25 ms·

What It's Like to Fail

• sciguy77 13y ago
  While this is up, does anyone know what happened to the Priceonomics search bar?
  • malloreon 13y ago
    I'm guessing they decided to be an economics blog full time.
    • pilom 13y ago
      They discussed this before but I can't find the link. Priceonomics has started consulting on data analysis and visualization and make significantly more money doing that than they do with their price search tools.
  • simantel 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6590041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6590041
• bomatson 13y ago
  Wow, quite a story. I wish we saw more like it on HN. Honest and real
• not_that_noob 13y ago
  The main reason he failed is because the industries he picked - first publishing and second sitcoms - were declining industries. And no matter how smart or hardworking you are - and this dude was smart and prudent and hardworking - you can't fight against larger macroeconomic forces.
  • aristidb 13y ago
    Sorry for the nitpicking, but you meant "macroeconomic". I agree with your point though.
    • not_that_noob 13y ago
      Yep typo. It was 'macro' in my head.
  • deaconblues 13y ago
    Publishing I can understand, but a seasoned sitcom writer -- especially a Roseanne alum -- should have been able to pick up more writing work. I'm not saying he's lazy or entitled or anything like that, just that the world can sometimes be a scary place where you end up in a bad situation just by luck of the draw.
    • not_that_noob 13y ago
      The article makes the point that sitcoms declined as reality TV was on the ascent. Fewer jobs available writing for sitcoms, and there were other great writers with current experience competing against him.
      • beachstartup 13y ago
        he only briefly mentions this, but he took 2 years off to spend more time with is family at exactly the wrong time, when the jobs started disappearing. quite honestly anyone who takes two years off when their career is at peak potential shouldn't be surprised at anything career-wise that happens from that point forward. all bets are off when you just check the f out for 2 years. how many successful people could take 2 years off from their work and expect things to be fine when they come back? this line of (non-) reasoning is sheer lunacy.
        • lgieron 13y ago
          Regarding your last question - I'd say it's pretty much the norm in our field.
          • beachstartup 13y ago
            you should try it and see what happens. go ahead, give yourself a 2 year break.
            • lgieron 13y ago
              I did that. After the break, I found a contract that paid more than a double than the previous one. Then another break (this time a little less than a year), and another bump in pay. If you can show you're valuable, the gaps don't matter (at least, that is my experience).
  • larrys 13y ago
    "And no matter how smart or hardworking you are " We aren't talking about buggy whips here. There are jobs in that industry. Who do you think are getting those jobs? People who are stupid and lazy? Of course a rising tide floats all boats. And of course it would have been better if he was an in demand programmer in SF. But most people aren't. And this is something they do need to deal with.
    • guyzero 13y ago
      "Who do you think are getting those jobs? People who are stupid and lazy?" People who are young and cheap. It says so right in the article.
      • redschell 13y ago
        I think it comes back to something we talk about quite a bit here: the advantage of the youthful entrepreneur. It's not that inexperienced 20-somethings and college dropouts are in any way superior to their older, credentialed, experienced peers. It's just that, when you're taking moonshots, you should expect to miss most of the time. When you're tired of failing, you can go back to school, or start in a new career field. The gaps in your resume are there, but they're forgivable. You were hungry and foolish then, but you're ready to eat and learn now. As others have noted, those gaps hurt a lot more when they appear later on. It's not fair, but it's just the way it is, unfortunately. Even if you were on your way to 20 years of employment at your stable dream job, layoffs can happen. Shit can happen. Count on it.
      • larrys 13y ago
        So are you claiming that there are no older people in those comedy writing jobs? At all. All are gone? Somehow I don't think that is the case.
        • willvarfar 13y ago
          (Did you read the whole article? He directly addresses this.)
        • 13y ago
  • ChuckMcM 13y ago
    You need to be careful with that line of reasoning. Things change, it wasn't clear necessarily when Rosanne was on that Sitcoms were dying. Nor that the replacement wouldn't need jokes. The take away is things change and if multiple things change at the same time in a negative way it hurts. What struck me was sitting in a library surfing the web. I'd much rather sit in the library and read books. If his description of the days being so long an boring and lonely for the homeless, does it make sense to start a program to read to them for a couple of hours a day. It won't be boring and it could be educational.
    • nerfhammer 13y ago
      Plus you can check books out of the library, to read when the library is closed.
      • bentcorner 13y ago
        Can you do that if you're homeless? (I don't know for sure - my local library doesn't say either way except for the statement "living in or owning property in [my area]").
        • cafard 13y ago
          It must depend on a lot on the library, which must depend a lot on the city. I have read of cities in New Jersey winding up in litigation over trying to push out the homeless essentially camping there. I believe that a co-worker used to complain of the homeless crowding the main DC library.
        • rst 13y ago
          Depends on the library, and perhaps on when you ask. The Cambridge Public Library web site now says they require a "current local address", so the homeless may be out of luck. But they used to require only that you be able to sign your name. (This was advertised with posters featuring a very dejected looking cat.)
    • rst 13y ago
      And it was particularly hard to foresee that the replacement wouldn't need writers, which had been a basic requirement of broadcast serial entertainment since before television.
  • mapgrep 13y ago
    I saw Bill Gates speak at Berkeley in 2001. He was urging, practically begging, the students to major in computer science. Because you see in 2001 software and the internet looked like a "declining industry" as you put it. The dot-com bust made the idea that software would revolutionize the world look like so much idiocy. Anyone who took Gates' advice is doing VERY well right now. But there was loads of skepticism in that audience, and lots of questions about offshoring. My point is, it is incredibly hard to tell what will be a "declining industry" even five years forward. There's no way this guy would have known that television writing would get nuked by reality television. Also, I hope people who read your comment don't make the mistake of thinking they can necessarily avoid this sort of misfortune simply by being smart enough.
    • willvarfar 13y ago
      Even as a teenager I reasoned that the job market and economy in general was like a rollercoaster and that the best time to study a subject was during a depression when nobody was hiring it. So many students reasoned the exact opposite, though, and avoided CS because of the recent bubble. I'd have pursued CS whatever the economy, though. I'm just lucky my take was right and my timing was lucky.
  • mathattack 13y ago
    Yes. Taking 2 years off didn't help either. This sounds like the plight of people who take extended maternity or paternity leaves, only to find themselves unwanted in the workforce. Age discrimination is tough!
  • brown9-2 13y ago
    Which makes the idea that people who fall on hard times have no one to blame but themselves quite silly - people shouldn't be punished for failing to accurately predict the future of an industry. In other words, the fact that these once huge industries were rapidly declining is a great argument for an increased social safety net.
  • sneak 13y ago
    No, the main reason he failed is because he had 9 dependent humans.
    • maxerickson 13y ago
      And some sort of obsession with excellence. Wikipedia relates that the median price of a home there is $1.98 million. I'm sure there is somewhere cheaper in L.A. that still has a very reasonable public school system.
• larrys 13y ago
  "Since I moved to the Bay Area, I’ve worked on two startups. I had a substantial equity stake in one of them and was promised an equity stake in the other once the next round of financing came through." Good story. And sad. But still not following Mom's advice and betting on something that has a very small chance of success. I wonder how much salary he is giving up to get that lottery ticket?
  • dragontamer 13y ago
    There always is the possibility that startups are the only place that would accept a homeless guy with little experience. He seems to have writing skills, which is a useful skill, but with very little "resume fluff" to prove it. A white-collar job looks down upon even 6-months of unemployment... seeing years and years of unemployment / odd jobs is just a giant red mark. Even if someone is fully qualified, you are simply going to favor the resume with a "solid work history" over someone with a whole bunch of holes. Startups on the other hand, cannot afford that luxury. They often need the skills immediately and don't about those sorts of matters as much.
    • jcater 13y ago
      That was my take as well. It seems he wants that long-term, corporate job, but it's just not there for the taking. The startups seemed to be the step-up from the Craigslist gigs.
    • kopsai 13y ago
      That's true. He also mentions that "So full-time, permanent employment in a real company with actual revenues is still an elusive prey."
    • rst 13y ago
      He's got several years as a staff writer on a hit TV show, and his magazine publishing experience before that. The gap is real, and obviously important, but what came before is a lot more than "fluff".
      • 13y ago
• deaconblues 13y ago
  Frightening and strangely inspiring. Definitely worth a read. Right on for his honest and uncompromising view of his own situation.
• cabinguy 13y ago
  Very interesting story. I used to frequent Williams Pub in Uptown (the downstairs peanut bar) so it made the story a little more personal for me. My guess is that he will have a few offers for "full-time, permanent employment" as a writer after this essay.
  • rwfilice 13y ago
    Ah - I forgot which one Williams was until you said "peanut bar"
• bkamapantula 13y ago
  Incredible story. Heart-breaking and inspiring at the same time. I cannot help but think how many stories were forgotten from that recession.
• OhHeyItsE 13y ago
  Go home and hug your bank accounts tonight, folks...
  • josefresco 13y ago
    ...and then tell them you don't need them ... turn around and then hug your kids and tell them they'll never be your second priority.
• zackmorris 13y ago
  After reading the article, I just realized that there are two kinds of failures: succeeding and subsequently failing, or just failing outright. He managed the first but I've only experienced the second. The major takeaway from the article is that he fell into the same trap that a lot of us did in the 90s, that the future was so bright you had to wear shades. I had no idea the 2000s were going to be so dang BLEAK. Now we have a two-tier economy where the companies making money make a lot of money and everyone else makes small money. We also have saturation in just about every market, filled by people who have recognized the small money and rejected it for the suffering it requires. And then we have the rest of the world coming up, so that it's more difficult to stand on others's shoulders and skim income from their labor (a good turn of events in my book). I don't know what all of this means or what the future holds. All I know is that if we rely on the free market to figure all of this out, the future is social darwinism. We'll have billions of souls struggling to find food and shelter instead of contributing their unique gifts to the betterment of humanity.
  • crusso 13y ago
    All I know is that if we rely on the free market to figure all of this out The government creates bubble after bubble causing enormous amounts of economic dislocation in the housing market, college loans, healthcare, and on and on... and your conclusion is that somehow the free market is the problem or at very least not the solution? contributing their unique gifts to the betterment of humanity No system throughout history has ever contributed more to the "betterment of humanity" than the free market. As with so many things, Friedman said it best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
    • nerfhammer 13y ago
      > The government creates bubble after bubble You can't make a statement like this and use it as a premise for something else and not expect to have to defend it as a statement unto itself. Given this is an extreme position you're going to have to have an extremely good argument for it for anyone to take it seriously. But assuming that the government does cause all "bubbles", why is it understandable that during such times market participants should start behaving irrationally, against their own best interests? Markets can solve anything, except bubbles caused by the government?
• angryasian 13y ago
  I think many entrepreneurs here can attest to similar stories of failures after being in the job market. I was fortunate I have an engineering background, but my skills were very deteriorated .. due to the fact that being a founder pulls your focus, skills and attention in many other areas. I did feel like I took a giant step down from where I was when I left my engineering position to becoming a founder and back. Was it worth it, NO
  • infinitone 13y ago
    Wait, was it what worth it? You stepping down to become a founder?
  • nostrademons 13y ago
    I wonder if you'll feel the same way in 5 years. My startup failed about 5 years ago now, and I went and got a real job that was fortunately a step up from where I was before a startup. But for about my first year or two on the job, I felt like I was behind everyone who had joined straight out of college and now knew all the ropes much better than I did. That flipped after about 2 years at the company, though. By then I knew the company's internal systems as well as anyone else, but I also had this great skill base on how to build things from scratch, how to identify problems that needed fixing without anyone telling me, and how to take initiative and plan out a solution. Many of those skills became invaluable later on, as I started tackling harder problems, while my peers often became frustrated because they were 5+ years out of college and the only thing they'd ever known was how to fix bugs and implement features in one server of one company.
    • learningram 13y ago
      What do mean by the skill base ?
      • nostrademons 13y ago
        "Skill base" as in all those things you can do but don't even think of as skills, either because you're not using them on a daily or because you assume everyone can do them. I listed a bunch in the post - "how to build things from scratch, how to identify problems that needed fixing without anyone telling me, and how to take initiative and plan out a solution". Most people who have built things on their own before assume "Duh, anyone should be able to do that" - but the reality is that most people cannot, and there is a painful learning curve and a lot of feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy when they try. The first time I tried to build something on my own, back in college, I certainly floundered around for years until I persevered through and launched it. Many people have not had that experience, and when faced with it, they shy away.
• 300bps 13y ago
  Stories like this are why I work 40 hours per week at my full time job at an investment bank and then work 20 hours per week doing side consulting. Right or wrong, I believe that "There but for the grace of God go I". As he says in the article: I made a thousand decisions, large and small, that seemed reasonable at the time but cumulatively led to our situation This type of thing keeps me up at night. Should I take the night off watching a TV show or get more work done? Should I go to every single one of my kids' activities or should I spend some of them at home working? Having grown up relatively poor, I don't want to return to that and stories like this are scary.
  • chmullig 13y ago
    I think you should learn from his later conclusion: He realized that people matter much more than money. Don't miss your children's childhoods for a few extra bucks, it's not worth it.
  • cgag 13y ago
    Save/invest a large percentage of your income, 50+ ideally. If you're making > 650k in a year, 500k in savings doesn't actually sound all that prudent. That's really secondary though, step one is to not have 8 kids.
    • larrys 13y ago
      "step one is to not have 8 kids" Really shows how intelligence and common sense are two different things. Or making decisions based on emotionality and what you want. Just because you want 8 kids (or 5 or whatever) doesn't mean it's a good idea to have that many kids. And just because you think your passion is being a comedy writer doesn't mean it's a good idea to take that career path or take that gamble. I mean I would imagine it would have been possible when he was offered the dream job by Tom Arnold to look at it rationality (hard but possible) and know enough about the business to realize the gamble he was taking. As opposed to the gamble that a person fresh out of college w/o kids or a family in the same "go for the brass ring" situation.
      • 13y ago
• dpcan 13y ago
  He has 8 kids. 6 grown and moved on. Not one of them refused to let him be homeless? Had a couch for him to sleep on? A computer to search for jobs on?
  • sehugg 13y ago
    He explains this in the article. Two children are in Germany with their mother, and the other children are still in high school or college. He hid his homelessness from all of them.
    • larrys 13y ago
      Exactly. So it's a macho thing (if that is the case).Well when push comes to shove you have to throw all of that out the window. Also, no friends or contacts that would even lend you money? I advanced a contractor $5000 once who had lost his job for work to be done over the next year. And I had never even met him in person (although he did work for perhaps several years..)
      • jdotjdot 13y ago
        I don't think it's so much a macho thing. It's one thing to ask for help when you need it--but quite another to ask for help in the form of room and board, the implication (and correctly so, here) being that for whatever reason you are unable to support yourself. As a father, to be unable to support yourself, let alone your kids, can be a destructive blow not only to your self-respect, but to your children's respect for you. I suspect that that's what he was trying to avoid, and I find it wholly reasonable. His children's respect might never return, and it's clear from the article that his relationship with his children is part of what he valued most.
        • sejje 13y ago
          I agree, and frankly I think it's a bit disgusting for people here to monday-morning-quarterback this man and his motives and decisions. If it was easy to avoid the situation, he would have.
• vijayboyapati 13y ago
  This was a great read. Reminds me of a modern day version of George Orwell's classic, Down and Out in Paris and London
  • pcrh 13y ago
    Bread, margerine and weak tea...
• pbreit 13y ago
  Is Priceonomics ever going to do anything besides write epic blog posts?
  • mooreds 13y ago
    Well, they still have an API: http://priceonomics.com/api/ http://priceonomics.com/api/
• bomatson 13y ago
  Just picked up the book, anyone else?
• bluejes 13y ago
  In my own words, what it's like to fail... You have beaten everyone at their own games, and then you yourself, at your own game. And then you could really give a fuck what priceonomics meant to say.
• mooreds 13y ago
  Terrifying. But inspiring too. I rode by a homeless person on the way to work today. This reminds me "there, but for the grace of God, go I". (Substitute whatever you like for the god word: fate, karma, etc.) Sometimes it is good to be reminded that sometimes sh*t just happens. (And I know, he could have done things differently in terms of life choices, but he also had some really poor luck.)
• ilovecookies 13y ago
  "My wife, Marina, was cooking dinner for me and our eight children" I stopped reading there...
  • jobowoo 13y ago
    Why?
    • redschell 13y ago
      The whole "8 kids" thing is off-putting for a lot of people. It's certainly not a great idea, but I feel that, even for people with few or no children, catastrophic failure is still lurking in the shadows, ready to reach out and drag them into the abyss. The best thing you can do is acknowledge its presence and build your defenses by prudently saving and spending.
  • swansw 13y ago
    Which part made you uncomfortable? The fact that his wife was cooking for their family or that he had eight kids?
• emillerm 13y ago
  I feel for the guy, but it sounds like he was spending beyond his means from the start, and then quit his job on top of that. According to cnn the average cost of raising a child is 240K, not including college. Multiply that by 8 and spread it over 18 years, and that is 107K per year, for 18 years. And that is just for the kids. It was a different time and all, but quitting your job completely when you have a large mortgage and 8 kids seems irresponsible. His eventual recovery is inspiring, but what would have happened to those 8 kids if his wife couldn't fall back on the German citizenship and its social safety net? This could have easily ended much worse for them.
  • a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
    He says he had $500K in savings at age 48. That seems a bit low considering his earnings and all the kids. Why he would think he was flush enough to risk two years off at that age I don't know.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
• ujsfdo 13y ago
  LOL poors
• VLM 13y ago
  Its fun to search for the word college "Yes, I, David Raether, the smart and funny guy who graduated with honors from college" "I ... helped high school seniors write college essays" "The other children have finished college or are nearing completion." And his story about his college buddy who couldn't write a magazine. Yup kids graduating with honors made me what I am today, a dude living in a '97 minivan... while the dropouts are startup billionaires and bartenders for famous people make $600K/yr, however temporarily. I just thought the fixation on college was humorously extremely accurate and highly subversive.
  • resu_nimda 13y ago
    Are you really using this as evidence that College is Bad? There are a lot more homeless dropouts and college-educated people with successful careers. By your logic, having a 300k/year salary is A Bad Thing cause, well, look where it got this guy! His point was to illustrate that traditional predictors of success, including even prior success, don't guarantee you anything. He's really proud that his kids were able to receive strong traditional educations that led to college degrees and promising stable careers. How is that subversive?
    • VLM 13y ago
      "His point was to illustrate that traditional predictors of success, including even prior success, don't guarantee you anything" I'm glad we agree on the subversive part of the story. There is a stereotypical middle class mantra always repeated unthinkingly that college is a universal good the purpose of which is to eat cash and excrete a credential that results in a good job and success, automatically, all the time, for all participants. Exactly the same Pavlovian thought conditioning process in go to church = go to heaven and several other peculiar beliefs.
  • qntmfred 13y ago
    and now he blogs for degreed.com, a startup focused on breaking the University's strangehold on degrees as an indicator of personal educational outcomes and career potential.
• OldSchool 13y ago
  Unless you're the rare tech entrepreneur getting a lifetime's fortune in a single acquisition event, or the equally rare successful serial entrepreneur, there will be ups and downs and you won't know the outcome until years later. The specifics of what you do today will inevitably become irrelevant even if it's the hottest technology of the moment. Save and continually adapt.
  • rst 13y ago
    Also, if that's the plan, live WELL below your means. Note that the OP had in fact saved up $500,000 --- a pretty sizable sum of money by most standards. Downsizing earlier and more aggressively (e.g., selling the house while he still could) might conceivably have stretched it out a bit, but the expenses of eight kids living anything close to a middle-class lifestyle are ferocious no matter what you do about it.
    • smm2000 13y ago
      $500000 is inadequate sum of money in his circumstances. He was making at least $300000 per year and he should have planned for at least 15 years of unemployment (50 to 65 when his pension kicks in). His saving rate should have been higher but I would not judge somebody with 8 kids for not saving enough for retirement.
• tokenadult 13y ago
  Wow. He is about my age, and he lived in some of the same cities at the same time I was living in them. After reading this article, I immediately shared it on my Facebook wall before coming here to comment. Some of the comments posted before this one express puzzlement about his "homelessness" when, after all, he had immediate relatives who still had a house to live in. Many cases of people living on the street are cases of people who have untreated behavior disorders that make them very hard to live with, even for their immediate relatives who have living space. The case of the author here is a case of a man who was brought up (as I am sure, having come from the same generation) to feel that it is his responsibility to provide for his children, and not their responsibility to provide for him. He used to live in Minnesota, where there is lethal cold outdoors during winter, but he was homeless in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, where it can feel cold at night but where the weather is liveable outdoors year-round. The author thought it was more dignified and honorable to live in a car or something else like that than to crash in his children's housing. On the whole, I'm very impressed by this man's maturity of outlook and gracious recognition of other people's point of view. He acknowledges, as several comments here have pointed out, that he made inexpedient career decisions. For a while, as he also acknowledges, he was "married to his job," and didn't give his wife enough encouragement and support as she brought up their children. He isn't passing blame around, but accepting responsibility. He may be a failure in economic terms in recent years, but his attitude now is admirable and shows a capacity to grow and keep on learning in middle age. Do any of us know what industry and what form of employment will be a sure thing twenty or thirty years from now? No. But we can be sure that life is full of surprises, which sometimes include setbacks or even complete failures. Being ready to bounce back and try again is a good capacity to develop during youth. It's a crucial capacity to continue to develop into middle age. Now I'm curious about the book[1] from which this article was excerpted. This is the kind of thing I'd like to read for myself, as advice from one dad to another, and the kind of thing I'd like my children to read to prepare for their own independent adult lives. [1] Tell Me Something, She Said by David Raether http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Me-Something-She-Said/dp/149363187X/ http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Me-Something-She-Said/dp/14936318...
  • larrys 13y ago
    "For a while, as he also acknowledges, he was "married to his job," and didn't give his wife enough encouragement and support as she brought up their children." Great comment but it's unclear to me how giving his wife encouragement and support as she brought up their children would have changed the outcome? Are you saying they wouldn't have gotten divorced? And if they hadn't he would still have a place to live? From my experience if you don't "bring home the bacon" spouses have little sympathy or care about little else. Money is a basic necessity. The most important thing is earning a living. No spouse that I ever know of ever cared about how many ball games or how you helped around the kitchen or shared responsibilities if you don't bring home a paycheck.
• Yhippa 13y ago
  > My agent told me that I faced a common problem for writers my age: Producers could hire a team of first-time writers for less than the fee they would pay me for my services. But they won’t know what they’re doing, I countered. They don’t care, he responded. Hmm. That sounds awfully familiar.
• jxf 13y ago
  He didn't really fail; he stumbled, and got back up.
• Xcelerate 13y ago
  So, oddly enough, the thing that bothered me the most about this article was the way his wife left him. I read stories like this a lot online, where two married people are prospering and living happy lives, and then despite the vow they made for "better or worse", one just gives up on the other person when times get hard. Is it really that easy? I'm currently 23, and if/when I ever get married, regardless of who brings in the income (both of us, just me, or just her), I would support whoever I married even if they lost their job or had some other hardship. You hear about people getting cancer or some other sickness and their spouse leaving them because they don't want to deal with it. It boggles my mind that these things occur. If you weren't going to truly commit to the person, why would you get married? Just live together instead. Or get married without saying the vows if you just want the government benefits. I don't understand. It's not just limited to spouses. It sounds like some of his children could have supported him as well. If something happened to my father, I would do everything I could to take care of him, regardless of what it cost me. I'm curious of other HNers take on this. Has anyone been in a situation like this?
  • cafard 13y ago
    >> Is it really that easy? I don't know. I do know that marriages break up for many reasons, not all of them obvious to outsiders (or even one or both insiders). Do you think that the wife, who had spent the last n years raising eight children, had any skills that would get her a job bringing in enough money to keep both of them going?
    • VLM 13y ago
      Well, in summary, I don't think there are many ex-poor people posting on HN. The primary problem is he had too much hope. If he knew it was going to come to this, cashing in the chips earlier and moving out of the house ASAP would have been much better off financially than letting the house drain his net worth to zero at which point it couldn't drain any more. Part of that hope is he still saw (still sees?) himself as a wealthy comedy writer and he might get hired as a local... but not if he's living in Germany as a house-husband. So to move away he'd have to give up hope, which he apparently refused to do. Ever. Now the wife's "skill" was in having German citizenship. So she comes from a more civilized country where she doesn't have to sleep in a '97 minivan and can occasionally eat. So she pretty much has to go there and take the smallest of the kids with her. As an economic refugee or whatever. I've occasionally considered if I absolutely had to (like, ultimate worst case scenario) I'd become an economic refugee and move to a more civilized country, like Canada. I actually have enough "points" to immigrate legally, for that matter. Depressing as this sounds (because it is depressing...) as my elderly ancestors are dying off, I literally have fewer reasons every year to stay in the USA. So an upgrade is likely in my future. You have to do what you have to do to keep the kids alive, and that means the wife is moving to Germany with the little kids, and he is staying in CA in the wild hope that he will get back in the biz. And long distance relationships being what they are...
• tonydiv 13y ago
  Priceonomics should hire this guy. I wouldn't doubt he would dedicate himself to writing stories such at these.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• HIbachikabuki 13y ago
  He seems like a nice guy but comes across like he didn't really think through the implications of his life choices, and when they piled on top of each other, it put him in a bad place. (I'm almost his age & have faced many of the same issues but made different decisions.) My take-aways: - being a single-source-of-income family is risky - the above is esp true if you have high cash outflow (big family & big mortgage in expensive part of the country) - if you've saved less than 2x your current annual income, don't make the mistake of thinking that's a lot - taking years out of the workforce, esp in the 2nd half of your career, can hurt your changes of getting back into a decent job - industries can change really quickly, so don't get too comfortable just because your skill set is hot stuff at a given moment in time - always have a plan to build up a secondary skill set or source of income (for example, imagine if he'd bought a small rental property back when he was flush...) - think through the lifestyle implications of jobs/careers: for example a job that requires a lot of travel or long hours or relocation will have impacts on your family/ non-job life - think through the implications of having a kid (much less eight) in terms of the stress on family finances, your time, your marriage - there's resources online that can help with almost any problem you encounter in life, you just have to find and use them
  • Domenic_S 13y ago
    > being a single-source-of-income family is risky Meh. If you're the type that isn't going to save, you're not going to save whether you have 1 income or two.
  • unclebucknasty 13y ago
    All of this sounds like great advice. Heck, it's even perfect advice. And, therein lies the problem. Life doesn't always (i.e. almost never does) present you with a perfect set of circumstances that allows you to respond by making the perfect set of choices. For instance, you point out the need to consider that a job can have negative impact on family life. That's true. OTOH, perhaps that was his means of maximizing economic opportunity. It's a tough choice, and many make the same one he did every day (for better or worse). Another: "being a single-source-of-income family is risky". Sure it is, but this must be weighed against the benefit of having one parent focused solely on raising the children (especially with a large family). Also, the costs of day-care in the case of multiple younger children vs. the earning potential of the at-home parent must be considered. That's not to say the author didn't make poor decisions (as he's acknowledged). It's just to say that life presents a lot of really difficult decisions that frequently require making tradeoffs. Nailing them just right can be very, very difficult. Further, many times the quality of our decisions (or lack thereof) are borne out by circumstances that are beyond our control and not always by our prescient and masterful decision-making.
• tsaoutourpants 13y ago
  I feel like there must be more to this story. At one point he says he was making $300K from his main job + $650K from a side job in a year. Even assuming that his average year was only half this money, we're talking $475K. If he did this for 10 years, he'd have brought in almost $5M, or about $6.5M in 2012 dollars. If he invested and got a 5% return on his money (easy back in those days), he's over $7.5M in 2012 dollars. Sure, taxes, but even if a third of his money were gone for that, he's still left with $5M in 2012 dollars. I understand living is not free, nor is raising kids. But, even if he spent $10,000/month on mortgage payments (which should be building him equity) and $120K on raising each child (prorated over this 10 year period), we're looking at $1.7M in expenses. He states that he saved well and lived below his means, but yet states that his savings when he quit was $500K. Something doesn't add up.
  • 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    The author's story is a great one for a variety of reasons, but the disconnect between his comments ("I had carefully saved and we had lived well below our means", "I had prudently saved and invested during my years in television") and the reality (his $500,000 "nest egg" and ultimate financial collapse) do seem at odds with each other. I don't, however, think that there's more to the story. A lot of people, perhaps the majority, pay more attention to what they earn than what they keep. They mistakenly believe that their savings rate must be higher than it actually is, and they make questionable assumptions about future earnings. Ironically, I think this is often easier to do the more you gross. When you don't have to worry about paying the bills, have enough left over to live comfortably and feel that your position in the economy is secure, it's easy to ignore the fact that you're not taking full advantage of your opportunity to save. I guarantee you there are a lot of folks riding today's tech boom who are making the same fundamental financial mistakes as the author, and most of them aren't grossing anywhere near what he was at his peak.
    • ams6110 13y ago
      Indeed, my parents saved over twice that amount, paid off a mortgage, and put two kids through university, and made maybe $70,000 combined in their best years.
• rckrd 13y ago
  So many things in this article don't add up. First, the finances. Second, the two years of intentional unemployment to bring his family back together. Clearly, that didn't work, and he suffered financially because of that. The inability to pay bills and the foreclosure on his home were not immediate - he must have seen his finances dwindle over the period of two years. Then, the estrangement from his family and their lack of financial support for their now homeless father. While there is probably some value here, most of the important parts are missing and its hard to find sympathy for someone when it seems like the fail happened over the course of many years and was avoidable.
• Bahamut 13y ago
  I understand this conundrum - I experienced homelessness myself. I had a top notch education, attended a top program in mathematics for graduate school as a PhD student, ABD (All But Dissertation)...and ended up homeless after leaving graduate school. I did not prepare for the real world at all - I naively expected the real world to recognize a talent like mine and seize it. I quickly learned that was not the case. I joined the military out of desperation over that reality. It was a hard way to live, but it had its rewards. It wasn't the life I wanted to live though, and so, after completing initial active duty training, I was out on the job search again. I applied to just about any white collar job I could, touting my education, excellent intelligence, and ability to learn quickly. Still no luck. I got fed up and started to teach myself coding. I started to enjoy it greatly. A little more than a year after leaving active orders, I found an entry level job at a non-profit - a dream position for me at the time, minus the pay, but it was pay that I couldn't even touch in salary before. My pay made me more hungry to succeed, so I spent many offhours & downtime during work to learn as much as I could about web development. I switched jobs only 10 months into that first career job in web development and became a senior frontend developer. It has been not even a year since I started my career & I'm on track to be a successful professional. From 3 1/2 years ago to 1 year ago, I was essentially homeless. I used whatever means possible to survive, and kept as sane as I could throughout all that time. Homelessness was a humbling experience. It was painful, but it was illuminating. I made bad decisions, as well as my parents, but the situation got me to reflect and put myself back on the right path, with some help from friends. I am still the same person as I ever was, but my compassion for others with legitimate troubles has grown. I still help anyone I can & who is willing to set their lives on the right path, as others helped me beforehand.
  • FLUX-YOU 13y ago
    What technologies and projects did you have when you got the initial position at the non-profit? I've spent about a year doing the same, but I still feel unprepared with only some small, unfinished projects in my repository. There always seems to be some additional technology I need to learn before being job ready. Thanks for the read.
    • 13y ago
• liotier 13y ago
  Takeaway: socio-cultural is the most important sort... Without a large baggage of skills to bounce back on, this story would not have ended the same way.
  • liotier 13y ago
    Oops - the missing word after "socio-cultural" is "capital" !
• goggles99 13y ago
  This is a very sad story. Even more sadly, it reflects many similar stories. All this calamity for this family of 10 came from bad planning. This guy had a career that would have likely lasted until retirement, but he took a risk and quit it. That was a smallish risk, not nearly the risk he took while in his next job. He admits that writers careers don't usually don't last into their 50s. Why did he not save more money so he could retire early? Why did he choose to have more and more children? Why did he not position himself for transition into another job as his writing career progressed? Why did he just quit without having another (less demanding) job lined up? He was making upwards of a million dollars a year at one point. I had some neighbors while growing up in the 90s, they had 8 kids too and their father probably make 2-3 million dollars over his entire life. They were never homeless (in fact they had a pretty nice 5bd house), never hungry, cold, had decently new cars and clothes, ETC. This guy blew his wad all at once like a pro athlete. All bad choices. After his job, why did they not cut back on their spending? They should have downsized and cut back dramatically rather than continuing their expensive lifestyle. At the time he quit, he was probably worth over 2 million dollars Add half a million that they borrowed after that and you still can't make that last more than 6 years? I know someone who did something similar. The person that I know took a couple of years off like this. He got so used to it that when he started looking for a job again - it was half-assed (he was spoiled with still living lavish on savings and not having to work). He sabotaged many interviews, turned down some for bogus reasons and when he got jobs, he could not keep them for long (self sabotage again). It was like he was mentally ready for retirement already, but he was only 40. It is a sad story, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who has grossed over 10 million dollars over his lifetime but squandered it.
  • jonknee 13y ago
    > All this calamity for this family of 10 came from bad planning. This guy had a career that would have likely lasted until retirement, but he took a risk and quit it. That was a smallish risk, not nearly the risk he took while in his next job. To be fair his career would have quit him shortly after he quit it. The industry changed.
    • kamaal 13y ago
• mrtriangle 13y ago
  for anyone looking, his twitter is: https://twitter.com/davidraether https://twitter.com/davidraether
• UK-AL 13y ago
  This is why I think having a good welfare system encourages entrepreneurship. You can take risks without going homeless.
  • cylinder 13y ago
    I agree, but the ironic thing is that most countries with good welfare systems end up being less entrepreneurial and more "salaryman."
    • asksol 13y ago
      E.g. in Norway you don't receive welfare unless you've been actively employed for some years.
• kilroy123 13y ago
  I'm actually on the other end of a very similar story with my mom. My mom will turn 50 in just a few months and she is now homeless (lives with family for the movement), has no job, can not land another job, and has absolutely no money or savings. She was a nurse and my step-dad was a software developer who made very good money, especially for the area. Both of them combined made over 200k a year. They were terrible with money and very rarely saved. It started when my mom lost her nursing license and could no long hold her career, at all, anywhere. Not a big deal, step-dad made a lot of money. Then my step-dad decided to leave my mom. He was still going to help her until she bounced back, so not that huge of a problem. Until he got laid off... After months, he finally landed a new job at a startup, and it will be a while until he bounces back. Now my mom is completely on her own. She has no money whatsoever. She has no home, and is living with one of her brothers. She took a year+ off work, and doesn't have a medical license to get a high paying nursing job. Who wants to hire a 50 year old who hasn't worked in almost 2 years, and mysteriously isn't a nurse anymore? I feel for her, but a lot of bad financial, and personal decisions lead her to where she is now.
  • UK-AL 13y ago
    People who make great choices, can end up in bad situations and vice versa. I think people should stop trying rationalise bad circumstances.
  • uhsnamih 13y ago
    May I ask, what prevents you from helping?
  • candybar 13y ago
    how did she lose her nursing license? is that a common occurrence?
    • kilroy123 13y ago
      Drug abuse about 10 years ago. Then missing mandatory testing, by being out of town or something. Not sure all the details.
• OGC 13y ago
  Lesson: Don't have eight kids.
  • blackkettle 13y ago
    this was the only thing i could think throughout the whole article. of course it makes no practical or moral sense to discuss after the fact, and his tale is both cautionary and oddly inspiring; but ultimately the entire situation could have been side-stepped with a bit of family planning. it definitely has a parallel, if even less acknowledged, in the wider world.
• lettergram 13y ago
  It seems to me that he did not plan appropriately. He invested and what not, but it seems to me he could have just been doing a part time job the entire time he was in "the gap" and he would have been fine. Further, eight kids... He seems nice, just planned VERY poorly. Also, kudos for him tugging back from homelessness. I am impressed.
• stretchwithme 13y ago
  I wonder how much this fellow paid in Social Security taxes over the years. I don't understand why people can't use their own resources when they need them, rather than when other people think they need them. The rules of a 401K and IRAs allow you to borrow from your own retirement funds (albeit with penalty if not paid back within a certain window). It seems like that would be more desirable than the funds being untouchable.
  • aspir 13y ago
    The concept of social security as a form of investment/retirement account is a bit of a misconception. In reality, your immediate payments into social security are for the current population that is elderly or disabled. The "promise" of social security is that when you're elderly or disabled, you'll benefit from the system. It's a slight but important difference. That said, he may have qualified for some sort of federal or state assistance while he was in this state.
• nilkn 13y ago
  What stood out to me about this is how well-written it is. I hope someone in a position to hire a writer reads this and recognizes his talent.
• 11thEarlOfMar 13y ago
  Like a chess game, it is not always obvious when you've made a decision that will ultimately cost you the game. Even if it is the only bad decision, and even if the mate comes 2 dozen moves later, you may never realize what it was. In reflecting how this could have played out differently, it seems that he needed a perspective outside his own circle, even after he had resigned. Not a formal adviser and paid advice, but someone he trusted who could see the increasing peril to his career. Even if the outcome was inevitable, perhaps the landing could have been softer.
• capex 13y ago
  Just bought his book.
• eranation 13y ago
  Bought the book, I hope most of the money goes to him... but I doubt it
• paulhauggis 13y ago
  Honestly, with 8 kids, what kind of job do you expect to have that doesn't take the majority of your time up? It will either be one long job or a regular job and a night job. "All of our children do as well. Germany has a stronger social safety net, so she decided to return with our two youngest daughters. They spent their high school years there and received a great education" This part doesn't make sense to me. So his wife would rather divorce, which is even more unhealthy for the children because there is no dad around to utilize a safety net than have a husband with a job with long hours. He was making $600,000/year. This is enough to support them for many years. His wife sounds like the selfish one and this was all an excuse to go back to Germany. Many women want the family and the money, but don't realize the time and sacrifice that it actually takes to get it.
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  I feel like the "fuck you, I've got mine" culture of Hollywood and, thanks to the VCs, also the Valley leads this way for a lot of talented, creative people (such as OP). The problem is that no one thinks age discrimination will happen to them, and people who've realized that it can and does have been rendered irrelevant. Also, I know that a lot of people will think that this is a shitty thing to say, but it's just the truth, so here goes. Unless you have dynastic wealth (and various generational protections against losing it, such as trust funds that skip a generation) having 8 kids is just fucking irresponsible. You're betting on 5+ of them being 150+ IQ types who can make it on their own without top schools and bought connections, and that's just not a reasonable bet no matter how good your genes may be. Sorry, but them's truth. I'm not sure I can even condone bringing one child into this fucked-up, horrible society. I certainly wouldn't even consider it if I lived in the ex-hippie-now-hypocrite fuck-you-I've-got-mine paradise of Hollywood/Silicon Valley.
  • goggles99 13y ago
    This guy WAS one of the I've got mine people. He is self described as a rock star type. He made many millions of dollars. I have knows middle class families who have not only raised 8 kids, but have retired and maintain the same standard of living on LESS money than this guy made in two of his peak (one million dollar) years. Having eh 8 kids is not the irresponsible part when you have made upwards of ten million dollars in your life. That much should be crystal clear (the money was squandered).
• dba7dba 13y ago
  IMHO, stories like these have the effect of people who should feel really really comfortable financially continue to work hard (aka paying underlings as little as possible).
• mhartl 13y ago
  I find this especially surreal because I live in Pasadena near San Marino and know most of the places he mentions. We may even have crossed paths. It's also virtually certain that we know at least one person in common, as I have a cousin who held various positions on "Roseanne", including head writer. Come to think of it, I once went to a taping of the show, so we may have crossed paths then, too. Wild. Glad he bounced back.
• xacaxulu 13y ago
  For the sake of fiscal solvency, an argument could be made for not having 8 children and maybe not living in the most expensive place in America. The guy's story is motivational but it seems like a lot of this could have been avoided by not buying into the 'American Dream' hook line and sinker.
  • wavefunction 13y ago
    I don't know how anyone can justify having 8 kids without having a family farm you're trying to staff.
• kika 13y ago
  Wow. There're experiences that you may think of but never really anticipate to encounter. For me it was feeling shame for buying a Kindle edition of the book. But I really want to read it and if so I need to buy it in the Kindle form.
• zvrba 13y ago
  Reading comments in this thread just confirms the old saying that it's easy to be a good general after the battle. But David himself says at the beginning of the text: "I made a thousand decisions, large and small, that seemed reasonable at the time but cumulatively led to our situation." Of course it's easy to analyze what went wrong after the fact. But it's not easy to see the trends when you're amid them. (Continuously monitoring the ongoing trends is one of the advices in the Book of five rings. A pile of small seemingly incremental changes amounts to a big shift. It's hard to notice them when they happen over an extended period of time.)
• josh_fyi 13y ago
  To solve a resume gap, just say you were a consultant. To make sure it's truthful, get a few gigs, no matter how low-paid (this guy did). If you're likely, some of the customers will serve be willing to serve as references. Most interviewers will not ask much about what you did as a consultant. You can tell them truthfully about the gigs. No interviewers will ask exactly how many hours a week you were billing.
• sunl 13y ago
  It's a good story, people should think about the fail carefully before commit to a startup. I shall read this story 1 year before, it's too late to think about it when you are facing it.
• ilaksh 13y ago
  How many jobs did he apply for which he was well qualified? The "economy" failed this guy, not the other way around. And under no circumstances should people end up homeless. There are too many empty homes. I will go so far as to say that no one should have to take charity from family or community in order to have some type of home, regardless of their income. This is a very sick and outdated Social Darwinistic society we have. The structure is the problem.
• auctiontheory 13y ago
  For those who would like to help him, the most direct way is to buy and then review his book on Amazon. He will receive more money for the paper edition than for the Kindle.
• charlieflowers 13y ago
  Who paid for the 6 kids college? (I enjoyed the story and feel tons of compassion for him. But there do seem to be some unexplained factual gaps in the story that my brain wants to make sense of. Who paid for college is the main question I haven't seen anyone else mention yet).
• bjourne 13y ago
  In my mind, this is an important bug report. Often when you deal with users, the problem is between the keyboard and chair: "The calculations are all wrong!" "Yes, that's because you uploaded an excel spreadsheet with all the wrong numbers..." But sometimes it isn't the users fault. Sometimes programs crash because you made a coding error. So you fix your code and the users become happy. To me, this story is the latter. Guy didn't do drugs, isn't a suffering a mental disorder, have a gambling problem, alcoholic and still becomes homeless! Then I think the problem can not be blamed on a user error, but is a system problem. Perhaps this user didn't behave exactly as the system programmers expected, but there still needs to be enough error handling builtin so you don't get homeless from the errors he made.
  • quasse 13y ago
    I mean he quit his job knowing he had eight kids and spent all his money while racking up a huge debt without a good plan to pay it off. That's not exactly the same as someone who lost his job, got sick, and then became homeless because of crushing medical bills.
    • bjourne 13y ago
      Supposedly he tried his best and he seems like a smart person. I think a very large part of the population would have taken even worse decisions in the same situation.
• geoka9 13y ago
  Barring living in a socialist utopia, I wouldn't dare to have even one child without being independently wealthy, let alone 8.
• krasi0 13y ago
  A great and enlightening story! But 8 children...?! Come on!
• squozzer 13y ago
  I enjoyed reading his story -- not the actual sequence of events obviously, but in the telling. It bears some similarities to "The Jerk" and "Life Stinks" but it could be a worthwhile movie (hope I didn't jinx it.) Some things I might have done differently -- 1) Left LA for someplace cheaper once I decided to take the sabbatical. 2) Not have eight children. Four would have been plenty. As others have pointed out, most who flock to LA to work in entertainment leave without much to show for it except a healthy dose of cynicism.
• tuxguy 13y ago
  A grad student at Duke, who lived in a van http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/education/edlife/ken-ilgunas-lives-in-a-van-while-a-graduate-student-at-duke-university.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/education/edlife/ken-ilgun...