[gt_]

>Many of us want to build cool things and make money and contribute to the world, and capitalism makes sure we’re rewarded for it.

No it doesn’t. I have been unemployed for a year and a half since suddenly losing my apartment on 30 days notice about 2 weeks after the company I worked for went under. My job was illegally skirted as contract work. The job (creative) necessitated that my work which was done for a major corporation not be included in my portfolio which made it very hard to find new employment overnight. I had to move in with my parents in a rural area so that finding a job and re-relocating to an urban area is a sick game, apparently begging for me to be dishonest, which I haven’t done yet.

I have many very valuable skills (technical and creative, including programming) and very little opportunity to put them to use. Eventually I will crawl my way out but it’s pretty ridiculous so far. I am young, healthy, easy to get along with. My friends who generally all come from wealthier families are, like you may be, dumbfounded by my predicament until they realize I have no choice.

[mathgladiator]

I find it incongruent that you have valuable skills yet can't find work because if they are valuable then people would buy them. I went homeless, and would have remained homeless if I stuck to what I valued. Instead, I shifted my values to work on things that other people value.

The cruelty of our world, imo, is that values shift and there is no good safety net to help everyone bounce back efficiently.

[chongli]

The young economist looks down and sees a $20 bill on the street and says, “Hey, look a twenty-dollar bill!”

Without even looking, his older and wiser colleague replies, “Nonsense. If there had been a twenty-dollar bill lying on the street, someone would have already picked it up by now.”

[gt_]

I don’t disagree with you.

I don’t lack job offers but they are all freelance and require me to live in an expensive city. I hesitate to depend on freelance work unless I can make what I used to make, maybe 5 years ago. The job offers went up over the years but the rate went down and now full-time positions are exceedingly rare.

I still get some remote work but I am having to reskill for jobs that have very high demand before moving to a city. But I think that saying capitalism makes sure I am rewarded for wanting to make things is misleading.

[mathgladiator]

My opinion is to take the highest paying job and live in your car. I can say this because I lived in my car, and it isn't that bad. In this, you accomplish three things.

(1) build up assets fast (or, pay off debts fast) (2) make relationships with people who will see and value your skills which could lead to referrals (the tech world is really small) (3) keep skills up and continue building up portfolio

> But I think that saying capitalism makes sure I am rewarded for wanting to make things is misleading.

I don't disagree, but I think capitalism is better than the alternatives. Capitalism rewards people for making things that are relevant. I'm not saying it is easy, but being relevant is hard work.

[psyc]

The job market is not that efficient. Interviews don’t reliably identify the skilled and the unskilled, and the search process is inefficient for hirers and seekers. I don’t claim to have easy solutions for that, but the inefficiency I’ve observed on both sides makes it easy for me to believe your parent’s experience.

[jnbiche]

So what did you shift your values from, and to?

[mathgladiator]

From what interested me at the time (game engine, math, computational geometry, algebra) to what interested others like "how can computers help people become more effective", "how does this whole internet marketing thing work", etc...

My first successful business was about helping self storage owners attract customers. It wasn't super interesting, but I focused on making it work and learned many things that were not comfortable to learn. A core lesson I learned is that the first step is find people that have problems and help them solve it.

There is a value of having an entrepreneurial mindset even if one does not end up as the owner of a business, and one of my concerns is that the mindset of today is "get a job" rather than "help people with problems"

Over time, I have built a career by focusing on other people's problems first to build skills, trust, and knowledge. Now, I am effectively a principal working on really cool distributed system problems.

When I started, I had 20K debt in student loans and was living out of my car. However, my story is a case of Survivorship bias, and a difficult aspect is filtering out what was luck versus was could be applicable advice. I do think the focus on building relationships and helping people with their problems is key.

[gt_]

Do you have any thoughts on how to find people that have problems, which the searching party can fix?

[mathgladiator]

I talk to small business owners in community. Here is the thing, most small business owners are people with faults. They start well and know their business, but then conditions change. For instance, they feel they need a website, but they don't know why. Or, they need to be on facebook. Or, they want an edge.

The first thing to do is build the relationship and seek to understand their problems. The second thing is to look for the missing platform.

If the platform exists, then you can offer management services. An example of this managing Google Ad Words or Facebook Advertising.

If the platform doesn't exist, then it is opportunity to build something.

Usually, you can do both.

[e_b]

>The job (creative) necessitated that my work which was done for a major corporation not be included in my portfolio which made it very hard to find new employment overnight

Put it in your portfolio

[gt_]

For the most part, I don’t have the finished products or enough of them to include them well in my portfolio. They were projects only used internally and I did the technical side of things before handing that over. I have good references and everything but I am in an industry that relies almost entirely on a portfolio. I do have a portfolio from side jobs but it misrepresents my experience. This is why I did the side jobs.