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I've considered it myself; I don't want to make a business doing contract work again, because I did not enjoy that. If I were to start my own business it would

by tombert 7mo ago

I've considered it myself; I don't want to make a business doing contract work again, because I did not enjoy that. If I were to start my own business it would have to be a product. I have plenty of interesting projects that I work on in my free time, but I'm not sure any of them are monetizable, or at least not monetizable enough for a venture capitalist to throw money at me (especially since most of them do not involve AI). I could probably think of something that could be monetizable if I really tried but if I don't actually enjoy the work I'm doing on the side for fun then I'm probably not going to do a particularly good job on it. Though even if I did have some brilliant project that I could sell, I have no idea how to go about finding VC investors. And even if I knew how to find these investors, I think I would ultimately be too afraid to actually commit to it. Increasingly it's seeming that I will probably not be worth billions of dollars in my lifetime, for no other reasons than I'm too much of a coward and I'm too discriminating with what I actually work on. Sometimes it depresses me to think about it, but hard to feel too sad for myself when I still have a high salary job that involves me staring at a computer screen all day.

mykowebhn 7mo ago
Forgive me for saying this, but I think you may be drinking too much of the kool-aid. If some of your projects are monetizable, couldn't you move forward without VC help? Perhaps related, why do you need to be worth billions of dollars? I feel your visions for what you want your future self to be are highly unrealistic and you're probably setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment and unhappiness. Sorry for the bluntness, but I think one could be happy on a lot less.
- tombert 7mo ago
  I was being a bit joking and hyperbolic about the billion dollars, though obviously that wasn’t communicated clearly. I don’t really need a billion dollars. I don’t think anything I have right now is very monetizable; most of the fun stuff I work on now ends up being formal methods stuff, which is cool but hard to make any money with. I guess what I was saying is that I think I am ultimately think I am too cowardly to just go for it and make my own company. I don’t think I am capable of purposely avoiding income for N months for a project to pick up.
  - mykowebhn 7mo ago
    Ah, okay. I didn't realize that. My bad!
    - tombert 6mo ago
      Given that two separate people didn't understand the joke, clearly bad communication on my end. I do not accept your "my bad!", and instead insist on it being my bad.
saghm 7mo ago
> Increasingly it's seeming that I will probably not be worth billions of dollars in my lifetime, for no other reasons than I'm too much of a coward and I'm too discriminating with what I actually work on I can't tell if you're wildly underestimating how many circumstances are outside of your control or just have an extremely high opinion of how much of an outlier you are (or maybe this isn't meant seriously and just went over my head), but I think that there are vanishingly few people (if any) in the world whose only impediments to a high likelihood of becoming a billionaire are self-imposed. I don't think that even extremely smart and charismatic people are particularly likely to do that. For every one that reaches that level of wealth, there are far more who try and fail, and it's not always because they weren't willing to work on shady things or weren't smart enough; some factors are just beyond the ability of an individual human to overcome, and you might just be lucky or unlucky.
- tombert 7mo ago
  Clearly poor communication on my end; I was joking about the billion dollars. My bad. I was just saying that I am too much of a coward to actually even attempt to make my own business.
  - saghm 7mo ago
    > Clearly poor communication on my end; I was joking about the billion dollars. My bad. No worries, I'm pretty bad at being able to recognize humor over text even when it's done well, so I legitimately can't tell the difference between whether it's on my end or yours! And if it is on your end, it's certainly still a more palatable character trait than the amount of ego needed to say it seriously.
    - tombert 6mo ago
      It is genuinely hard for me to say anything completely seriously and without an abundance of sarcasm. My therapist says it might be an avoidance mechanism that I devised as a kid in order to avoid confronting serious topics. There probably is some truth to that, and it can understandably come off as me not listening or being mindful to things people say to me because they think I'm blowing it off, even when it's more of just how I deal with things. My wife, being pretty awesome in many ways, realized this pretty early on and thus more or less always understood that when I make a smartass comment even for serious topics, I'm not really trying to make light of it as much as its just how I cope with things. Anyway, yeah, I'm sarcastic a lot of the time and I realize that that doesn't always come through with text.

by tombert 7mo ago

mykowebhn 7mo ago

Forgive me for saying this, but I think you may be drinking too much of the kool-aid. If some of your projects are monetizable, couldn't you move forward without VC help? Perhaps related, why do you need to be worth billions of dollars? I feel your visions for what you want your future self to be are highly unrealistic and you're probably setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment and unhappiness. Sorry for the bluntness, but I think one could be happy on a lot less.

tombert 7mo ago
I was being a bit joking and hyperbolic about the billion dollars, though obviously that wasn’t communicated clearly. I don’t really need a billion dollars. I don’t think anything I have right now is very monetizable; most of the fun stuff I work on now ends up being formal methods stuff, which is cool but hard to make any money with. I guess what I was saying is that I think I am ultimately think I am too cowardly to just go for it and make my own company. I don’t think I am capable of purposely avoiding income for N months for a project to pick up.
- mykowebhn 7mo ago
  Ah, okay. I didn't realize that. My bad!
  - tombert 6mo ago
    Given that two separate people didn't understand the joke, clearly bad communication on my end. I do not accept your "my bad!", and instead insist on it being my bad.

saghm 7mo ago

> Increasingly it's seeming that I will probably not be worth billions of dollars in my lifetime, for no other reasons than I'm too much of a coward and I'm too discriminating with what I actually work on I can't tell if you're wildly underestimating how many circumstances are outside of your control or just have an extremely high opinion of how much of an outlier you are (or maybe this isn't meant seriously and just went over my head), but I think that there are vanishingly few people (if any) in the world whose only impediments to a high likelihood of becoming a billionaire are self-imposed. I don't think that even extremely smart and charismatic people are particularly likely to do that. For every one that reaches that level of wealth, there are far more who try and fail, and it's not always because they weren't willing to work on shady things or weren't smart enough; some factors are just beyond the ability of an individual human to overcome, and you might just be lucky or unlucky.

tombert 7mo ago
Clearly poor communication on my end; I was joking about the billion dollars. My bad. I was just saying that I am too much of a coward to actually even attempt to make my own business.
- saghm 7mo ago
  > Clearly poor communication on my end; I was joking about the billion dollars. My bad. No worries, I'm pretty bad at being able to recognize humor over text even when it's done well, so I legitimately can't tell the difference between whether it's on my end or yours! And if it is on your end, it's certainly still a more palatable character trait than the amount of ego needed to say it seriously.
  - tombert 6mo ago
    It is genuinely hard for me to say anything completely seriously and without an abundance of sarcasm. My therapist says it might be an avoidance mechanism that I devised as a kid in order to avoid confronting serious topics. There probably is some truth to that, and it can understandably come off as me not listening or being mindful to things people say to me because they think I'm blowing it off, even when it's more of just how I deal with things. My wife, being pretty awesome in many ways, realized this pretty early on and thus more or less always understood that when I make a smartass comment even for serious topics, I'm not really trying to make light of it as much as its just how I cope with things. Anyway, yeah, I'm sarcastic a lot of the time and I realize that that doesn't always come through with text.