Comment by raw_anon_1111

Comment by raw_anon_1111 3 days ago

Is this some type of founders myth?

Musk left Canada at 17, went to college in the US and sold is first business in 1999.

But I also worked at low minimum wage job at 18 at Radio Shack while living at home with my parents driving the car my parents bought me. I assure you if I have lost my job, it wouldn’t have hurt. I would just spend more time hanging out with my friends and on my $4K Mac setup.

Musk was not going to be homeless if he failed.

WalterBright 3 days ago

Feel free to read a biography of him.

> Musk was not going to be homeless if he failed.

Right. He'd just get a job and rent an apartment.

I had a friend who started company after company starting in high school. Some were more successful than others, but he never lost his enthusiasm for the next company. The last time I saw him, he was living out of a trailer because he put everything he had into his next company. (Sadly, he passed a few years ago from an accident.) He left behind a large wake, and his memorial service was packed.

(He grew up in poverty.)

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omnicognate 3 days ago

I'm not sure what point is being made here. AIUI, Musk comes from a wealthy family. Are you saying a biography would say otherwise?
I think the point people are making about the low wage jobs is that it's irrelevant. People from wealthy backgrounds take low paid jobs sometimes, so having done so doesn't imply he's a rags-to-riches story.

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- WalterBright 3 days ago
  
  I'm saying Musk's company was not founded on family wealth. Even if it was, where are all the other trillion dollar companies given that lots of families have wealth?
  > People from wealthy backgrounds take low paid jobs sometimes, so having done so doesn't imply he's a rags-to-riches story.
  It does in Musk's case. Why not read a biography of him? It's more interesting than speculation.
  
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  omnicognate 2 days ago
  
  Nobody said his company was "founded on family wealth". They said he had that wealth available as a cushion to fall back on should his ventures fail. They also never said "every person from a rich family can make a trillion dollar business". They claimed that those who found successful businesses are disproportionately from wealthy backgrounds, and provided a supposed mechanism: a greater ability or willingness to take financial risks knowing there is a limit to how far they can fall if they don't pan out.
  Personally, I don't have any view on whether that is correct or not but it's obviously the claim that was made. It seems plausible but I'd want to see some actual data to believe it, not just anecdotes about a few of the most famous founders. Your points about low wage jobs and other trillion dollar companies are simply not relevant to it, and if biographies of Elon Musk contain information that would refute it you haven't said what or how.
  Knowing you are an extremely accomplished man and fully capable of parsing this, I have to wonder why you seem blind to it.
  
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forgotoldacc 3 days ago

> Right. He'd just get a job and rent an apartment.
I'm not sure if you're suggesting homeless people are homeless simply because they refuse to go out and get a job and an apartment. But as someone who's been homeless and someone who's a friend of people who've been homeless, a very large number of homeless people bust their asses at work. Things beyond their control go wrong and they have no social safety net to fall back on.
Elon Musk could've vacationed barefoot in Southeast Asia for 5 years and still returned to be given some executive job offer, just as many other children of rich kids do. Most people don't have that level of good fortune.

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- WalterBright 3 days ago
  
  > Elon Musk could've vacationed barefoot in Southeast Asia for 5 years and still returned to be given some executive job offer, just as many other children of rich kids do.
  Except that is not what happened. He started doing menial jobs in Canada. He was never given some executive job offer.
  
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  forgotoldacc 3 days ago
  
  You can do any job you want and take any sort of risk when you have a rich family. It's not exactly unusual for rich kids to do menial jobs to "build character" or get some experience before rocketing off to some other venture, knowing they have essentially unlimited money behind them to absorb any mistakes they might make.
  
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hparadiz 3 days ago

> Musk was not going to be homeless if he failed.

I think I can safely say that about every single person I know from college with most being normies. No sane parent is gonna not put up their college student kid till they figure out their next step.

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raw_anon_1111 3 days ago

There is a huge difference between
1. “Son, here is $5000 to cover your rent, utilities and food for one month while you look for another job in San Francisco” and keep doing that for 6 months
And
2. “We can’t afford to help you pay your rent so you are going to have to break your lease and come back home to East MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska. You might be able to get a job at “Big John’s Fish Tackle and WordPress Shop” and maintain the local church’s blog.
I knew my parents would be able to do a cheaper version of #1 s/Atlanta/SFO and s/Small town South GA/Nebraska.
I had a friend who I graduated with who was the oldest of three or four kids and whose mom was a single mother who couldn’t afford to subsidize him.
I was able to move to Atlanta and get a lower paying job as a computer operator based on an internship the year before because I knew that’s where I needed to be. My parents did subsidize me for the first year while I hustled my way to a better job through networking. I couldn’t have done that in small town South GA.
He ended up moving to a slight bigger small town on the border of GA and Alabama that paid more, lower cost of living and lower opportunities

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yunwal 3 days ago

There’s no way you didn’t know anyone whose parents couldn’t put them up for a year. There are lots of people who go to college who’s parents don’t have 30k spending money

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- WalterBright 3 days ago
  
  Putting up your son on the couch is not expensive.
  
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  raw_anon_1111 3 days ago
  
  And then they are in the MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska and having to maybe move from where the jobs are and where they can network. It is expensive to subsidize their living away from home.
  
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