[kaiwenwang]

As a young person in the United States, the main concern is that if you aren't one of the greatest at what you do, you'll be doomed to a life of increasing poverty: food derived from vegetable oils and chemically bleached wheat, apartments of grey laminate flooring and concrete, crime, people who derive their actions from social media, a 60 minute commute---as the real world: nature, people who are present, quality food, becomes increasingly out of reach.

[Aurornis]

> As a young person in the United States, the main concern is that if you aren't one of the greatest at what you do, you'll be doomed to a life of increasing poverty

In psychology there’s a concept called splitting, or dichotomous thinking, where a person only thinks of things in concepts of their extremes. Either the most extreme good outcome, or the most extreme bad outcome. They might see people or public figures as either amazing or evil. The Wikipedia page has a primer on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) But you don’t need a Wikipedia article or psychology concepts to realize that there are more outcomes than extreme success or increasing poverty.

I’m fascinated by how these concepts that were once relegated to psychology and therapy have started to become commonplace among young people on the internet. They’re not seen as failure modes in thinking, but rather an obvious conclusion from whatever they’ve been consuming so much of online.

The comment above is a prime example. Even the obsession over “food derived from vegetable oils and chemically bleached wheat” is a confusing conclusion for me, someone who has had no problem avoiding wheat products and eating healthy on a budget with even minimal effort. The food topic is particularly strange because it’s not that hard to learn basic cooking skills, buy cheap vegetable, and cook quick and easy meals. Yet I continue talking to young people who simultaneously fret about food quality while filling their diets with nothing but processed and fast foods, many of which are more expensive than cooking basic fast meals.

I don’t know what else to say, other than the above style of thinking is, in my experience, indicative of what happens when someone collects too much perspective from the internet and not enough from the real world. Given the context of this comment section, I can only recommend trying to reevaluate, disconnect from the internet a little more, and make an effort to reconnect with the real world

[alexslobodnik]

The binary perspective gives an excuse to give up.

The reasonable perspective does not. It demonstrates that though agency is limited it does exist.

Our life outcomes are connected to our actions. For many their circumstances make this an unpleasant thought, thus binary thinking protect their self-image. For some that's all they have left.

[raddan]

I too am baffled by the prevailing sense of doom that many young people have. They certainly get a lot of messages about how hard things are, and of course, one’s circumstances have a big effect on one’s future. I am often asked in my job as a professor: “if I fail this test am I doomed forever?” which strikes me as so miscalibrated with reality that I struggle to respond.

Humanity’s initial circumstances, by modern standards, was pretty poor! What is lacking from the modern day doom and gloom is any notion of agency. You can change an awful lot in your life if you identify a goal and then ask yourself “what do I need to do to get there?” The common objection to this line of argument is “well there are people who cannot change their circumstances” and maybe that’s true. But I doubt that’s true for most people, and it certainly was not true for me. My life is dramatically more interesting and comfortable than the one I started life in. My main advantage over others is that I had loving and supportive parents who encouraged me to dream, and maybe that is a big advantage, but what we did not have was much money.

The recurring thought I have is that, where I live in the Eastern US, most of the houses, which were built in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s, were built with what we would now think of as primitive (and affordable) tools. That did not stop people from building beautiful things. I have learned to use those tools, and while they are slower than modern ones, they work fine. It’s hard not to get the sense that, for all of the complaining about “I will never be able to afford a house,” etc, there is also not much effort invested in seriously considering how one might acquire one with limited means. I bought what used to be called a “fixer-upper,” a house that sat on the market for years because of its problems, and turned it into a comfortable and pleasant home. I had to sacrifice nights and weekends. For years. But I made it happen, and eight years after I bought it, my mortgage (which was small) is nearly paid off.

Was I lucky? Maybe. But I also coupled that luck with the motivation to actively change things. I would love it if I could somehow convince people that they really can have fulfilling and even happy lives if they are willing to work toward that goal.

[asdf6969]

Inequality is increasing and we’re anxious about being on the wrong side. It’s just standard (and justified) economic anxiety. We’re correct to see that the standard path through life is increasingly precarious and there’s no safety net. On the other hand, successful people are more successful than ever.

Your students who can’t graduate will have to reevaluate their entire lives. If I didn’t become a software engineer I would have to move across the continent and choose a new career. I already had to leave all my friends and family behind and I’m one of the success stories. Sometimes there is a solution but it’s not worth the trade offs and that’s typically when pessimistic thinking is helpful.

If you live in a low cost of living area then I have no idea though. Those people really are just whining.

[kaiwenwang]

Feel like binary perspective is a motivation to not fall into hell. If I lived in certain places in Western Europe or my family was in a developed part of the United States I would be fine being a tradesman or simple office job.

[zub-twin]

It is not a new outlook, soylent green—is people.

[kaiwenwang]

Sorry in advance if this seems rude. Going to context dump a lot of stuff below:

My opinion is based on the real world as I've lived it. I cook for myself. I highly recommend https://www.centurylife.org/ for anyone else learning to cook.

Have also deeply thought about types of cookware: from glass to ceramic to clay, have experimented with clay pots such as RÖMERTOPF (not worth it), dutch oven is fine to pressure cookers, or German cookware such as Fissler that has spot welded and presents a neat design compared to riveted cookware common in the US.

If you go to almost any supermarket (Costco, Publix, Kroger, Whole Foods, HMart), the majority of foods people eat are derivatives of what I said.

Whereas recipes in the past were limited by the locale, we are now limited to the cities we have transportation options to.

If you're in a suburb of one of the major metropolitan areas, this doesn't apply. In small cities of the United States, people might only have Walmart, Amazon, Dollar Generals. So people have to cram into cities as the availability of goods is limited.

There are only a few suppliers for things---there is not unlimited choice from free market competition, a wall of supermarket cereals look different but the ingredients are fundamentally the same. I can't get good cuts of meat such as bone-in shoulder easily. Nor can I get it cut at a butcher because USDA guideline has limits on outside meat.

Food is only 3 categories: fats, carbs, or proteins.

Let's consider proteins: The major meat I buy from Costco is the Australian grass-fed lamb import. The Sprouts has lamb, but it's been sitting on the shelf for a long time. The factory farmed pork, chicken, fish, and feedlot beef give me symptoms of malaise.

Almost all processed foods are using canola oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil, etc.--the polyunsaturated fats are shown to highly depress metabolism, despite what the USDA guidelines say.

For carbs, most of the wheat is chemically bleached with "Oxides of nitrogen, Chlorine, Nitrosyl chloride, Chlorine dioxide."

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B...

The wheat and the corn give me symptoms because I am fairly aware of my body's reactions. Some person might be extremely unhealthy and live in a slum (from my perspective) and say that they're fine, and we would both we right because each perspective is relative to an individual.

Many are increasingly unable to afford to even transport oneself in the United States without a car or gasoline because of the suburbanization of infrastructure yet cities are increasing in price.

The internet affects the real world because federal laws, which be written in places far away from where you live, affects people's behaviors and how they can do things.

You categorize me as a surface-level thinker prone to the emotional dramatics derived from the internet not having deeply thought about the reality and nature of things, but I would hope that the above comment dispels such preassumptions.

Seemingly widening inequality and inability to land meaningful jobs as a lived experience for people I know makes my concerns reasonable and truthful based on lived experience (young 20s).

[chr15m]

"the greatest at what you do" is by definition a zero sum framing that will lead 99.999% of participants to view their lives as a failure. It is literally madness to make this your goal.

The alternative is to choose to be very good at what you do, which has a good chance of success if you try hard at something you care about.

[kaiwenwang]

I feel like very good isn't enough as employers want the best candidates but not the average candidates, and if you're sort of in the middle then the so-so companies don't want you either because they think you'll leave.

Something about the increased social stratification of our times, which also has to do with increased transportation and communication.

Might also depend on your locale. Plumber in Germany might be better than SWE in Texas.

[chr15m]

Hiring is not a zero sum game (growth of the company/economy through good hiring means more positions are created). I've hired software developers before and what I was looking for was somebody who commits code that works and is good quality. I don't care about their ranking on some imaginary programmer hierarchy. You probably don't want to work at a company where they do.

[raddan]

Not to mention that motivated humans are amazing learning machines. The supposed trend of replacing entry-level programmers with AI is pure insanity. Sure, code of indeterminate quality (let’s assume for a moment that it is good) will get written. But a company is its people, and you are shutting the door to new ideas. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the neophyte, who was maybe considered a bit of a dope after they were hired, in their second or third year stumble on a great idea that energizes everybody. People can change. A good organization recognizes this and nurtures them so that both change for the better.

[chr15m]

Good point. Good hires have the potential to become even better.

[kaiwenwang]

No, not a fan of Leetcode either, nor imaginary measures of social prestige.

We may not necessarily disagree with any of each other's points, but lack of mutual context and having different lived experience makes our words have different meaning.

[chr15m]

Yeah true. Thank you.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

>employers want the best candidates but not the average candidates,

This is just flatly false. Employers want candidates at all ability levels given a competitive price.

You can be pretty bad at your job and still have a steady stream of work if you're cheap, for example. The Hacker News crowd loves to poop on these guys because we are almost by definition a quasi-professional platform, but we are far from the median take on this.

>Might also depend on your locale. Plumber in Germany might be better than SWE in Texas.

If you truly believe this, and think the difference is substantial, make a 5 year plan and move to Germany. Talk is cheap.

[kaiwenwang]

Added you on LinkedIn if you'd like to chat about your experiences moving to Finland. Yes, I might've been too non-specific with my wording. My communication style tends to link disparate topics together, which seems too hyperbole when people read into the words themselves.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

I'm always happy to talk about it.

For the benefit of future readers with less context, you can model my move to Finland and Europe more generally to a first approximation as a trade. I gave up somewhere in the ballpark of $500,000 in expected post-tax income over the first ~5 years of my career by moving away from the US right after graduating from college. In exchange I married the love of my life a few years earlier than I would have otherwise, and we got our little family started a few years earlier too.

To me this was and is a fantastic way to spend $500,000. To most other people their heads would explode merely by realizing such a trade could be on the table, and so they never get serious enough about either money or love to face it head on.

[pragmatic]

Woah that’s bleak.

You don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other people the bear is chasing.

The bar is so low in corporate America you could trip on it.

Just try to be halfway competent, do something useful at work, read a book or two about your industry. You’re already way ahead.

Don’t fall for the hacker news bs.

Lots of millionaires out here that never had a successful startup.

[kaiwenwang]

I've tried to be as accurate as I perceive it, and the descriptions of the environment are accurate to the locale of most of the United States.

If the bar is that low, then the environment is sure to be like the first place I described.

[danparsonson]

"Most of the United States"? You're covering an awfully big area there - how much of it have you actually seen for yourself vs learned about second hand through news and social media?

As for the skills bar, if you're intent on being hired by the likes of OpenAI then sure, you'll need to aim high, but for the majority of jobs, being reasonably good, friendly, and reliable will definitely be sufficient; the challenge is then mainly about seeming slightly more appealing than the other candidates for a position.

[kaiwenwang]

As an adult I lived in Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio for internships and visited the major cities: Seattle, SF, Chicago, NYC, Boston, DC, Dallas, Philly.

Most of the United States is suburbanized, and if you want to rent an apartment near the city it tends to be that gray laminate style I've described for $1500/mo with roommates.

Most of the people who managed to have a family in a major city area are doing well for themselves, prior to asset and rent inflation because they have accessible goods and knowledge to them.

I didn't even know what IKEA was until age 18.

Because the national system of laws and transportation forms a certain culture, Costco regardless of the location is the same. The STOP signs in the United States are all the same. The processing of foods all follow certain guidelines. There are certain stores existing up to the limits of the locale, and only certain producers because society has centralized so heavily. So I think my claim of generality is reasonable.

[asdf6969]

Sufficient is irrelevant when the interviews are 10x harder than the actual job. Employment is a competition. How else can you explain the credentials arms race for low skilled labour?

[coderatlarge]

> Lots of millionaires out here that never had a successful startup.

what do you mean by this?

[WJW]

Not GP, but exactly what he says: don't fall for the HN narrative that the only way to be successful in life is to found a startup and become a billionaire at 25. Carefully and diligently working your way up the career ladder and consistently spending less than you earn has a vastly higher expected value than the startup life, but since it can be described in a few sentences and is not very exciting you will not find many influencers pushing it.

[coderatlarge]

thanks for explaining; 100% agree.

[asdf6969]

> The bar is so low in corporate America you could trip on it.

I talk to incompetent people all day every day but I don’t know anyone competent who could get the opportunity to work here without at least a few weeks of studying and a lot of luck. Thousands of applicants for every position and you still think meritocracy matters? The only winners in this market are people with no self respect and the well connected

[iddan]

I’m not from the US, but from my visits there and continuous reading of the living conditions in America this comment seems painfully true. As someone living in Israel I’m grateful we don’t live in those extremes.