4 ms·

I don't think Sam Altman would consider such a person successful. We all know the stereotype of the trust fund kid who is lazy and ineffectual. There's a lot

I don't think Sam Altman would consider such a person successful. We all know the stereotype of the trust fund kid who is lazy and ineffectual. There's a lot of emotional baggage around rich people, but if you strip it down to individual situations it's pretty simple. I've worked for people ranging from small business owners scraping out $50k a year all the way up to billionaires. How hard they work has no correlation to the money they have. I don't resent a boss with money, I resent a boss who isn't working as hard as me, and most founders/business owners I've worked for have worked harder than everyone else.

djrobstep 6y ago
> I resent a boss who isn't working as hard as me In a modern economy most "business owners" are passive shareholders who literally do nothing for that money. I am a partial business owner of many enormous corporations via my retirement account. I don't do any work for any of them, and yet, they continually send me money. Strange!
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  You are pretty far off with "most business owners". Maybe you could claim "most" of the passive shareholders of public companies do nothing for that money but that is a very small minority of "business owners". Most businesses are small businesses and most small business owners bust their ass to make a decent living.
  - djrobstep 6y ago
    Small business mythology is pretty far from reality. Most of the economy is run by large firms, owned by people who receive revenue by virtue of ownership rather than work.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  So, how many bad investments did you have? When investing in a corporation, there is no guarantee that you will gain profit from it, you can even lose your entire investment. If you were a long-term Nokia shareholder, you would have lost a lot of money since, say, 2005. When you invest, you put the value of your previous work at stake. You can retroactively sink your work (= money that you earned from it) into a black hole.
  - djrobstep 6y ago
    The retirement account managers make the decisions on the investments, not me. > When you invest, you put the value of your previous work at stake. What was the "previous work" I did when I inherited my father's Walmart stock?
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      > The retirement account managers make the decisions on the investments, not me. Let us hope that they won't get sucked into plots of the next Bernie Madoff, who will likely come one day. > What was the "previous work" I did when I inherited my father's Walmart stock? True, I was thinking about investments of surpluses from your salary.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Considering the structure of the economy it is far more likely for assets to inflate than the income of workers. Sure some higher up people could wake up and reverse this trend but if there was a risk of this happening most workers would already be happy with their current economic situation.
- dasil003 6y ago
  I mean the person running the company, for SMB that might be the owner, for bigco it's the C-suite, because those are the people that affect my ability to do my job effectively, which has a huge impact on my day-to-day emotional well-being. Investors are a whole different story, and it's wise to de-couple financial considerations from job satisfaction as much as possible. Being resentful that my work passively benefits investors would be a silly distraction—they will be there seeking returns via investment regardless of where I seek employment. What really matters to my financially is my own salary, equity and the upside of the company where I am devoting most of my time.
  - djrobstep 6y ago
    But don't you think it's weird to resent a lazy boss more than passive owners who don't work at all for that income?
xapata 6y ago
> I don't think Sam Altman would consider such a person successful. Then we should first define "success" before continuing the conversation. I worry there might be a bit of a No True Scotsman problem, working backwards from the conclusion of laziness preventing success. The typical definition of "successful" is almost synonymous with "wealthy" except for popular artists (broadly defined) who for some reason aren't able to earn from their work or achieved popularity posthumously.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  In my personal bubble, people whose wealth was inherited from previous generations, are not considered successful. The very word "success" implies the previous effort to reach something, gain something etc. Do you anecdotally know someone who said "John is a son of a magnate who does nothing all day, he is so successful"? There is a different situation when the successor generation multiplies the wealth, but that already takes some effort and good judgment.
  - xapata 6y ago
    > Do you anecdotally know someone who said "John is a son of a magnate who does nothing all day, he is so successful"? Yes, though they don't emphasize the doing-nothing. Further, it's easy for a wealthy person to mask doing nothing with appearing busy yet effectively being a socialite. > There is a different situation when the successor generation multiplies the wealth, but that already takes some effort and good judgment. It may take good judgement, but not much effort. VTSAX and chill, as the kids say. I grew up around the kids of very wealthy people, often multi-generational wealth. Most decided to have jobs. Some had very impressive careers, but when you realize that first opportunity was only because of a parental connection, suddenly it seems a bit hollow. It's not hard to appear wise and smart when you're wealthy, and then you can simply not fuck up and the rest of the pyramid keeps chugging along. Case in point, Trump. He is a lazy fuck-up, but somehow managed to appear "successful" to a large portion of America.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago

djrobstep 6y ago

> I resent a boss who isn't working as hard as me In a modern economy most "business owners" are passive shareholders who literally do nothing for that money. I am a partial business owner of many enormous corporations via my retirement account. I don't do any work for any of them, and yet, they continually send me money. Strange!

Taylor_OD 6y ago
You are pretty far off with "most business owners". Maybe you could claim "most" of the passive shareholders of public companies do nothing for that money but that is a very small minority of "business owners". Most businesses are small businesses and most small business owners bust their ass to make a decent living.
- djrobstep 6y ago
  Small business mythology is pretty far from reality. Most of the economy is run by large firms, owned by people who receive revenue by virtue of ownership rather than work.
inglor_cz 6y ago
So, how many bad investments did you have? When investing in a corporation, there is no guarantee that you will gain profit from it, you can even lose your entire investment. If you were a long-term Nokia shareholder, you would have lost a lot of money since, say, 2005. When you invest, you put the value of your previous work at stake. You can retroactively sink your work (= money that you earned from it) into a black hole.
- djrobstep 6y ago
  The retirement account managers make the decisions on the investments, not me. > When you invest, you put the value of your previous work at stake. What was the "previous work" I did when I inherited my father's Walmart stock?
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    > The retirement account managers make the decisions on the investments, not me. Let us hope that they won't get sucked into plots of the next Bernie Madoff, who will likely come one day. > What was the "previous work" I did when I inherited my father's Walmart stock? True, I was thinking about investments of surpluses from your salary.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Considering the structure of the economy it is far more likely for assets to inflate than the income of workers. Sure some higher up people could wake up and reverse this trend but if there was a risk of this happening most workers would already be happy with their current economic situation.
dasil003 6y ago
I mean the person running the company, for SMB that might be the owner, for bigco it's the C-suite, because those are the people that affect my ability to do my job effectively, which has a huge impact on my day-to-day emotional well-being. Investors are a whole different story, and it's wise to de-couple financial considerations from job satisfaction as much as possible. Being resentful that my work passively benefits investors would be a silly distraction—they will be there seeking returns via investment regardless of where I seek employment. What really matters to my financially is my own salary, equity and the upside of the company where I am devoting most of my time.
- djrobstep 6y ago
  But don't you think it's weird to resent a lazy boss more than passive owners who don't work at all for that income?

xapata 6y ago

> I don't think Sam Altman would consider such a person successful. Then we should first define "success" before continuing the conversation. I worry there might be a bit of a No True Scotsman problem, working backwards from the conclusion of laziness preventing success. The typical definition of "successful" is almost synonymous with "wealthy" except for popular artists (broadly defined) who for some reason aren't able to earn from their work or achieved popularity posthumously.

inglor_cz 6y ago
In my personal bubble, people whose wealth was inherited from previous generations, are not considered successful. The very word "success" implies the previous effort to reach something, gain something etc. Do you anecdotally know someone who said "John is a son of a magnate who does nothing all day, he is so successful"? There is a different situation when the successor generation multiplies the wealth, but that already takes some effort and good judgment.
- xapata 6y ago
  > Do you anecdotally know someone who said "John is a son of a magnate who does nothing all day, he is so successful"? Yes, though they don't emphasize the doing-nothing. Further, it's easy for a wealthy person to mask doing nothing with appearing busy yet effectively being a socialite. > There is a different situation when the successor generation multiplies the wealth, but that already takes some effort and good judgment. It may take good judgement, but not much effort. VTSAX and chill, as the kids say. I grew up around the kids of very wealthy people, often multi-generational wealth. Most decided to have jobs. Some had very impressive careers, but when you realize that first opportunity was only because of a parental connection, suddenly it seems a bit hollow. It's not hard to appear wise and smart when you're wealthy, and then you can simply not fuck up and the rest of the pyramid keeps chugging along. Case in point, Trump. He is a lazy fuck-up, but somehow managed to appear "successful" to a large portion of America.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago