life

throwaway2016a 10y ago

Sounds like it is about 50:50 here for people who would go back to work and people who think it's nuts. My personal plan incase anyone cares: 1. Take a lot of time to take care of things I've neglected like my health. Honestly, I would be working out a hour a day and trying out lots of new recipes. 2. Once I'm in the best shape of my life. Take my family someplace nice for vacation so I can show off my new beach body ;) joking, about the beach body part not the vacation 3. Start turning my side project ideas into actionable ideas.

geophile 10y ago

After 25 years in startups, with several of them paying out, I was able to retire at 55, so I did. I still love writing software, but I got tired of: not having a life, due to insane startup schedules; the stress of startups; working for idiots, (partly this is because we hired idiots, but also because my tolerance for idiocy has vanished). I have more time for family and friends. I can tinker with new ideas in software, and eventually find new projects to work on, (I have one now). I have started teaching again, on and off. I get to sleep late, go out more, both at night and on vacations. However, I have done less than I thought I would, and honestly, I am sometimes bored. However, I absolutely will not work again if I don't have to. Why? Because going to work for someone else is an admission that I don't know what the hell to do with myself, so I might as well fill my time sacrificing my precious time for someone else's dream. No thanks. Not only does that re-introduce the problems mentioned above, but it masks the real problem of not knowing what I really want to do. Also, I'm really tired of the startup life. Charismatic startup founders who use their charm to extract what they need from you, VC lemmings, "this is the most important release ever", open floor plans, ...

blueatlas 10y ago
Have you considered investing in or coaching a startup to guide them through (around) what you found so frustrating? It seems like that would be quite valuable to a young startup and would have a level of satisfaction for you ("I helped these kids avoid VC lemmings and other idiots").
- geophile 10y ago
  I've considered and rejected the idea of investing. Coaching is an interesting idea. Any recommendations on how to get started?
  - dyim 10y ago
    Reach out to people who leave email addresses in their HN profiles! :)
  - postscapes1 10y ago

gnicholas 10y ago

I'm surprised more folks aren't mentioning spending time to raise kids. If my startup were suddenly acquired, I'd certainly spend a lot more time with mine. This would be partly to educate and enrich them, and partly to support my wife's career (pre-tenure professor at demanding institution). I'd probably pursue side projects and go back to working full-time at some point, but I'd spend the bulk of my time working/playing/volunteering/traveling with my kids.

zem 10y ago

interesting. i like to think that i would quit my job and just work on open source projects, but the article makes some good points about not being really challenged to work past the bits that aren't fun and easy without some external motivator.

elorant 10y ago

I don't know about working but no matter how much money I/will have I'll always write code. Even if it is for solving trivialities in my everyday life with no hope of commercializing them.

iUsedToCode 10y ago

I retired at 25 due to startup and some inheritance. Being free all the time can be depressing and i began to look for challenges. It's not so easy if you don't "need" to go through all the bullshit and hard work that gives you results in the long run. So now i'm focused on social issues. Fixing small social problem arising due to bad laws with a bit of automation. I'm on my second startup (or rather NGO) in that area and it brings me a lot of satisfaction. But not having to do stuff can be sometimes as hard as having to do stuff.

imgabe 10y ago

The argument is that money is uncorrelated to "job-satisfaction" which is believable, but using that to somehow conclude that you'd keep chasing "job-satisfaction" after no longer needing a job doesn't make any sense. Of course there are plenty of other things that can make a well-paying job unpleasant. But the very idea of "job-satisfaction" presupposes a job in the first place. Why would anyone who didn't need a job care about how satisfying a particular job is? There are many ways to achieve a sense of self-worth besides grinding away in a cubicle to make someone else rich.

btkramer9 10y ago
> There are many ways to achieve a sense of self-worth besides grinding away in a cubicle to make someone else rich. I kind of read it that many people don't know of any other way to achieve a sense of self worth. They've worked for so long and it has become such a big part of their identity that they don't know what else to do with their time.

throwaway43564 10y ago

I can add a different take -- I inherited a big chunk of assets a number of years ago. As opposed to a lot of tech cashouts, this included a family company, commercial office space and an investment portfolio. A big difference between myself and others in the thread is that I've had a lot of exposure to, and interest in, asset management. I stayed with my corporate job for about a year, but ultimately the effort of playing board member to the family company and making informed investment decisions about the rest clashed with amount of work they wanted from me as I kept rising at my corporate job. When I told them I was leaving, they offered me a big raise and to double the team under me. I countered by asking for part-time and, if they wanted, a smaller team or none at all. Ultimately that didn't work for them, they needed a creative and driven manager, not a good but expensive individual contributor. Like a lot of people, I took the next year off, convinced my girlfriend to quit her job too and we traveled. But I'm back to work these days, not a in normal job though -- I really think of myself as a full time investor. I think there's a big thing people miss in this situation is that they can't see the forest for the trees. You have so many opportunities to create jobs, create products, create places to live, or drive charitable change when you have a lot of assets. Why work 2000+ hours per year in a normal job just to add a drop in the bucket? There's a lot of spilled ink in the linked article and elsewhere talking about, roughly, Maslow's theory of self-actualization and how you can get there doing your old job or similar. Jeez, you finally got to the pot of gold and now you're out of ideas? Swing for the fences, or at least, try and hit a few singles. And the best part is you can spend 8 or 80 hours a week doing it, you're in charge after all. Me? I'm going Warren Buffet style from here on out. Sure I doubt I'll ever be a famous investor, but I'd love to take the amount I have and turn it into a lot more. My long term goal is to shore up the future generation in my family before I give the rest away. I think the happiness maximizing amount of work for each person varies, but for me I know it's more than zero.

mianos 10y ago

Same for me. I retired at 42. Once I spent the first few years with my new daughter the misses got sick of me having too much fun at home and kicked me back to work after just over four years of retirement. The only difference between now and then is my tolerance of fools. I have been working for start-ups as a senior engineer and like work as much as ever. People do treat you quite differently if they have no strings attached to you. Mainly pros, some cons.

hayd 10y ago

Alternatively: he's depressed but work provides sufficient distraction.