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"On the other hand, if you beat the competition (your peers) to get a reputable corporate gig at a big co, well known startup, or prestigious consulting or bank

"On the other hand, if you beat the competition (your peers) to get a reputable corporate gig at a big co, well known startup, or prestigious consulting or banking you’re setting yourself up for life." Statements like these reveal so much implicit values/philosophy. Viewing life - success, output, fulfillment etc - through lenses like this is the issue IMO.

aklemm 7y ago
This sentiment resonates. People seem unable and uninterested in pursuing anything meaningful.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It seems to me that our economy is extremely good at removing meaning from anything. Great many jobs - possibly most - involve being paid for doing arbitrary tasks that become inputs to further arbitrary tasks that make money for someone else. A worker is just a replaceable piece in a vast machinery. And even if you elect to search for meaning on the front lines of value delivery - if you become, say, a doctor, or a fireman - you'll discover your job is as much about helping people as it is about making money and preserving your ability to make money. I wonder whether it's just the price of progress, of increasing complexity in human organization? As heartbreaking as it is, could it be any different?
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    >As heartbreaking as it is, could it be any different? Not if all those 401(k), IRA, and defined benefit pension funds want fat ROIs. There is something quite humorous about people working hard to earn money to invest, and then those same investments causing them to work even harder to meet their ROIs.
    - dmoy 7y ago
      Huh, total US retirement stuff about a year ago was ~$28T, and total US market cap at the same time was ~$30T. Now obviously there's not complete overlap there, because a huge chunk of retirement accounts are not invested in equities at all, and a less huge but still significant chunk is not invested in US equities. However, that means that the remainder is still a massive chunk of all US equities. I would not have guessed this, given the size of the average person's 401(k). My guess was much smaller. Not sure if I'm worried or relieved to be wrong about that.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        It doesn’t matter if it’s equities or debt, once an assumption about growth in the future is made, then if it doesn’t come to pass, it is considered a loss. And who doesn’t like to make rosy assumptions about the future so that they can enjoy life today. Let’s assume 8% returns, so that we can save less and spend more now. Well...now you have to work harder to make those 8% returns come true. And the savers get screwed too because people (aka government) will opt to pump up the value of equities to make sure the 8% nominal return comes true at the expense of sacrificing the value of the currency.
denkmoon 7y ago
It's the difference between comfort and a life of struggle. I don't think the majority of college graduates are thinking "I need to be a big swinging dick on wallst to feel good about myself". More likely they are thinking about how they can simply get a home that can't be arbitrarily taken away, or the seeming impossibility of raising a family on a single income. Stuff our parents had, that just seems so far out of reach as to be unattainable. That is certainly where my financial anxieties lie.
firstplacelast 7y ago
It's not a sentiment of needing to be uber successful for the sake of being successful. It's the fact that not being highly successful often means you can't afford even a crappy home in your city, can't have kids, have a hard time justifying the expense of a vacation, can't pay off massive student loans, can't justify the cost to travel to your home town on holidays to see family, likely won't be able to retire early or even "on time", etc etc etc. You need to be making way above average in at least 50% of the country to afford those things (yes, many people that can't afford those things still do them, but it will bite them in the ass later). People like stability. People, on average, have less stability these days. It's super great for exploitation though. Start companies people! Probably no better time, at least outside the tech industry, workers are cheap.
gingabriska 7y ago
>Viewing life - success, output, fulfillment etc - through lenses like this is the issue IMO. Having met people on streets, I can tell you not everyone thinks like this. It's mostly the audience of this site who are high achievers and focused individuals, they need some way to gauge meaningfulness of their lives and this is how they chose to do it. I've one friend who only plants trees and another friend who is always creating RC vehicles and uploading videos of his experiments on YouTube. They are happy.

aklemm 7y ago

This sentiment resonates. People seem unable and uninterested in pursuing anything meaningful.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
It seems to me that our economy is extremely good at removing meaning from anything. Great many jobs - possibly most - involve being paid for doing arbitrary tasks that become inputs to further arbitrary tasks that make money for someone else. A worker is just a replaceable piece in a vast machinery. And even if you elect to search for meaning on the front lines of value delivery - if you become, say, a doctor, or a fireman - you'll discover your job is as much about helping people as it is about making money and preserving your ability to make money. I wonder whether it's just the price of progress, of increasing complexity in human organization? As heartbreaking as it is, could it be any different?
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  >As heartbreaking as it is, could it be any different? Not if all those 401(k), IRA, and defined benefit pension funds want fat ROIs. There is something quite humorous about people working hard to earn money to invest, and then those same investments causing them to work even harder to meet their ROIs.
  - dmoy 7y ago
    Huh, total US retirement stuff about a year ago was ~$28T, and total US market cap at the same time was ~$30T. Now obviously there's not complete overlap there, because a huge chunk of retirement accounts are not invested in equities at all, and a less huge but still significant chunk is not invested in US equities. However, that means that the remainder is still a massive chunk of all US equities. I would not have guessed this, given the size of the average person's 401(k). My guess was much smaller. Not sure if I'm worried or relieved to be wrong about that.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      It doesn’t matter if it’s equities or debt, once an assumption about growth in the future is made, then if it doesn’t come to pass, it is considered a loss. And who doesn’t like to make rosy assumptions about the future so that they can enjoy life today. Let’s assume 8% returns, so that we can save less and spend more now. Well...now you have to work harder to make those 8% returns come true. And the savers get screwed too because people (aka government) will opt to pump up the value of equities to make sure the 8% nominal return comes true at the expense of sacrificing the value of the currency.

denkmoon 7y ago

It's the difference between comfort and a life of struggle. I don't think the majority of college graduates are thinking "I need to be a big swinging dick on wallst to feel good about myself". More likely they are thinking about how they can simply get a home that can't be arbitrarily taken away, or the seeming impossibility of raising a family on a single income. Stuff our parents had, that just seems so far out of reach as to be unattainable. That is certainly where my financial anxieties lie.

firstplacelast 7y ago

It's not a sentiment of needing to be uber successful for the sake of being successful. It's the fact that not being highly successful often means you can't afford even a crappy home in your city, can't have kids, have a hard time justifying the expense of a vacation, can't pay off massive student loans, can't justify the cost to travel to your home town on holidays to see family, likely won't be able to retire early or even "on time", etc etc etc. You need to be making way above average in at least 50% of the country to afford those things (yes, many people that can't afford those things still do them, but it will bite them in the ass later). People like stability. People, on average, have less stability these days. It's super great for exploitation though. Start companies people! Probably no better time, at least outside the tech industry, workers are cheap.

gingabriska 7y ago

>Viewing life - success, output, fulfillment etc - through lenses like this is the issue IMO. Having met people on streets, I can tell you not everyone thinks like this. It's mostly the audience of this site who are high achievers and focused individuals, they need some way to gauge meaningfulness of their lives and this is how they chose to do it. I've one friend who only plants trees and another friend who is always creating RC vehicles and uploading videos of his experiments on YouTube. They are happy.