4 ms·

My issue with American programmers and technologists who get rich is that it goes to their head and suddenly they think they're an intellectual on a wide range

My issue with American programmers and technologists who get rich is that it goes to their head and suddenly they think they're an intellectual on a wide range of subjects. It happened to me but I grew out of it when I got old. Marc Andreeson is no different. Have you ever really listened to Peter Theil in an interview? He's all over the map, saying things that sound profound but when you think about it actually make no sense at all. He's great at some things, but he's not great at everything. Same with Andreeson. At least he's not as bad as Musk in this regard.

syndicatedjelly 2y ago
Is this true of experts in other fields? Why are programmers prone to this behavior?
- bmitc 2y ago
  Physicists and engineers are a lot like this too. I think software people have more of a chance getting rich very easily based upon some dumb idea that just happens to make them rich when the company sells.
  - labrador 2y ago
    Yes, when home copmputers hit in the 80's and the internet hit in the 90's, if you were a half-way decent programmer the odds were pretty good that you'd make a lot of money. Physicists and non-microchip engineers didn't strike it rich like that
- jampekka 2y ago
  https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556
  - labrador 2y ago
    The wise man is one who knows what he does not know - Lao Tsu In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen master Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance - Confucius The more I know, the more I understand one thing: that I know nothing - Osho Nobody knows anything - William Goldman, Hollywood producer
- hilux 2y ago
  Nature: maybe highly analytical people are lower in empathy. There's some evidence for this - difficult to prove. Nurture: when you're extremely well-paid, when both employers and (many) women want you ... the motivation to change your worldview is low.
bmitc 2y ago
This is especially true for a lot of the people that got rich pre-dotcom bubble. Literally the easiest time in the world to make big money on dumb stuff. Then they could take that money and "buy the dip" post-war and post-crash. It basically describes all of these people. And I've always found it intriguing that these people happen to get real libertarian after they get rich. It's beyond me how someone has such a blind eye regarding the luck that they had. Jim Simons is the only billionaire I've seen explicitly state that his success had a lot to do with luck, honestly addressing what his skills were that helped with his success.
- labrador 2y ago
  I'm a working class kid and made my money in that era (money long gone). I moved my family into a wealthy neighborhood thinking it would be good for my kids to be around a better class of people. Boy was I wrong. There are a surprising number of rich people who are not smart at all. They got lucky, made a windfall and got lucky again to find a good financial advisor so they manage to hang on to their wealth. Not only that, but rich people have problems that I didn't experience growing up. When I lived in Menlo Park suicide among rich teenagers [1] was happening at an alarming rate due to status wars with other teens and pressure from parents to be successful. My high school graduate father didn't care at all if I went to college. I succeeded because I wanted to. I think it's better that way. [1] THE SILICON VALLEY SUICIDES Why are so many kids with bright prospects killing themselves in Palo Alto? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sil...
  - hilux 2y ago
    I used to live next to the Menlo Park Caltrain station. All the time, we could hear the train stopping for hours ... for another suicide. I know a lot of rich people who sent their kids to the fanciest private schools. My friends are legitimately smart, but their kids ... have serious problems. In hindsight, they might have done better to go to a comprehensive public school with "average" kids.
    - 2y ago
talldayo 2y ago
Reminds me of listening to Vitalik Buterin when I was younger. He's a smart guy in many respects (probably moreso than Thiel and Andreessen), but his whitepapers, talks and presentations were all characterized with a hopeless idealism. You want changemakers in tech to be pragmatic, not just focused on old stuff but the things that people want and already use. The latest wave of entrepreneurs and investors both feel like pie-in-the-sky populations that intend to disrupt everything or let their business go bust.
bmacho 2y ago
Probably PEBKAC, as you expect someone to be 100% right. That's clearly impossible, thus it's a problem with you, not them. I expect people (including myself) to be ~50% right in disputes, based on symmetry.
lr4444lr 2y ago
Peter Thiel was like that before he got rich. He was very politically active in his Stanford law days. I don't think the problem is limited to American programmers. Actors and musicians have been behaving that way in this country before personal computers were even a thing.
- mikestew 2y ago
  Actors and musicians have been behaving that way in this country before personal computers were even a thing. I always think of Jessica Lang, Sissy Spacek, and Jane Fonda testifying before Congress about the family farm, because they each played the part of a farmer's wife in a movie once. https://archive.ph/wip/g1YYc https://archive.ph/wip/g1YYc
tmaly 2y ago
Where do you place Naval?
- marssaxman 2y ago
  Hunter's Point, I would think.
renewiltord 2y ago
You have the direction mixed up. They became this successful because they always had conviction in non-mainstream ideas. This is frequently shown in criticism of the Internet Archive. "How could they think that Outrageous Thing X could be legal? The Archive is reasonable but this new thing is not". Well, none of the people who thought that did the original Internet Archive in the first place. Those who only take well-worn roads rarely discover new places. And to them, discovery seems serendipitous. Why would this explorer not just take the well-worn road now that he's discovered something, they wonder. He thinks he's a visionary just because he found this. If I found it I'd never leave the road.
- labrador 2y ago
  I looked into Marc Andreeson's genius once and it surprised me that there were several GUI web browsers before Mosaic. Marc made a better one at the right time for it to take off. He's a coder, a good one, but to say he's a maverick following his own path is incorrect. It was a no brainer to start Netscape, so that's not so original either. Q: What were some GUI web browsers before Marc Andreeson wrote Mosaic A: Before Marc Andreessen and his team developed Mosaic in 1993, there were a few early GUI web browsers: WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus): Developed by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, in 1990. It was the first web browser with a graphical user interface. (WorldWideWeb on Wikipedia) ViolaWWW: Created by Pei-Yuan Wei in 1992, it was the first browser to support scripting and stylesheets. (ViolaWWW on Wikipedia) Erwise: Developed by a group of students at Helsinki University of Technology in 1992, it was the first browser to support inline images. (Erwise on Wikipedia) Midas: Created by Tony Johnson at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in 1992, it was another early graphical web browser. (Midas on Wikipedia) These early browsers paved the way for Mosaic, which became widely popular and laid the foundation for modern web browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    One of the things with being first on something cool is that it's a no-brainer 30 years later. Everyone thinks things are obvious in hindsight.
hilux 2y ago
That's my reaction as well. He sounds exactly like what many white male American (as opposed to immigrant) Silicon Valley guys would sound like if you got them to talk about politics or anything to do with non-tech humanity. They're not well-informed outside of tech. They ARE well-paid and in-demand. Since they're "winning," there's very little motivation to update their world view.
the_snooze 2y ago
It goes at least as far back as Silicon Valley's earliest days with William Shockley. Smart guy when it comes to transistors. Less so when it comes to other people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Racist_and_eugenicist_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Racist_and_eu...
haunter 2y ago
>My issue with American programmers and technologists who get rich is that it goes to their head and suddenly they think they're an intellectual on a wide range of subjects. Bill Gates is also a good example of that but there are countless others.

syndicatedjelly 2y ago

Is this true of experts in other fields? Why are programmers prone to this behavior?

bmitc 2y ago
Physicists and engineers are a lot like this too. I think software people have more of a chance getting rich very easily based upon some dumb idea that just happens to make them rich when the company sells.
- labrador 2y ago
  Yes, when home copmputers hit in the 80's and the internet hit in the 90's, if you were a half-way decent programmer the odds were pretty good that you'd make a lot of money. Physicists and non-microchip engineers didn't strike it rich like that
jampekka 2y ago
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556
- labrador 2y ago
  The wise man is one who knows what he does not know - Lao Tsu In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen master Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance - Confucius The more I know, the more I understand one thing: that I know nothing - Osho Nobody knows anything - William Goldman, Hollywood producer
hilux 2y ago
Nature: maybe highly analytical people are lower in empathy. There's some evidence for this - difficult to prove. Nurture: when you're extremely well-paid, when both employers and (many) women want you ... the motivation to change your worldview is low.

bmitc 2y ago

This is especially true for a lot of the people that got rich pre-dotcom bubble. Literally the easiest time in the world to make big money on dumb stuff. Then they could take that money and "buy the dip" post-war and post-crash. It basically describes all of these people. And I've always found it intriguing that these people happen to get real libertarian after they get rich. It's beyond me how someone has such a blind eye regarding the luck that they had. Jim Simons is the only billionaire I've seen explicitly state that his success had a lot to do with luck, honestly addressing what his skills were that helped with his success.

labrador 2y ago
I'm a working class kid and made my money in that era (money long gone). I moved my family into a wealthy neighborhood thinking it would be good for my kids to be around a better class of people. Boy was I wrong. There are a surprising number of rich people who are not smart at all. They got lucky, made a windfall and got lucky again to find a good financial advisor so they manage to hang on to their wealth. Not only that, but rich people have problems that I didn't experience growing up. When I lived in Menlo Park suicide among rich teenagers [1] was happening at an alarming rate due to status wars with other teens and pressure from parents to be successful. My high school graduate father didn't care at all if I went to college. I succeeded because I wanted to. I think it's better that way. [1] THE SILICON VALLEY SUICIDES Why are so many kids with bright prospects killing themselves in Palo Alto? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sil...
- hilux 2y ago
  I used to live next to the Menlo Park Caltrain station. All the time, we could hear the train stopping for hours ... for another suicide. I know a lot of rich people who sent their kids to the fanciest private schools. My friends are legitimately smart, but their kids ... have serious problems. In hindsight, they might have done better to go to a comprehensive public school with "average" kids.
  - 2y ago

talldayo 2y ago

Reminds me of listening to Vitalik Buterin when I was younger. He's a smart guy in many respects (probably moreso than Thiel and Andreessen), but his whitepapers, talks and presentations were all characterized with a hopeless idealism. You want changemakers in tech to be pragmatic, not just focused on old stuff but the things that people want and already use. The latest wave of entrepreneurs and investors both feel like pie-in-the-sky populations that intend to disrupt everything or let their business go bust.

bmacho 2y ago

Probably PEBKAC, as you expect someone to be 100% right. That's clearly impossible, thus it's a problem with you, not them. I expect people (including myself) to be ~50% right in disputes, based on symmetry.

lr4444lr 2y ago

Peter Thiel was like that before he got rich. He was very politically active in his Stanford law days. I don't think the problem is limited to American programmers. Actors and musicians have been behaving that way in this country before personal computers were even a thing.

mikestew 2y ago
Actors and musicians have been behaving that way in this country before personal computers were even a thing. I always think of Jessica Lang, Sissy Spacek, and Jane Fonda testifying before Congress about the family farm, because they each played the part of a farmer's wife in a movie once. https://archive.ph/wip/g1YYc https://archive.ph/wip/g1YYc

tmaly 2y ago

Where do you place Naval?

marssaxman 2y ago
Hunter's Point, I would think.

renewiltord 2y ago

You have the direction mixed up. They became this successful because they always had conviction in non-mainstream ideas. This is frequently shown in criticism of the Internet Archive. "How could they think that Outrageous Thing X could be legal? The Archive is reasonable but this new thing is not". Well, none of the people who thought that did the original Internet Archive in the first place. Those who only take well-worn roads rarely discover new places. And to them, discovery seems serendipitous. Why would this explorer not just take the well-worn road now that he's discovered something, they wonder. He thinks he's a visionary just because he found this. If I found it I'd never leave the road.

labrador 2y ago
I looked into Marc Andreeson's genius once and it surprised me that there were several GUI web browsers before Mosaic. Marc made a better one at the right time for it to take off. He's a coder, a good one, but to say he's a maverick following his own path is incorrect. It was a no brainer to start Netscape, so that's not so original either. Q: What were some GUI web browsers before Marc Andreeson wrote Mosaic A: Before Marc Andreessen and his team developed Mosaic in 1993, there were a few early GUI web browsers: WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus): Developed by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, in 1990. It was the first web browser with a graphical user interface. (WorldWideWeb on Wikipedia) ViolaWWW: Created by Pei-Yuan Wei in 1992, it was the first browser to support scripting and stylesheets. (ViolaWWW on Wikipedia) Erwise: Developed by a group of students at Helsinki University of Technology in 1992, it was the first browser to support inline images. (Erwise on Wikipedia) Midas: Created by Tony Johnson at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in 1992, it was another early graphical web browser. (Midas on Wikipedia) These early browsers paved the way for Mosaic, which became widely popular and laid the foundation for modern web browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  One of the things with being first on something cool is that it's a no-brainer 30 years later. Everyone thinks things are obvious in hindsight.

hilux 2y ago

That's my reaction as well. He sounds exactly like what many white male American (as opposed to immigrant) Silicon Valley guys would sound like if you got them to talk about politics or anything to do with non-tech humanity. They're not well-informed outside of tech. They ARE well-paid and in-demand. Since they're "winning," there's very little motivation to update their world view.

the_snooze 2y ago

It goes at least as far back as Silicon Valley's earliest days with William Shockley. Smart guy when it comes to transistors. Less so when it comes to other people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Racist_and_eugenicist_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Racist_and_eu...

haunter 2y ago

>My issue with American programmers and technologists who get rich is that it goes to their head and suddenly they think they're an intellectual on a wide range of subjects. Bill Gates is also a good example of that but there are countless others.