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This isn't a question of what he's accomplished, this is about money - that's what this conversation was founded on. Lots of people accomplish lots of things, t

by XorNot 3y ago

This isn't a question of what he's accomplished, this is about money - that's what this conversation was founded on. Lots of people accomplish lots of things, they don't get rich (around the USD$billion valuation by the terms of this discussion) from them. The metric we've had put up is the money == "good advice on how to get it". And if that's the case, then giving any advice now asks the important question: where's your piles of cash?

WalterBright 3y ago
Bill Gates famously spend a couple decades working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, no vacations. I was never willing to work that hard, and so I accept that I never made Bill Gates billions. I've made enough off of my investments to be able to work full time for the D Language Foundation. I've shared many times on HN how to do this, and have advised many friends, and nobody follows the advice. :-/ Advice like I bought a used Ford and used it as a daily driver for well over 30 years until it finally disintegrated.
- XorNot 3y ago
  If you worked a standard 9 to 5 and took 4 weeks of vacation a year, then you worked ~1920 hours per year. Bill Gate's self-reported work schedule would give him 3640 hours per year, meaning he worked about double the hours of a "regular person". Bill Gates in 2018 dollars as of 1999 was worth about $150 billion dollars. Giving him an hourly rate of 2018-USD$1,369,863 per hour over 30 years. Whatever you, or I, or pretty much anyone else on HN is worth is a rounding error towards 0 of that value. While it is certainly possible that value goes exponential after that first 40 hours, there's plenty of people on Earth who work far longer hours then that and will never be worth anywhere near as much.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    That's because they're working on the wrong things. I emphasize over and over that if you want to get ahead, working hard isn't enough. You have to be working on the right things.

by XorNot 3y ago

WalterBright 3y ago

Bill Gates famously spend a couple decades working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, no vacations. I was never willing to work that hard, and so I accept that I never made Bill Gates billions. I've made enough off of my investments to be able to work full time for the D Language Foundation. I've shared many times on HN how to do this, and have advised many friends, and nobody follows the advice. :-/ Advice like I bought a used Ford and used it as a daily driver for well over 30 years until it finally disintegrated.

XorNot 3y ago
If you worked a standard 9 to 5 and took 4 weeks of vacation a year, then you worked ~1920 hours per year. Bill Gate's self-reported work schedule would give him 3640 hours per year, meaning he worked about double the hours of a "regular person". Bill Gates in 2018 dollars as of 1999 was worth about $150 billion dollars. Giving him an hourly rate of 2018-USD$1,369,863 per hour over 30 years. Whatever you, or I, or pretty much anyone else on HN is worth is a rounding error towards 0 of that value. While it is certainly possible that value goes exponential after that first 40 hours, there's plenty of people on Earth who work far longer hours then that and will never be worth anywhere near as much.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  That's because they're working on the wrong things. I emphasize over and over that if you want to get ahead, working hard isn't enough. You have to be working on the right things.