7 ms·

This is going to sound terrible to some but as someone who believes strongly in self-reliance, I get a little giddy when I see anti-self-reliance commentary get

• clswords 7y ago
  passive aggressive bragging isn't very helpful. maybe get back to your work
• ph4 7y ago
  This comment has nothing to do with the article. You responded to half of a headline.
• frostburg 7y ago
  Most work is likely useless or counterproductive.
  • rayiner 7y ago
    That’s kind of like saying “every employer is paying trillions in compensation and healthcare benefits for work that conveys no benefit.” It takes staggering hubris.
    • Ericson2314 7y ago
      > every employer is paying trillions Um, that's not how division works. In seriousness, the argument isn't that employers are stupid, but that has some local value (and inertia) but far less global value because the nature of the economic distributed system. Kinda like how micro services are often a terrible idea yet in some examples of that each service is justified given the others.
    • frockington1 7y ago
      I believe this is a new talking point on cable news, probably going to receive a negative canned reply
• jgwil2 7y ago
  People obviously have to take responsibility for themselves in order to be successful, but this kind of article is a valuable corrective to the notion that individuals are solely responsible for their successes and failures. This seems self-evident to me on reflection; we are all products of the families and societies in which we grew up.
  • toomuchtodo 7y ago
    > This seems self-evident to me on reflection; we are all products of the families and societies in which we grew up. And luck. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-... (If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.)
    • lanternslight 7y ago
      Not just chance. You have to see the opportunities AND work to take advantage of them. Worries the work, they wouldn't happen.
      • toomuchtodo 7y ago
        You can still see the opportunity, attempt to succeed, and fail, through no fault of your own. And conversely, you can do everything wrong and still succeed. There's a reason we have the term "failing upwards", or businesses that succeed not because of their actions, but in spite of them. Chance is a substantial (but not the only) component to success.
    • esotericn 7y ago
      The idea is about increasing expected value. I give you a machine, once per year say, and put it at the entrance to your home. It's broken. If you fix it, it will, with 5% probability, give you a ton of money. In the other 95% of cases you get nothing, it disappears, wait for next year. Is chance a major component? Of course. But not tinkering with that machine is lower EV than tinkering with it. If you stay in bed all day, ignore the machine and do something else instead, you're not going to get anything, ever. It will never spontaneously open by chance. You post below that "you can do everything wrong and still succeed". No, you actually can't. If you're picturing a startup founder that makes a lot of seemingly silly decisions - well, they still made the (high risk) decision to start that company. If you lay in bed all day, or work your corner shop job forever, then you are not increasing your EV. I work in a field that is very heavily based on probability; I literally bet for a living. Luck is a considerable component, but if you want to tell me skill is irrelevant, then I'd like to show you what happens if I just tweak this parameter here...
• esotericn 7y ago
  Ha. I have the opposite response! I also believe strongly in self reliance and the power of the individual to affect their environment. To me though, that makes the seemingly increased focus as of late immensely frustrating, because to me, it's seeking to take away agency from people. Exactly the _worst_ thing you can do to someone who's in a bad situation is tell them that they're just helpless and that's how it's gonna be. Feeling like you have no control over your life situation is not an ingredient that will produce a healthy mind. There's a fine line between having an awareness of your limits and fighting for what's right, and running around blaming all of your problems on others.
  • jgwil2 7y ago
    The article seemed to be more about appreciating the networks that have allowed the author to be successful (in her case especially the authors she has discovered in her neighborhood bookstore). I don't think anyone is telling people in bad situations that they shouldn't bother trying to help themselves; rather, we are suggesting that no successful person becomes successful alone.
    • esotericn 7y ago
      Right, but that's completely self evident and thus pointless to discuss. I'm typing to you from a screen that I couldn't produce alone, that's ignoring the 50 billion other objects in my life that depend directly or indirectly on the activities of others. An entire article isn't needed in order to make that viewpoint clear. I address this in a post above - it's a strange cartoonish stereotype that there are people out there who think that they are completely 'self-made'. Those that advance it in public as a genuine belief are either mentally ill, or deliberately playing a character.
• the_snooze 7y ago
  It's a matter of moderation. Yes, working hard and smart is great. But don't give yourself too much credit. There are people who helped you along the way, and you should recognize when you're in a position to give others a boost too when they need it. That's more productive and kind than putting yourself at the center of the universe.
  • saas_sam 7y ago
    Agreed. I appreciate the help of others and am considered by most to be a generous giver of help myself. I think the idea that self-reliant people don't care about others or don't genuinely appreciate giving & receiving help is cartoonish hyperbole akin to the cigar-smoking rich man bulldozing the youth community center to build a shopping mall. Like, okay, maybe that exists somewhere in real life, but it's usually an exaggeration under-achievers use to self-soothe.
    • the_af 7y ago
      > "[...] I think the idea that self-reliant people don't care about others or don't genuinely appreciate giving & receiving help is cartoonish hyperbole [...]" Note this isn't what other people are saying. They are saying self-reliant people are not entirely self-reliant. It's not a matter of appreciation, it's a matter of understanding we're the products of society, family, luck, and the efforts of others, as well as our own merit -- i.e. we're not entirely self-reliant. The same critique can be made of the overestimated notion of "meritocracy".
      • esotericn 7y ago
        Yes, but as saas_sam says, no-one actually believes they are truly completely self reliant in that cartoonish way. When people speak of being self-reliant, they obviously don't literally mean that they were spawned from some sort of spontaneous reaction, that they farm their own cotton, sew their own shirts, invent their own scientific disciplines and produce semiconductors in their garage in the clean room they built from scratch. They're referring more to building their own path in life and going out and getting what they want rather than waiting for it to be handed to them. It's similar to how you or I might say we "need" something, when really it's qualified, because almost all use of language is.
• toofy 7y ago
  do your thing! i think having a variety of humans with different priorities and interests is absolutely a good thing. i think it’s amazing that you enjoy putting in that time at work and it’s amazing that others prefer to spend a bit more of theirs on family or other projects. as a person who advocates for shorter work weeks (as long as we place a higher emphasis on _occasional_ crunch times) i totally understand both sides. i do think the article makes some great points though–it borders on delusion how a subset of people convince themselves they “did it alone.”
• downerending 7y ago
  For a variety of reasons, I learned early in life that I couldn't really count on anyone, and I had to learn/do everything for myself. Not sure I'd choose that for someone else, but it has indeed been an extremely useful work skill. In pretty much every job I've ever had, I've ended up being the final go-to person for the hardest problems. Especially with respect to computers, there's essentially no problem I can't solve/mitigate/triage at this point in my career. That said, this skill doesn't seem to be very useful for getting hired. Maybe I'm not marketing myself correctly. Once I'm in, though, I'm generally gold after a few months. Once had a manager burst into tears when I gave notice. It does feel like this is rarer these days. In my current org of about 5000 people, I'm not aware of a single tech person on par with me in this respect. That might sound like a boast, but it's very much a lament.
  • hugey010 7y ago
    I struggle with this too. I think it's people applying the "jack of all trades, master of none" saying too far or too literally. To be a truly successful (backend, frontend, web, mobile, crypto, etc...) developer, it is a requirement to have firm grasp of nearly all technologies, methodologies, and practices at play in the ecosystem.
  • AQuantized 7y ago
    Not that this is exactly a massive disadvantage for you, but I routinely see guys such as yourself, not being exploited as such, but essentially never having their compensation match their productivity. I believe the original poster in that they could be much more productive than their coworkers. However, in my experience, that has only a loose correlation with wealth, and playing the game right / nepotism take precedence for real earning.
• homonculus1 7y ago
  Working hard, working long, maximizing productivity, and maximizing value are all separate things. They do not necessarily correlate positively across the whole scale let alone perfectly at the peaks. You should be optimizing for value. If you optimize for one of the other three you're making a sucker tradeoff by definition. You will have to work some hours with some effort to generate some productivity to maximize value for yourself, but anything past that more value is going to your employer than the opportunity cost for you of your time. This is tautological but it's worth saying because your language fits the pattern of someone who chases productivity as a proxy for personal value. Or in other words you value the possessions money can buy more than the experiences you could have with free time. The tell for workaholism isn't always 80 hours a week or some numerical threshold, it's also that you look down on people who value free time more than you do. That's an indicator that you aren't adjusting your own values, that you've delegated that function to the companies you're so happy to please--which always optimize to extract from you rather than maximize value in your own life.
• EliRivers 7y ago
  And I'm no workaholic either. I put in a solid 50 or so hours a week Sounds pretty workaholic to me. I guess everyone thinks of themself as the norm.
• zzzeek 7y ago
  your success is the mostly the result of a massive amount of luck and privilege you've received. just imagine that you had an accident that reduced your brain capacity by 20%... you could then have worked three times harder but sadly not achieved the same success. While your hard work is an element of your success, it is not at all the foundation of it. It's more akin to a chef putting the correct seasoning on a fully prepared dish. It's definitely needed, but it's not the basis.
  • refurb 7y ago
    That seems like a pointless argument. Sure, I'm successful because I wasn't run over by car when I was 12.
    • Psyladine 7y ago
      Yeah, you are. So when you're talking to someone who lost a beautiful person in their life because someone else decided they were fine driving after a night out of drinking, you can realize how arbitrary and random life really is.
      • friendlybus 7y ago
        Sorry for your loss. Being alive is a pre-requisite for success, but doesn't make it guaranteed.
        • Psyladine 7y ago
          The fact there is no guarantee makes it inherently luck based.
    • zzzeek 7y ago
      it seems like you missed the argument entirely. hard work means nothing if you are not fortunate enough to have the foundation with which to work upon. the person with 20% less brain capacity can do way more work than you, and not get anywhere, which proves that there is no linear relationship between hard work and success. something else has to be present for "hard work" to lead towards success. There are some people working much harder than you at their job at McDonalds, and they will not be as successful as you. Your hard work did not create your success, your circumstances did most of the work in making the conditions right, just like human evolution would not have happened if there weren't a perfectly conditioned Earth present that took billions of years to create. Your hard work was just one of many prerequisites for your success to occur (and of course, many people don't need to work very hard at all to be successful, due to their circumstances as well), and additionally, your capacity, desire, and stamina for such hard work are also things that you were lucky enough to have.
• loblollyboy 7y ago
  How can you be both a strong believer in self reliance and also want to spend more of your time working for someone else?
• deckar01 7y ago
  You find pleasure in the idea that your relative value is increasing due to the value of others decreasing? This sounds psychopathic. It is one thing to take comfort in the belief that you can control your own destiny, but to believe your control is diluted by the control of others is delusional and short sighted.
  • frockington1 7y ago
    Its the same reasoning I support marijuana legalization. More people sitting at home high on their parents couch is less competition for me
    • sethammons 7y ago
      I know plenty of very, very well off pot users. I also know several very, very unsuccessful pot users. I'm tempted to believe that the "high on their parent's couch" types would be otherwise on their parent's couch, irrespective of access to pot.
  • s1artibartfast 7y ago
    I think the argument is that relative value to an employer translates to absolute value to the employee. The rewards of effort, ambition, and talent are absolutely diluted by that of others.
• quotemstr 7y ago
  Yes, essays like this give people like you and me a short term advantage. But these anti-work-ethic pieces also poison the minds of the next generation and justify political agitation on the part of the suckers who believe this stuff and squandered their time instead of contributing. There will always be a market for soft words that tell us that our vices are actually virtues.
• billjings 7y ago
  Pick up some game theory, too! Your strategy works great when you're the only one who follows it. But if everyone follows your strategy, everyone gets screwed.