Very nice write-up! I've suspected that a lot of those things are true, but wasn't too sure, so your saying them increases my confidence. Especially the thing about avoiding overtime. I've brought it up before but most people seem to have the opinion that "you learn at work, so you may as well work late and keep learning (not taking into account the opportunity cost)".
What do you think about the chances that a good programmer with a few years' experience could easily find a new job? It seems pretty high to me. a) I here so much about the demand for developers. And b) in my job search it seemed that there was a huge demand for developers with a few years' experience. But again, this is outside view-y and I don't understand the components too well.
most people seem to have the opinion that "you learn at work, so you may as well work late and keep learning
Depends. Now that you wrote that, I remembered the time when I was freshly out of university; it did work that way. Thanks for reminding me! Everything was new. I didn't have internet at home. The computer I had at work was more powerful than the computer I had at home. I even had a few books about programming at work. So when I stayed overtime, I learned a lot. I was a 100% nerd back then, zero social life, no hobbies beyond programming. Thu...
I'm 22 years old, just got a job, and have the option of putting money in a 401k. More generally, I just started making money and need to think about how I'm going to invest and save it.
As far as long-term/retirement savings goes, the way I see it is that my goal is to ensure that I have a sufficient standard of living when I'm "old" (70-80). I see a few ways that this can happen:
Median optimistic year (10% likelihood): 2022
Median realistic year (50% likelihood): 2040
Median pessimistic year (90% likelihood): 2075
- http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html
And even if they're wrong and there's no singularity, it still seems to be very likely that there will be immense wealth creation in the next 60 or so years, and I'm sure that there'll be a fair amount of distribution as well, such that the poorest people will probably have reasonably comfortable lives. I'm a believer in Kurweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, but even if you project linear growth, there'd still be immense growth.
Given all of this, I find thinking that "wealth creation + distribution over the next 60 years -> sufficient standard of living for everyone" is a rather likely scenario. But my logic here is very "outside view-y" - I don't "really understand" the component steps and their associated likelihoods, so my confidence is limited.
Anyway, I think that there is a pretty good chance that I succeed, in, say the next 20 years. I never thought hard enough about it to put a number on it, but I'll try it here.
Say that I get 10 tries to start a startup in the next 20 years (I know that some take longer than 2 years to fail, but 2 years is the average, and it often takes shorter than 2 years to fail). At a 50% chance of success, that's a >99.9% chance that at least one of them succeeds (1-.5^10). I know 50% might seem high, but I think that my rationality skills, domain knowledge (eventually) and experience (eventually) give me an edge. Even at a 10% chance of success, I have about a 65% (1-.9^10) chance at succeeding in one of those 10 tries, and I think that 10% chance of success is very conservative.
Things I may be underestimating: the chances that I judge something else (earning to give? AI research? less altruistic? a girl/family?) to be a better use of my time. Changes in the economy that make success a lot less likely.
Anyway, there seems to be a high likelihood that I continue to start startups until I succeed, and there seems to be a high likelihood that I will succeed by the time I retire, in which case I should have enough money to ensure that I have a sufficient standard of living for the rest of my life.