8 ms·

The Unhealthy Desire for Prestige

131 points by adamant 9y ago

paulsutter 9y ago
"Always prioritize the substance of what you're doing. Don't get caught up in the status, the prestige games. They're endlessly dazzling, and they're always endlessly disappointing.” -Peter Thiel
- a_d 9y ago
  +1 Is this from Zero to One?
  - spking 9y ago
    source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/10/10/peter-thiel-on-what-works-at-work/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d10bf4a6d3c8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/10...
- wskinner 9y ago
  I like the quote, and in fact, the whole source article is well worth reading. But it's hard to take statements like this from billionaires who already won the status / prestige games at 100% face value.
  - Ngunyan 9y ago
    Would you rather take it from someone who has not had a taste of prestige, or even from someone who lost prestige?
internetman55 9y ago
This seems to be quite a big issue for people in finance like the OP blog author was
jxub 9y ago
Glad to see this blog pop up here. The author has great insights about investing, FIRE and careers, even though his worldview is skewed towards the SF bubble heavily.
jpm_sd 9y ago
"As a soon to be 40-year-old man, I don’t give a rat’s ass about prestige anymore!" OK, great. I'm 39, I'm right there with you. But is this advice useful or actionable for people in their 20s?
- adamant 9y ago
  It would be great to hear someone's opinion about this.
  - chubot 9y ago
    Check out Paul Graham's opinion: http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young.
    - adamant 9y ago
      Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
- pmorici 9y ago
  Seems to me that prestige usually follows from from things that signal wealth or at least potential for future wealth. Better than prestige is actually being wealthy / financially independent. He sort of implies this in the article w/o stating it directly. If you are in your 20's the take away might be to focus on keeping your costs low and maximizing savings to reach that point of financial independence earlier.
- chubot 9y ago
  Yes, because prestige runs behind what is actually valuable. Prestige is what other people think is valuable. If everyone thinks it's valuable, then there's insane competition, and you're unlikely to get meaningfully ahead (unless you're simply smarter and work harder than everyone else). PG wrote several paragraphs about prestige here which still ring true to me: http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious. (Corrolary: it was best to join YC when it wasn't prestigious, e.g. when Reddit or Dropbox did. Now that it's prestigious, it's probably less valuable. Although it could still be valuable compared to the alternatives.)
mrleiter 9y ago
To seek prestige runs far deeper in our minds than one would think. It comes from a place of uncertainty and fear. There is an interesting theory called "social comparison" [1], which states that one way to define ourselves is to compare us with our peers, either upward or downward. It's pretty on point in my personal opinion, because I do it as well. And when I have mentioned this theory while chatting with friends, they confirmed that they do it, too. We humans are brittle creatures that pretend to be very strong and independent in order to survive and not be vulnerable. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/social-comparison-theory https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/social-comparison-...
- ivanhoe 9y ago
  Exactly, and it's because we, as all animals that live in groups, have a strong sense of hierarchy inside the group and our place within it. Position inside the group is a primary unit of one's perceived "value".
- 20171026 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy
tsunamifury 9y ago
I respect financial samurai a great deal and his posts give me a lot to think about, especially when I respectfully disagree with some of his points. Some thoughts: 1)Life is hard and humans respond to that in a variety of ways, like desire for prestige. However prestige is one thing that can be given and received freely as well. Compliments are a great way to build a culture of cost-free prestige. It’s not always about climbing the stack rank. 2) Consumption as prestige is a trap created by marketing, but at the same time a signal that works well in some cultures. Signaling you desire more let’s leaders know you are hungry to grow. You can think of this as unfortunate, but it’s very real. 3) Sometimes it is just nice to have nice things. I find the desire for external prestige dies when your internal sense of prestige grows. You see many wealthy people become unconcerned with showing off after achieving real goals in the world. That being said they still live in mansions and drive exotic vehicles.
- FooBarWidget 9y ago
  > Signaling you desire more let’s leaders know you are hungry to grow. Is that really how it works? If I look at Chinese materialism as prestige, I don't see anybody signaling that they are hungry. I only see people signaling that they have stuff and that somehow having stuff equates happiness and "something good".
  - tsunamifury 9y ago
    American Corp culture still sees a hungry young worker with good taste as “one of them”. Knowing what car to take to the track, sailing knowledge, or what Hermès scarf to buy as a gift for their partner as comforting conversation fodder that makes them more comfortable with you.
  - troycarlson 9y ago
    One interpretation of this is leaders viewing a young, "hungry" employee who likes to spend money as being more reliant on a salary than someone who's identity isn't so tied to spending money. If the hungry one needs a steady salary to maintain their lifestyle, they're more likely to be loyal to the company because they can't afford to leave. Of course that depends on the employee being someone the company actually wants to keep around and and whether the company can afford to pay them above market value.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gumby 9y ago
I have always hated the word "prestige" or "prestigious" as it always makes me feel that the person using it wants to pick my pocket. (I mean an advertiser or housing builder etc...I don't mean the author of this piece, or for that matter my own comment either!)
beders 9y ago
The article is about how to get women...zzzzzzz
songzme 9y ago
I'm glad this is brought up. ever since I left Google my parents no longer have much to brag about when taking to relatives about me. I got to spend a year doing stuff I was passionate about without having to defend my decisions to anybody and it was so liberating. Life is much more fun when you are not in the spot light, you can pretty much do whatever you want. In my time off, I built a few profitable projects and gave away CEO title to my friends. I write blog posts anonymously so my name is never associated with anything. It was a pretty big mindset shift, but it's been pretty good so far
- wskinner 9y ago
  I would love to hear more about your experience doing this. Would you be willing to share links to your blog (perhaps privately, since your name is in your profile)? I'm interested in doing something similar.
factsaresacred 9y ago
> I asked John how his product was doing, and he said that he’s looking to hire a CEO with more product experience...when I talked to him further, he said he was still looking to launch his MVP...So after 1.5 years, John basically spent $10,000+ attending financial conferences, collected no revenue, and hasn’t even launched a working website Laughing at how real this is. This is exactly the situation with me and a friend. We both had an idea for different businesses 2 years ago. He prints business cards, incorporates a business, talks about partnerships, a launch party, worries about getting too big....and has no users. I quit my job to code away in the morning, reply to user feedback in the afternoon and emulate my competitor's marketing at night. I did this every day....and just passed 100,000 users. Hardly anybody knows what I do. The difference between us: he works for a big tech company where everyone talks about their app idea™ over lunch and lives in a city where splashing $1000 on bottle service is seen as smart instead of foolish. I don't. Instead I grind for two simple reasons: to be free of a boss and to make something people find valuable. I love my friend and I'm not knocking his approach, nor saying mine is better. But printing business cards before gaining users is a bizarre way to order one's priorities.
- spamizbad 9y ago
  "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" applies to startups just as much as anything.
- detritus 9y ago
  "emulate my competitor's marketing at night, every day" Might you expand on thisa little, in loose terms, please?
  - factsaresacred 9y ago
    Bad grammar made that sentence more confusing than it should have been so I fixed it. What I mean is I spend 1/3 of my day looking at how my competitors got to where they are and try to replicate it. Did they get featured in Lifehacker, are they trying any shady stuff like purchasing positive app store reviews, are their primary channels email or search - this kind of stuff. I try copy their secret sauce and add my own.
huac 9y ago
korea has the highest suicide rate in the oecd, not really fair to say that antidepressant use is correlated with depression rate. similarly antidepressants are not widely available in japan (not even included in his chart) and japan's suicide rate is also very high.
dash2 9y ago
Counterpoint: https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/The.Drum.Major.Instinct.2-4-68.pdf https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/The.Drum.Ma...
coffeemug 9y ago
The thesis of the post was great. But then: > In fact, I don’t think I’ve cared about prestige since 2010 Yeah, right. We're all wired to seek prestige. If we don't get it we wither and sulk. He just figured out that he's unlikely to get it via traditional means, and decided to seek it via an alternative route. Perhaps there are extremely rare mentally atypical people who really don't care about prestige, but it almost certainly isn't you or me or the blogger. Be careful about the lies you tell yourself.
- Ngunyan 9y ago
  Be careful about generalizations either.
- FooHentai 9y ago
  That last sentence of your post cuts both ways.
- huntertwo 9y ago
  What makes you believe this?
- verylittlemeat 9y ago
  Not caring about prestige means cultivating your self-esteem and confronting your insecurities. Learn to respect and admire yourself rather than relying on society to gratify your ego. It's a lifelong process not a state to achieve.
randcraw 9y ago
Prestige is just a variant of respect, but motivated by appearance rather than substance. It's basically envy. Like fame, it's shallow and derivative, and it works only when no one gets to look behind the curtain.
smallnamespace 9y ago
> If we can figure out how to rid ourselves of the desire for prestige, we will become much happier in the process! Why not just take this to the limit and become a Buddhist then? I'll answer that question: because our desires are possibly adaptive and are what keep us alive. The problem is not prestige, it's holding the wrong things to be prestigious.
johnwatson11218 9y ago
This book really shaped my views on luxury https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Up-Consumers-Goods-Companies-ebook/dp/B00186Z0N2 https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Up-Consumers-Goods-Companies-... I really liked the parts where they talk about how new luxury items are often based on some technical aspect that makes the new product much better than what was there before. I remember one point about how the old luxury was based on rarity. People with a nice watch didn't want to see others wearing the same watch. But with high end mountain bikes it is actually very cool to see others on the trail with the same gear.
shanghaiaway 9y ago
The author clearly cares about prestige - his bio mentions having an MBA from Berkeley.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
aavotins 9y ago
An article about unhealthy desire for prestige has surfaced on HN, a subsidiary of a very prestigious VC firm, a site with clever upvotes and, most importantly, karma system. It strikes me as ironic. I also think that John was a metaphorical figure. I can name a few startups that got financed early and are now attending conferences, hiring and spending a lot of money, without actually doing anything for their business.

131 points by adamant 9y ago

"Always prioritize the substance of what you're doing. Don't get caught up in the status, the prestige games. They're endlessly dazzling, and they're always endlessly disappointing.” -Peter Thiel

a_d 9y ago
+1 Is this from Zero to One?
- spking 9y ago
  source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/10/10/peter-thiel-on-what-works-at-work/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d10bf4a6d3c8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/10...
wskinner 9y ago
I like the quote, and in fact, the whole source article is well worth reading. But it's hard to take statements like this from billionaires who already won the status / prestige games at 100% face value.
- Ngunyan 9y ago
  Would you rather take it from someone who has not had a taste of prestige, or even from someone who lost prestige?

internetman55 9y ago

This seems to be quite a big issue for people in finance like the OP blog author was

jxub 9y ago

Glad to see this blog pop up here. The author has great insights about investing, FIRE and careers, even though his worldview is skewed towards the SF bubble heavily.

jpm_sd 9y ago

"As a soon to be 40-year-old man, I don’t give a rat’s ass about prestige anymore!" OK, great. I'm 39, I'm right there with you. But is this advice useful or actionable for people in their 20s?

adamant 9y ago
It would be great to hear someone's opinion about this.
- chubot 9y ago
  Check out Paul Graham's opinion: http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young.
  - adamant 9y ago
    Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
pmorici 9y ago
Seems to me that prestige usually follows from from things that signal wealth or at least potential for future wealth. Better than prestige is actually being wealthy / financially independent. He sort of implies this in the article w/o stating it directly. If you are in your 20's the take away might be to focus on keeping your costs low and maximizing savings to reach that point of financial independence earlier.
chubot 9y ago
Yes, because prestige runs behind what is actually valuable. Prestige is what other people think is valuable. If everyone thinks it's valuable, then there's insane competition, and you're unlikely to get meaningfully ahead (unless you're simply smarter and work harder than everyone else). PG wrote several paragraphs about prestige here which still ring true to me: http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious. (Corrolary: it was best to join YC when it wasn't prestigious, e.g. when Reddit or Dropbox did. Now that it's prestigious, it's probably less valuable. Although it could still be valuable compared to the alternatives.)

mrleiter 9y ago

To seek prestige runs far deeper in our minds than one would think. It comes from a place of uncertainty and fear. There is an interesting theory called "social comparison" [1], which states that one way to define ourselves is to compare us with our peers, either upward or downward. It's pretty on point in my personal opinion, because I do it as well. And when I have mentioned this theory while chatting with friends, they confirmed that they do it, too. We humans are brittle creatures that pretend to be very strong and independent in order to survive and not be vulnerable. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/social-comparison-theory https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/social-comparison-...

ivanhoe 9y ago
Exactly, and it's because we, as all animals that live in groups, have a strong sense of hierarchy inside the group and our place within it. Position inside the group is a primary unit of one's perceived "value".
20171026 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy

tsunamifury 9y ago

I respect financial samurai a great deal and his posts give me a lot to think about, especially when I respectfully disagree with some of his points. Some thoughts: 1)Life is hard and humans respond to that in a variety of ways, like desire for prestige. However prestige is one thing that can be given and received freely as well. Compliments are a great way to build a culture of cost-free prestige. It’s not always about climbing the stack rank. 2) Consumption as prestige is a trap created by marketing, but at the same time a signal that works well in some cultures. Signaling you desire more let’s leaders know you are hungry to grow. You can think of this as unfortunate, but it’s very real. 3) Sometimes it is just nice to have nice things. I find the desire for external prestige dies when your internal sense of prestige grows. You see many wealthy people become unconcerned with showing off after achieving real goals in the world. That being said they still live in mansions and drive exotic vehicles.

FooBarWidget 9y ago
> Signaling you desire more let’s leaders know you are hungry to grow. Is that really how it works? If I look at Chinese materialism as prestige, I don't see anybody signaling that they are hungry. I only see people signaling that they have stuff and that somehow having stuff equates happiness and "something good".
- tsunamifury 9y ago
  American Corp culture still sees a hungry young worker with good taste as “one of them”. Knowing what car to take to the track, sailing knowledge, or what Hermès scarf to buy as a gift for their partner as comforting conversation fodder that makes them more comfortable with you.
- troycarlson 9y ago
  One interpretation of this is leaders viewing a young, "hungry" employee who likes to spend money as being more reliant on a salary than someone who's identity isn't so tied to spending money. If the hungry one needs a steady salary to maintain their lifestyle, they're more likely to be loyal to the company because they can't afford to leave. Of course that depends on the employee being someone the company actually wants to keep around and and whether the company can afford to pay them above market value.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gumby 9y ago

I have always hated the word "prestige" or "prestigious" as it always makes me feel that the person using it wants to pick my pocket. (I mean an advertiser or housing builder etc...I don't mean the author of this piece, or for that matter my own comment either!)

beders 9y ago

The article is about how to get women...zzzzzzz

songzme 9y ago

I'm glad this is brought up. ever since I left Google my parents no longer have much to brag about when taking to relatives about me. I got to spend a year doing stuff I was passionate about without having to defend my decisions to anybody and it was so liberating. Life is much more fun when you are not in the spot light, you can pretty much do whatever you want. In my time off, I built a few profitable projects and gave away CEO title to my friends. I write blog posts anonymously so my name is never associated with anything. It was a pretty big mindset shift, but it's been pretty good so far

wskinner 9y ago
I would love to hear more about your experience doing this. Would you be willing to share links to your blog (perhaps privately, since your name is in your profile)? I'm interested in doing something similar.

factsaresacred 9y ago

> I asked John how his product was doing, and he said that he’s looking to hire a CEO with more product experience...when I talked to him further, he said he was still looking to launch his MVP...So after 1.5 years, John basically spent $10,000+ attending financial conferences, collected no revenue, and hasn’t even launched a working website Laughing at how real this is. This is exactly the situation with me and a friend. We both had an idea for different businesses 2 years ago. He prints business cards, incorporates a business, talks about partnerships, a launch party, worries about getting too big....and has no users. I quit my job to code away in the morning, reply to user feedback in the afternoon and emulate my competitor's marketing at night. I did this every day....and just passed 100,000 users. Hardly anybody knows what I do. The difference between us: he works for a big tech company where everyone talks about their app idea™ over lunch and lives in a city where splashing $1000 on bottle service is seen as smart instead of foolish. I don't. Instead I grind for two simple reasons: to be free of a boss and to make something people find valuable. I love my friend and I'm not knocking his approach, nor saying mine is better. But printing business cards before gaining users is a bizarre way to order one's priorities.

spamizbad 9y ago
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" applies to startups just as much as anything.
detritus 9y ago
"emulate my competitor's marketing at night, every day" Might you expand on thisa little, in loose terms, please?
- factsaresacred 9y ago
  Bad grammar made that sentence more confusing than it should have been so I fixed it. What I mean is I spend 1/3 of my day looking at how my competitors got to where they are and try to replicate it. Did they get featured in Lifehacker, are they trying any shady stuff like purchasing positive app store reviews, are their primary channels email or search - this kind of stuff. I try copy their secret sauce and add my own.

huac 9y ago

korea has the highest suicide rate in the oecd, not really fair to say that antidepressant use is correlated with depression rate. similarly antidepressants are not widely available in japan (not even included in his chart) and japan's suicide rate is also very high.

dash2 9y ago

Counterpoint: https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/The.Drum.Major.Instinct.2-4-68.pdf https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/The.Drum.Ma...

coffeemug 9y ago

The thesis of the post was great. But then: > In fact, I don’t think I’ve cared about prestige since 2010 Yeah, right. We're all wired to seek prestige. If we don't get it we wither and sulk. He just figured out that he's unlikely to get it via traditional means, and decided to seek it via an alternative route. Perhaps there are extremely rare mentally atypical people who really don't care about prestige, but it almost certainly isn't you or me or the blogger. Be careful about the lies you tell yourself.

Ngunyan 9y ago
Be careful about generalizations either.
FooHentai 9y ago
That last sentence of your post cuts both ways.
huntertwo 9y ago
What makes you believe this?
verylittlemeat 9y ago
Not caring about prestige means cultivating your self-esteem and confronting your insecurities. Learn to respect and admire yourself rather than relying on society to gratify your ego. It's a lifelong process not a state to achieve.

randcraw 9y ago

Prestige is just a variant of respect, but motivated by appearance rather than substance. It's basically envy. Like fame, it's shallow and derivative, and it works only when no one gets to look behind the curtain.

smallnamespace 9y ago

> If we can figure out how to rid ourselves of the desire for prestige, we will become much happier in the process! Why not just take this to the limit and become a Buddhist then? I'll answer that question: because our desires are possibly adaptive and are what keep us alive. The problem is not prestige, it's holding the wrong things to be prestigious.

johnwatson11218 9y ago

This book really shaped my views on luxury https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Up-Consumers-Goods-Companies-ebook/dp/B00186Z0N2 https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Up-Consumers-Goods-Companies-... I really liked the parts where they talk about how new luxury items are often based on some technical aspect that makes the new product much better than what was there before. I remember one point about how the old luxury was based on rarity. People with a nice watch didn't want to see others wearing the same watch. But with high end mountain bikes it is actually very cool to see others on the trail with the same gear.

shanghaiaway 9y ago

The author clearly cares about prestige - his bio mentions having an MBA from Berkeley.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

aavotins 9y ago

An article about unhealthy desire for prestige has surfaced on HN, a subsidiary of a very prestigious VC firm, a site with clever upvotes and, most importantly, karma system. It strikes me as ironic. I also think that John was a metaphorical figure. I can name a few startups that got financed early and are now attending conferences, hiring and spending a lot of money, without actually doing anything for their business.