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Has anyone checked out the reddit comments for this same article? It's like night and day. http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/ http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/

Has anyone checked out the reddit comments for this same article? It's like night and day. http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/ http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/

davo11 19y ago
Interesting the comment about 'living a human-scale life' was worth the read.
whacked_new 19y ago
Unsurprisingly and understandably so. PG's essays resonate most strongly with a particular type of person. There are enough assertions that do not generalize across diverse populations and nobody who reads his essays should actually expect them to. The population in this site are not are self selected to the extreme. I for one am happy to see multiple opinions.
ambition 19y ago
There's something about anonymous commenters bashing PG and YC on reddit, of all forums, that makes me smile.
- dpapathanasiou 19y ago
  Well, here's one way to think about those commentators: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxxPLDZnqwA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxxPLDZnqwA
Xichekolas 19y ago
Oddly the thing that stood out in those comments was the discussion of living expenses, and specifically health insurance. Everyone is quoting things like $700/mo and $1100/mo. Even the guy with the high deductible plan alluded to paying $116/mo for a $5k deductible. Am I the only one that pays $55/mo for a $1k deductible plan? I must be lucky or something. And that aside, seriously, you buy insurance for catastrophes... not to save $150 on a doctors visit. Why the heck would you spend $1100/mo on insurance? No wonder these people think startups are hard. They'd need a VC round just to cover their insurance premiums.
- joshwa 19y ago
  A lot of people these days (myself included) have chronic conditions that require ongoing regular doctor visits and/or medication. Even at a high premium level, insurance is cheaper than paying out of pocket (my maintenance medication costs $48k annually!). I guess you could argue that that makes me not a good candidate for a startup... which is why I still work for BigCo, and work on my startup at night (N.B not the one currently listed in my profile).
  - Xichekolas 19y ago
    Ahhh, very true. I imagine it would be nearly impossible to get a plan outside of a company with $48k guaranteed outlay, since you wouldn't have coworkers helping to even out the cost for the insurance company. I guess there are always government backed plans like COBRA for cases like that. I think the best candidates for startups are the ones who actually make the leap... everything else is accounting... best of luck to you!
    - joshwa 19y ago
      COBRA is pricey as hell! My COBRA premiums (if I had taken it when I left my last job) would have been around $850/month. This is why the company has to pay for this stuff. I'm pretty useless if I get sick...
  - nostrademons 19y ago
    I've got a friend that remarked on that once...he has Marfan's syndrome, which means that he has pricey routine medical treatments and the possibility of some very expensive emergency operations. He's working at Microsoft (despite being a big Mac person), and he said that one of the reasons why he chose to work for "the evil empire" is they have great health benefits, and no small company would be able to cover his health insurance.
- LogicHoleFlaw 19y ago
  My first major job out of school was with CitiBank. I hated the corporate culture there, and the immense inertia. When I left I had health insurance through the federal COBRA plan, but it cost me $400 monthly. I don't recall the deductible offhand. That was a double-whammy because not only did I no longer have the steady income from that job, but I now had an additional $400/mo expense. Fortunately I had some small savings, but I was almost to the point of going into debt for basic necessities before my next full-time job started. Beyond that, even though I had insurance through my next employer, the insurance company had a policy of denying coverage for any pre-existing conditions for three months. I was fortunate that it was only three months; I believe they can have such policies which last for up to a year. The only thing worse than paying huge amounts of money for health insurance is not having insurance. My out-of-pocket expenses were about $800-$900 monthly the few months I did not have insurance covering things like prescription medications. I'm living frugally now and saving funds to begin my own startup. But I now know that my true expenses are much greater than I had imagined as a student due to the high cost of health care.

Has anyone checked out the reddit comments for this same article? It's like night and day. http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/ http://reddit.com/info/6cu0t/comments/

davo11 19y ago

Interesting the comment about 'living a human-scale life' was worth the read.

whacked_new 19y ago

Unsurprisingly and understandably so. PG's essays resonate most strongly with a particular type of person. There are enough assertions that do not generalize across diverse populations and nobody who reads his essays should actually expect them to. The population in this site are not are self selected to the extreme. I for one am happy to see multiple opinions.

ambition 19y ago

There's something about anonymous commenters bashing PG and YC on reddit, of all forums, that makes me smile.

dpapathanasiou 19y ago
Well, here's one way to think about those commentators: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxxPLDZnqwA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxxPLDZnqwA

Xichekolas 19y ago

Oddly the thing that stood out in those comments was the discussion of living expenses, and specifically health insurance. Everyone is quoting things like $700/mo and $1100/mo. Even the guy with the high deductible plan alluded to paying $116/mo for a $5k deductible. Am I the only one that pays $55/mo for a $1k deductible plan? I must be lucky or something. And that aside, seriously, you buy insurance for catastrophes... not to save $150 on a doctors visit. Why the heck would you spend $1100/mo on insurance? No wonder these people think startups are hard. They'd need a VC round just to cover their insurance premiums.

joshwa 19y ago
A lot of people these days (myself included) have chronic conditions that require ongoing regular doctor visits and/or medication. Even at a high premium level, insurance is cheaper than paying out of pocket (my maintenance medication costs $48k annually!). I guess you could argue that that makes me not a good candidate for a startup... which is why I still work for BigCo, and work on my startup at night (N.B not the one currently listed in my profile).
- Xichekolas 19y ago
  Ahhh, very true. I imagine it would be nearly impossible to get a plan outside of a company with $48k guaranteed outlay, since you wouldn't have coworkers helping to even out the cost for the insurance company. I guess there are always government backed plans like COBRA for cases like that. I think the best candidates for startups are the ones who actually make the leap... everything else is accounting... best of luck to you!
  - joshwa 19y ago
    COBRA is pricey as hell! My COBRA premiums (if I had taken it when I left my last job) would have been around $850/month. This is why the company has to pay for this stuff. I'm pretty useless if I get sick...
- nostrademons 19y ago
  I've got a friend that remarked on that once...he has Marfan's syndrome, which means that he has pricey routine medical treatments and the possibility of some very expensive emergency operations. He's working at Microsoft (despite being a big Mac person), and he said that one of the reasons why he chose to work for "the evil empire" is they have great health benefits, and no small company would be able to cover his health insurance.
LogicHoleFlaw 19y ago
My first major job out of school was with CitiBank. I hated the corporate culture there, and the immense inertia. When I left I had health insurance through the federal COBRA plan, but it cost me $400 monthly. I don't recall the deductible offhand. That was a double-whammy because not only did I no longer have the steady income from that job, but I now had an additional $400/mo expense. Fortunately I had some small savings, but I was almost to the point of going into debt for basic necessities before my next full-time job started. Beyond that, even though I had insurance through my next employer, the insurance company had a policy of denying coverage for any pre-existing conditions for three months. I was fortunate that it was only three months; I believe they can have such policies which last for up to a year. The only thing worse than paying huge amounts of money for health insurance is not having insurance. My out-of-pocket expenses were about $800-$900 monthly the few months I did not have insurance covering things like prescription medications. I'm living frugally now and saving funds to begin my own startup. But I now know that my true expenses are much greater than I had imagined as a student due to the high cost of health care.