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The days are long but the decades are short (2015)
- garbagecoder 3y ago0. Thirty is too young to give life advice.
- burcs 3y agoThis is a bad take. It's like paying people based on years of experience vs. talent and output.
- garbagecoder 3y agoI strongly disagree. Sometimes just experiencing the passage of time is a requisite and that has nothing to do with you not being appreciated for your talent.
- MattRix 3y agoClearly it isn’t, since this is a good list.
- notch898c 3y agoIt's a good list for under 30s probably. Taking care of demanding and constantly shifting needs of young children easily bombs half this list.
- boring_twenties 3y agoPerhaps "don't have children" should have been the first suggestion.
- garbagecoder 3y agoDefinitely shouldn't do that blind. That's good advice. The kind someone over 30 would give. (=
- Bloating 3y agoand aging parents
- Juliette1234 3y ago[flagged]
- fnordpiglet 3y ago37. When doing non profit work, always be ready to take the profit.
- rvz 3y ago38. After selling and hyping the poison (ChatGPT), also sell its antidote (WorldCoin).
- aschearer 3y agoAnd sometimes the days are short, too. Nice list, though. Happy birthday and good luck on your journey, Sam.
- mdriley 3y ago(2015)
- dang 3y agoAdded. Thanks!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- angarg12 3y agoOn 5): The most transformative step in my journey up the class ladder was when money stopped being a source of problems and instead became a way to solve problems.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI have plenty of money (relatively speaking, I don't make FAANG money but I don't worry about paying the rent or saving for a rainy day). I have real trouble spending it though. It almost causes me physical pain to spend money on something I don't regard as essential. I don't like to travel, or eat expensive meals, or go to movies, concerts, shows, etc because I hate to spend the money on it. Don't know what the root of that is, but it bothers other people more than it bothers me. The hobbies I have are similarly frugal: fixing stuff, repairing old cars, where I feel I've gained some value for the time spent.
- nuancebydefault 3y agoI think a lot of people are like you described (say 5 per cent), but not many dare to admit, fearing of coming across too boring or greedy or whatever. I think being content with what you have and what you buy, the fulfillment of fixing things has much more value than fancy stuff that is fancy today but gets outdated quickly. Also "experiencing things" seems overrated these days. As if scratching things off a bucket list has lots of value.
- solarkraft 3y agoI'm similar, but it has probably cost me more in happiness then the money is worth. I am trying to counter it by framing more things as investments into myself (happiness as its own goal, but also the ability to more easily make that money back).
- winphone1974 3y agoThis is awesome! Your attitude and values are only recently "out of date"; previous to the current generation of zero percent financed lifestyles many people achieved success through slow growth savings. I think it's great that you reject the value derived from common consumption because it's less than the cost. I wish more people felt this way
- dang 3y agoRelated: The days are long but the decades are short (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065466 - Feb 2021 (73 comments) The days are long but the decades are short (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20903714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20903714 - Sept 2019 (33 comments) The days are long but the decades are short – Sam Altman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20668835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20668835 - Aug 2019 (1 comment) Sam Altman: 36 Life Lessons I Learned Before the Age of 30 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491492 - May 2015 (3 comments) The days are long but the decades are short - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440 - April 2015 (387 comments)
- block_dagger 3y agoReminds me of Meditations, also an excellent read.
- fauxreb 3y agoThe thing about Meditations is that it's advice from a Roman Emperor, and, at first blush, more important than the advice of a 30 y.o. tech bro. But only a few years later Altman has more influence and power than even Aurelius in his time. We should all read Montaigne instead, the reflections of a man 1400 years later, isolated, considering his influence and how he lives/lived in the world.
- WakoMan12 3y ago[dead]
- weekendvampire 3y agoI'm always surprised by how often advice from extremely successful people tends to repeat itself, which tells me that there really is no "secret" to making it and living a great life that I don't already know.
- zamfi 3y agoYes, implementing this kind of advice is much harder than merely reading it.
- gnulinux 3y agoThis makes about as much sense as saying the same thing for advise on winning the lottery. The "implementing" part you're referring is nothing other than "being lucky" so there really isn't anything to implement nor anything to advise.
- solveit 3y ago> How to succeed: pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored), focus, believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work), develop personal connections with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, and work hard. It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard. You have to be somewhat lucky to be able to do this, but also you have to actually try. Your comment seems needlessly dismissive as well as inaccurate.
- selcuka 3y agoIt is accurate in the sense that you don't have to implement anything specifically. You should simply act according to the circumstances, and if the circumstances are positive (i.e. you are lucky) you can succeed. In the hindsight the "act" might look like the thing that made you succeed, but most of the time it's actually the luck. The "strategy" is just a normal reaction. For example: "I invested half of my money in stock market and half in property. That made me a billionaire. You should do the same." vs "I won $1M from the lottery, and I invested half of it in stock market and half in property." Obviously if you omit the lottery part the advise doesn't make any sense (i.e. you won't be a billionaire by investing half of your minimum wage every fortnight). This may be an extreme example, but demonstrates my point.
- quickthrower2 3y agoAll the timescales are short for me: seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades. I am not joking. Now going to the gym is 'easier' vs 20 years ago, because an hour at the gym doesn't seem like much time.
- jeron 3y agofun fact, this saturday is Sam's birthday
- dahwolf 3y agoIt's like combining the advise of Schwarzenegger, Dr Phil, Yoda, a random tech bro's substack, life-hack Youtube stars, and more. None of the advise is incorrect of course, it's just that the sum is unattainable and at times contradicting. It basically says: here's 20 balls. Now juggle them up in the air, don't let any of them drop. That being said, your 20s are special. It's indeed the decade where you have the most energy versus the least responsibilities. Don't take your 20s in slow or tame mode.
- woodruffw 3y agoAs another commenter points out: the advice is not contradictory only if you’re stinking rich, as the people who tend to write these posts tend to be.
- dahwolf 3y agoI was not aiming at rich, instead at the concept that time is zero-sum. You should work hard and also spend the maximum amount with friends. And your parents. Also, exercise, sleep well, and so on. Doing a long list of things very well might lead to exhaustion or one thing coming at the expense of the other things. Like I said though, do live your 20s hard. Do not live it safely and slowly as if you're middle-aged already. It's a limited time opportunity.
- koolba 3y ago> Summers are the best. If you take nothing else from this repost, let this really sink in. And for those of us in the northern hemisphere, you should have a plan by this point in the year for your work life to truly enjoy it when it arrives.
- randallsquared 3y agoThe bestness of summers varies widely by location. On the US east coast, summers are best only north of New Jersey. ;)
- m463 3y agoOne time at work years ago, at our group meeting our manager said "and these are the things we'll be working on this summer". It sort of stopped me in my tracks. I looked out the window at the green outside and thought of being stuck indoors working on a bunch of milestones and goals and... sigh.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoShould a prerequisite to every successful tech person advice list include "Be 99th percentile IQ or higher"? All these people go to schools and work environments where they exclusively interact with incredibly intelligent people. Do they really know just how mediocre the average person is? Or is the average person implicitly written off with respect to any sort of prodigious success.
- comte7092 3y agoThe hubris on this site never ceases to amaze. That one would assume these people are solely in the place they are due to exceptional intelligence and merit and not a combination of luck, connections and a degree of hard work and talent just shows how much of a bubble tech is. The meritocracy myth rages on.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoIf you are smarter than 99 out of 100 people, there are still millions of people as smart as you in USA alone. If someone said 99.999th percentile I would agree with you, but IME being smarter than 99 out of 100 people is not that high of a bar.
- comte7092 3y agoExcluding 99% of the population from applying fairly generic advice from listicle isn’t that high of a bar?
- pfannkuchen 3y agoI am assuming that the advice given is not just to get any tech job at all, but to be highly successful in the field. Clearly, below some analytic intelligence level, being highly successful in engineering is not a realistic or useful pursuit. Where that threshold is would be up to debate, certainly. I think most would agree it’s above 90th percentile, at least. Calling it 99th might be hyperbolic, sure, but I don’t think it’s intensely out of touch or anything. It’s like if an NBA player is giving advice about how to succeed in a basketball career. Presumably they are speaking about succeeding in the NBA or at least college level basketball, not some rec league. And, if you are 5’5”, while it is not strictly impossible for you to succeed, it is probably not realistic for you to pursue it. The advice is implicitly aimed at people who stand any chance at all of making it into the NBA.
- winphone1974 3y agoDon't know if Sam has young kids, aged parents or dependents who require extra help but if you do #1 will consume pretty much 100% of your life, if you're not independently wealthy. Good luck with anything else from this list.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoIt all comes down to being in the right network. When his Loopt startup failed he had to be in the right network to fail upwards. Most people lack that network. I think the IQ and the hard work bits are common.
- ZephyrBlu 3y agoYeah, luck and opportunity is generally bestowed upon you by someone else not generated out of thin air.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago"Befriend generous benefactors who like you" is good, but hard to action, advice. Equally, be prepared to look past failings of the same folks.
- ZephyrBlu 3y agoI completely agree. I think a slightly more actionable version of this is: be interesting to people to who can give you opportunities.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoWell said.
- aecorredor 3y agoHow is this up here when I turn 30 tomorrow? Brah…
- JadedEngineer 3y agoHere's something these posts never touch on: dealing with the inevitable routine and the boredom that comes with it. You always read that life is short, seize the moment, etc. and I call BS. I like to think I did all that, I'm well under 40 and have really travelled the world, succeeded professionally, lived in 10 countries, did everything I ever wanted to do. And now what? The problem with achieving things is that you run out of goals. I find it harder and harder to find things that excite me. I have no desire to network aggressively with "smart people" like these posts tell you to. What's the point, ultimately more opportunities i.e. money? That doesn't motivate that much anymore. I want that feeling back, the anticipation when I was about to go to a new place or have a new experience. That's the most precious thing there is and I miss it.
- smegsicle 3y ago> The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stn8188 3y agoI feel you, there's a certain feeling of ephemeralness if you step back and think about it that way. Put another way, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away". The thing that changed this for me is, no joke, having kids. This brought me away from the feeling that life is fleeting with little point to the minuscule things I may accomplish and showed me a grander scale. As an engineer, I'll never be a Maxwell, Shannon, etc., but I can raise the generation to come in a way that - though I may never know it - could have an incredible influence on the world.
- belugacat 3y agoThat’s why there’s a biological impulse to procreate, such that by the time you’ve reached your 30s/40s your main drive is not to fulfill your own goals, but help tiny humans navigate the world and fulfill their own. That becomes your metagoal, and adding a 25th stamp to your passport or getting 100 more stars on your GitHub library doesn’t seem to matter as much.
- voidhorse 3y agoIt's a bit silly for me to raise this stance on this website, but I'm so sick and tired of tech luminaries giving life advice. It's all so flat and tasteless. It lacks character, it assumes such basic goals for human beings as happiness or money. They all write like they're handing in some kind of flavorless college freshman's book report. I don't know where the truly philosophical individuals are these days but they certainly aren't heading up tech companies. Want life advice? Start looking into the history of philosophy and read it widely and deeply. The words are powerful and there's no underlying assumption that life is reducible to making it out the best way we can in the current dominant socio-economic structure; they actually suggest that, gasp dominant systems and structures might not be serving people well. People actually believed in this thing called meaning and thought about how to pursue it beyond fulfilling prescribed roles and desires. It's so arrogant of these founders to suggest that their personal experience in capitalism is extractable to some set of general principles worthy of moralization. Worse, they do it with the literary style of a lemming. At least the moralists of the 16th and 17th centuries knew how to construct a pithy, catchy aphorism when they were dolling out vague advice. Sheesh.
- asdfman123 3y agoThe trick is spending a decade or more of your life inside of an office to the exclusion of virtually every other activity. Your success will convince you you’re a genius, qualified to comment on anything, but you will have completely killed anything inside yourself that doesn’t involve corporate advancement.