I have never seen a high paying job in tech that wasn't ALSO higher stress and generally more hours. I'm sure exceptions exist, but as I've gotten to my mid thirties I've noticed that those in my friend group who make the most are also the most stressed. One of them is very, very good at CS. He works for a FAANG and makes an excellent salary. And he's fucking depressed as hell. But he has exactly the life I thought I wanted ten years ago.

I'm an OK programmer who has no commute, lives in the middle of nowhere crazy cheap, and has almost no overhead. I work 8 hours a day. If I get paged on the weekend (hey, it happens) I work commensurately fewer hours during the week. I see my kid more than most dads I know. He's said (in not so many words) he envies what I have.

There's always someone faster, slower, richer, poorer, healthier, and sicker than you.

Google reveals various versions and sources of the exchange. Here's mine:

Vonnegut: Can you believe this guy? He makes more money in a single day than we'll make in our entire lives. And you wrote Catch-22!

Heller: Sure, but I have something he'll never have.

Vonnegut: Yeah, Joe? What's that?

Heller: Enough.

"I'm working on my second million!"

(pause for people to act impressed, while secretly loathing you)

"I gave up on my first."

Strangely while Facebook, Amazon, Netflix Google haven't been invented, Apple is here. Also strangely me too, but with long dark brown hair instead grey.

Like today Apple and a bunch of other high status companies are highly sought after employers of note. And just like today overwork and burnout their highly skilled workers and then toss them out like yesterdays trash.

Work for Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Intel they said. Make a name for yourself. Work on stuff other people think is exciting they said. Nope I said. And I've been happy enough over the last 35 years doing stuff no one else really cares about for companies and clients no one's ever heard of.

End of the day, No Name Corps money is just as good as Googles and Apples. Sure there is less of it. But the difference you paying for with lack of control and stress.

Edit: There's always someone faster, slower, richer, poorer, healthier, and sicker than you.

If there is one thing growing up in the bay area has taught me it's this.

"Its just a fucking job" indeed!

I've lost a lot of friends and recognize that life is way too short to not be putting as much time as possible toward something you find totally compelling. The stock answer is contentment and "happiness."

The most content person I've ever met was a flower cart man in Belmopan, Belize. Probably made $100 a week at most. He knew all he wanted to do was bring beautiful flowers to people and give them a smile. He had a point in life. Sure he had kids, but he knew that they would move on one day and do their own thing, and he wanted to be known as the best flower man in Belize so he got up early to start and worked late.

This pervasive idea that "it's just a fucking job" is ultimately a milquetoast cop-out. Spend your hours doing something that has impact to you.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. ... Which is okay. Sometimes it's all right just to be a little bad. To know your limitations. Make do with what you've got.

Maybe because I agree, but this is one of my favorite statements written by anyone ever.

When you're in your early 20s everyone has similar goals - you're going to be a goddamn giant success, no matter what your field is. As the years go on you realise that's not going to happen and you have to re-evaluate. It's not always easy.

For me personally, I know I do good work. I know my coworkers can rely on me to deliver. Maybe I could be out there giving more conference talks and raising my profile, but I've learned to accept that isn't my forte, and that's ok. As engineers most of us are extremely lucky that even with very little public recognition we still earn the kind of money most people can only dream of.

When I'm at work, I do the best I can do. Then I get out of the door at a good time, go home to my family and have a blast with them. I'm happy, though my 21 year old self might recoil in horror to see it.

But Pippen had the most rebounds and Rodman the most assists during that time. That’s what made the team win, you want to win as a team and there is no I in team. Then you retire from engineering, never making the next Facebook or revolutionary Operating System, instead going onto lead the next generation stars to the promised land even though you were never an individual superstar during your career (see Steve Kerr for reference).

Update: also Rodman talked Kim Il down from nuclear disaster, so there is plenty of opportunity to stay relevant as your career progresses

As for Rodman, he had become irrelevant and unmarketable and all he did was suck up to Kim Jong Un. There was a WSJ article about this. He was not in a position to talk him out of anything.

They change their goals "I didn't want that anyway" "It wasn't my destiny to do that" "I'm much happier with this than if I had done that" etc...

At the end of the day you either realize your goal, or you change it. You can either pretend like it was the plan all along, admit defeat and try something new, or wallow in defeat.

Only one of those is sustainable.

Think about any life goal that requires significant work, such as "I'd like to be a superstar engineer" or "I've got no savings, but I want to save up and buy a house" or "I'd like to become a black-belt martial artist" or "I'd like to publish a successful novel."

How long does it take to achieve something like that?

There are a lot of goals in life that take five, ten, or even more years to achieve.

Now here's the thing...

If you're doing this life thing correctly, you will gain a significant amount of wisdom and perspective in any five- or ten-year span.

And with that wisdom and perspective comes the realization that some of your old goals weren't worth achieving. Or perhaps you will simply find a different goal you like better. Or a different path to the same goal. That's not cognitive dissonance. That's learning and growing.

I learned a few really good things from this, like, said friend is completely open about the things that he doesn't know. He doesn't hide or bluff his lack of knowledge, he went 'so far' as to google something in front of me that he didn't know. I realised this was a factor to some degree of attitude, upbringing, and socialization. I adopted it and I honestly have learned much more than I would have otherwise.

The other aspect of it is of course, I've taken a different career path than him. We have different sets of knowledge (even though I think if he took the time in about six months he could probably be up to my level in my path).

It's a manner of attitude, rather than anything else

0) Remember that social media and the press shows the best parts of people's lives and rarely the crappy parts that everyone has.

1) You can't have it all. Often people sacrifice other parts of their lives to achieve in one area. My old boss that got promoted to a very high position never found a partner or children. Other tech friends who have earned a lot have worked thier whole lives and never went backpacking around the world like I did.

2) Some people have advantages. Eg Bill Gates was a millionaire before he even started college, many famous people had privileged upbringings.

3) Some people are just lucky. Maybe they were in the right place in the right time. I had a very wealthy friend who I never figured out why they spent so much or how they could afford such a big house and expensive vacations. Later I found out their father literally won the lottery, $50Mil - at the same time her sister has severe deformities from birth. Which brings to

4) Money and "Success" doesn't equal happiness. My wealthy friend would easily give it up to have a healthy happy sister. Taleb talks a lot about how suburbs filled with huge multi-million dollar houses are filled with bored lonely people.

5) You're probably much wealthier and have a better life than most people already. Remember >2Billion people don't have clean tap water they can drink. People are risking their lives so they can come to the US or Europe to work in construction or cook your meals in a restaurant.

When I take a picture on camera, I sometimes realize that a person looking at the picture will probably imagine something much better than reality.

For example, an entire day spent with my kids who try to be as annoying as possible; then for five minutes they act cute, and I make a nice photo. A person looking at the photo will probably imagine that the whole day was fun. Or we take a trip somewhere, take a nice photo in front of a local historical building, then the kids get really annoying and we have to cancel the trip and go home. Again, a person looking at the photo will probably be impressed by what kind of trips we can make with the kids.

So when I look at someone else's photo, I can do the reverse reasoning. The smiling guy on the photo? Maybe the whole day was actually quite bad, and he only had 5 minutes of fun. A photo taken on a ship? Seems nice, but maybe the trip was slow and boring, and the weather mostly bad. An attractive girl next to him? Maybe he spent five minutes talking with her, and the rest of the day traveling or siting at various meetings. Or maybe not; the point is that the nicest possible scenario is only one of the possibilities.

This might work on a surface level, but you're just plastering over the problem, not rising above it.

If that's true, then examining what it is that you think someone else is getting is worthwhile, as is examining what you actually already have. Comparisons are appropriate to make sure your expectations are calibrated to something more realistic than feelings.

Bill Gates was a billioniare multiple times over before he finished college, considering that he never received a degree.

Harvard did grant him an honorary law degree in 2007, but not before he acquired his wealth.

Covetousness Resentment Sadness (Maybe ambition?)

Covetousness is really, really, bad. It will eat your soul. It is the desire to take what someone else has for yourself. “I want his car.” “I want his girlfriend.”

Resentment can be useful for a short term, but will eat you and cause bitterness if it festers. “I am not paid what I’m worth, I can get better elsewhere.” Is a useful statement if it is accurate and you act on it. But if you are lying to yourself or if you don’t act, it turns bad.

Sadness is a normal human emotion when things just aren’t how you hoped they were.

Ambition is the (mostly healthy within limits) impetus to achieve more. “I want a boyfriend who is nice the way his is.” “I want an even cooler car than anyone I know.” As long as you remain healthy and within your ethical system, ambition is good.

I think maybe taking a frustrating emotion like envy and reframing it with component parts can help you approach it differently?

Just an idea.

I know that I’m intellectually vain. It’s a personal foible and it can be very unattractive, but I’m always concerned that everyone know how smart I am. But I think being able to admit it, and acknowledging it is a fault, is the first step towards controlling it.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of being envious. Envy and greed turn into resentment and anger. You need to nip it.

If you know the person, you know what’s a great way to handle this... Give the guy a call or drop by and congratulate them on their good news.

And for yourself, grab a notebook, go sit at the library or wherever and write down the things you want to do. Anything, this is for you. Write that you want to be the president. Channel your inner Office Space and write that you want to have a threesome. Or be the next Zuck. Or catch a fish. Whatever.

Then write down a high level plan of attack to achieve each thing. One thing per page. Then write the list of things you really want to do.

In my personal experience, envy is usually more of a reflection of what I failed to do or dream or plan vs what some other person achieved. Be secure in who you are and what you want, and you will be better for it.

Both being jealous and mentally knocking people down are pretty normal human things to do. If you listen, you’ll notice lots of people say things out loud that have the undertone of here’s why you’re not that great or here’s why I’m better than you. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s not.

The main thing I tend to think about is how I’m not in competition with anyone but myself. I can improve, or not improve, and I can affect my own situation. But either way, it doesn’t affect anyone else, and their lot doesn’t affect me. It won’t help me make more money or get more attention if I bring someone else down, nor will it prevent them from getting attention or money.

Another way to approach this is acknowledging that some people are actually very talented, some people are very focused and work incredibly hard. You have the option to drop the jealousy and join others in respecting someone’s achievements. You can also study them, find out what they’re doing and how they work in order to emulate the behaviors that got them where they are.

Another way to deal with this is meditation. If you study a little meditation, one of the first things you learn is how to identify your talkative and often negative inner voice, and then after you learn how to recognize it, you learn to acknowledge it and let it go, in favor of a more peaceful and positive inner monologue.

It's also worth remembering that these talented, hard working, people didn't author their talents or tendencies for working hard. Their talents and temperaments derive completely from their genes, upbringing and to varying degrees luck. I.e. they can't really - in the ultimate sense - take credit for their success. Nor can I.

>Another way to deal with this is meditation.

I've found meditation a great way to more deeply instill the disposition above. It has helped me celebrate - rather than seethe - with people when they 'achieve' any kind of success.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleshas_(Buddhism)

Edited:

The above helps a person to manage their own Kleshas. But if it is the other person's that is bothering you, then it helps to cultivate a mind of acceptance (according to Buddhism, that is).

And to quote the Bard from Othello:

Who steals my purse steals trash;

’tis something, nothing;

’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.”

I hosted a person from poor country in my San Francisco apartment. They had traveled here on a paid trip for a tech conference. They asked where they could buy food for less than one dollar per meal. It turned out they only had $6 to pay for their entire stay in San Francisco, including public transit fair for a return to the airport (which costs almost $10). I don't stress about finding money to pay for food or public transit, and occasionally being the one who has more helps me balance out feelings envy when I see people who have more than I do.

Keep some old shoes or take your restaurant leftovers with you to give to that next homeless guy at the intersection

This happens to pretty much everyone.

> What do you do about it?

Your options are:

Motivation: "If I learn to do the things s/he does, I can be more successful too."

Rationalization: "Well, if I had had the same opportunities s/he did, I'd have been just as successful. I did the best I could with what I had. And at least I'm still doing better than X, Y, and Z."

Indifference: "X is doing well? That's nice. Wonder what I should have for lunch today?"

I find I gravitate more towards the bottom of the list as I get older.

The more confident, self assured, and happy I became with my own life, the more the envy went away. The more I became happy for that person's success. Also I've found that there more I know and like a person, the less envy I felt.

At least for me, getting married helped with this big-time.

If I'm not making enough for the amount of work that I do, I will find another job.

Two of us were hired as actuaries at the same time fresh out of college to work in the same department. Immediately, it was clear that he was much more competent, smarter, and and overall better employee than I was. The bosses would consistently praise him, call him smart, etc etc while I got average performance reviews. As someone coming out of college with a degree in mathematics, where I was constantly called 'the smart one' in my friend group, it was brutal. I was not mentally prepared to fall behind a peer like this in such an obvious manner. When I wasn't sulking, I was angry. I was the smart one, or so I had been told.

It took a change in perspective to get myself to a better place. I deleted social media and stopped comparing myself to other people. I started congratulating my coworker when he did well, because honestly, he deserves it. His success does not have to be my failure, working at a company does not have to be a zero-sum game.

Getting to this better place has helped me tremendously in my professional and personal life. I am a very high performer now, have a great girlfriend, great friends, a great job, everything I could ask for. I learned that it does not pay to stress about being the best, because you will never be the best, and if you are, you need to find a different company, friends, whatever.

If you find someone who is outpacing you, humble yourself for a damn minute and try asking them what they are doing that makes them so effective, then see if you can make it work for you.

If more engineers had this mindset, we'd all be better off.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%27ll%20gla...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrUbFZdiZxM

Perhaps it's time to change your perspective. No one is ever the smartest in the room. There's always something that can be learned from someone else.

Because NOBODY else there was ever going to have the opportunity to be a "high-flying" developer.

Basically, there were a few engineers that had gained the trust of upper management. The "chosen few" engineers were talented, though not spectacularly so, and had also saddled the company with their share of mistakes and lots of technical debt.

This created a cycle where:

1. The "chosen few" developers got all of the greenfield(-ish) development work -- the only work at the company where it was really possible to move quickly, hit deadlines, and "wow" people

2. The "chosen few" developers got to make nearly all of the technical decisions, and if you weren't one of them you were stuck forever implementing somebody else's idea of a good solution

3. The "chosen few" developers were always solving challenging issues, which made them look impressive to management, who lacked the technical ability to understand that a lot of these issues were actually caused by the "chosen few"'s poor decisions in the first place.

4. The "other" developers were always plodding waist-deep through technical debt, much of it caused by the "chosen few."

I was there for only four years but eventually it became clear that there was literally no way for me to shine there. You can't shine when doing maintenance work on legacy nightmare code. I became jealous of the "chosen few" and grew a bit bitter and burned out. My work suffered and I was eventually let go.

That was one year ago.

Now I'm making 25% more money at a different company where I'm 100% more productive and 100% happier. =)

     When someone younger than me, in my field, is making more money 
     / getting more acclaim / winning praise from people I respect, 
     it makes me seethe. Sometimes I even waste my time looking for 
     a way to invalidate them, to put an asterisk* on their success, 
     so I can feel better about myself.

If you are jealous because they are more talented than you, then YOU are the problem.

If you are jealous because you're not given a fair chance, then THE COMPANY is the problem.

“You have to be that person. Do you want to be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, and their self image? If you’re not willing to do a whole sale, 24/7, 100% swap with who that person is, then there’s no point in being jealous.”

Material possessions and success are fun, but ultimately only generate fleeting happiness.

I have run my company for almost 20 years now and have seen many of my friends/acquaintances make 10 million+ in a much shorter time. Not that I dont wish I could have more money for less effort (in the same way that I wish I could play the guitar or speak multiple foreign languages). Yet Im very happy with my life as I understand clearly what makes me happy and dont let my happiness be defined by what someone else has done or has.

I acknowledge I’m not as good as I could be. And I try to use it as fuel to improve my own life.

I crucify myself with all that I lack in the hopes of a “transformation.”

In practice, that means setting some time aside in the day to read more, workout more, practice more.

But I have to be careful. Sometimes envy can be deceitful. It’s easy to fall for things I don’t actually want.

So I use envy as a guide, an approximate one, to reflect on what I lack and what I can do to change it, if anything at all.

It’s my Elysian mirror.

How would you want to respond to the friend?

Personally, I would congratulate the friend on his/her success. I want good things to happen to my friends. It doesn’t take away from my own successes, or change anything about what is going on in my own life, so there is no value in tearing people down.

Hopefully this perspective helps in reorienting one’s mindset.

If you can transition yourself to an abundance mindset, I think you'll find the success of your peers as a collective asset: as your field or group becomes more credible/successful, more opportunities will open up for you. If you can figure out how to use their success to your benefit, you maybe find yourself thankful for them.

But in the moment of envy it comes down to what your personal goals are and if you are reaching them. Personally, when I see others flying high I wonder how many long hours and weekends they have put in for that 10-20% extra they might be making. When others get more acclaim I wonder how long the glow of that lasts until they are expected to raise the bar even more to outdo their last accomplishment.

If your goals are acclaim and more money then it would be good to talk to the high flyers and find out what their special sauce is. If your goals lie elsewhere its okay to take a minute to be frustrated, but see how that frustration could be used to fuel your own drive toward your goals. High-flyers only have so many good years anyway until they are eclipsed by someone younger, prettier, more skilled or dynamic.

Just for reference, I realized that I am not cut out to be a high flyer but had specific compensation and work/life balance goals for myself.

We’re talking about the difference between an engineer approaching forty at an ordinary company earning a little over $100k versus someone ten years younger at a FAANGMI earning $250k+. There are a lot of people in the former group who would happily give up a few weekends and put up with more stress to be a part of the latter group.

I was envious of my friends success and higher pay but I never wanted to deny them or dream of their failure.

It did motivate me and was one of the reason why I quit my public sector job for private sector.

I think everybody have different path and that learning to accept it is maturity. The mindset of being better than them is terrible for me. I focus on what they have that I lack and what can I improve upon. I also accept that I wasn't as good as selling myself as some of my friends are especially coming from an ESL background. But I've come to term with that and focus on building my skill set that I lack and deem important to me.

The people that do better than me are something I use as a road map but I make sure not to waste time day dreaming about being in their position or to over think it. It's a waste of time because there are tons of other things I can be doing right now (improving in many area of my life instead of day dreaming).

Homer Simpson and I are both pretty sure it is indeed envy, not jealousy.

https://youtu.be/Tmx1jpqv3RA

The only people I would feel envy towards are people who have both time and money, and could do whatever they want (fuck you money).

Especially depressing is reading IndieHackers, because it seems like everyone there just tests out some idea, then suddenly they're making $35k MRR. But even those people I'm not envious. Most of the time I realize that their idea wouldn't be something I'm passionate about, and even when it's a similar product to mine it wouldn't be built how I would choose to build it. Even if I was rich I would be building my projects - and that's what I enjoy, so the journey is more important than the end result.

I don’t think the journey is more important than the end here. “The end” is being happy. If you can simply exist and be happy, that’s going to be more satisfying than aggressively pursuing the path you believe leads to happiness.

Looking at happy people and telling yourself it’s a facade is a really bad idea.

I don’t see how this is true for any urban area, where $80k will not let you save any significant amount whereas $200k will provide you a decent cushion in case your incoming cash flow experiences turbulence. The peace of mind resulting from this certainly improves quality of life, especially if you have mouths to feed.

Also, at $200k you can save enough to start investing in equity, and make real wealth gains as opposed to the pittance earned by way of wages for labor.

You know there is some aspect of jealousy going on here, and being so self-aware in that way is really important and you're half the way there already! So any time you feel that you want to tear apart someone's ideas or someone's code or whatever else, that might just be the jealousy talking. While there's a lot to be said for being an old motherfucker (by tech standards) and lessons that you can teach others, just always use that as a damper on yourself.

Perhaps a good antidote to that mindset is to refocus. Tell people what they are doing right. Look for little moments of genius when you see them. Actively look for things that are done right, and be sure to let the person in question know what they did right! Building people up will make you feel good, and it will definitely feel a lot better than professional jealousy.

I hope this is helpful in some way.

I always like seeing people succeed, use that envy to work harder and do better. Set a goal they have reached and go for it.

Be careful spending your time lamenting them and looking for holes in their success. Don't waste your time like this.

You should check out this book Zen Shorts, it's for kids but has some great lessons.

Here's a quick summary . . .

“The heavy load”, story goes….

Two traveling monks reached a town where there was a young woman waiting to step out of her sedan chair. The rains had made deep puddles and she couldn’t step across without spoiling her silken robes. She stood there, looking very cross and impatient. She was scolding her attendants. They had nowhere to place the packages they held for her, so they couldn’t help her across the puddle.

The younger monk noticed the woman, said nothing, and walked by. The older monk quickly picked her up and put her on his back, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other side. She didn’t thank the older monk, she just shoved him out of the way and departed.

As they continued on their way, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. After several hours, unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “That woman back there was very selfish and rude, but you picked her up on your back and carried her! Then she didn’t even thank you!”

“I set the woman down hours ago,” the older monk replied. “Why are you still carrying her?”

Now the question goes to you all, “Do you think you have carried it long enough?”

Do keep in mind, a big part of success is your network and luck, so that plays a part. But we can always improve, strive to do better.

So be happy for them and congratulate them unless of course this person is just a daft p--- about their success.

Then I just tell them.

Hey, Good For You.

GFY!

Who denies women have been systematically oppressed: "The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory." -Jordan Peterson, history understander

Who claims to be a champion free speech, yet has sued and threatened several of his critics?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson

>Peterson additionally threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against Kate Manne, who accused him of misogyny in a critical book review of 12 Rules for Life. [212] Following a negative book review of 12 Rules for Life in the New York Times by Pankaj Mishra, Peterson called Mishra an "arrogant racist son of a bitch" and threatened to "slap" Mishra should they ever meet in person.[213]

[212] https://www.thecut.com/2018/09/jordan-peterson-threatened-to...

[213] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/23/jordan...

sure. I'm no big fan, but don't color good advice bad when it comes from the wrong person.

All his quote is advocating for is self-reference and relativity with regards to self improvement.

It's sort of like quoting Mark Twain. 4/5 people will enjoy the quote, that last person will bring up what a tyrannical bigoted racist he was. (opinion theirs)

The reality is that people who aren't necessarily great themselves can bring wisdom to our attention. Just because it was THEM that had the idea, or at least the ability to bring that idea to words, doesn't invalidate the idea.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/23/jordan...

>Why is Jordan Peterson so angry? For someone whose whole routine is based on telling men to “toughen up”, the clinical psychologist and author of the bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, who rose to prominence in the UK after his run-in with Cathy Newman on Channel 4, seems to unravel at the slightest provocation. After a brutal but perfectly polite and clinical takedown in the New York Review of Books by Pankaj Mishra, where the rudest thing said about Peterson is that his latest book is packaged for people who have grown up on BuzzFeed listicles, Peterson had a meltdown. He called Mishra a “sanctimonious prick”, an “arrogant racist son of a bitch”, said he would “slap him” if he was in the room, and rounded it up with a final “fuck you”. Somewhere along the tantrum, he tweeted that Mishra was a “dealer in lies and half-truths”. The responses that followed can only be summarised as a mass sideways look to camera.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and...

>Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism, by Pankaj Mishra.

>Closer examination, however, reveals Peterson’s ageless insights as a typical, if not archetypal, product of our own times: right-wing pieties seductively mythologized for our current lost generations.

The world has a few winners and lots of losers. Like me, you’re probably a loser. This is just part of the tragicomedy of life. For most of history people were born farmers and died farmers.

The best thing you can do is to focus on being better than yourself yesterday.

Also, envy isn’t a bad thing. If someone has something you don’t, do you want that thing? If yes, envy motivates you to try harder. If no, who cares?

Sometimes it's mostly hype and hot air. Theranos was valued at $10 billion. It dropped to basically zero overnight. Now the founder is set to be prosecuted on criminal charges.

Other times, sure, their success is real -- and comes at the cost of divorce, chronic drug use to manage consequent health issues etc. Rich and famous people are sometimes privately pretty miserable. We sometimes get insight into their personal misery during headline making personal drama, like bankruptcy, ugly divorces or death due to drug overdose.

I like to say "Sometimes, the grass is greener because of all the crap."

Yeah, they can run marathons and got into a DL team at Google and got 2350s on their SATs and made a million in crypto, what of it? I’m very skeptical that the people better than me aren’t better than me for a darn good reason.

The other student was Hispanic and spoke English as a second language. He had no idea where to even start. He didn't even know what it was.

My dad did the Cryptoquote in the newspaper every single morning. I knew exactly how this worked.

I was one of the "smart" kids at school, but my ability to solve this puzzle had little or nothing to do with innate intelligence. I just had seen such puzzles many, many times and helped my dad when he got stuck because he didn't like failing to solve it. So if he couldn't do it on his own, he began asking family members to look at it.

Meanwhile, I never have really become fluent in a second language like the Hispanic student I was trying to assist because it struck me as unfair that he had zero hope of solving this puzzle due purely to large forces beyond his control.

But he was a poor immigrant of the wrong ethnicity. The school system and world around him placed no value on the extra knowledge he had due to who his dad was. Instead, it placed value on what I knew because of who my dad was, somewhat randomly and arbitrarily, not because there are careers to be of solving puzzles in the daily paper and not because being bilingual is useless.

There is so much luck, happenstance, born into the right family, right-place-and-right-time involved in "success" that I just can't be arsed to invest a lot of emotional heat in looking at other people and wishing I had their stuff.

I've worked hard at making my private life work. I think if I ever have "success," it will be sustainable and not destroy me/my life. In contrast, many people with public success got it by making crippling personal sacrifices. In some cases, it literally kills them.

I'll pass on that. It's simply not anything I want.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-11-02

There's many things I would rather be doing with 8-9 hours a day: AI research, cancer research, volunteer work. I also think my greatest achievements in life have all occurred when I wasn't under pressure, which is difficult when you have a full time job.

The next step is to realize and accept that you can only impact things that are within your sphere of influence. Focus 100% on those things, especially the things that make you happy.

Note that you rarely know the full story behind someone else’s success. It may have been luck, it may have been privilege, it may have been that they are simply able to perform at a level that you are not capable of (at least not yet). All of those things are OK — just focus on what you have influence over.

I did really well for myself early on (not as well as some, better than most) and I realized it didn't make me happy intrinsically. As such, I've started investing in myself, in relationships, and in figuring out what does make me happy. It's great seeing my contemporaries do well. I've let go of a lot of things and people who weren't making me happy lately and it's really nice, actually.

Perspective matters, and in some ways, comes for us all in time.

I didn't grow up very competitive, never played any sports, but I started working very early so that's where I got most of my positive affirmation, so that's one reason why I always put so much focus on the importance of my professional success.

Another is that I grew up relatively poor and tell myself I've fought to attain wealth and happiness at the same time for myself and my family, so seeing someone else achieving these goals before me triggers me to see myself as a failure, doubting and regretting decisions in my past, which is obviously self-destructive and not a good way to live your life.

So far I've managed to use the emotions of envy to focus myself in times of distress or immense pressure, but it's only a stopgap solution until I manage to find contentment with my situation, however the outcome, the road to stoicism can be quite long though.

I went to Uni and there were people that were smarter than me by quite a bit. It is just something you gotta accept and be okay with it.

I am lucky enough to be smarter than the vast majority of the population, and I make more money and I have opportunities that most people don't have

When I saw real poverty it was a reality check and I've calmed down since.

Now, granted, he was already really well paid when he said this, but he had only the 4th highest salary on his team at the time.

But you have to realize there are so many things are going on you might not be aware of eg. relations, background, even luck!

Instead, try to exploit your recognition of their success and ask/learn about their story. That will help you a lot too.

When you think that way: they went through a path instead of you so you can now explore their story and get their experience much faster.

And don't forget: when there are 10 competitors with virtually the same skills and performance its still only one who wins the contest with the prize and goes away with all the chicks. The others seem to be unsuccessful from a bird view, but in reality there might be not much difference in value.

Realizing this made calm, I am totally ok with lottery. Everything is a lottery a bit, except you really nail it: but that requires so much work I won't ever be envy.

> Comparison is the thief of joy.

So, don't compare.

I still get just as envious as anyone else, especially when times are tough, but thinking outwardly helps get me re-aligned. I've already got everything I need, having more money would just mean living a more comfortable life which is something you get used to and stop appreciating pretty quick.

My interpretation from the book: it's a perfectly natural feeling, but it doesn't mean you have to act on negative destructive instincts. There are ways to channel this energy into more productive behaviours (e.g. by using it to challenge yourself).

You don’t know what those newer hires have on their resumes nor the conditions under which they were hired. You’re also not likely to make any good impressions for yourself by being identified as a threat or confrontational. Good management doesn’t like that behavior (edit-outside of professions like law, politics, sales/marketing, etc).

Read “Siddhartha“ by Hermann Hesse. Take a deliberate approach to managing your emotions. Mediate. Remember that the world is bigger than one persons seemingly great career - both yours and others careers.

Corporate America has all of this as negative side effects. How you react is your choice. Maybe take the opportunity to reevaluate what you should be learning or working towards to advance your own career. Look for things you can add to your resume. Consider options that make this one particular situation not your only source of money, professional respect and growth, or so on.

Bravery isn't the absence of fear, it's doing a thing despite the fear. It's overcoming your animal instincts using the power of your cognitive mind.

I don't know a word for handling envy that's the equivalent of bravery...maybe "compersion"? Perhaps in the way one might be brave in the face of fear, one may seek compersion in the face of jealousy.

On the second, suggest trying to figure out what skill(s) the other person has that enabled them to achieve that which you are surprised (it didn't just happen by magic). Is it technical? Personal interaction? Networking? Then consider if that may be something you can/should work to improve.

On the ego issue - There was a point in my life when I was a very angry person, apt to bitterness and tirades. I strongly encourage reading a book or two on chan/zen. You need not become a buddhist to benefit from their philosophical teachings and you don't need to meditate every day. But I do think you can become small 'e' enlightened and really improve how you view and interact with others and the ups and downs of daily life.

But if you do decide to make it a goal then work toward accomplishing it.

It sounds to me like you're wandering aimlessly in life to have decided your goals are to try to find ways to be counter-productive.

Here’s where it gets more fun — that process made me realize that where I “wanted to be” was not where I wanted to be. And this post was fun to read because I reflected on how far off I am from when I felt the same way, and yet I’ve achieved different successes than I had imagined, experienced different failures than I had dreaded. It’s a wild ride; take time to reflect, work to improve yourself and set goals, but balance it with enjoyment of the ride.

Other than specific edge cases (for example, competing with a colleague for a promotion), success is not mutually exclusive.

You can be happy for your peers when they do well -- their performance doesn't mean that you can't succeed, too.

There's always somebody better than you but there's always somebody better than the person that's better than you. Usually they're younger and smarter but whatever.

I guess in the end I have a job as there's only so many people super smart who are doing what they do. Eventually they need to hire low achievers like myself.

I decided to compile some of my favourite learnings from this thread:

1) Jealousy comes from a scarcity mindset. Use this as awareness and fuel to improve.

2) Never compare yourself to someone across a single domain. Things must be analyzed in the context of their lives, including what they've chosen to give up.

3) Outward success != happiness. This is particularly important in the age of social media, when people post the best 10% of their lives. Consistent happiness > sporadic highs.

4) Assess whether you'd actually want to do what that person does, not just be perceived as they are.

And then you can celebrate 'your' successes, commiserate failures, lament failings, while freeing the other you to improve.

More difficult if 'they're' arrogant and sneering perhaps, but that's a only a challenge, to be faced head-on.

It all depends on one's state of mind. I've had times when it was difficult for me to face such a fact, and times when I looked at it in a quite positive way.

The only people I ever envy are those who don't have to work, and by the nature of that fact, I don't work with them.

You made different choices. You valued different things at different times. If you optimized everything to get the job you maybe would have the job - but you didn’t, because it’s a job and there is more to life than that.

What you see in their title / newspapers / on social media is not their life. The acclaim / praise is not their life. It does not guarantee happiness / success. It does not make you worse or lesser.

May the envy / anger be fleeting. It’s human, it’s allowed, but in the end, useless and harmful.

I'd say the key thing is that you've noticed the envy, which means that it can't control you -- not all the time.

Keep paying attention.

I totally gave up on him when his lies became so audacious he got mad at me twice for casually dismissing his claims of being the real Satoshi and that Rigetti totally stole his ideas, forcing him to play catch up. He managed to get in a story about strangling a person to death and the Canadian Armed Forces covering it up because it was a "ptsd-related blackout," and that the RCMP would put out a kill order if anyone without top secret clearance entered his commercial "lab".

Why he couldn't figure out why I was so disinterested in these stories is beyond me... I think he was just looking for a buddy with similar professional interests that he could brag to, and couldn't figure out how to keep me interested in his otherwise woefully lacking / plagiarized code base that didn't do nearly half of what he claimed it did.

Originally I was trying to help him get his head on straight, but within a day of his total meltdown at my expense, I was over that, and have zero sympathy for what his investors are soon to learn.

Ironically, in all his fantasy wisdom and military-strength security, even after supposedly having his ideas stolen from him, he never got me to sign a non-disclosure agreement, even when I brought it up multiple times with both him and his primary investor.

It really looks like self-sabotage to me. Baffling.

I went along with everything until I discovered nearly his entire code base was copied from other people's git repos and the one thing that seemed to have a little genuine code wasn't capable of meeting his claims. Then he pretended it as "obfuscated" and as a hacker, I should see through it. The problem is,I totally saw through it.

Maybe he was hoping I'd turn his imaginations into real things. I really couldn't tell.

His behaviour was so bizarre, I was concerned he could explode spectacularly. Not worth the time and effort to calm his jealousy and internal rage.

2. It may be helpful to think that this is probably also true for the person you're looking ahead to: she's also looking at somebody "ahead" of her. So, even if you get there, not much will change, you'll just keep looking at people ahead (also see "hedonic treadmill" [2]).

3. A lot of the time you're just seeing PR, and they're in fact not ahead of you. For example a recent trend is "winning startup competitions". I had friends who went to these, kept winning them, they got futured in newspapers... but then the product had no traction and they shut down quickly. Don't confuse PR with the real thing. Social media can be misleading.

4. In my experience, a lot of it is down to luck. For example, for our group, if a friend gets a juicy job at a FAANG, it will feel like they're ahead. (And they will be.) But having been at a FAANG and done interviews, believe me, a lot of it is down to luck --- esp. when it comes to getting a juicy job. Same is true for startups, I would say most of it is down to luck.

5. Often, other than luck, there's really something the person has done to get there; a lot of the times the major component is _hustle_. Ask yourself, would you want to do that to get there? For example, some startup founders who achieve initial success (Series A and later) end up working for their own company for 10+ years. Would you want to work for the same company (even your own) for that long? Eg. I had a startup, it failed, and since then I'm "just" an employee, and I switch jobs every 2-3 years, and I'm loving it, because I keep learning new things, meet new people, go to new countries, etc; right now I wouldn't want to trade this to be a Series X co-founder having to explain to my board why we're not growing like I said we would in the pitch deck (most companies don't end up growing like they were "supposed to").

[1] unless you become the next M.Z. (unlikely), this will always be true.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

I and many other people do not ever seethe about the successes of others. I don’t say that to self-aggrandize, but rather to counter some of the other people here saying it’s normal or universal. It’s not.

If you find yourself envious, instead focus on enlarging ur world to escape the zero-sum mentality. Try thinking beyond the limitations you perceive yourself in currently.

The thing is, it doesn't matter. There are sports players in the world who make more money in a week than most of those SV developers make in a year, too. Maybe I could move to the US and make enough to pay off my entire mortgage in a year or two. But I don't want to live and work in the US, so for me personally, that opportunity isn't interesting or relevant.

What matters to me in terms of my professional career is making the most of opportunities when I do want what they offer, and being content that my professional development is OK and I'm doing good work that I enjoy. Obviously better compensation is always welcome, but the reasons I'm glad I went freelance and ultimately started my own businesses are mostly about increased flexibility, diversity, and making my/our own decisions instead of being subordinate to The Boss. You can't put a price on the improvements in quality of life that come from a better work environment and better work/life balance.