I own my own business and the company is worth some millions of dollars, so I am "rich" though by American standards, not really. My salary is rather low for being the founder. My partner has an equally low salary. Some employees make more than me.

I was formerly a data scientist with a salary 2x of what my current one is. I was miserable.

Today, I love work. I create things. I have two kids and a wife and she stays home with them and does actual tough work. I wear clothes from companies we partner with (sports science, so lots of universities give us free stuff) and company-logoed clothes only. I don't have expensive hobbies. My wife gets all of my money and I invest things at home like Blue Apron, a house cleaner, day care, etc, to make family life better.

Having a job I love and a company that fulfills my vision negated all need for tangible things in my life. When I was actually "rich" in regards to salary, liquid money, I was consumed by stuff. It was terrible.

Life's good now. I want for nothing expensive. I make this comment to tell you that you may be able to have both if your work is something that you truly enjoy.

I am rather curious what type of company you created. You mentioned sports science? Something in the direction of moneyball?

Email him :) mike dot anon at hotmail

"I wear clothes from companies we partner with (sports science..."

I'm intrigued... would you mind sharing a bit more about your business?

Diminishing returns for your personal enjoyment, sure. But there are plenty of ways any extra money you had could be spent to make a huge impact for other people: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/#approa...

I wish more people saw it this way. Philanthropy is the only thing driving me to amass wealth. I used to be ok with being poor and spending a lot of free time on side projects but more and more I'm becoming disgusted with myself and those around me for living selfishly when so many people around the world are in pain.

I found that there are actually relatively few people with the type of experience most of us here at HN have that work in philanthropy. I mean people with IT background, can-do attitude, consider scaling whatever you build to million or billions of people, entrepreneurial and able to pitch well for investments.

If I work as a reasonably successful IT entrepreneur (I don't think I am going to be Gates, Brinn or Zuckerberg). At most I will be able to give away few million to charity/philanthropy. That is going to have a relatively limited impact. International development funding is $130 billion / year.

Taking my skills and helping spending those $130 billion sensibly, by applying my skills is having a considerably bigger impact, I think.

My team is routinely involved in country level data-to-decision work around things like drinking water supply, sanitation access, food security, agriculture efficiency, climate change adaptation, disaster respons etc. If I add up the population of the countries where we our tools are used for rural drinking water mapping and prioritisation of investments, we end up with about half a billion people.

For me, the best way to use my time I think is helping others by applying my skills to the problem at hand. Working for a faceless shareholder (mine and your pension fund and a bunch of rich people) on something that may be technically interesting, but didn't make a big positive impact on the world and the people in it, just wasn't enough for me anymore. What I do now is more satisfying and has a much bigger positive impact, I think.

I'd love to be involved in something like that. I feel like most helpful innovation is hardware based or science-research based. I'm not a trained weather data scientist, for example, I'm just a boring backend developer. Have you seen much philanthropy positions for backend devs or any suggestions on where to look?

Sounds really awesome - if you'd care to share, I'd love to find out what company you work with!

edit: haha I'm dumb, just checked your profile.

I'd hardly say that I'm successful, and I know everyone I work with is smarter than me.

But I've been poor (poorer than you appear to be), and I'd be pretty happy to never, ever go back.

Money is a lubricant for so many things.

My impression is money gets more important as you get older because your ability to get other people to give it to you for work goes way down and your medical expenses go way up. At least that's what I've seen in my family

For nearly all countries in the developed world the medical expenses part is barely an issue.

I suggest you reconsider this. Not necessarily change your answer, but...

Earlier in my career, I chose jobs based on interest, challenge, excitement, and fun. As a result, I had a low salary history.

When I turned 45, I found myself in a position where, in absolute terms, I was making significantly less than the average for my experience and education in my area; relatively, I was making much less than coworkers who were significantly less competent (I make no claims as to my absolute competence) and receiving much less respect. To the extent that I was called in when the sky was falling but was ignored when pointing out that and obviously poor decision would result in the sky falling.

Fortunately, I had a habit of packing money into a brokerage account and a modest inheritance, so I am now happily unemployed and don't have to deal with the horseshit.

I just have to figure out what to do when I'm 75 and broke.

I am 36 and I feel I've been overly passive throughout my career. I only "activate" in emergency mode and during the last 15 months (a stable job) I started reflecting and understanding that I only ever tried hard only NOT to sink, and not a centimeter beyond that.

Your experience is something I fear will share in just several years if I don't get off my ass and invest in my future.

To be fair, I had a plethora of pretty valid reasons which I'll not list here. I grew to realize they gradually devolved in mere excuses however in my mind. They were valid for 5-6 years (between 19 and 25, let's say, and even that's a lot of time). Beyond those I just kind of loved the slack they were giving me.

TL;DR: I am stressed, tired and realizing that if I don't start getting much more things done, I'll face a VERY GRIM future.

I'm guessing you are single and not planning to have kids, right?

I'm not single, but you're right about the kids. In my world view having a kid is similar to an 18 year prison sentence.

My parental units divorced when I was six and my brothers and I grew up essentially feral. I was 16yo when my girlfriend got pregnant. After a few weeks she fessed up, and tests later proved, it wasn't mine... I always wore a rubber, the other dude never did. I had my vasectomy at 17 using my fake ID(easy enough in Cal City circa '87) and continued to practice safe sex, JIC. 30 years later, no regrets. I have lived similar to errantspark's minimalist lifestyle for 30 years, watching friends get married, have kids and drifting away while I ride the feast/famine waves of a single independent contractor. It's not as glorious as some outsiders believe, but for an introvert from an abused childhood it is the optimum life I am able to provide for myself. My only advice for my younger counterparts: always have a savings buffer, the 'famine' cycles become exponentially harder to weather the older you get.

Kids are great. I have 3 kids and to me it is nothing like a prison sentence. I love watching them grow up, it is taking me back to the happiness and carelessness of my own childhood every day. It also gives me a sense of purpose that I would have never found without kids and what I gave up in freedom is made up in love, affection and just plain fun.

Based on my experience I am 100% convinced that people that can't find joy in the happiness of others should remain single and even more important: never, ever have kids.

> Based on my experience I am 100% convinced that people that can't find joy in the happiness of others should remain single and even more important: never, ever have kids.

As a counterargument, I've seen a few people turn into complete monsters once their kids were born. Their justification was "I have kids now and I'll do literally anything for my family, fuck everyone else and their needs." (paraphrased). It's all fine and dandy until the instinct for survival kicks in.

Unless you're talking about friends in warzones I don't really see how their kids are a justification for being, or acting like a dick.

I don't see it either, but I guess people can justify whatever they want to justify.

I think people like this were that way before they had kids.

Dude. Just because someone is adamantly against having children themselves doesn't mean that they "can't find joy in the happiness of others." My wife and I decided to not have kids. I don't know that I would equate it to "an 18 year prison sentence" but...I wouldn't not call it that. I love all my little nieces and nephews; they're one of the best parts of my life. I also thank the noodly appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster every time I'm with them for more than an hour my wife and I made the choice we did.

I said that people that can't find joy in the happiness of others should not have kids, not the other way around. That would be a stupid thing to say.

Fair enough. Apologies for misinterpreting.

It was a snotty thing to say. Even making the judgment that a another person is incapable of enjoying the happiness of others is a really judgmental and overall shitty sentiment. It's doubtful the person you are responding to would have the intimate information needed to make that assessment, further people are ever evolving for the most part. Just a shitty thought all around.

Where do I make that judgement? You're turning it around again. Read my comment, there is no judgement of people whatsoever, only the claim that you should not have kids if you're unable to enjoy the joy of others. Because otherwise, yes, they are likely to make you feel like you're subject to an 18 year prison sentence.

English is not my first language, can anyone explain why people read my comment and reverse the sentence structure?

They do because they see the intent to make that erroneous connection with backup plan of telling you 'only' said it one way and not the other (can't tell my self too). Higher order logic.

Kids can make you happy or tired, or both, too many factors for your parenting to go wrong way. Especially if you aren't rich. Imo, friends and gfs are far easier to get mutual happiness with, because they are self-established. I've lost too many friends to happy families they hate now, so personally I don't get your statement any way around.

I wanted kids. I believe your statement is still correct. In my case I subjected myself to prison because of biology ruling over my logical processing unit. Humanity goes on as a result of that, I am quite sure of it. :)

I get that, but my friends are starting to have kids and I'm rather looking forward to being their crazy uncle and teaching them how to solder and take things apart etc. I love kids, I just don't want to be the one primarily responsible for them

I cannot fault you. Most days I wonder why I decided to have kids. I realize that I didn't decide it in any sort of logical manner that implies normal decision-making. If I went purely on logic and rational thought, I certainly wouldn't have done it. Alas, that wasn't in the cards. I wouldn't take it back, but I tell everyone who is on the fence about having kids to very strongly reconsider if they want to go through with it.

On its face, it's an incredibly dumb choice. But biology wins out, sometimes..

It depends how big the field you have to plow is. Having many kids helps in keeping and maintaining the field then using it to grow food (for you and your free plowering kids).

Some kind of bootstrap if you will.

I don't really know about your situation and if you are actually doing it now. But based on experience, people who get married usually dismiss friendship with singles and instead look for friendships with people who have families/kids.

You certain thats not bi-directional, or more likely - the other way around? As a single person who can go do fun things at the drop of the hat without having to get permission from someone else, or set up a babysitter, or any other number of roadblocks, trying to set up an outing with married with kids crowd is incredibly irritating, time consuming and often fruitless.

A lot of this is simple scheduling pattern differences.

As an example, my no-kids friends typically schedule things like dinner parties starting at 8:30pm or so. The ones with kids would aim for 5:30 or 6 instead.

Well... in order for you to wonder at how "biology ruled over your logical processing unit" a lot of people had to sacrifice their freedoms, before you. Don't beat yourself over it, it's such an important thing that it is equal to "being alive". And what you lose as a person, your DNA gains as a living system. DNA is such a chump. I never realized how much work it does. Every protein in our bodies is copied from DNA. It does so much copying and processing, it's amazing. And for such a hardworking pal, it's OK to sacrifice yourself. It's busting its ass too, in order for any of the billions of processes in our bodies to happen.

What if you value your consciousness and the here and now more than the idea of your DNA staying alive well after you're dead?

To me, my consciousness is my identity (myself). The body is just a vessel for it, and once it craps out, and takes the consciousness down with it, I couldn't care less about my DNA (a bit of a tautology, but you get the idea).

Yes, I agree, we can value our consciousness more than the idea of DNA survival, but the reason it exists in the first place is to protect the DNA. It's just a mechanism to adapt and accommodate the organism to the changing external conditions.

I wrote it in so nice way. I'm usually more harsh to people.

Deciding not to have kids because it's too much of an effort is so selfish act. You're throwing away all the effort your ancestors put in to get to the point of you being alive.

Let's not get caught up on what dead ancestors may think. The world is already overpopulated. Overpopulation causes depletion of natural resources, degradation of the environment, conflicts and wars caused by such lack of resources, and there being less resources per capita. Adding people when it is causing problems like these is harmful.

However, people having 2 or 3 or thereabouts children isn't something to be worried about too much, so go ahead if you want to. But people who have lots of children has to stop. This is per person, so it includes men who have children with different partners. If it is left too late, then less can be done about it.

Just in terms of numbers isn't a man having a single child each with 10 women better than 10 couples each having two kids?

In response to your question, have another question. Does a man having a child with woman mean she won't have other children? I don't see any reason it does.

Would a man having a child with 10 women cause huge social problem? It certainly does. Do you want to be a single woman with kids? Doubt it.

Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have? I really don't see any reason for that. There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them because they think they are great and winning life because they have so many children and let other people care for them. Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

> Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have?

I never said they should.

> There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them

What in the world does that have to do with anything?

> Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

What are you talking about? I never said anything about any sort of limit.

Having kids is a far more selfish act than not. Our species and our planet would be way, way better off if about 9/10 of us elected not to reproduce for a few generations.

You are presumably delighted to know that Europe is in fact dying off with only France having a fertility rate of 2.0 (2014) which is not enough to sustain the population. One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.

At < 2 replacement rate, the populations of Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria just won't be around in a few generations. The cultural identity of Europe will disappear on present trends.

Relying on fertility to prop up the welfare state was never a sustainable model to begin with. The adjustment will not be pleasant whoever is left in 200 or so years will be a lot better off because of it. To say nothing of all the non-human species with whom we share the world.

> One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.

Can't pay for it. It's all gonna collapse =)

Couldn't agree more.

That's one of the reasons we decided to not have kids. There are too many humans consuming too many resources in an unsustainable lifestyle.

You are normally "way more harsh to people" for making the very personal decision as to whether they will have children?

You do realize just how offensive you are being? Whether other people have children is not for you to decide or deride.

I wrote "...because it's too much of an effort" was a really selfish reason. If you decide not to have kids on some grounds, I don't mind at all.

It amazes me how shallow has people's attention on HN become. Not even bothering to read the whole sentence. I feel like I'm on Reddit.

> I'd put this up there with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.

This is probably the most offensive thing in this thread.

You are allowed to disagree with other people's choices. You are allowed to voice that disagreement, even publicly. People are allowed to think you're stupid for caring whether or not someone else has children.

Nothing about any of that is even remotely "discrimination" and to imply it's anywhere in the same universe as racism or sexism is offensive to real problems everywhere.

I'd argue that being harsh to women for their reproductive choices is a key component of modern sexism.

Discrimination has a variety of forms.

It takes a man and a woman to have a child. Stop trying to shoehorn cries of sexism into everything.

Sure. And women and men can both obviously face discrimination over their reproductive choices. The discrimination just disproportionally falls on women. Ie. less likely to be hired because she may have children. Expected behaviours and judgements if she doesn't.

What do women have to do with it?

> You're throwing away all the effort

How many children must one have before one is morally absolved of this sin?

Zero. I only wrote that for those citing "it's too much of an effort" as a reason not the have kids.

I intended to ask: how many children must I have before I'm allowed to cite "it's too much of an effort" as my reason for not having another child?

The topic is deciding to have kids or not. I doesn't matter how many.

As I understand it, though, the argument applies almost equally to deciding whether to have fewer than $n$ children, whether $n$ is 1 or larger.

You have no idea what his ancestors wanted.

I have two kids and whether or not they have kids makes no difference at all to me. Likewise, my parents never pressured me to have kids.

Most of our ancestors didn't get to reproduce all that offspring by being nice guys.

If you think about it for a moment they can't nearly have been as noble as they're made out to be, by far.

Reproduction is not a virtue in and of itself. There will come a moment when the next generation will not forgive us for this overpopulated earth.

But of course I never tell my friends what I really think when they tell me the happy news of their expectancy ...

> In my world view having a kid is similar to an 18 year prison sentence.

Unless something happens to them you have offspring for the rest of your life; not for 18 years. If you're referring to them leaving the house at 18 y.o. The US trend is that 18 y.o. stay living at home. Personally, I expect students to be the exception to that.

His world view isn't possible to have once you have a child. It's the world view that makes sense when you don't have the data.

How can you possibly claim to know how he would feel? Maybe he's different than you.

Think of kids as cloning yourself, or as close to time travel as your going to get. Your kids let you relive emotions and experiences from your childhood that you forgot about, and you get a chance to guide them through life with benefit of hindsight. I enjoy it. Not to mention free manual labor.

Less so when you have a lot of money.

eh, I have kids and don't make that much money, but I think the point is still valid.

My colleague and I were talking about this paper the other day because it led to huge questions about all the assumptions underlying our definitions of "success."

For example, my wife and I's household income was fairly big before we had kids, but not really anything noteworthy. It allowed us to save up enough so that her staying home with them isn't too much of a financial strain. I do worry about the long-term consequences in terms of savings, but I also know that to her, staying home with them at this age means a lot to her, and her going to work to be away from them was miserable when she was doing that. I think she feels lucky.

I could have gone into something more lucrative, and probably could be pulling in more money now, but it would mean less flexibility for me, and more stress, etc. I'd also have about as much independence now at my job as someone could have (for better or worse). Are we not successful? I'm not always sure, because I've thought a lot of changing careers, but one reason I haven't is because I'm not sure it would be worth it on balance. It might be, but it might not be.

To abstract it a bit, think about Donald Trump: is he successful? A lot of people would say yes, but is he a model of who we want to be, or our children to be? Sure, some people would say yes, but more would probably say no. So should income be a marker of success?

One problem with these studies (and I think they're valuable, so I don't mean to suggest otherwise) is that what constitutes success is so variable, and is so detached from income, that I'm not sure how to interpret them.

I mean, sure, all other things being equal, I'd rather have more than less money, but all other things are definitely not equal in life. There's pros and cons to everything. Income is a very weak metric of what an ideal life goal is.

I respect your calm-mannered response.

IMO part of my reason not to want kids is the fact that I am doing awfully with money even though I am a programmer in demand (which means I do a lot of things wrong on this platform, which is a fact I became painfully aware of in the last one year)... and thus, any extra expense would literally kill me in the long-term. I barely manage well right now.

That said, I don't think I'll be happy watching my kids wanting a toy, or new boots, or simply a scarf and a hat for the winter, or a cheap gaming console, and me being unable to buy them those. Where's the happiness in seeing your children being miserable? That's the thing that pushes normal peaceful people to attempt robberies!

So your case is anecdotal. Works pretty well for you but I know that for me and many others it won't. So my case is anecdotal as well.

All in all, I do my best not to let hormones or misplaced "duty" principles decide for me, and use my rational thought for my decisions.

I derive a lot of satisfaction from fixing things myself. I watch YouTube clips that show me how to do anything to my Jeep. I recently bought an old farm house that's a constant list of new projects to work on, and a yard to landscape. I feel like Hank Hill sometimes, and my co-workers act like it's not worth their time to do those kind of things (they just buy new cars whenever something little happens to them). But I've been pleasantly surprised by how much fun it is to save money and learn new skills. It's a great feeling when you have the right tool for an important job.

I am gradually travelling from your colleagues' state of mind to yours lately.

In my case though, it's not about "not worth my time". It's just that I am always tired and thus somewhat cranky, unhealthy and have a lot of things to care for -- debts, teeth fixes (and several other health issues), proper TV stand and bedroom floor fixators, get proper kitchenware (like, I have a pan that USED to be teflon for example), you name it -- loads of thigns to care for because they simply aren't where I want them to be. And I am talking things I find basic, not luxuries.

While I am in this drama, I really do find it hard to just screw everything and go fix an old PC or a bike lying around.

I started finding inner peace in tinkering with things but it's an uphill battle against my stress and messed-up life -- and it's gonna take a while for me to fully get there.

No real topic in my comment. Just wanted to offer you another point of view.

The thing is, that you're incredibly successful. You live life the way you want it and have the freedom to decide what you want to spend your time on. This, for me, is success.

What do you plan to do when you're old? Right now it might be simple to earn enough money to pay your bills, but if you don't earn enough to save a significant portion of it you risk not having enough once earning money becomes harder.

Unless he decides to make a one-way hike into the tundra when he can no longer work, the kids other people "selfishly" decided to have will support him (even if indirectly, e.g. by working at the companies that he has equity in as retirement investments).

For intelligent people, it can be nice to go to congresses a lot. Or buy computer gear, like a big GPU rig, just to play with (or develop a business from). Just some examples why money can still be nice.

You are like a guru of minimalism and self reliance. Bravo! I feel the same - we don't need so much money because, after fulfilling our basic needs, we have many other sources of fulfillment.

>It really seems like the point at which working harder to earn money hits diminishing returns comes much much earlier that most people think.

How old are you? Do you have children? Sick or elderly family to take care of?

I get a kick out of young people in the software industry talking about how easy it is. Of course it is when you're by yourself with very particular interests. But life circumstances can and do change.

So, no family to care for? What level of savings security do you have? What happens to you if you get cancer, or break a leg? What will sustain you in retirement?

If you live outside the US in some country where human basic needs are guaranteed, your approach would make more sense to me!

I love this. To me, this is real 'smarts'.

Could you explain what part of being a data scientist made you hate it?

How do you spend most of your free time?

I'd say about a 50/50 split between useless things like: hanging out with friends playing video games, riding my bike in traffic in a semi irresponsible manner, smoking weed, climbing trees; and useful things like reverse engineering/modifying things, exploring programming languages, painting/drawing, doing 3D graphics/art, working on various side projects and building things that come to mind.

Some examples of side recent projects if you're interested: a virtual reality strange attractor explorer, a high resolution bike speedometer/light system and a tool to record and subsequently play images from cassette tapes.

> hanging out with friends playing video games, riding my bike in traffic in a semi irresponsible manner, smoking weed, climbing trees; and useful things like reverse engineering/modifying things, exploring programming languages, painting/drawing, doing 3D graphics/art, working on various side projects and building things that come to mind.

Eerily similar to me, except that I have spent less than 400$ a month for the past 4 years due to where I live. I've traded most every comfort (hot water, air conditioning, possessions in general), which I could not care less about, for the ability to practically never work. I have a laptop, speakers, a table, a chair, a mattress on the floor, two fans, art supplies, sports equipment, and that's about it. I will live like this forever and my only motivation to become very rich is to help other people.

What do you do for work?