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25 things I’ve learned about life the hard way before turning 25
- dgzen07 3y agoi am 50 but loved every bit of it; you are so wise man
- ednevsky 3y agoAppreciate the sarcasm :)
- ftxbro 3y agowelcome to hacker news you are going to love this new kind of stories we got here with less hacking and more stream of consciousness blogspams and upvote and comment bots
- sophacles 3y agoWelcome to you too! If dive into the archives, you'll find that this sort of story isn't new to the site at all. Nor is the complaining about things not being about computers, or about writing style, or even "this is too basic for this site". Stick around for a while and you'll see that the sorts of story, the topics, and even some specific articles go in cycles of popularity. It's kind of interesting in and of itself.
- vehemenz 3y ago> you are Don't you mean "your?"
- ftxbro 3y agostill waiting for substack to put its paywall so we won't have to be subjected to this
- smcin 3y agoWhat were your specific criticisms of the post? Items 1-5,7-11,24,25 seem useful to me; the rest subjective or questionable.
- bigthymer 3y agoI'm not the commenter that you responded to (ftxbro) but any listicle screams clickbait to me. I suspect he feels the same way.
- ednevsky 3y agoDoes this mean that listicle is "banned" forever or how does that work? Genuinely curious.
- smcin 3y agoSure, but much of Substack/Twitter/LinkedIn is clickbait. I thought this one at least contained a couple of useful items, along with some questionable ones. Which in my book would make it slightly above-average; although marginally on-topic on HN. Maybe the time has come to split HN's page or use tags: tech, language-specific, business, life, economy, knowledge etc. At least to keep the softer posts from pushing out harder ones.
- ednevsky 3y agoSince you've read the post and are not downright dismissive, would love to hear your perspective on what you've found questionable and why!
- skilled 3y agoNot to worry, 30 will humble you.
- ednevsky 3y agoLooking forward to it, as always :)
- witchesindublin 3y agoI think one of the things I noticed about a lot of Asian tech newbies (both East Asia and South Asian) is how different they were to be in terms of money and wanting to "live it large" in a place such as Los Angeles. Obviously these people were attracted to tech because of the money, but this blog does show me that even these tech newbies will eventually realise the errors of their ways. I rarely drive and never place too much value on money, and realise that a lot of the "socially warm" cultures that some people rave on about are a little pointless.
- ednevsky 3y agoI'm not sure I got what you meant here. Would you clarify on what exactly is the "error" and in whose ways? Genuinely curious.
- chrisbigelow 3y ago> If you have a deviated septum, undergo septoplasty Really? If you have a severely deviated septum you'll likely have a benefit. Talking as someone who has undergone a septoplasty, the ENT wanted to make me perfect and the surgery was horribly painful. What actually helped was treating my allergies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6616214/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6616214/
- ednevsky 3y agoThis worked for me and a number of people I know, but that isn't to say that everyone needs to do this. The post is a reflection and not a call-to-action. My surgery wasn't horrible. It was nothing at all because I was out. The first few days were really bad because I was unable to use my nose to breathe and my brain was glitching because of that. I still think it was worth it.
- tester756 3y ago>Working in tech, you're likely able to save >50% of your earnings. is this naivety or privilege?
- ednevsky 3y agoThis is a perspective from my end, and not meant to be applicable to everyone. There are about 8 bil people in the world, for god's sake! PS: I'm in Europe.
- jstx1 3y agoWhich one is "assuming most other people are like me"? That one.
- vehemenz 3y agoMy savings rate is about 50%. I think this is accurate for any reasonably-paid job in tech.
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- fknorangesite 3y agoPor qué no los dos?
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- opportune 3y agoI’m sure for part of the privileged bubble the author is in, but it’s super common for 20-something US tech workers to save >50% of take home. Some certainly choose to take on more expenses like living by themselves, choosing luxury housing, having a nice car, spending on nice clothes and vacations. But it’s pretty common for people to live with roommates and otherwise not “ball out” while eschewing most of that - it’s very common for tech college graduates to follow the money mustache/boglehead financial strategy of avoiding lifestyle inflation and living like college students for a while. And if you do that, you could easily have living expenses at 40k/y or less even in an expensive city like SF, Seattle, LA, NYC. And you don’t need an outlier income to save 40k+ per year (including 401k) on 40k of expenses either. The 401k contribution limit is 22.5k. Per smartasset’s calculator, you’d only need an income of about $100k to save $40k on $40k of expenses while living in California, (that’s without employer matching while maxing 401k). And $100k is a totally reasonable figure for new grad tech TC in California.
- jstx1 3y agoIt's okay to write down one cliche for each year of your life, it's not okay to have so little self awareness that you make it a blog and post it on HN yourself.
- ednevsky 3y agoMy bad. How come have I dared to post something on the internet. How unthoughtful of me...
- haswell 3y ago> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. [0] We all experience life differently, come from varied backgrounds, start our careers with varying levels of life skills, carry defaults passed on from our parents (for good or bad), etc. What seems cliche to you may be revolutionary to someone else. I would have benefited from a list like this earlier in my career. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- thefz 3y agoThese points go from extremely mundane and generic to downright wrong.
- ednevsky 3y agoWould love to read on what you think is wrong and why. Happy to contemplate on your worldview :)
- haswell 3y agoThe post is already flagged, but the general point here is: then directly challenge what’s wrong. And it’s helpful if you look at this through the lens of “Things I’ve learned”, emphasis on the author’s journey. To claim that what others have learned about how they live their own lives is downright wrong…strikes me as a rather limited way of thinking about the spectrum of situations we all find ourselves in. If the author was claiming that all readers should alter their lives according to his own discoveries, I’d have more issues with it.
- narush 3y agoTo join the quote-and-respond masses in the comments: > AI will be the single most significant driving factor of change in the world. If we solve AGI (or achieve intelligence close to AGI), we'll likely solve most of the world's problems. I literally don't get the confidence in this statement. I'm not an AI-doomer by any means, but AGI (if possible) will likely be the most powerful technology humankind has ever invented. Just in terms of possible impact, why would we assume it will solve more problems than it will create (or the opposite)? Think of recent super-powerful technologies we've invented. Sure, there's the potential for fantastic fixes to many problems that come out of nuclear tech. But there's also... the threat of nuclear annihilation? Is that all net positive? Do we even really have a way to evaluate on the timescale of 100 years? How can we know the net impact of nuclear tech in the next century, or millennium? How can we call this sort of rhetoric anything other than blind optimism? Why would we have any priors about how AI will go? Why do we say things that make us blindly rush forward? I'm not being sarcastic, or trying to argue one way or another. I'm genuinely asking. How does anyone have confidence in "AI is good" or "AI is bad" claims? Is confidence even good in this case? For me, these questions lead into such deep and treacherous waters it's probably best to stop the comment there. There are limits to what even interested HN addicts can ask of each other.
- ednevsky 3y agoThank you for the comment. I see what you mean and by no means my point is dismissive of the potential threats of AGI gone rogue. By the way, I didn't say "AI is good". I said that it would change the world the most. Whether that involves the current humanity's status-quo or not, I'm not sure. I would even say that given where the world is heading right now, I would love to try and take a shot at some form of AGI governing us (making decisions etc) and establishing the world order. I'm not sure we can escape this future unless we go back into the medieval era. In general, I guess I'm an optimist at heart and I'm more focused on the amazing things we would be able to do with the infinite compute and infinite resources rather than the doomsday scenario, but I'm supportive of thinking of both.
- xmprt 3y agoIt's also a really strange thing to suggest because there are a lot of physical problems with the world that AGI won't be able to solve without access to extremely advanced robots (or some way to control humans to do its bidding which is even more terrifying). And then there's even more human problems such as getting people to agree on such as immigration or gun rights. Regardless of where you stand on the issue it's laughable to claim that AGI will be able to get people to agree on an action there.
- ravenstine 3y ago> Fashion is mostly made up. No one cares what you wear as long as you're a cool person. Cool. I'll wear my giant veiny penis hat to the office from now on.
- kraquepype 3y agoI think that being a "cool person" aligns with not wearing things that others would find offensive. Unless you know the target audience well enough that it would be well received. Carry on then.
- fernly 3y agoYou missed the caveat back in his point #4, > as long as you don't cross societal norms
- opportune 3y agoBefore you make fun of this, realize that while to the older HN crowd a 25 year old imparting life advice may seem laughable, to 20 year old college students this is likely very interesting and informative, while being more “fresh” in terms of applicability to the contemporary world than what us older folk could give. Even if we might think it’s inaccurate or lacks perspective for other reasons, it has benefits we can’t give. It’s also just interesting to read what kind of advice younger people would give to those younger than themselves!
- ednevsky 3y agoReally enjoying the feedback so far. PS This wasn't meant to be an advice per se. That's why the list features "ing" most of the time :)
- KerrAvon 3y ago20 year olds should maybe get advice from more grounded 25 year olds. This particular one appears to be vain, shallow, and incurious.
- ednevsky 3y agoWould love to read something that is the opposite and compare. Please share if you have any links :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]