7 ms·

I get depressed reading HN because a lot of the stories are about people my age who are making a lot more money than me. Then I tell myself that they probably

I get depressed reading HN because a lot of the stories are about people my age who are making a lot more money than me. Then I tell myself that they probably haven't saved as many lives as I have. Then I have to tell myself that this doesn't pay the bills, dammit. HN/slashdot/FB in moderation, kids! Now you know and knowing is half the battle.

NietTim 12y ago
There's more to life then making money! Perhaps they have a terrible social life and you are doing much better. Work to live, don't live to work But yeah, I know that feeling.
_cudgel 12y ago
I would encourage you to read this: https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816 https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816 I suspect these people your age making a lot more money lead lives similar to what's described in this article. These do not seem like happy lives to me! If you're actively saving lives, that is more valuable than all the money in the world, and I thank you.
- plongeur 12y ago
  To react to other people's portrayed successfulness with doubting the legitimacy or their honesty and suspecting those people to be actually unhappy is almost as immature as getting depressed by it.
interdrift 12y ago
Whenever I get those kind of thoughts I remember that the last thought I will have on my death bed will be : what good did I leave to this world?
mibbitirc 12y ago
Make sure you read all the news stories about rich people who are depressed, and have horrible lives. Probably a lot more common than you think.
- philh 12y ago
  Pretty sure poor people are more likely to be depressed and have horrible lives than rich people.
  - tamebadger 12y ago
    would love for someone to challenge you on this statement
  - mibbitirc 12y ago
    Poor people are likely to have other issues to make them depressed - bad upbringing, lack of education and skills, etc Also a lot of people just haven't found something that they truly love doing. There's plenty of rich miserable people, and plenty of miserable poor people. If you have very little, you've got very little to worry about...
    - learnstats2 12y ago
      If you have very little, you've got very little to worry about... An attractive statement but totally wrong. If you have very little - if you are poor, you have to worry about renting a roof for yourself, and food to eat, and clean-enough water, and having enough warmth, and healthcare, and then all of those things for each member of your family. Every second of every day. So much that you cannot manage anything else. That contributes towards depression, sure. Find something you truly love doing? This is usually something that rich people have the capacity and opportunity to do.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - mushiake 12y ago
    Poor people don't have time to participate in a survey.
motters 12y ago
Seeing people with lots of money doesn't depress me, although reading about people struggling with money or health issues can be depressing. In my case I don't care that person X has more money than I do, since as long as I have enough for basic living money itself isn't something which I care deeply about.
danieldk 12y ago
I get depressed reading HN because a lot of the stories are about people my age who are making a lot more money than me. I don't care too much about money. For me it's been more difficult to cope with the fact that there are so many people who are far more clever than I am. What's one's purpose if so many people can do it better? (Before I sound too depressed: I am a happy person, I have come to appreciate that enjoying the craft you do is the most important thing. After family and friends.) Regardless, I think that there is a large qualitative difference between e.g. Hackernews and Facebook. On Facebook people brag about their fortune (or bad luck), on Hackernews there are many genuinely interesting technical discussions where one can learn a lot.
- EGreg 12y ago
  I get encouraged reading HN. It's not a zero-sum game, a rising tide lifts all boats and all that. Having so many smart people eg developing cool open source helps me, and vice versa. Sometimes I wonder, though, what's the purpose of associating oneself with advances in the world? If you knew other people could do it better, would you still want your solution to win? I guess the answer is that we don't know other solutions are definitely better, when everyone is developing theirs, and betteris a relative term. Perhaps it's more interesting to think in terms of Alan Watts' philosophy of growing and competing. Things just happen and there is no "ceramic theory" of good ideas.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    “Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.” ―André Gide
  - darkmighty 12y ago
    I love hearing mathematicians talk about picking problems. You think hackers have it hard about seeing other peoples accomplishments and feeling powerless? Try being a mathematician and hearing about how Gauss or Euler were better than you at the age of 15! And mathematicians devote their whole [professional] life to solving problems. One advice I hear often is: if you're not the quickest, just don't try to race anyone else for solving a problem (there are many people you could legitimately call 'genius' working on certain problems!). Work on things you know no one else is working with -- if you fail, it's only because the results aren't very useful (but for most things it's really hard to tell when they'll be useful anyway). I call this "work orthogonalization". And there's my favorite, and probably most often said: be guided by beauty. If you feel what you're solving is "just right", it most likely will work and will work well. Common sense stuff, so it has exceptions of course. Engineering for instance has a whole extra layer where we have to deal with physics, resource constraints and follow more closely the needs and demands of our users.
amelius 12y ago
The sad part of this is that in psychological experiments it has been shown that people feel better about themselves if they see other people doing worse than them. It says something about human nature that perhaps we need to fix, rather than just suppressing the symptoms by avoiding things like facebook.
- thret 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  whenever you think the solution is fixing human nature, you've just added many, many more problems.
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  whenever you think the solution is fixing human nature, you've just added many, many more problems.
spacemanmatt 12y ago
I came for the fellow gearheads and tech news. There will always be people richer and always be people poorer than you. Perspective is valuable.
coderdude 12y ago
Very successful people don't waste all their time on HN/slashdot/FB. If all you're doing is reading about those people on those sites, stop and focus your efforts on something constructive. Reading HN is fake work.
plongeur 12y ago
> I get depressed reading HN because a lot of the stories are about people my age who are making a lot more money than me. I'm certainly not getting depressed from this - but I find this trend fairly annoying as well. There is fairly dominant sub-community on HN who try to communicate as often as possible how extremely smart they are and humblebrag about some start-up or how they declined an offer from Google. But I think this sub-population is actually minority. The majority of HN readers is just curious about the subjects itself - those contribute the highest value on here in my experience.
fsloth 12y ago
"Getting depressed" by some arbitrary stimuli and clinical depression are different things.
mrweasel 12y ago
I wouldn't use the word depressed though, I'm not depressed, I'm annoyed. My issue with something like HN isn't that other people are making money, are smarter or doing cool projects. My issue is that so many people are doing stupid things (in my mind), and making a ton of money from VC funding. Someone who can create and make a living of product or service that's useful to others is wonderful. If you can't get by without funding and you don't seem to have a viable business plan, that's really infuriating. I don't think it's okay to just burn other people money until a business plan materialises. We wouldn't have Twitter, Facebook and a ton of other companies, I understand that, but I'm also okay with it.
- theorique 12y ago
  My issue is that so many people are doing stupid things (in my mind), and making a ton of money from VC funding. Why does that have anything to do with you, or, more specifically, any impact on your own subjective sense of well-being?
- beachstartup 12y ago
  there's plenty of terrible shit going on in this world to be annoyed about. i don't think dot com bros making money off the internet is really anywhere near the top of my list.

NietTim 12y ago

There's more to life then making money! Perhaps they have a terrible social life and you are doing much better. Work to live, don't live to work But yeah, I know that feeling.

_cudgel 12y ago

I would encourage you to read this: https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816 https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-in-economy-ec3ec1294816 I suspect these people your age making a lot more money lead lives similar to what's described in this article. These do not seem like happy lives to me! If you're actively saving lives, that is more valuable than all the money in the world, and I thank you.

plongeur 12y ago
To react to other people's portrayed successfulness with doubting the legitimacy or their honesty and suspecting those people to be actually unhappy is almost as immature as getting depressed by it.

interdrift 12y ago

Whenever I get those kind of thoughts I remember that the last thought I will have on my death bed will be : what good did I leave to this world?

mibbitirc 12y ago

Make sure you read all the news stories about rich people who are depressed, and have horrible lives. Probably a lot more common than you think.

philh 12y ago
Pretty sure poor people are more likely to be depressed and have horrible lives than rich people.
- tamebadger 12y ago
  would love for someone to challenge you on this statement
- mibbitirc 12y ago
  Poor people are likely to have other issues to make them depressed - bad upbringing, lack of education and skills, etc Also a lot of people just haven't found something that they truly love doing. There's plenty of rich miserable people, and plenty of miserable poor people. If you have very little, you've got very little to worry about...
  - learnstats2 12y ago
    If you have very little, you've got very little to worry about... An attractive statement but totally wrong. If you have very little - if you are poor, you have to worry about renting a roof for yourself, and food to eat, and clean-enough water, and having enough warmth, and healthcare, and then all of those things for each member of your family. Every second of every day. So much that you cannot manage anything else. That contributes towards depression, sure. Find something you truly love doing? This is usually something that rich people have the capacity and opportunity to do.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mushiake 12y ago
  Poor people don't have time to participate in a survey.

motters 12y ago

Seeing people with lots of money doesn't depress me, although reading about people struggling with money or health issues can be depressing. In my case I don't care that person X has more money than I do, since as long as I have enough for basic living money itself isn't something which I care deeply about.

danieldk 12y ago

I get depressed reading HN because a lot of the stories are about people my age who are making a lot more money than me. I don't care too much about money. For me it's been more difficult to cope with the fact that there are so many people who are far more clever than I am. What's one's purpose if so many people can do it better? (Before I sound too depressed: I am a happy person, I have come to appreciate that enjoying the craft you do is the most important thing. After family and friends.) Regardless, I think that there is a large qualitative difference between e.g. Hackernews and Facebook. On Facebook people brag about their fortune (or bad luck), on Hackernews there are many genuinely interesting technical discussions where one can learn a lot.

EGreg 12y ago
I get encouraged reading HN. It's not a zero-sum game, a rising tide lifts all boats and all that. Having so many smart people eg developing cool open source helps me, and vice versa. Sometimes I wonder, though, what's the purpose of associating oneself with advances in the world? If you knew other people could do it better, would you still want your solution to win? I guess the answer is that we don't know other solutions are definitely better, when everyone is developing theirs, and betteris a relative term. Perhaps it's more interesting to think in terms of Alan Watts' philosophy of growing and competing. Things just happen and there is no "ceramic theory" of good ideas.
- walterbell 12y ago
  “Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.” ―André Gide
- darkmighty 12y ago
  I love hearing mathematicians talk about picking problems. You think hackers have it hard about seeing other peoples accomplishments and feeling powerless? Try being a mathematician and hearing about how Gauss or Euler were better than you at the age of 15! And mathematicians devote their whole [professional] life to solving problems. One advice I hear often is: if you're not the quickest, just don't try to race anyone else for solving a problem (there are many people you could legitimately call 'genius' working on certain problems!). Work on things you know no one else is working with -- if you fail, it's only because the results aren't very useful (but for most things it's really hard to tell when they'll be useful anyway). I call this "work orthogonalization". And there's my favorite, and probably most often said: be guided by beauty. If you feel what you're solving is "just right", it most likely will work and will work well. Common sense stuff, so it has exceptions of course. Engineering for instance has a whole extra layer where we have to deal with physics, resource constraints and follow more closely the needs and demands of our users.

amelius 12y ago

The sad part of this is that in psychological experiments it has been shown that people feel better about themselves if they see other people doing worse than them. It says something about human nature that perhaps we need to fix, rather than just suppressing the symptoms by avoiding things like facebook.

thret 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
oldmanjay 12y ago
whenever you think the solution is fixing human nature, you've just added many, many more problems.
oldmanjay 12y ago
whenever you think the solution is fixing human nature, you've just added many, many more problems.

spacemanmatt 12y ago

I came for the fellow gearheads and tech news. There will always be people richer and always be people poorer than you. Perspective is valuable.

coderdude 12y ago

Very successful people don't waste all their time on HN/slashdot/FB. If all you're doing is reading about those people on those sites, stop and focus your efforts on something constructive. Reading HN is fake work.

plongeur 12y ago

> I get depressed reading HN because a lot of the stories are about people my age who are making a lot more money than me. I'm certainly not getting depressed from this - but I find this trend fairly annoying as well. There is fairly dominant sub-community on HN who try to communicate as often as possible how extremely smart they are and humblebrag about some start-up or how they declined an offer from Google. But I think this sub-population is actually minority. The majority of HN readers is just curious about the subjects itself - those contribute the highest value on here in my experience.

fsloth 12y ago

"Getting depressed" by some arbitrary stimuli and clinical depression are different things.

mrweasel 12y ago

I wouldn't use the word depressed though, I'm not depressed, I'm annoyed. My issue with something like HN isn't that other people are making money, are smarter or doing cool projects. My issue is that so many people are doing stupid things (in my mind), and making a ton of money from VC funding. Someone who can create and make a living of product or service that's useful to others is wonderful. If you can't get by without funding and you don't seem to have a viable business plan, that's really infuriating. I don't think it's okay to just burn other people money until a business plan materialises. We wouldn't have Twitter, Facebook and a ton of other companies, I understand that, but I'm also okay with it.

theorique 12y ago
My issue is that so many people are doing stupid things (in my mind), and making a ton of money from VC funding. Why does that have anything to do with you, or, more specifically, any impact on your own subjective sense of well-being?
beachstartup 12y ago
there's plenty of terrible shit going on in this world to be annoyed about. i don't think dot com bros making money off the internet is really anywhere near the top of my list.