8 ms·

Anyone who says they are not in it for the money is lying. The underlying goal is always money, few admit it. If they truly wanted to do something not for the m

by rfnslyr 13y ago

Anyone who says they are not in it for the money is lying. The underlying goal is always money, few admit it. If they truly wanted to do something not for the money, they'd be in their garage carving figurines not spending every breath maintaining a (probably) already dead startup.

thibaut_barrere 13y ago
I personally really don't care about the money (no lying, I swear). I care, though, about the fact that money brings me time, and as such more freedom to do whatever I like. I do not know where you took that from... Most of the people (EU-based) I know that are bootstrapping their own (profitable, not dead) startup or service seem to be minded similarly, too. I just make sure I have enough money to not have to think about money, so it actually gets out of the way.
- ken_railey 13y ago
  I personally really don't care about the money (no lying, I swear). I care, though, about the fact that money brings me time, and as such more freedom to do whatever I like. These two statements are contradictory. The whole point of having it is that it is stored value that can provide you with the things you actually need; time, in your case.
  - thibaut_barrere 13y ago
    I don't see it contradictory since my freedom and time is not solely brought by money; money is just one ingredient (in the middle of knowledge, confidence, etc etc). Similarly, I don't care much about H alone, but I definitely enjoy H2O!
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      Yes your freedom and time is solely brought by money, and because money is a representation of value, anything you do of value for someone else effectively buys you the means to freedom and more time which is exactly what you are doing to afford yourself the freedom of not caring about money. However, if you did not have money, you would either: a) Be comfortable living the most basic lifestyle humanly possible. b) Be working so you can afford yourself the lifestyle you want. Clearly, you are not in group A since you have a more than comfortable lifestyle, so it's B. You did contradict yourself.
      - thibaut_barrere 13y ago
        Your first sentence is an opinion stated as a fact, which I disagree with. But I don't consider that stating something demonstrates it. Later you divide the whole humanity in A, B (and C). I certainly do not consider this is correct, and believe there are many more cases to be considered. I cannot see what could possibly go wrong, going from here, in terms of deciding that people contradict themselves, logic, etc! Feel free to consider I contradict myself - I certainly do not agree.
        rfnslyr 13y ago
        Why did you reply if you're not going to further discuss? Thanks for crossing your arms and walking away.
        thibaut_barrere 13y ago
        I replied to state my disagreement and end my participation to the conversation politely, nothing more. To which you replied (but edited later): Okay thanks for pointing out exactly how I typed my paragraph. Did you offer any sort of rebuttal? No. Stop being a baby. This is obviously going nowhere - so yes I'm leaving the discussion. I'm now back to my regular schedule, arms uncrossed (I rarely cross them, mind you), actually. Have a nice end of day (sincerely).
- sysop073 13y ago
  It sounds like you're pretty confused about most people's reasons for caring about money. Making sure you have enough money to not need to worry about money is pretty much the entire goal for most people
  - thibaut_barrere 13y ago
    I'm not "confused" - we just do not agree here (that's ok).
dmathieu 13y ago
All money put aside, I'd definitely prefer to be maintaining a startup (it's not dead since money is put aside) than carving figurines in a garage. Everyone his hobbies. If your hobby can land you some money so you can get a roof and some food, then you're already a good way to becoming an happy man.
lectrick 13y ago
> The underlying goal is always money, few admit it. I love to build cool shit. My salary does not matter to me. Of course, it is fairly high so perhaps I have the luxury to say that, but if my basic needs were taken care of, I'd be just about as happy just building things in Ruby.
mjn 13y ago
If you're poor and need to improve your financial situation, sure. But now that I have a solid middle-class job I don't personally feel a need to earn even more money. Now I spend my incremental time on things that generally don't earn money: research side projects, writing Wikipedia articles, contributing to open-source projects, etc. In many cases I've found trying to monetize content makes it worse. Not always, but sometimes the right choice from an intellectual perspective is to improve an existing article somewhere else, whether by editing Wikipedia, or sending in corrections to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or sending a documentation-related pull request to a project on GitHub. The alternative, if I put monetization first, would be to always find a way I could "own" the content: it needs to be published on my domain, where I get the credit and SEO and personal-branding out of it, and can put AdSense or Amazon Affiliate links on it. Instead of fixing the Wikipedia article or the docs, write a linkbaity blog post mocking their errors, for example, and submit it to HN. Not as constructive, but many people do exactly that. Decisions that are good for monetization don't always magically align with non-monetary goals like improving publicly accessible information, and sometimes they're in direct conflict. In that case, I don't think it's necessarily laudable to prioritize monetization.

by rfnslyr 13y ago

thibaut_barrere 13y ago

I personally really don't care about the money (no lying, I swear). I care, though, about the fact that money brings me time, and as such more freedom to do whatever I like. I do not know where you took that from... Most of the people (EU-based) I know that are bootstrapping their own (profitable, not dead) startup or service seem to be minded similarly, too. I just make sure I have enough money to not have to think about money, so it actually gets out of the way.

ken_railey 13y ago
I personally really don't care about the money (no lying, I swear). I care, though, about the fact that money brings me time, and as such more freedom to do whatever I like. These two statements are contradictory. The whole point of having it is that it is stored value that can provide you with the things you actually need; time, in your case.
- thibaut_barrere 13y ago
  I don't see it contradictory since my freedom and time is not solely brought by money; money is just one ingredient (in the middle of knowledge, confidence, etc etc). Similarly, I don't care much about H alone, but I definitely enjoy H2O!
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    Yes your freedom and time is solely brought by money, and because money is a representation of value, anything you do of value for someone else effectively buys you the means to freedom and more time which is exactly what you are doing to afford yourself the freedom of not caring about money. However, if you did not have money, you would either: a) Be comfortable living the most basic lifestyle humanly possible. b) Be working so you can afford yourself the lifestyle you want. Clearly, you are not in group A since you have a more than comfortable lifestyle, so it's B. You did contradict yourself.
    - thibaut_barrere 13y ago
      Your first sentence is an opinion stated as a fact, which I disagree with. But I don't consider that stating something demonstrates it. Later you divide the whole humanity in A, B (and C). I certainly do not consider this is correct, and believe there are many more cases to be considered. I cannot see what could possibly go wrong, going from here, in terms of deciding that people contradict themselves, logic, etc! Feel free to consider I contradict myself - I certainly do not agree.
      - rfnslyr 13y ago
        Why did you reply if you're not going to further discuss? Thanks for crossing your arms and walking away.
        thibaut_barrere 13y ago
        I replied to state my disagreement and end my participation to the conversation politely, nothing more. To which you replied (but edited later): Okay thanks for pointing out exactly how I typed my paragraph. Did you offer any sort of rebuttal? No. Stop being a baby. This is obviously going nowhere - so yes I'm leaving the discussion. I'm now back to my regular schedule, arms uncrossed (I rarely cross them, mind you), actually. Have a nice end of day (sincerely).
sysop073 13y ago
It sounds like you're pretty confused about most people's reasons for caring about money. Making sure you have enough money to not need to worry about money is pretty much the entire goal for most people
- thibaut_barrere 13y ago
  I'm not "confused" - we just do not agree here (that's ok).

dmathieu 13y ago

All money put aside, I'd definitely prefer to be maintaining a startup (it's not dead since money is put aside) than carving figurines in a garage. Everyone his hobbies. If your hobby can land you some money so you can get a roof and some food, then you're already a good way to becoming an happy man.

lectrick 13y ago

> The underlying goal is always money, few admit it. I love to build cool shit. My salary does not matter to me. Of course, it is fairly high so perhaps I have the luxury to say that, but if my basic needs were taken care of, I'd be just about as happy just building things in Ruby.

mjn 13y ago

If you're poor and need to improve your financial situation, sure. But now that I have a solid middle-class job I don't personally feel a need to earn even more money. Now I spend my incremental time on things that generally don't earn money: research side projects, writing Wikipedia articles, contributing to open-source projects, etc. In many cases I've found trying to monetize content makes it worse. Not always, but sometimes the right choice from an intellectual perspective is to improve an existing article somewhere else, whether by editing Wikipedia, or sending in corrections to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or sending a documentation-related pull request to a project on GitHub. The alternative, if I put monetization first, would be to always find a way I could "own" the content: it needs to be published on my domain, where I get the credit and SEO and personal-branding out of it, and can put AdSense or Amazon Affiliate links on it. Instead of fixing the Wikipedia article or the docs, write a linkbaity blog post mocking their errors, for example, and submit it to HN. Not as constructive, but many people do exactly that. Decisions that are good for monetization don't always magically align with non-monetary goals like improving publicly accessible information, and sometimes they're in direct conflict. In that case, I don't think it's necessarily laudable to prioritize monetization.