14 ms·

Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

154 points by prostoalex 8y ago

Isamu 8y ago
>She told me, “I was curious, but I don't know how a single person in America who doesn't have family money could buy anything, I really don’t, if they're not working in finance or they're not a doctor. ” Easy, there are vast areas of America where housing is more affordable. I certainly got zero cash from family when I bought a home. My family put money into giving me food and shelter growing up though. This is kind of like that cartoon of a New Yorker's view of the US, where Manhattan looms large, then there's New Jersey, and at the fringes there is the rest of the nation.
- Sangermaine 8y ago
  You seem to be ignoring the second part of her statement: what's your job? Is it a good, high-paying one?
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  The places with cheaper housing also tend to suffer from a dearth of employment options. There are probably a few mid-sized cities out there that have both cheap housing and decently-paid jobs, but I imagine they are few and far between. I don't know how legitimate this source is, but > ATTOM points out that home prices are climbing faster than wages in 80% of U.S. markets. In fact, median home prices increased at a faster pace than average weekly wages in 601 of the 755 counties analyzed in its report. https://www.housingwire.com/articles/47878-home-prices-are-rising-faster-than-wages-in-80-of-us-markets https://www.housingwire.com/articles/47878-home-prices-are-r...
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    They are pretty common. Kansas City. St. Louis. Des Moines. Dayton. And that's just the Midwest. You don't need a great job market; you just need the one job. Works for some people.
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      With the market changing quicker than ever before due to various structural changes such as new technologies, consolidation of employers, and globalization, I would not recommend having one, or even just a handful of buyers for what you're selling. This applies to businesses and individuals. I would demand a premium for being in a market where there are fewer buyers and I am subject to more risk of losing my income.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - collyw 8y ago
      In Europe house prices seem fairly tied to employment opportunities. Certainly if you are working in It.
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        Is that true? I know real estate is incredibly expensive in places like London/Paris and most people cannot afford to own homes there based on their working salary (which is usually much lower than the US equivalent).
    - goobynight 8y ago
      Works for a lot of people, especially if they fall into fairly standard, but good service gigs. e.g. vehicle repair, home repair, cutting hair, or working a local pub. Even better if you show up with a pile of cash from a former career.
  - greedo 8y ago
    I live in a midwest college town. Unemployment here is extremely low, has been for decades. Housing costs are relatively low as well. I live in a house that in the Seattle area would be over $1M. I paid 20% of that. There are multiple startups for tech here, as well as government jobs, college related jobs, and other industries. So there's no dearth of employment options. If something were to happen, I can commute an hour to a city with a population of 1M.
- smt88 8y ago
  > I certainly got zero cash from family when I bought a home. Crucially, this is not the least help your family can offer. For many (most?) people in the world, their relatives are actually insecure and need financial support. This is a key reason the cycle of poverty can't be broken by one person getting a good job. I know multiple people who would've easily had a down payment on a house if their parents hadn't lost pensions/savings in the financial crisis. Several years later, that $100k they used to bail out parents would've grown to $300k+ in equity if they could've bought a house in a city between 2009 and 2012.
- latencyloser 8y ago
  This reminds me of when I was working at Microsoft and a colleague said to me: "I don't know how anyone raises a family off less than $130k/year." I laughed and asked him if he'd ever been anywhere in the US outside of Seattle before. Turns out, he hadn't and assumed the insane cost of living we're subject to in this area also exists in the rest of the country. My point of reference is my family's house in a rural area that is about 2x the size of mine (the property is 10x) and costs 1/3 as much. I wish my career as a software engineer better enabled this type of living but, alas, my corporate overlords require I am ass in desk every day in a metro area.
  - blueboo 8y ago
    And so the legend goeth: A friend exclaimed, "how do you afford to buy a house in San Francisco?" I, too, laughed! For lo': huts in the wilderness were mere pennies. He hadn't ever been to the bush, and had assumed the insane cost of living in this area exists in other places with high-paying tech jobs.
    - _range_life 8y ago
      The article wasn't specifically about tech jobs, or huts in the bush you retard. It made a blanket statement, and that's what this guy is responding to.
  - duxup 8y ago
    My first trip out to the valley working for a company out there someone turned to me and asked "So what do people do out there?" I thought he meant "for fun" but he meant regarding jobs or a career. Despite the fact that I did the same job he did... "out there".
  - AboutTheWhisles 8y ago
    The same extrapolations happen with population density. People in LA and New York think the world is overpopulated and everyone is on top of each other. They don't realize that 45 minutes north east of San Francisco there are no houses, no street lights and no cell phone reception.
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  Exactly. I live in a 2nd tier city. My friends who are home owners have very middle class blue collar jobs. Examples include auto mechanic, security system installer, and local delivery truck driver. None of them got "help."
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    How old are they? I know plenty of people who bought a house 30 or 40 years ago on blue collar salaries. I don't know any <30 year olds who bought property without parental help.
    - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago
      Where do the people you know live? That might inform the probability of being able to buy a home with or without parental help. I just picked a metro: Baton Rouge. Median home price there is around $160k, although naturally there is plenty of inventory available for less than $100k. Some of it's in pretty dismal shape, but, looking at Zillow, there are non-zero houses in this category that look livable. The median HHI in Baton Rouge is $45k. So it would take about four years for the median family to save up enough to buy something that's at least livable, assuming they can save ten percent of their income. I couldn't say whether blue collar people make at, above, or below the median, but it strikes me as likely that at least some of them will be able to purchase a home in this type of metro.
      - ForHackernews 8y ago
        I grew up in the midwest. Most of the people I know are in Iowa, some in Illinois and Missouri. Saving up a down-payment is a significant obstacle, I think. I know that in some areas, you can get a rural development loan that requires a much smaller downpayment, but my friends don't want to live in the boonies and it would lead to a pretty miserable commute for them.
        AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
- ben509 8y ago
  Responding to your quote: Working in finance, I can report that we do not have magic money machines. You could narrow "finance" to mean professional traders who do extensive market research and take large risks, sure, they make a lot of money, but they also get wiped out periodically. They're not very different from other entrepreneurs who make a big investment into their area of expertise and takes big risks, often failing many times along the way. That is pretty much the "self-made" story, and one thing I do see working in finance is that most people are way too risk averse for it. That's not a bad thing in aggregate, the conservative majority's instinct for stability is an important buffer against all the breakage the risk takers cause.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    I'm not saying it's an easy job, by any means, but there's not a ton of risk involved in taking an entry level job at an investment bank and trying to work your way up to MD or similar. And that track most certainly pays plenty well, even if you doin't quite get as high as the boardroom.
  - donaldknuth123 8y ago
    Hedge Funds literally print money. 2/20 is guaranteed money, 2% on all funds managed so you win regardless of the market and 20% of any gains when you beat the market. Easy.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  >She told me, “I was curious, but I don't know how a single person in America who doesn't have family money could buy anything, I really don’t, if they're not working in finance or they're not a doctor. ” This is kind of like that cartoon of a New Yorker's view of the US, where Manhattan looms large, then there's New Jersey, and at the fringes there is the rest of the nation. I met this veteran taxi driver in South Carolina who had bought a big Federal era house north of the state capital, for only $20,000 back in the late 90's. Everything about the house needed fixing, and there was no heating/ventilation equipment functioning at all. He was living there, however, and he was putting all of his extra money into buying construction materials, so he could eventually sell it for 20 times as much. I also knew a waitress/barista in Ohio who had bought a duplex, was living in one half, and renting out the other. She had done all of that on $5/hour plus tips and sweat equity. Both of the above examples happened in the 90's. This Kirsten Dirksen video is basically a documentary about how homeowner's interests and their affect on local laws have basically ossified our society. (This is set in Sonoma, which is not overcrowded in the least.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg Basically, homeowners have thrown up roadblocks to keep "the wrong element" out of their neighborhoods, which also locks out the young people of their own group. The big irony is that this happened much more in liberal California than it did in conservative Ohio and South Carolina.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    The big irony is that this happened much more in liberal California than it did in conservative Ohio and South Carolina. Not sure where you've come up with this bizarre and selective understanding of US history. Ohio is notorious for racially-based restrictive covenants on housing. There were entire neighborhoods where deeds had restrictions preventing their sale to blacks. They got the idea from southern states like South Carolina. These restrictions are still on many of the deeds in Ohio and South Carolina, though they are no longer legally enforceable.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Not sure where you've come up with this bizarre and selective understanding of US history. Ohio is notorious for racially-based restrictive covenants on housing Note that I was specifically talking about the unintended impacts of such laws on the youth of one's "own" group. California is singularly bad about that. (I have a different view on these things, outside of the usual polarization. So people tend to project a "side" to my comments which isn't intended and actually isn't there. As a non-white person whose parents experienced ethnically based exclusion, such projections make little sense to me.)
- TuringNYC 8y ago
  >> I certainly got zero cash from family when I bought a home. For a lot of wealthy friends, this was the case, they were self made (first order) and paid their own way (first order). The really valuable thing they received was the safety net and contacts such that they werent exposed to the spikes of unfortunate things that can happen. For me, if I cant make mortgage for 6mo, i'd be in trouble and there is no family member to help out. There is no uncle at a hedge fund who can suddenly get me a job. I'm in the general pool of candidates and only have those opportunities and the ones I create myself. That makes be reach less, it made me take more conservative jobs earlier on in my career, etc. My risk tolerance and hence potential rewards go down
- wardbradt 8y ago
  Are you talking about "View from 9th Avenue" [1]? If so, that is a great analogy because it depicts no housing in the rest of the country. [1] https://condenaststore.com/featured/view-from-9th-avenue-saul-steinberg.html https://condenaststore.com/featured/view-from-9th-avenue-sau...
420codebro 8y ago
What I took away is people who live in places they can't afford take money from their parents. Didn't need 1000+ words to convey this.
norswap 8y ago
"why do millennials act like it doesn't exist?" Hhm, do they really?
- jccalhoun 8y ago
  That was my first thought. What makes any of the article unique to millennials?
- es7 8y ago
  I see these types of articles way more than I hear fellow millenials discussing being 'self-made'. It seems almost trendy these days to try to point out all the ways that successful people just got lucky or substantial assistance. It seems highly related to this trendy idea that all people are fundamentally equal in all forms of capability, except maybe where poor diet hindered education or something. Individuals vary tremendously, and that's all luck too. Nature+Nurture. Everyone gets something from their parents: Personality is 40-60% heritable* IQ is 50-80% heritable So around half of who you are comes from who your parents are. The rest is luck. Even before you're born. My point is that every single person is basically 100% a combination of inheritance and luck. Maybe that inheritance is good genes, good parenting and money or maybe it isn't. Maybe in that context, a 15k loan isn't that big a deal. Maybe it is. Either way, it's counter productive to pick out a single aspect or two of a person and dismantle their success because they had THAT particular advantage. * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
awakeasleep 8y ago
I understand the use of 'millennials' as click-bait, but when a serious author tries to tie 'millennials' into some larger explanation of sociology I just have to stop reading. What the hell is going on in [the author]Jen Doll's head where she thinks that the myth of self-made success is a millennial phenomena? Does she suffer from amnesia? Is this just 4000 words of disinterested bullshit to get paid?
- samwhiteUK 8y ago
  Yes. Her writing career is unreliable, she said so herself. She has to take every opportunity
ip26 8y ago
I came away from this feeling like it's a very short jump from "Maybe some of the people doing impossibly well got help" to "Everyone who is doing better than me must have gotten help". I can't help but feel this element of dismissal is present even in this piece. E.g., Pierson turned a $15,000 loan into a business with $300,000/yr in revenue. She says, her biggest fear was hearing “she’s only successful because of her parents.” And this piece seems to suggest, or at least gently lead, the reader in that direction- ignoring the many many people who turned $15,000 loans into failed businesses.
- captainbland 8y ago
  Sure, it's impressive enough to turn $15k into a profitable business but most people could only take that plunge once or maybe twice, realistically. How many successful businesses were started by people who could do that ten times or a hundred times? Or more pertinently: how much of the market has been captured by such people? That's the real differentiator.
- zachsnow 8y ago
  > ignoring the many many people who turned $15,000 loans into failed businesses. As far as I understand it, most (VC-backed, tech) companies that raise millions of dollars manage to turn the money into failure.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Turning a $15,000 loan into a successful business is certainly a big accomplishment that does not warrant dismissal. On the other hand, is it not true that this success depended on her parents? How many people out there are capable of doing what she did, except they would never have access to a $15,000 loan in the first place? We can acknowledge that the deck is stacked without blindly dismissing those who succeeded with the deck stacked mildly in their favor.
malvosenior 8y ago
I think I found the problem: "Take a look around you at the lives you envy, the ones that make you boil with resentment, or fill you with insecurity about your own subpar existence: That adorable Brooklyn brownstone or chic-but-rustic upstate home; the career that YOU want (and you should have, what are you doing wrong?); the impeccable wardrobe; the mid-century modern furniture; the international vacations; the time spent flitting between gorgeous hotels or going to boutique fitness classes or (seemingly) not working at all." Do people really envy others like this and make themselves miserable over it? Other than the time not working, that list reads like pure hedonism, much of which is probably best avoided all together. I also don't think it's such a mystery as to who has come from money and who hasn't. Hint: poor people aren't freelance writers living in Brooklyn and they know those who are come from a different class altogether (since they probably don't even value half of those things).
- Opportunity007 8y ago
  Do people really envy others like this and make themselves miserable over it? Yes, it’s fairly evident by what’s popular: Instagram,Facebook,Snapchat etc... These are platforms meant to “connect” people but more often than not it’s just a method for “keeping up with the Joneses”
dahfizz 8y ago
I am constantly surprised at people's inability to imagine that other people lives are different than thier own. Just because real estate is expensive in the center of a big city doesn't mean it's impossible to buy a house anywhere in the entire country. Just because you can't support yourself as a writer doesn't mean nobody can support themselves no matter what. Just because you got free money from your parents doesn't mean everyone gets lots of free money from thier parents.
- the_gastropod 8y ago
  Yes! This. People get a really distorted view of reality, hanging around people earning 6 figure salaries, spending 90+% of them. Even in major cities, the median salaries are typically in the ~$50k range, and people do live and raise kids just fine. Instead of wondering how they do that, people tend to just throw up their hands, and declare it's impossible.
arwhatever 8y ago
The increasing prevalence of this type of material really rankles me. I fear that it just provides the uninitiated fodder to rationalize their lack of initiative.
jxramos 8y ago
Isn’t there a stat that says something like at most 10% of millionaires inherited their money/assets. The rest were supposedly “self made”
- treyfitty 8y ago
  This article goes a little deeper in exploring the definition of "self-made." Did those millionaires who didn't inherit money have their college paid for? Did they get help from their parents for a down payment? ...etc. The author makes a valid point by exploring this definition, and it suggests that most people, especially the well off received some substantial help that isn't available to many.
  - friedman23 8y ago
    This is such a stupid reductionist argument. Literally everybody at some point in their life receives help.
    - Rusky 8y ago
      The question is to what degree.
  - jxramos 8y ago
    There's an interesting exchange Milton Friedman has about the inheritance of social capital https://youtu.be/hoFdVuqrMZw?t=3928 https://youtu.be/hoFdVuqrMZw?t=3928 The video cuts off an interesting follow up exchange """FRIEDMAN: Well, the major source of inheritance is the inheritance of human qualities not of physical assets.""" https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/BP_1978_2.pdf https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collection... He talks about the inheritance of talent here https://youtu.be/YRLAKD-Vuvk?t=650 https://youtu.be/YRLAKD-Vuvk?t=650 I think in all the exchanges he makes a point about how none of it is fair, just as much as an inheritance of a negative hindrance of some kind also isn't fair. I think another person would play as, "there's no cosmic justice"
radmuzom 8y ago
Resonates strongly with me. Many of my school friends went to the best colleges in my country - all the time attributing their success solely to "hard work". However, they always seemed to ignore the fact that their parents paid a lot of money for them to attend the best tuition outside of school. I did not have that option and did not get admitted to any of the famous colleges (I am discounting the constant mental tension associated with poverty here). Luckily, I have done quite well for myself (till now) - but I am under no illusion that it was solely due to me. For example, I got my first data science job via a personal contact - without that I would forever be stuck in less paying jobs. Edit: typos
- dev_dull 8y ago
  > I did not have that option and did not get admitted to any of the famous colleges (I am discounting the constant mental tension associated with poverty here). Luckily, I have done quite well for myself Rather than confirm the articles premise you seem to be discrediting it.
- yunyu 8y ago
  I received much better financial aid offers from top schools than the local state university. While the ability to pay tuition definitely is a factor, keep in mind that many students do not pay even close to sticker price.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    Different states have different amounts of financial aid. I fortunately have a state school that is highly ranked in Comp. Sci. My family didn't get much financial aid, but I managed to put mostly on a loan and pay it back afterwards. I do realize that having a family rich enough to disqualify from financial aid is the "advantage" this article is probably talking about... But still, it wasn't like it was easy to take the SAT like 5 or 6 times through practice regiments. Memorizing word-lists from 3 different "SAT-word list books" to master analogies / reading sections was incredibly rigorous, it was the hardest studying I ever did in my life. By the end of the program, I memorized well over 20,000 "difficult words" over a period of 6-months to improve my SAT score (and promptly forgot about them after the test). Its not easy to do. There were plenty of other people in my SAT Prep classes who were unable to score as high as me... and there were plenty of people I know who worked harder than I did and scored higher than I. So there is certainly something to be said about "self-driven effort". But I fully recognize that my family's values and money helped me achieve what others couldn't. I also know of friends who were unable to afford multiple test-prep classes year after-year during high school... multiple years of "Kumon Math", and other such extracurricular after-school academic classes. Only now as an Adult do I realize how expensive all those after-school test prep classes are. ------------ There's give and take for sure. The opportunity is money-driven, but the achievement is still personal. All the money and test-prep classes in the world won't help if the child is disinterested or lazy.
ralusek 8y ago
> So why do millennials act like [financial help from parents] doesn't exist? I would argue the exact opposite. I would argue that with the rise of socialist tendencies among millennials, and the hyper fixation on gender, racial, and economic privilege, there is almost an outright rejection of the existence of merit at all. I think that the position is so extreme, that many millennials believe the output of an individual belonging to a group they consider to be universally privileged is almost entirely the consequence of their group's privileges or disadvantages. No person in their right mind wouldn't acknowledge the privileges we can be afforded. You can be tall, attractive, smart, have both parents at home, not need to work jobs to help your parents take care of your many siblings, have parents that don't abuse you, have access to a network of successful people willing to take financial risks on your behalf. These things are inconceivably helpful. There is a reason that the public's reaction to Donald Trump's "with a small loan of a million dollars and [inheriting my dad's business and network]" was almost unilaterally one of repulsion. Most sane people don't object to the concept of individual privilege (inherent, universal group privileges are a different discussion). What people object to is the disregarding of merit altogether; the extent to which we are divorcing consequence from actions. Where you start matters, but so do the choices you make.
- learc83 8y ago
  >Where you start matters, but so do the choices you make. Of course it does...but the single largest predictor of future income is parental income. >I would argue the exact opposite. I would argue that with the rise of socialist tendencies among millennials, and the hyper fixation on gender, racial, and economic privilege, there is almost an outright rejection of the existence of merit at all. I think that the position is so extreme, that many millennials believe the output of an individual belonging to a group they consider to be universally privileged is almost entirely the consequence of their group's privileges or disadvantages. And I would argue that this is the right-wing clickbait version of millennials. Not that people like this don't exist, but that their size and impact has been vastly exaggerated. >People don't have a problem acknowledging privilege. That doesn't match my personal experience with people.
  - 8y ago
darawk 8y ago
This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. If you're born in the US and your entire family is lawyers, maybe that same accomplishment is not "self made success". But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. I feel like this trope that self-made success is a myth comes almost entirely from people like the author of this article. People who were born with lots of advantages, who still couldn't hack it. They want to justify their own failure to live up to their family's expectations by tearing other people down. Whether or not self-made success is a thing, self-made failure certainly is, and i'd say the author of this article more than qualifies for it.
- radmuzom 8y ago
  Down-voted for such a strong word - "nonsense". See my other comment [1]. I am as self-made as anyone can be, with a very high standard of living in my country without taking even one cent from my parents beyond a certain age. But all that is because of one stroke of luck - I am proud of the fact that I was able to use that luck to my advantage but under no illusion that all my success is due to me alone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621
  - darawk 8y ago
    The fact that you did not do whatever it is that you did without any modicum of help or luck does not mean you are not self-made. You can take credit for your accomplishments. It's ok. We don't have to live in a binary, all or nothing world. You can acknowledge that you got lucky, while simultaneously acknowledging that you were smart and hard working to achieve whatever it is that you have. Maybe in your case it was entirely due to luck, but I seriously doubt it.
  - 8y ago
isoskeles 8y ago
So is this entire article about how some successful people got help from parents? (And therefore, all must have gotten help from their parents.) Seems pretty easy to cherry-pick the stories you research and write about here. Let me skip all the way to the end, spoiler alert: > If you have the privilege of not having to pay 50 percent of your rent because your parents are paying, how can you advocate for interns to make a decent-enough salary, or for scholarships to support an intern or fellow? That’s where the change comes in.” I don't understand this thesis. These are the exact type of people who would advocate for "decent-enough salary" because money comes to them for free. The magical thinking required to just demand decent-enough salaries are thrown about by businesses (or other authority figures) that must have bottomless pockets looks very similar to how they think about getting a free ride from mommy and daddy. Can we find examples of people who get free money from their parents and openly say that everyone else needs to pull themselves up by the bootstraps? I think "Trump" might be the only person others will respond with, cynically at that, given I don't think Trump has said such a thing--he's just a Republican. But otherwise, where are all these trust-fund babies who believe everyone else needs to be a self-made person? Those people don't exist as far as I know.
smallgovt 8y ago
I think a more interesting question to ask is: Why do we care who is responsible for our success? Is it so that we know how to engineer more success? Or, is it to validate our egos? And, if the latter, aren't we asking the wrong question?
- ls612 8y ago
  We care because if a lot of people don’t believe they can succeed they will generate substantial social unrest, which has often ended poorly throughout history.
  - smallgovt 8y ago
    But this article is working in the opposite direction -- attempting to take people's ego down a notch and convince them success is not a result of their agency. I get the feeling that the article is steeped in a value system based around the ego. But, if we take it for granted that the ego is important, shouldn't we be happy when people have elated egos? Why try to bring them down? And, if we don't agree that the ego is important, why even ask these questions to begin with?
    - ls612 8y ago
      Sorry, I wrote that poorly. The well-off people who defend the ideal of the self made person do so because of their desire to not be on the wrong end of pitchforks (metaphorical or otherwise). Not necessarily to massage their egos.
bwang29 8y ago
It’s not just about the money, there is also the intangible experience when it comes to information and family education. I’d argue that will put an even a stronger influence on a kid’s mindset so if a parent is giving a 15k loan to a child it doesn’t mean the kid isn’t helped significantly to bootstrap her otherwise. On the contrary, it feels even more like a status symbol of demonstration from the parents to illustrate to society how confident they were about the kids paying the loan back.
ryandrake 8y ago
> A recent study from Merrill Lynch and Age Wave reported that 79 percent of the parents surveyed are providing financial support to their adult children, at an average $7,000 a year Wow, this can’t be right. I mean I’ve had friends whose parents paid for their university and stuff like that, and mine helped me a little bit with tuition at a cheap state school, too, for which I’m grateful. But ongoing financial support, year after year? And 4 out of 5 parents? Yow! Guess I’m naive, but I had no idea it was that common. Maybe age is part of it. I was lucky enough to go to uni before the days of 6 figure student loan debt. I know exactly one adult whose parents pay for all their bills, including rent. We’re friends so I give him hell about it. “You’re a grown-ass man with a decent job. Let mommy and daddy retire already!” I think once you start down those tracks and get used to the “extra funding” lifestyle, it’s hard to get off the train.
- DigiMortal 8y ago
  Yeah I am a bit surprised, though I do see many of these examples around me. I have several peers into their late 20's receiving support, many in the NYC area as well. My parents put a roof over my head, valued education, helped with most all of my tuition for undergrad (over 100k), I have 7k of student loan debt left to pay off and I am 26. Right now, I am only left on their phone plan, which I just venmo my dad monthly for, 50 bucks for unlimited on Verizon and I bought my phone off of Swappa for 200 bucks (I recommend Swappa as well, save your money) I've also seen parents feed junkies, so there's that. I don't understand the ones not working, yet going out all the time, no money management, doing drugs....parents sending money... WHY?!?!
bedhead 8y ago
The author clinging to a 100% literal translation of "self made" is mind-numbingly stupid.
jonbarker 8y ago
So the author's parents encouraged leverage by subsidizing a down payment on real estate, an asset class which underperforms index funds. The story doesn't seem to end well; it is probably self correcting in the long run.
- briandear 8y ago
  Real estate underperforms index funds? Perhaps in capital appreciation, but in terms of cash on cash returns, nothing beats real estate. If you can turn a $50k downpayment into a $250k property netting $300 per month after mortgage/expenses, plus get capital appreciation on top of that — you’ll make far more money on that $50k than the same money invested in an index fund. Statements such as “indexes out-perform real estate” might be true for an owner-occupied residence, but it certainly isn’t true when the real estate is an actual cash-flowing investment and not your own residence. What people fail to grasp is that a $250k house doesn’t cost $250k in cash. It costs $50k in cash. While the bank owns the other $200k in value, that $50k gives you control of that asset and the cash flow that comes from it. If that $250k house goes up to $300k in value, then you just earned a 100% return on your cash plus the cash-flow revenue. Even if the house goes down in value, if you are still cash flow positive, you are still making money. A $300 net per month is $3600 per year which is a 7% return on your $50k cash, however on top of that 7%, you also get a “free” house since your tenant is paying the note and expenses. On top of that, you get depreciation, which in many cases can make that $3600 per year tax free when the depreciation exceeds the income from the rent. Indexes outperforming real estate is a highly simplistic view and doesn’t accurately reflect cash on cash returns, tax advantages and cash flow. $50k in an index vs $50k as a down payment on a cash flow property— the property is going to make as much in cash as your entire capital appreciation for the index. For an index to be better, it’s going to have to both appreciate at a higher rate than the house as well as pay dividends equal to the annual net from the house. Comparing indexes and real estate shouldn’t discount the value of leverage, nor should it discount the cash flow from the asset. (In the situation you are commenting on though, the author buying a residence, I don’t disagree; I am commenting on real estate as an asset class in general.)
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
Kiro 8y ago
This is objectively false. I know a lot of successful people who haven't had any help whatsoever, starting with $0 and building their later successful business on the side while working full-time. In fact, I barely know anyone who had their rent paid by their parents at all (since that seems to be the argument here).
throwaway-1283 8y ago
Can we stop talking about "millennials" like we're still kids? I'm pretty sure by definition "millennials" are almost 40.
dev_dull 8y ago
It's really quite amazing to see the attacks lately against successful people. I can't help but feel we're being prepped to accept a new tax structure (or possibly new economical model), and the first step is to whip up everyone against the future fodder (wealthy individuals). The poor spendthrift vagabond says to a rich man: "I have discovered there is enough money in the world for all of us, if it was equally divided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy together." "But," was the response, "if everybody was like you, it would be spent in two months, and what would you do then?" "Oh! divide again; keep dividing, of course!"
- titanomachy 8y ago
  Ayn Rand is back from the dead, and she's posting on HN! In all seriousness though, the excesses of certain rich people are pretty gross. I once saw a guy spend $20k (of inherited money) on a fancy showerhead. Kids who go into foster care are 3x more likely to go to prison and unlikely to reach higher education. "Equal opportunity" indeed.
  - dev_dull 8y ago
    Who cares what someone wastes their money on? If you believe a “fool and their money are soon parted” then the only explanation for life-long wealthy people is that they don’t waste it. There are many problems in our country. Are you doing something personally to make it better, or just attacking others and asking someone else to fix it for you?
    - titanomachy 8y ago
      Wealthy people can afford to waste much more (in absolute terms) without losing their wealth. The extreme is European royalty before revolution, and eventually it was shown that people did not have an unlimited tolerance for inequality. "There are many problems in our country..." I probably don't live in your country, but I try to work towards solving problems. There are also people in my society whose job it is to solve social problems, and I help fund the work of those people just by being economically productive and therefore paying taxes.
djschnei 8y ago
"My life was like this, therefore everyone's was." - Jen Doll
nkingsy 8y ago
Just adding my data point. My grandfather gave me a college fund and I went to public college, leaving me with the difference between that and private college. The little nest egg that remained in that account was a weight around my neck. I had many enjoyable experiences in my 20's (eg traveling the world earning a living playing online poker for 3 years), but I felt no urgency to pursue a career. In my late 20's I spent most of the money attempting to write a novel (living expenses) and gave the rest away. Within months of approaching zero in my bank account, I rediscovered programming, found a career I love and was able to afford children. My recollections may be colored by history, and I may have just been someone that took a long time to mature, but that's how I feel about it today.
mountainofdeath 8y ago
The one thing that personally really angers me is that many institutions are exponentially harder to break into unless you come from a specific, moneyed background. You basically need to go to an elite preschool, to go to an elite primary school (usually private), to go to an elite secondary school, to get into an elite university, to get into an elite company in an elite sector (consulting, investment banking, arguably SV tech more often than not). To this class of people, spending $60k+ a year*, per child is nothing since they have been spending that much since the child was born. I've met more than a handful of these people that I wonder what, if anything, they learned.
honkycat 8y ago
I like that we keep talking about privilege, no matter how much it irks the hacker news elite. I have a previous comment about this[0], so I will not go into too much detail. Nobody thinks they are rich or privileged. Now, the Hendersons down the street? THOSE PEOPLE are rich! I feel that people underestimate the huge effect of having a safety net under them. It is the difference between going to the amazing state school and the local community college. It is the difference between paying attention and learning in class and sleeping through it because you had to get up at 6 am to work an 8-hour shift. It is the difference between living in a studio apartment, 45 minutes from school in the bad part of town and living in the beautiful two-bedroom top-floor loft in Logan Square. It is the difference between a data entry job, and an unpaid research internship with your professors. It is the difference between sleeping on a couch for 3 months while you look for your first job, and having a place to stay and prepare. It is the difference between taking the first job you can get, and holding out until you find a better one. It's the difference between a loan for a house and a loan to your parents to pay off medical debt. Think about every step, every decision you have made in your life and consider if you would have made the same choices if your life was different. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19098317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19098317
- fireflash38 8y ago
  Every time I see privilege come up, people start denying it, or excusing it. Saying things like "I still had to work hard for this!" It's a tricky subject to talk about, as the article references, specifically because it's hard to differentiate between what you got from privilege and what you got from hard work. I find analogies best to talk about it. Your goal is to reach the top floor of a building. Some people start at the penultimate floor. Some start on the 2nd floor. Others are in the basement. Every single one takes effort to climb the steps. But some have a big head start, and can even fail down a few floors and still have it easier than other people.
  - projektfu 8y ago
    There's very little that's more impertinent than telling an American he didn't earn what he has. Can't speak for other cultures.
Dirlewanger 8y ago
Spoiled delusional New Yorker has delusional view of the world, more at 11.
- dang 8y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive, snarky, and gratuitously negative comments to Hacker News? You've done this a lot, it breaks the site guidelines, and we're hoping for better than that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
arendtio 8y ago
> Financial help from parents comes in many forms, and it’s the basis of so many success stories. So why do millennials act like it doesn't exist? Because never before your chances of becoming wealthy without help from your parents were so good? At least that is my impression without knowing any facts.
afpx 8y ago
I always thought it was common knowledge that most people 'making a living' on journalism, academia, literature, art, etc. were being subsidized by either their or another's independent wealth.
markvdb 8y ago
In some parts of the world, it's very often the other way round: kids financially supporting their parents. Or what would you do when your parents' savings and pension had all disappeared in the collapse of the USSR? That's exactly the scenario some friends of mine are in...
mAEStro-paNDa 8y ago
I am not quite sure why the author narrows in on millennials in this piece, this is something happening among varying age groups. It also appears from my experience on this forum that the prevailing opinion here is that this story is not a myth at all, but I understand there is variance here. The issue with cost of living is an obvious one that is made in comments here, but that still does nothing to address the individuals/families who _still_ struggle in areas that are much cheaper to live. Yes, the insular view of one who has not lived outside SF is troublesome, but it's dishonest to argue as if there is still not real existing poverty in places with a lower cost of living. While there are many different ways the socioeconomic status of ones family and upbringing can assist in their own success, there are a myriad of ways in which this is also influenced by systemic features to our society, as well as the historical context of that. Think of racially discriminatory housing policies that have helped lead to wealth gaps in the present. While rags to riches makes a good story, we also don't talk about failures in business as much as we do the successful enterprises. Referring to individual actions in tandem with family assistance, coming to terms with the subject of meritocracy in our society and individual success, I'd propose we're looking at it the wrong way. The part to evaluate is not how much these things have to do with success, but rather how much can they come back from failure? This paints a rather different picture, as those with more financial security are in a much better position to take risks, make poor decisions, while not being pulled into poverty. Finally, I'd like to point out that there is a growing skepticism of the liberal world order, the mainstream consensus, status quo, whatever you want to call it. More people are realizing now the varying degrees of ways the system is rigged against common working people. With it comes skepticism of the legitimacy of meritocracy in our current social order. This isn't just coming out of a vacuum.
- apercu 8y ago
  Sounds cynical and paranoid (I kid, sorta).
rocgf 8y ago
I am perpetually amazed by how often people feel the need to put a label on something, even if that doesn't _really_ matter. As far as I have noticed, the self-made "myth" is mainly a media trick. For some reason (maybe intrigue, maybe hope, maybe something else), people love rags to riches stories, be it an immigrant to the US with "five dollars in her pocket", a Bill Gates or an Elon Musk. The people who write those stories don't do it to get the word out, they do it to sell you something, so of course they will try to make it as dramatic as possible. Now there's a counter-movement to balance things out. Bill Gates was actually born in a wealthy family and had a trust fund with millions in it; taking risks with his company was not really a risk. A lot of people like Cara Delevingne (who is constantly advertised everywhere for some reason) are actually part of a family with big ties in their respective industries. They are not truly self-made, but they are not just propelled to the top without significant amounts of work or talent either. The truth is generally somewhere in the middle, with outliers at both ends. In the end, does it really matter? I feel like social media is full of either stories like this or people pretending to live a perfect life. In short, things that are unattainable for most people even if they were to live a hundred lives. Dreaming big is a wonderful thing, but it definitely won't pan out for the vast majority of people, while making them less happy in the process. That's just my view, maybe wrong in some aspects.
staunch 8y ago
The term self-made is just too imprecise to be useful. The three major factors involved in an individual's success are: #1 Genetics - High general intelligence, ambition, etc. #2 Environment - Highly educated well-off parents, etc. #3 Opportunity - Support of powerful people, etc. You probably can't do much without at least one of these factors. Most people that do big things have all three working in their favor. People like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and Paul Graham had all three. On the other hand, people like Steve Jobs, John Carmack, Palmer Luckey, and Larry Ellison only had #1 working for them, which is why their success is so much more impressive.
40acres 8y ago
Rising inequality and the expansion of the welfare state have transformed "self-made" into an aspiration. Even prior to the gilded age being "self-made" was rare.. only a few people were able to pull themselves up to success. If you want to read an American self-made tale pick up "Up From Slavery". Anyway, I grew up lower-middle class. My parents were immigrants and we came from the poorest country in the western hemisphere (Haiti) with no generational wealth. I don't consider myself 'self-made', I'd say there was a mix of luck, support from the state (rent control, FAFSA, EITC, etc.) and self directed hard work. It sounds like to me that the author got some "generational help" and feels like they were not able to capitalize, unlike some of the other profiled in this article. And thus is taking a zero-sum view of the concept of "self-made". Most parent's would do anything for their kids lives to end up better than theirs did. I won't have any qualms about paying my kids tuition or helping with a down payment when the time comes.
deleted 8y ago
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DoreenMichele 8y ago
I spent nearly six years homeless. During that time, I basically taught myself to make money online. I still don't have much, but I'm off the street. I read articles like this and imagine a future where I'm wealthy and powerful and everyone will talk about my privileged background and pooh pooh the idea that I'm self made. If I ever figure out how to address affordable housing in some meaningful way, no one will laud me as a champion of the poor and downtrodden. No, they will most likely label me a slumlord. Of course, no one is entirely self made. Of course, it's helpful to know what resources were genuinely involved in actually creating x, y or z. You have no hope of doing something similar if you have what amounts to misinformation about how it got done. But we value the concept of a self made person because we've all had to fight to be free. We all struggle to take the hand life dealt us and turn it into a thing we desire. We all look to others who somehow accomplished that for clues to find our way into the unmapped future and try to make it a thing we don't loathe overly much.
Gpetrium 8y ago
There is a fundamental limitation in the human ability to assess success. Humans inheritably live in different worlds therefore, their perception of key factors such as self-actualization, esteem, belonging, love, safety & physiological needs will be invariable different. I would argue that if everyone started out with the same mindset and base opportunities, with time, the environment and its scarcities would cause some to deviate towards being 'richer' and others towards being 'poorer', partially by luck, and partially by other factors within and outside each person's control. Someone that is self-made will mostly see itself's success as their personal actions and will mostly overestimate that side (E.g. I saved money while my peers were burning it on consumer goods) while others looking from outside will mostly push the (E.g. He was lucky or the environment he was in made him succeed) usually underestimating the person's personal actions.
socrates1998 8y ago
Not a great article, but it certainly does illustrate the idea that we are helped to a certain extent. It's hard to measure one's success accurately. A $15k loan paid back almost immediately is really nothing in the grand scheme of things, she probably could have gotten a regular loan or at least used some credit cards to float her for it. A much bigger help was her parents paying for college. THAT's significant. It meant she knew that starting a business was an option because she could live cheaply after she graduated instead of being forced to get a job. For the most part, the most successful people in America have been helped significantly by their parents, in my opinion. Whether it's through paying for an education or networking or outright buying them a business (like a franchise). Growing up upper-middle class in America puts you way ahead of almost everyone else on the planet as far as advantages goes.
sagartewari01 8y ago
Even if it is a myth, it's a myth worth believing.

154 points by prostoalex 8y ago

>She told me, “I was curious, but I don't know how a single person in America who doesn't have family money could buy anything, I really don’t, if they're not working in finance or they're not a doctor. ” Easy, there are vast areas of America where housing is more affordable. I certainly got zero cash from family when I bought a home. My family put money into giving me food and shelter growing up though. This is kind of like that cartoon of a New Yorker's view of the US, where Manhattan looms large, then there's New Jersey, and at the fringes there is the rest of the nation.

Sangermaine 8y ago
You seem to be ignoring the second part of her statement: what's your job? Is it a good, high-paying one?
ForHackernews 8y ago
The places with cheaper housing also tend to suffer from a dearth of employment options. There are probably a few mid-sized cities out there that have both cheap housing and decently-paid jobs, but I imagine they are few and far between. I don't know how legitimate this source is, but > ATTOM points out that home prices are climbing faster than wages in 80% of U.S. markets. In fact, median home prices increased at a faster pace than average weekly wages in 601 of the 755 counties analyzed in its report. https://www.housingwire.com/articles/47878-home-prices-are-rising-faster-than-wages-in-80-of-us-markets https://www.housingwire.com/articles/47878-home-prices-are-r...
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  They are pretty common. Kansas City. St. Louis. Des Moines. Dayton. And that's just the Midwest. You don't need a great job market; you just need the one job. Works for some people.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    With the market changing quicker than ever before due to various structural changes such as new technologies, consolidation of employers, and globalization, I would not recommend having one, or even just a handful of buyers for what you're selling. This applies to businesses and individuals. I would demand a premium for being in a market where there are fewer buyers and I am subject to more risk of losing my income.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - collyw 8y ago
    In Europe house prices seem fairly tied to employment opportunities. Certainly if you are working in It.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      Is that true? I know real estate is incredibly expensive in places like London/Paris and most people cannot afford to own homes there based on their working salary (which is usually much lower than the US equivalent).
  - goobynight 8y ago
    Works for a lot of people, especially if they fall into fairly standard, but good service gigs. e.g. vehicle repair, home repair, cutting hair, or working a local pub. Even better if you show up with a pile of cash from a former career.
- greedo 8y ago
  I live in a midwest college town. Unemployment here is extremely low, has been for decades. Housing costs are relatively low as well. I live in a house that in the Seattle area would be over $1M. I paid 20% of that. There are multiple startups for tech here, as well as government jobs, college related jobs, and other industries. So there's no dearth of employment options. If something were to happen, I can commute an hour to a city with a population of 1M.
smt88 8y ago
> I certainly got zero cash from family when I bought a home. Crucially, this is not the least help your family can offer. For many (most?) people in the world, their relatives are actually insecure and need financial support. This is a key reason the cycle of poverty can't be broken by one person getting a good job. I know multiple people who would've easily had a down payment on a house if their parents hadn't lost pensions/savings in the financial crisis. Several years later, that $100k they used to bail out parents would've grown to $300k+ in equity if they could've bought a house in a city between 2009 and 2012.
latencyloser 8y ago
This reminds me of when I was working at Microsoft and a colleague said to me: "I don't know how anyone raises a family off less than $130k/year." I laughed and asked him if he'd ever been anywhere in the US outside of Seattle before. Turns out, he hadn't and assumed the insane cost of living we're subject to in this area also exists in the rest of the country. My point of reference is my family's house in a rural area that is about 2x the size of mine (the property is 10x) and costs 1/3 as much. I wish my career as a software engineer better enabled this type of living but, alas, my corporate overlords require I am ass in desk every day in a metro area.
- blueboo 8y ago
  And so the legend goeth: A friend exclaimed, "how do you afford to buy a house in San Francisco?" I, too, laughed! For lo': huts in the wilderness were mere pennies. He hadn't ever been to the bush, and had assumed the insane cost of living in this area exists in other places with high-paying tech jobs.
  - _range_life 8y ago
    The article wasn't specifically about tech jobs, or huts in the bush you retard. It made a blanket statement, and that's what this guy is responding to.
- duxup 8y ago
  My first trip out to the valley working for a company out there someone turned to me and asked "So what do people do out there?" I thought he meant "for fun" but he meant regarding jobs or a career. Despite the fact that I did the same job he did... "out there".
- AboutTheWhisles 8y ago
  The same extrapolations happen with population density. People in LA and New York think the world is overpopulated and everyone is on top of each other. They don't realize that 45 minutes north east of San Francisco there are no houses, no street lights and no cell phone reception.
Consultant32452 8y ago
Exactly. I live in a 2nd tier city. My friends who are home owners have very middle class blue collar jobs. Examples include auto mechanic, security system installer, and local delivery truck driver. None of them got "help."
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  How old are they? I know plenty of people who bought a house 30 or 40 years ago on blue collar salaries. I don't know any <30 year olds who bought property without parental help.
  - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago
    Where do the people you know live? That might inform the probability of being able to buy a home with or without parental help. I just picked a metro: Baton Rouge. Median home price there is around $160k, although naturally there is plenty of inventory available for less than $100k. Some of it's in pretty dismal shape, but, looking at Zillow, there are non-zero houses in this category that look livable. The median HHI in Baton Rouge is $45k. So it would take about four years for the median family to save up enough to buy something that's at least livable, assuming they can save ten percent of their income. I couldn't say whether blue collar people make at, above, or below the median, but it strikes me as likely that at least some of them will be able to purchase a home in this type of metro.
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      I grew up in the midwest. Most of the people I know are in Iowa, some in Illinois and Missouri. Saving up a down-payment is a significant obstacle, I think. I know that in some areas, you can get a rural development loan that requires a much smaller downpayment, but my friends don't want to live in the boonies and it would lead to a pretty miserable commute for them.
      - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
ben509 8y ago
Responding to your quote: Working in finance, I can report that we do not have magic money machines. You could narrow "finance" to mean professional traders who do extensive market research and take large risks, sure, they make a lot of money, but they also get wiped out periodically. They're not very different from other entrepreneurs who make a big investment into their area of expertise and takes big risks, often failing many times along the way. That is pretty much the "self-made" story, and one thing I do see working in finance is that most people are way too risk averse for it. That's not a bad thing in aggregate, the conservative majority's instinct for stability is an important buffer against all the breakage the risk takers cause.
- CPLX 8y ago
  I'm not saying it's an easy job, by any means, but there's not a ton of risk involved in taking an entry level job at an investment bank and trying to work your way up to MD or similar. And that track most certainly pays plenty well, even if you doin't quite get as high as the boardroom.
- donaldknuth123 8y ago
  Hedge Funds literally print money. 2/20 is guaranteed money, 2% on all funds managed so you win regardless of the market and 20% of any gains when you beat the market. Easy.
stcredzero 8y ago
>She told me, “I was curious, but I don't know how a single person in America who doesn't have family money could buy anything, I really don’t, if they're not working in finance or they're not a doctor. ” This is kind of like that cartoon of a New Yorker's view of the US, where Manhattan looms large, then there's New Jersey, and at the fringes there is the rest of the nation. I met this veteran taxi driver in South Carolina who had bought a big Federal era house north of the state capital, for only $20,000 back in the late 90's. Everything about the house needed fixing, and there was no heating/ventilation equipment functioning at all. He was living there, however, and he was putting all of his extra money into buying construction materials, so he could eventually sell it for 20 times as much. I also knew a waitress/barista in Ohio who had bought a duplex, was living in one half, and renting out the other. She had done all of that on $5/hour plus tips and sweat equity. Both of the above examples happened in the 90's. This Kirsten Dirksen video is basically a documentary about how homeowner's interests and their affect on local laws have basically ossified our society. (This is set in Sonoma, which is not overcrowded in the least.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8x4CWBMsPg Basically, homeowners have thrown up roadblocks to keep "the wrong element" out of their neighborhoods, which also locks out the young people of their own group. The big irony is that this happened much more in liberal California than it did in conservative Ohio and South Carolina.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  The big irony is that this happened much more in liberal California than it did in conservative Ohio and South Carolina. Not sure where you've come up with this bizarre and selective understanding of US history. Ohio is notorious for racially-based restrictive covenants on housing. There were entire neighborhoods where deeds had restrictions preventing their sale to blacks. They got the idea from southern states like South Carolina. These restrictions are still on many of the deeds in Ohio and South Carolina, though they are no longer legally enforceable.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Not sure where you've come up with this bizarre and selective understanding of US history. Ohio is notorious for racially-based restrictive covenants on housing Note that I was specifically talking about the unintended impacts of such laws on the youth of one's "own" group. California is singularly bad about that. (I have a different view on these things, outside of the usual polarization. So people tend to project a "side" to my comments which isn't intended and actually isn't there. As a non-white person whose parents experienced ethnically based exclusion, such projections make little sense to me.)
TuringNYC 8y ago
>> I certainly got zero cash from family when I bought a home. For a lot of wealthy friends, this was the case, they were self made (first order) and paid their own way (first order). The really valuable thing they received was the safety net and contacts such that they werent exposed to the spikes of unfortunate things that can happen. For me, if I cant make mortgage for 6mo, i'd be in trouble and there is no family member to help out. There is no uncle at a hedge fund who can suddenly get me a job. I'm in the general pool of candidates and only have those opportunities and the ones I create myself. That makes be reach less, it made me take more conservative jobs earlier on in my career, etc. My risk tolerance and hence potential rewards go down
wardbradt 8y ago
Are you talking about "View from 9th Avenue" [1]? If so, that is a great analogy because it depicts no housing in the rest of the country. [1] https://condenaststore.com/featured/view-from-9th-avenue-saul-steinberg.html https://condenaststore.com/featured/view-from-9th-avenue-sau...

420codebro 8y ago

What I took away is people who live in places they can't afford take money from their parents. Didn't need 1000+ words to convey this.

norswap 8y ago

"why do millennials act like it doesn't exist?" Hhm, do they really?

jccalhoun 8y ago
That was my first thought. What makes any of the article unique to millennials?
es7 8y ago
I see these types of articles way more than I hear fellow millenials discussing being 'self-made'. It seems almost trendy these days to try to point out all the ways that successful people just got lucky or substantial assistance. It seems highly related to this trendy idea that all people are fundamentally equal in all forms of capability, except maybe where poor diet hindered education or something. Individuals vary tremendously, and that's all luck too. Nature+Nurture. Everyone gets something from their parents: Personality is 40-60% heritable* IQ is 50-80% heritable So around half of who you are comes from who your parents are. The rest is luck. Even before you're born. My point is that every single person is basically 100% a combination of inheritance and luck. Maybe that inheritance is good genes, good parenting and money or maybe it isn't. Maybe in that context, a 15k loan isn't that big a deal. Maybe it is. Either way, it's counter productive to pick out a single aspect or two of a person and dismantle their success because they had THAT particular advantage. * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

awakeasleep 8y ago

I understand the use of 'millennials' as click-bait, but when a serious author tries to tie 'millennials' into some larger explanation of sociology I just have to stop reading. What the hell is going on in [the author]Jen Doll's head where she thinks that the myth of self-made success is a millennial phenomena? Does she suffer from amnesia? Is this just 4000 words of disinterested bullshit to get paid?

samwhiteUK 8y ago
Yes. Her writing career is unreliable, she said so herself. She has to take every opportunity

ip26 8y ago

I came away from this feeling like it's a very short jump from "Maybe some of the people doing impossibly well got help" to "Everyone who is doing better than me must have gotten help". I can't help but feel this element of dismissal is present even in this piece. E.g., Pierson turned a $15,000 loan into a business with $300,000/yr in revenue. She says, her biggest fear was hearing “she’s only successful because of her parents.” And this piece seems to suggest, or at least gently lead, the reader in that direction- ignoring the many many people who turned $15,000 loans into failed businesses.

captainbland 8y ago
Sure, it's impressive enough to turn $15k into a profitable business but most people could only take that plunge once or maybe twice, realistically. How many successful businesses were started by people who could do that ten times or a hundred times? Or more pertinently: how much of the market has been captured by such people? That's the real differentiator.
zachsnow 8y ago
> ignoring the many many people who turned $15,000 loans into failed businesses. As far as I understand it, most (VC-backed, tech) companies that raise millions of dollars manage to turn the money into failure.
mikeash 8y ago
Turning a $15,000 loan into a successful business is certainly a big accomplishment that does not warrant dismissal. On the other hand, is it not true that this success depended on her parents? How many people out there are capable of doing what she did, except they would never have access to a $15,000 loan in the first place? We can acknowledge that the deck is stacked without blindly dismissing those who succeeded with the deck stacked mildly in their favor.

malvosenior 8y ago

I think I found the problem: "Take a look around you at the lives you envy, the ones that make you boil with resentment, or fill you with insecurity about your own subpar existence: That adorable Brooklyn brownstone or chic-but-rustic upstate home; the career that YOU want (and you should have, what are you doing wrong?); the impeccable wardrobe; the mid-century modern furniture; the international vacations; the time spent flitting between gorgeous hotels or going to boutique fitness classes or (seemingly) not working at all." Do people really envy others like this and make themselves miserable over it? Other than the time not working, that list reads like pure hedonism, much of which is probably best avoided all together. I also don't think it's such a mystery as to who has come from money and who hasn't. Hint: poor people aren't freelance writers living in Brooklyn and they know those who are come from a different class altogether (since they probably don't even value half of those things).

Opportunity007 8y ago
Do people really envy others like this and make themselves miserable over it? Yes, it’s fairly evident by what’s popular: Instagram,Facebook,Snapchat etc... These are platforms meant to “connect” people but more often than not it’s just a method for “keeping up with the Joneses”

dahfizz 8y ago

I am constantly surprised at people's inability to imagine that other people lives are different than thier own. Just because real estate is expensive in the center of a big city doesn't mean it's impossible to buy a house anywhere in the entire country. Just because you can't support yourself as a writer doesn't mean nobody can support themselves no matter what. Just because you got free money from your parents doesn't mean everyone gets lots of free money from thier parents.

the_gastropod 8y ago
Yes! This. People get a really distorted view of reality, hanging around people earning 6 figure salaries, spending 90+% of them. Even in major cities, the median salaries are typically in the ~$50k range, and people do live and raise kids just fine. Instead of wondering how they do that, people tend to just throw up their hands, and declare it's impossible.

arwhatever 8y ago

The increasing prevalence of this type of material really rankles me. I fear that it just provides the uninitiated fodder to rationalize their lack of initiative.

jxramos 8y ago

Isn’t there a stat that says something like at most 10% of millionaires inherited their money/assets. The rest were supposedly “self made”

treyfitty 8y ago
This article goes a little deeper in exploring the definition of "self-made." Did those millionaires who didn't inherit money have their college paid for? Did they get help from their parents for a down payment? ...etc. The author makes a valid point by exploring this definition, and it suggests that most people, especially the well off received some substantial help that isn't available to many.
- friedman23 8y ago
  This is such a stupid reductionist argument. Literally everybody at some point in their life receives help.
  - Rusky 8y ago
    The question is to what degree.
- jxramos 8y ago
  There's an interesting exchange Milton Friedman has about the inheritance of social capital https://youtu.be/hoFdVuqrMZw?t=3928 https://youtu.be/hoFdVuqrMZw?t=3928 The video cuts off an interesting follow up exchange """FRIEDMAN: Well, the major source of inheritance is the inheritance of human qualities not of physical assets.""" https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/BP_1978_2.pdf https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collection... He talks about the inheritance of talent here https://youtu.be/YRLAKD-Vuvk?t=650 https://youtu.be/YRLAKD-Vuvk?t=650 I think in all the exchanges he makes a point about how none of it is fair, just as much as an inheritance of a negative hindrance of some kind also isn't fair. I think another person would play as, "there's no cosmic justice"

radmuzom 8y ago

Resonates strongly with me. Many of my school friends went to the best colleges in my country - all the time attributing their success solely to "hard work". However, they always seemed to ignore the fact that their parents paid a lot of money for them to attend the best tuition outside of school. I did not have that option and did not get admitted to any of the famous colleges (I am discounting the constant mental tension associated with poverty here). Luckily, I have done quite well for myself (till now) - but I am under no illusion that it was solely due to me. For example, I got my first data science job via a personal contact - without that I would forever be stuck in less paying jobs. Edit: typos

dev_dull 8y ago
> I did not have that option and did not get admitted to any of the famous colleges (I am discounting the constant mental tension associated with poverty here). Luckily, I have done quite well for myself Rather than confirm the articles premise you seem to be discrediting it.
yunyu 8y ago
I received much better financial aid offers from top schools than the local state university. While the ability to pay tuition definitely is a factor, keep in mind that many students do not pay even close to sticker price.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  Different states have different amounts of financial aid. I fortunately have a state school that is highly ranked in Comp. Sci. My family didn't get much financial aid, but I managed to put mostly on a loan and pay it back afterwards. I do realize that having a family rich enough to disqualify from financial aid is the "advantage" this article is probably talking about... But still, it wasn't like it was easy to take the SAT like 5 or 6 times through practice regiments. Memorizing word-lists from 3 different "SAT-word list books" to master analogies / reading sections was incredibly rigorous, it was the hardest studying I ever did in my life. By the end of the program, I memorized well over 20,000 "difficult words" over a period of 6-months to improve my SAT score (and promptly forgot about them after the test). Its not easy to do. There were plenty of other people in my SAT Prep classes who were unable to score as high as me... and there were plenty of people I know who worked harder than I did and scored higher than I. So there is certainly something to be said about "self-driven effort". But I fully recognize that my family's values and money helped me achieve what others couldn't. I also know of friends who were unable to afford multiple test-prep classes year after-year during high school... multiple years of "Kumon Math", and other such extracurricular after-school academic classes. Only now as an Adult do I realize how expensive all those after-school test prep classes are. ------------ There's give and take for sure. The opportunity is money-driven, but the achievement is still personal. All the money and test-prep classes in the world won't help if the child is disinterested or lazy.

ralusek 8y ago

> So why do millennials act like [financial help from parents] doesn't exist? I would argue the exact opposite. I would argue that with the rise of socialist tendencies among millennials, and the hyper fixation on gender, racial, and economic privilege, there is almost an outright rejection of the existence of merit at all. I think that the position is so extreme, that many millennials believe the output of an individual belonging to a group they consider to be universally privileged is almost entirely the consequence of their group's privileges or disadvantages. No person in their right mind wouldn't acknowledge the privileges we can be afforded. You can be tall, attractive, smart, have both parents at home, not need to work jobs to help your parents take care of your many siblings, have parents that don't abuse you, have access to a network of successful people willing to take financial risks on your behalf. These things are inconceivably helpful. There is a reason that the public's reaction to Donald Trump's "with a small loan of a million dollars and [inheriting my dad's business and network]" was almost unilaterally one of repulsion. Most sane people don't object to the concept of individual privilege (inherent, universal group privileges are a different discussion). What people object to is the disregarding of merit altogether; the extent to which we are divorcing consequence from actions. Where you start matters, but so do the choices you make.

learc83 8y ago
>Where you start matters, but so do the choices you make. Of course it does...but the single largest predictor of future income is parental income. >I would argue the exact opposite. I would argue that with the rise of socialist tendencies among millennials, and the hyper fixation on gender, racial, and economic privilege, there is almost an outright rejection of the existence of merit at all. I think that the position is so extreme, that many millennials believe the output of an individual belonging to a group they consider to be universally privileged is almost entirely the consequence of their group's privileges or disadvantages. And I would argue that this is the right-wing clickbait version of millennials. Not that people like this don't exist, but that their size and impact has been vastly exaggerated. >People don't have a problem acknowledging privilege. That doesn't match my personal experience with people.
- 8y ago

darawk 8y ago

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. If you're born in the US and your entire family is lawyers, maybe that same accomplishment is not "self made success". But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. I feel like this trope that self-made success is a myth comes almost entirely from people like the author of this article. People who were born with lots of advantages, who still couldn't hack it. They want to justify their own failure to live up to their family's expectations by tearing other people down. Whether or not self-made success is a thing, self-made failure certainly is, and i'd say the author of this article more than qualifies for it.

radmuzom 8y ago
Down-voted for such a strong word - "nonsense". See my other comment [1]. I am as self-made as anyone can be, with a very high standard of living in my country without taking even one cent from my parents beyond a certain age. But all that is because of one stroke of luck - I am proud of the fact that I was able to use that luck to my advantage but under no illusion that all my success is due to me alone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621
- darawk 8y ago
  The fact that you did not do whatever it is that you did without any modicum of help or luck does not mean you are not self-made. You can take credit for your accomplishments. It's ok. We don't have to live in a binary, all or nothing world. You can acknowledge that you got lucky, while simultaneously acknowledging that you were smart and hard working to achieve whatever it is that you have. Maybe in your case it was entirely due to luck, but I seriously doubt it.
- 8y ago

isoskeles 8y ago

So is this entire article about how some successful people got help from parents? (And therefore, all must have gotten help from their parents.) Seems pretty easy to cherry-pick the stories you research and write about here. Let me skip all the way to the end, spoiler alert: > If you have the privilege of not having to pay 50 percent of your rent because your parents are paying, how can you advocate for interns to make a decent-enough salary, or for scholarships to support an intern or fellow? That’s where the change comes in.” I don't understand this thesis. These are the exact type of people who would advocate for "decent-enough salary" because money comes to them for free. The magical thinking required to just demand decent-enough salaries are thrown about by businesses (or other authority figures) that must have bottomless pockets looks very similar to how they think about getting a free ride from mommy and daddy. Can we find examples of people who get free money from their parents and openly say that everyone else needs to pull themselves up by the bootstraps? I think "Trump" might be the only person others will respond with, cynically at that, given I don't think Trump has said such a thing--he's just a Republican. But otherwise, where are all these trust-fund babies who believe everyone else needs to be a self-made person? Those people don't exist as far as I know.

smallgovt 8y ago

I think a more interesting question to ask is: Why do we care who is responsible for our success? Is it so that we know how to engineer more success? Or, is it to validate our egos? And, if the latter, aren't we asking the wrong question?

ls612 8y ago
We care because if a lot of people don’t believe they can succeed they will generate substantial social unrest, which has often ended poorly throughout history.
- smallgovt 8y ago
  But this article is working in the opposite direction -- attempting to take people's ego down a notch and convince them success is not a result of their agency. I get the feeling that the article is steeped in a value system based around the ego. But, if we take it for granted that the ego is important, shouldn't we be happy when people have elated egos? Why try to bring them down? And, if we don't agree that the ego is important, why even ask these questions to begin with?
  - ls612 8y ago
    Sorry, I wrote that poorly. The well-off people who defend the ideal of the self made person do so because of their desire to not be on the wrong end of pitchforks (metaphorical or otherwise). Not necessarily to massage their egos.

bwang29 8y ago

It’s not just about the money, there is also the intangible experience when it comes to information and family education. I’d argue that will put an even a stronger influence on a kid’s mindset so if a parent is giving a 15k loan to a child it doesn’t mean the kid isn’t helped significantly to bootstrap her otherwise. On the contrary, it feels even more like a status symbol of demonstration from the parents to illustrate to society how confident they were about the kids paying the loan back.

ryandrake 8y ago

> A recent study from Merrill Lynch and Age Wave reported that 79 percent of the parents surveyed are providing financial support to their adult children, at an average $7,000 a year Wow, this can’t be right. I mean I’ve had friends whose parents paid for their university and stuff like that, and mine helped me a little bit with tuition at a cheap state school, too, for which I’m grateful. But ongoing financial support, year after year? And 4 out of 5 parents? Yow! Guess I’m naive, but I had no idea it was that common. Maybe age is part of it. I was lucky enough to go to uni before the days of 6 figure student loan debt. I know exactly one adult whose parents pay for all their bills, including rent. We’re friends so I give him hell about it. “You’re a grown-ass man with a decent job. Let mommy and daddy retire already!” I think once you start down those tracks and get used to the “extra funding” lifestyle, it’s hard to get off the train.

DigiMortal 8y ago
Yeah I am a bit surprised, though I do see many of these examples around me. I have several peers into their late 20's receiving support, many in the NYC area as well. My parents put a roof over my head, valued education, helped with most all of my tuition for undergrad (over 100k), I have 7k of student loan debt left to pay off and I am 26. Right now, I am only left on their phone plan, which I just venmo my dad monthly for, 50 bucks for unlimited on Verizon and I bought my phone off of Swappa for 200 bucks (I recommend Swappa as well, save your money) I've also seen parents feed junkies, so there's that. I don't understand the ones not working, yet going out all the time, no money management, doing drugs....parents sending money... WHY?!?!

bedhead 8y ago

The author clinging to a 100% literal translation of "self made" is mind-numbingly stupid.

jonbarker 8y ago

So the author's parents encouraged leverage by subsidizing a down payment on real estate, an asset class which underperforms index funds. The story doesn't seem to end well; it is probably self correcting in the long run.

briandear 8y ago
Real estate underperforms index funds? Perhaps in capital appreciation, but in terms of cash on cash returns, nothing beats real estate. If you can turn a $50k downpayment into a $250k property netting $300 per month after mortgage/expenses, plus get capital appreciation on top of that — you’ll make far more money on that $50k than the same money invested in an index fund. Statements such as “indexes out-perform real estate” might be true for an owner-occupied residence, but it certainly isn’t true when the real estate is an actual cash-flowing investment and not your own residence. What people fail to grasp is that a $250k house doesn’t cost $250k in cash. It costs $50k in cash. While the bank owns the other $200k in value, that $50k gives you control of that asset and the cash flow that comes from it. If that $250k house goes up to $300k in value, then you just earned a 100% return on your cash plus the cash-flow revenue. Even if the house goes down in value, if you are still cash flow positive, you are still making money. A $300 net per month is $3600 per year which is a 7% return on your $50k cash, however on top of that 7%, you also get a “free” house since your tenant is paying the note and expenses. On top of that, you get depreciation, which in many cases can make that $3600 per year tax free when the depreciation exceeds the income from the rent. Indexes outperforming real estate is a highly simplistic view and doesn’t accurately reflect cash on cash returns, tax advantages and cash flow. $50k in an index vs $50k as a down payment on a cash flow property— the property is going to make as much in cash as your entire capital appreciation for the index. For an index to be better, it’s going to have to both appreciate at a higher rate than the house as well as pay dividends equal to the annual net from the house. Comparing indexes and real estate shouldn’t discount the value of leverage, nor should it discount the cash flow from the asset. (In the situation you are commenting on though, the author buying a residence, I don’t disagree; I am commenting on real estate as an asset class in general.)
- lotsofpulp 8y ago

Kiro 8y ago

This is objectively false. I know a lot of successful people who haven't had any help whatsoever, starting with $0 and building their later successful business on the side while working full-time. In fact, I barely know anyone who had their rent paid by their parents at all (since that seems to be the argument here).

throwaway-1283 8y ago

Can we stop talking about "millennials" like we're still kids? I'm pretty sure by definition "millennials" are almost 40.

dev_dull 8y ago

It's really quite amazing to see the attacks lately against successful people. I can't help but feel we're being prepped to accept a new tax structure (or possibly new economical model), and the first step is to whip up everyone against the future fodder (wealthy individuals). The poor spendthrift vagabond says to a rich man: "I have discovered there is enough money in the world for all of us, if it was equally divided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy together." "But," was the response, "if everybody was like you, it would be spent in two months, and what would you do then?" "Oh! divide again; keep dividing, of course!"

titanomachy 8y ago
Ayn Rand is back from the dead, and she's posting on HN! In all seriousness though, the excesses of certain rich people are pretty gross. I once saw a guy spend $20k (of inherited money) on a fancy showerhead. Kids who go into foster care are 3x more likely to go to prison and unlikely to reach higher education. "Equal opportunity" indeed.
- dev_dull 8y ago
  Who cares what someone wastes their money on? If you believe a “fool and their money are soon parted” then the only explanation for life-long wealthy people is that they don’t waste it. There are many problems in our country. Are you doing something personally to make it better, or just attacking others and asking someone else to fix it for you?
  - titanomachy 8y ago
    Wealthy people can afford to waste much more (in absolute terms) without losing their wealth. The extreme is European royalty before revolution, and eventually it was shown that people did not have an unlimited tolerance for inequality. "There are many problems in our country..." I probably don't live in your country, but I try to work towards solving problems. There are also people in my society whose job it is to solve social problems, and I help fund the work of those people just by being economically productive and therefore paying taxes.

djschnei 8y ago

"My life was like this, therefore everyone's was." - Jen Doll

nkingsy 8y ago

Just adding my data point. My grandfather gave me a college fund and I went to public college, leaving me with the difference between that and private college. The little nest egg that remained in that account was a weight around my neck. I had many enjoyable experiences in my 20's (eg traveling the world earning a living playing online poker for 3 years), but I felt no urgency to pursue a career. In my late 20's I spent most of the money attempting to write a novel (living expenses) and gave the rest away. Within months of approaching zero in my bank account, I rediscovered programming, found a career I love and was able to afford children. My recollections may be colored by history, and I may have just been someone that took a long time to mature, but that's how I feel about it today.

mountainofdeath 8y ago

The one thing that personally really angers me is that many institutions are exponentially harder to break into unless you come from a specific, moneyed background. You basically need to go to an elite preschool, to go to an elite primary school (usually private), to go to an elite secondary school, to get into an elite university, to get into an elite company in an elite sector (consulting, investment banking, arguably SV tech more often than not). To this class of people, spending $60k+ a year*, per child is nothing since they have been spending that much since the child was born. I've met more than a handful of these people that I wonder what, if anything, they learned.

honkycat 8y ago

I like that we keep talking about privilege, no matter how much it irks the hacker news elite. I have a previous comment about this[0], so I will not go into too much detail. Nobody thinks they are rich or privileged. Now, the Hendersons down the street? THOSE PEOPLE are rich! I feel that people underestimate the huge effect of having a safety net under them. It is the difference between going to the amazing state school and the local community college. It is the difference between paying attention and learning in class and sleeping through it because you had to get up at 6 am to work an 8-hour shift. It is the difference between living in a studio apartment, 45 minutes from school in the bad part of town and living in the beautiful two-bedroom top-floor loft in Logan Square. It is the difference between a data entry job, and an unpaid research internship with your professors. It is the difference between sleeping on a couch for 3 months while you look for your first job, and having a place to stay and prepare. It is the difference between taking the first job you can get, and holding out until you find a better one. It's the difference between a loan for a house and a loan to your parents to pay off medical debt. Think about every step, every decision you have made in your life and consider if you would have made the same choices if your life was different. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19098317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19098317

fireflash38 8y ago
Every time I see privilege come up, people start denying it, or excusing it. Saying things like "I still had to work hard for this!" It's a tricky subject to talk about, as the article references, specifically because it's hard to differentiate between what you got from privilege and what you got from hard work. I find analogies best to talk about it. Your goal is to reach the top floor of a building. Some people start at the penultimate floor. Some start on the 2nd floor. Others are in the basement. Every single one takes effort to climb the steps. But some have a big head start, and can even fail down a few floors and still have it easier than other people.
- projektfu 8y ago
  There's very little that's more impertinent than telling an American he didn't earn what he has. Can't speak for other cultures.

Dirlewanger 8y ago

Spoiled delusional New Yorker has delusional view of the world, more at 11.

dang 8y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive, snarky, and gratuitously negative comments to Hacker News? You've done this a lot, it breaks the site guidelines, and we're hoping for better than that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

arendtio 8y ago

> Financial help from parents comes in many forms, and it’s the basis of so many success stories. So why do millennials act like it doesn't exist? Because never before your chances of becoming wealthy without help from your parents were so good? At least that is my impression without knowing any facts.

afpx 8y ago

I always thought it was common knowledge that most people 'making a living' on journalism, academia, literature, art, etc. were being subsidized by either their or another's independent wealth.

markvdb 8y ago

In some parts of the world, it's very often the other way round: kids financially supporting their parents. Or what would you do when your parents' savings and pension had all disappeared in the collapse of the USSR? That's exactly the scenario some friends of mine are in...

mAEStro-paNDa 8y ago

I am not quite sure why the author narrows in on millennials in this piece, this is something happening among varying age groups. It also appears from my experience on this forum that the prevailing opinion here is that this story is not a myth at all, but I understand there is variance here. The issue with cost of living is an obvious one that is made in comments here, but that still does nothing to address the individuals/families who _still_ struggle in areas that are much cheaper to live. Yes, the insular view of one who has not lived outside SF is troublesome, but it's dishonest to argue as if there is still not real existing poverty in places with a lower cost of living. While there are many different ways the socioeconomic status of ones family and upbringing can assist in their own success, there are a myriad of ways in which this is also influenced by systemic features to our society, as well as the historical context of that. Think of racially discriminatory housing policies that have helped lead to wealth gaps in the present. While rags to riches makes a good story, we also don't talk about failures in business as much as we do the successful enterprises. Referring to individual actions in tandem with family assistance, coming to terms with the subject of meritocracy in our society and individual success, I'd propose we're looking at it the wrong way. The part to evaluate is not how much these things have to do with success, but rather how much can they come back from failure? This paints a rather different picture, as those with more financial security are in a much better position to take risks, make poor decisions, while not being pulled into poverty. Finally, I'd like to point out that there is a growing skepticism of the liberal world order, the mainstream consensus, status quo, whatever you want to call it. More people are realizing now the varying degrees of ways the system is rigged against common working people. With it comes skepticism of the legitimacy of meritocracy in our current social order. This isn't just coming out of a vacuum.

apercu 8y ago
Sounds cynical and paranoid (I kid, sorta).

rocgf 8y ago

I am perpetually amazed by how often people feel the need to put a label on something, even if that doesn't _really_ matter. As far as I have noticed, the self-made "myth" is mainly a media trick. For some reason (maybe intrigue, maybe hope, maybe something else), people love rags to riches stories, be it an immigrant to the US with "five dollars in her pocket", a Bill Gates or an Elon Musk. The people who write those stories don't do it to get the word out, they do it to sell you something, so of course they will try to make it as dramatic as possible. Now there's a counter-movement to balance things out. Bill Gates was actually born in a wealthy family and had a trust fund with millions in it; taking risks with his company was not really a risk. A lot of people like Cara Delevingne (who is constantly advertised everywhere for some reason) are actually part of a family with big ties in their respective industries. They are not truly self-made, but they are not just propelled to the top without significant amounts of work or talent either. The truth is generally somewhere in the middle, with outliers at both ends. In the end, does it really matter? I feel like social media is full of either stories like this or people pretending to live a perfect life. In short, things that are unattainable for most people even if they were to live a hundred lives. Dreaming big is a wonderful thing, but it definitely won't pan out for the vast majority of people, while making them less happy in the process. That's just my view, maybe wrong in some aspects.

staunch 8y ago

The term self-made is just too imprecise to be useful. The three major factors involved in an individual's success are: #1 Genetics - High general intelligence, ambition, etc. #2 Environment - Highly educated well-off parents, etc. #3 Opportunity - Support of powerful people, etc. You probably can't do much without at least one of these factors. Most people that do big things have all three working in their favor. People like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and Paul Graham had all three. On the other hand, people like Steve Jobs, John Carmack, Palmer Luckey, and Larry Ellison only had #1 working for them, which is why their success is so much more impressive.

40acres 8y ago

Rising inequality and the expansion of the welfare state have transformed "self-made" into an aspiration. Even prior to the gilded age being "self-made" was rare.. only a few people were able to pull themselves up to success. If you want to read an American self-made tale pick up "Up From Slavery". Anyway, I grew up lower-middle class. My parents were immigrants and we came from the poorest country in the western hemisphere (Haiti) with no generational wealth. I don't consider myself 'self-made', I'd say there was a mix of luck, support from the state (rent control, FAFSA, EITC, etc.) and self directed hard work. It sounds like to me that the author got some "generational help" and feels like they were not able to capitalize, unlike some of the other profiled in this article. And thus is taking a zero-sum view of the concept of "self-made". Most parent's would do anything for their kids lives to end up better than theirs did. I won't have any qualms about paying my kids tuition or helping with a down payment when the time comes.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I spent nearly six years homeless. During that time, I basically taught myself to make money online. I still don't have much, but I'm off the street. I read articles like this and imagine a future where I'm wealthy and powerful and everyone will talk about my privileged background and pooh pooh the idea that I'm self made. If I ever figure out how to address affordable housing in some meaningful way, no one will laud me as a champion of the poor and downtrodden. No, they will most likely label me a slumlord. Of course, no one is entirely self made. Of course, it's helpful to know what resources were genuinely involved in actually creating x, y or z. You have no hope of doing something similar if you have what amounts to misinformation about how it got done. But we value the concept of a self made person because we've all had to fight to be free. We all struggle to take the hand life dealt us and turn it into a thing we desire. We all look to others who somehow accomplished that for clues to find our way into the unmapped future and try to make it a thing we don't loathe overly much.

Gpetrium 8y ago

There is a fundamental limitation in the human ability to assess success. Humans inheritably live in different worlds therefore, their perception of key factors such as self-actualization, esteem, belonging, love, safety & physiological needs will be invariable different. I would argue that if everyone started out with the same mindset and base opportunities, with time, the environment and its scarcities would cause some to deviate towards being 'richer' and others towards being 'poorer', partially by luck, and partially by other factors within and outside each person's control. Someone that is self-made will mostly see itself's success as their personal actions and will mostly overestimate that side (E.g. I saved money while my peers were burning it on consumer goods) while others looking from outside will mostly push the (E.g. He was lucky or the environment he was in made him succeed) usually underestimating the person's personal actions.

socrates1998 8y ago

Not a great article, but it certainly does illustrate the idea that we are helped to a certain extent. It's hard to measure one's success accurately. A $15k loan paid back almost immediately is really nothing in the grand scheme of things, she probably could have gotten a regular loan or at least used some credit cards to float her for it. A much bigger help was her parents paying for college. THAT's significant. It meant she knew that starting a business was an option because she could live cheaply after she graduated instead of being forced to get a job. For the most part, the most successful people in America have been helped significantly by their parents, in my opinion. Whether it's through paying for an education or networking or outright buying them a business (like a franchise). Growing up upper-middle class in America puts you way ahead of almost everyone else on the planet as far as advantages goes.

sagartewari01 8y ago

Even if it is a myth, it's a myth worth believing.