All these smart folks at Stanford are wasting their time studying IT, law or finance. Too much competition. Study agriculture, be rich. Farmers are going to drive Maserati's in the future not successful software developers or Wall Street crowd.
Or people who own farmland?
Outliers are managing 10-20,000 acres. To do that you need a lot of capital. The large need for capital makes it nearly impossible for an outsider to do a startup. Returns are small and farmers face risk with weather, markets and government intervention into the market.
Small farmers pay more for supplies and are at an extreme disadvantage before putting a single seed in the ground. Exceptions to the rule are niches like organic farming and greenhouses.
As easy as supply & demand. App Store Supply & Demand is such that you get apps for free. Food industry Supply & Demand is such that a cup of coffee can be at 3-5 bucks. Just paid 20usd for an organic chicken. And that's cheap! Really does taste different (much better).
So? Coding an iPhone app for free because it's cool? I know agriculture doesn't have any of the "cool" factor some of the people are looking for, but you know what? Working for free isn't cool. Selling chickens 20usd/piece or coffee 4usd/cup probably is. And if you can't make it in the agriculture world - the government will keep subsidizing you forever.
What not to like about it ?
If by farmer you mean someone with millions of dollars of capital invested in farmland, it's not accurate to compare them to a run of the mill software developer. As with all industries in a capitalist economy, the people with the capital are the ones making most of the money.
Jim Rogers? http://www.jimrogersinvestments.com/2012/05/jim-rogers-farme...
edit: followed your later comments, yup.
Regarding "why" people may choose to make iPhone apps instead of farming. It's almost impossible to get started up in agriculture for someone who hasn't inherited a farm. Farmland where I'm from is over $10K per acre at the moment. You need millions of dollars just to buy the land. Then you need millions of dollars to buy all the equipment. Also, subsidies only happen for cash crops and commodities like milk and pork, you don't get subsidies for organic chicken and vegetables.
My favorite was an older couple operating a small hotdog stand... they made a ridiculously delicious meatsauce and basically worked a 35 hour week in the summer in the Northeast, and a similar schedule for a couple of months down South.
They owned a nice house in city, were active in the church and community, and were genuinely good people, who made a great living selling hotdogs, mostly to government and Verizon workers.
But... they faced all of the downside risks of small business owners. Rain == slow or no sales. Big vacation weeks for the workforce == slow sales. Get sick? No pay. That said, it's probably still a better gig than being a game programmer.
Small business owners should be able to plan ahead for rainy days and the slow season. Squirrels can do it. Humans can too.
Sandy in NYC flooded a great deal of infrastructure and left buildings without power or communications for a long time. Large parts of downtown were completely depopulated for weeks on end - that sort of event takes out independent business owners, and you can't effectively plan for it.
For the most part food vending isn't so profitable that you can build up a thick cushion for longer-term outages.
I just point out that many people are programmed to be risk-averse. A shitty job with a steady paycheck is perceived as lower risk than a potentially more lucrative job with a big company.
When I was in college, I sold extended warranties with computers. People would buy a PC for $2,000, and 80% of them would buy an extended warranty for $400. They felt like they were winning, because their liability was now limited.
Game programmers are the equivalent of children workers in a sweatshop.
More people need food than games.
More people want to make games than sell street food.
The food business is brutally hard work, and I have a lot of respect for anyone doing it (well). There's no a priori reason why game programmers should be rewarded more than street food vendors.
Being a game programmer is a choice taken by people with good choices available to them. They could be working less hard and/or earning more elsewhere. They choose not to. I don't see why that's a travesty.
Sweatshop is working is horrible conditions that no one would choose if they had any decent options.
http://english.sina.com/china/2013/0717/609718.html
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/190358-protests-after-street...
It's nice this person found a profitable niche but the concept itself doesn't lend itself to even linear growth.
(I don't know why this gets modded down, but let me clarify: his old salary is his personal income. The "doubled" salary is the income from his business, apparently the combined salary of both of them - so it's misleading to say that he "doubled his salary")
Your point is correct. But people will ignore the key.
>We had no idea that we'd sell so much—we sold 100 shaobings in a day, business is only getting better and better." said the programmer. "We already earned enough for an apartment and now we're saving up more money. We hope to get married next year.
The story has a happy ending. It's nice to see people, if not doing what they love, then at least loving their newfound life. And that's the whole shaobing.
"Nong" means farmer ("Nong Fu"). It implies laborious work.
The closest translation to it should be "Code Farmer".
If they're selling 100 a day, every day, at 2.5元/each, that would be 250元/day and ~7500元/month.
7500元 is only about $1220.
So even if the article is only assuming revenue per month (and not profit), they still have to increase their price or sales (or some combination) by 267% to hit the $3,259/month mentioned.
If you're talking actual profit, which would be a more adequate comparison to his previous salary, then it's probably closer to a factor of 5.
I can imagine for a popular cart selling 100 items is usually done over a lunch, then something similar in the evening again.
I read the story as them thinking that when they sold 100 per day when they started was validation that their plan was going to work.
Programmers are almost notoriously overworked and underpaid in China. Working 10 to 12 hours a day for $1000 a month is quite common. It's possible to make more money working six hours a day for half a month working as an English teacher.
The view in Eastern Asia is that a programmer is akin to a machine that you hand a specification and code is produced and hence the low pay. You could trade programming in China for a large number of other careers and double your salary. It's not a particularly usual thing.
If you were to trade this for a software development position in the US or Western Europe it's going to be a much different story. Culturally speaking, it's seen much more like and engineer or craftsmen rather than a labourer. Switching from a position like this in the US to selling food is much less likely to see the same kind of return.
Alot of my friends left to start food trucks, street stands, etc... Keep in mind where I live (a cold part of Canada), you can realistically only sell street food for 4-6 months out of the year. They would all make $60,000 to $100,000 in a season, and now a few of them have brick and mortar restaurants to their name.
I worked a street food stand for a festival awhile back, we made $3000 in a day (split 2 ways).
Street food doesn't scale too well, and there are a whole slew of downsides, but if you can figure out an efficient way to make tasty food, you can make a lot of money and there's only a small barrier to starting out (likely less start up cost in China).
Mortality is closely connected with the hours we spend sitting each day. So that's one reason.
The other one is that after working so hard and saving up enough for the rest of your life, you need something that is much more stress-free. And selling something so basic as food is exactly that.
The difference is upwards mobility. It's hard moving up the corporate ladder while flipping burgers. It was not so hard to turn the game programming job into a lucrative career in software development.
The video games industry is pretty difficult to cut your teeth in though. It's highly technical, it has a ridiculous amount of competition and the software produced has a very short shelf life. If you can make it there, chances are you can make it anywhere.
It was funny on several levels... if you didn't work there.
EDIT: I assume that joke is funny in the same way that you'll find "The Liberated Democratic Free People's Republic of Chernarus"?
I never had the 'honor' of working there. One of my brother's did.
I know that as an early stage founder that I am part of the problem, but I often stop to think about whether what I'm doing is really that valuable or if I should just join another company in growth phase. I think the 100th engineer at Facebook would have had a lot more impact than most of the failed founders today.
I just think that being a founder is a harsh experience that you have to learn from many times over in order to get right, and that even when things go well there's no guarantee of a money pot at the end of the rainbow. I think you really need to have motivations other than cash to truly convince yourself that what you're working on is worth waking up for every day.
I think if you have that motivation inside you then being a founder is a great experience. Thinking you should just leave your job for an instant moneypot is just silly though, IMHO.
http://www.programmer.com.cn/14918/
CNY 3k - 5k , that means USD 400 - 800.
Nearly 1/5 programmers in China live in this salary.
What USD 500 can buy in America?
A rare example of an adage which still works when applied literally.
An executive from America was standing at the pier of a Mexican village, taking a much needed vacation. It was his first in more than 10 years. He noticed a small boat docked with just one fisherman on board. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The executive complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, “only a little while.”
The executive then asked, “why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”
The fisherman replied, “I have enough to support my family for a little while.”
The executive then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”
The executive scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then?”
The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”
“Millions.. Then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
I'm a programmer in Finance in London, and a good day rate for a Senior contractor is 600GBP/day. I have a good friend who started out doing "grilled chorizo in a ciabatta bun" at a London market, and easily made 1000GBP his first day. Now he uses employees to man that stall, and has moved on to the next idea, at a different locations doing something different to allow him to do something that appeals during different seasons. By now I imagine he is easily making double what I do.
Hearing that a good living can be made selling traditional street food in China is interesting though. That's some sort of sign.
Also, if you click the Chinese link in the article you'll find a video.
Just because you have the logical mind for something does not mean it will make you happy. I often feel like I lack the logical mind for working in IT but I freaking LOVE the work.
The article basically says he wrecked his body working punishing hours, so he quit, found a girlfriend, started collaborating with her on a mutual goal, and plans to get married. Headline says "he doubled his salary!"
If he doesn't care whether he's on the path to linear growth, why should we?
Running a diesel engine off waste oil is a great idea, more people should be doing it.
And no, food businesses don't scale well, but that's ok, because if you're efficient, and your food is good, you can make a decent living for your whole life.
> Running a diesel engine off waste oil is
> a great idea
I'm not really a fan of running diesel cars off waste oil.
To be clear, when I say "not really a fan" I mean I hate with a passion. In my experience, driving behind a vehicle running on waste oil is an absolutely foul experience. It doesn't just smell like fetid garbage, it tastes like it too.
As far as stress free... Interacting directly with many customers can be a trying experience. I think it can be a lot more stressful than an office job for many people.
Regarding stress free comment... I guess it depends on the person in question. Besides, when you finish for the day, you really finish for the day and that's the most important thing. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.
Smart people will put health before entrepreneurship, especially if it prolongs their life and not just in the sense how many years will they have to life.
There is very little that is as stress free as being a programmer. Certainly not the food industry. My wife's cousin is a chef. Her job is terribly interesting, but she works 80 hours a week to make 1/3 as much money as a programmer and has to deal with tremendously demanding situations (cooking at peak dinner service).
I dare you to take a food safety course. I sweat bullets just thinking about what might happen in the tiny chance that a customer gets sick from eating my food even after all the ten million precautions that were taken. Then I dare you to run a reasonably high volume restaurant during peak lunch/dinner hours. :)
Forget all the other stresses like how it's really hard to find good burger flippers in the bay area, even for $14/hour plus tons of overtime 3x meals and more. And the health inspector breathing down your neck giving you a 99/100 for something that has nothing to do with the safety of your restaurant.
Compared to my development work, running a restaurant is a whole different set of stresses and just as bad, all the time.
The parable of the fisherman is basically the Ant and the Grasshopper told up until some time before winter.
Exaggerated obviously, but then parables always are, that's why they are almost useless.
All jokes aside, unless you have a very good knack or special offering, scaling might not work so well. You have to train people to be just as good as you are, some people go to specific food trucks for the people.
Seriously, it's bordering on the most lucrative profession in the US. If "Selling Hotdogs" sounds like it might make you even 1/10 as much, you're simply not charging enough.
So if you're looking for a business that doesn't involve selling your time for money, your best option is Software Product Company. Build something people need enough to pay you $50/month for it. The math works out quite nicely.
Actually, my side biz is selling food. Unless you propose that I make way over a million dollars a year while contracting (no thanks to that stress)...I think my restaurant does okay. If I sunk the same amount of time in my restaurant that I did for contracting, then I'd definitely make more money with the restaurant than with contracting. I'm fairly confident I can compete with many bay area salaries at those numbers, and I could sink more effort and money into opening more restaurants and.... you see where I'm going with this, right?
My business is fairly small fry anyway. Had I a couple million bucks in the bank, I'd be looking at running restaurants with $40k+/month net profit. (How many engineers make that, before stock options and ignoring the value of the business itself?)
There are a LOT of other ways to make bank and saying being a developer is the only way to do it is incredibly narrow.
Not exactly traditional small businesses, but honestly, both options have much higher probability of success (or at least not losing all of your money like restaurants)
Possibly true anecdote. However with the median family income for the country being $45K or so, thats implying the profit alone exceeds something like 25% of the median tenant gross income. So thats like a $1M CEO waterfront house not joe6pack's house.
Somewhat more realistically, you can expect your average family to spend maybe 1/3 their income on housing, and your profit will probably be a fraction of that, and you'll only have tenants a (large?) fraction of the time, so from a scalability standpoint to earn a median income you probably need to rent out one to two dozen houses, which rapidly becomes a full time job and is quite a capital investment. Also it becomes interesting to express various typical maintenance costs as "months of rental profit" rather than $. A furnace might be more than a years gross profit, yet only guaranteed for 20 years... times ten other major appliances all carefully value engineered to fall apart...
One worrisome part about long term prices is a Z percentile resident will more or less always live in Z percentile housing. Now the capital cost of that housing solely depends on about 1/3 the resident's income put toward the mortgage interest payment... and that rate was at multi-generational lows aka prices were at multi-generational highs. J6P can afford to pay the bank $2K/month means he can borrow how much, depending on interest rate? So what happens to your capital investment when median income inevitably continues its multi-generational decline, while at the same time, interest rates inevitably rise resulting in crashing sale prices? There are other cultural effects like retiring baby boomers wanting to downsize, kids having mortgage sized school loans therefore unable to afford a mortgage, etc.
Just saying, focusing on return OF capital is probably more important than return ON capital, when you're doing long term real estate investment. From a diversification stand point it can work if you have 100 or so houses, but its rough at a smaller scale.
Plus you get people waking you up in the middle of the night when they lock themselves out.
The article is about a programmer in China. This one guy might be (probably is) particularly good at making & selling street treats.
That being said, saving lots of money and living off of dividends is the way to go.
Just be aware that saying used to be 10 year period, until it broke. It hasn't worked in the last decade or so, therefore roughly speaking durations keep expanding to reach the eighties. I suspect in 2030 the phrase will be something like ... never been a 50 year period ...
The part that worries me is hearing about all those boomers having to cash in equities and real estate over the next couple decades to pay off the medical sector... Who, exactly, is supposed to step up and buy that stuff at current prices / PE ratios? AKA where's the demand?
What makes your restaurant so succesful, isn't that industry plagued with 80% shutdown wiyhin 5 years?
Yes. While I haven't actually looked at financial statements for those businesses since they were way out of my budget, I'd get the occasional listing with numbers like that. Businesses like http://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/Sushi-Restaur... - nearly $700k in earnings in one year is not bad at all.
It's up for debate how much the owner actually makes and how much of the sales goes unreported to the BOE, IRS, etc., but it's within the realm of possibility.
Alternatively, absentee-own a franchise or series of stores for similar effect: http://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/4-Unit-Five-G...
> What makes your restaurant so succesful, isn't that industry plagued with 80% shutdown wiyhin 5 years?
I can believe the failure rate is that high for brand new restaurants, but that is why you buy already established businesses instead. I also don't think that number is too strange in the context of all brand new businesses. Think of how many startups fail. Imagine if there was a market for buying and selling "matured" startups - that's basically how small business sales work. (Hopefully) all the bad ones will have died out already, the ones the owners are trying to flip as fast as possible before they die are dead obvious, and you'll maybe be left over with a few sustainable businesses to choose from.
I think the only difference between running a restaurant and starting a startup is that there is no restaurant equivalent to winning the jackpot (read: selling your startup for mega bucks) and just keeping the business in the black is the norm (although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how a lot of startups can even dream to accomplish that...).
As for what makes my restaurant successful? My takeover may have been this year, but it's sat at the same location for decades (older than I am, even) and we have big servings and tasty fries. :D
Some caveats though: -Even large billion dollar corporations that have been in business go bankrupt -My perspective has always been that if a profitable restaurant is selling, its because it really isn't that profitable. The usual reasons given for the sale are can't spend the hours or health, but the reality is that if a restaurant is profitable, they could just hire a manager for 40-60k who could manage all aspects of the business, while the owners collect their checks every month. My feeling on why that doesn't happen is because the business isn't doing as well as reported.
(For short term issues there is insurance, whether in the form of savings or actual insurance.)
Such coverage pays some percentage of your salary for many years from the beginning of a long-term disability. I think that both of those numbers vary widely from plan to plan.
I don't see how being a small business operator of something like this is different. The source of income is different, the wisdom is the same.
Hopefully they were able to set aside months worth of floating money, and even weeks due to a natural disaster wouldn't wreck them.
It's not hackers, it's adults. This is called an "emergency fund". 3 to 6 months cash that's easy to access in the event of a genuine emergency, including loss of work. Personal Finance 101.
This is totally different from my freelancing mindset since I have to start thinking about tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just for floating a brick and mortar business for even a couple months, whereas my biggest investment for my main line of work is...mostly a nice computer. All this after insurance, so then it's time to start thinking about FEMA and bank loans (as if the stingy as fuck banks will give out loans).
All of this is on top of other hassles (SF, Alameda and LA counties are ....nuts for restaurant owners, to say the least) and it just sucks to think about. Maybe food trucks get more leeway or whatever in a lot of areas due to flexibility and size, but if I'm having these thoughts about a pretty profitable decent volume restaurant I shudder to think about the smaller fish out there.
The real threat is actually blends that use a small amount of biodiesel mixed with rock diesel. These can be burned in any engine, and there is so little food oil (animal and vegetable) compared to the demand for liquid fuel, that this practice can easily lead to the kind of effects you describe.
How safe are the fumes to be burned around cities? Remember when we found out lead in gas was unsafe to be inhaled from exhaust pipes?
Either way the tetraethyl lead situation was completely different. It was very clear early on that the stuff was extremely toxic. Lead was already known to be toxic, and workers at the refineries were dying left and right due to exposure.
Biodiesel is meant to be used in standard diesel engines and is thus distinct from the vegetable and waste oils...
Pretty nice to have a safety net, but the government can be picky too. Many people I know got rejected for loans after the Northridge earthquake 20 years ago for trying to make a quick buck selling batteries etc. way above the regular price. FEMA people commented to my parents (they owned a small biz at the time) that they were one of the handful of businesses that didn't price gouge anyone within the area. I had no idea the government could pay so much attention to what people were doing in such a big area.
Health insurance, business insurance, vacation time, holiday time, sick time, equipment, etc. All of these things go into the calculations for your rates.
So I had to cut my hours. I took the 10 free hours/week as an opportunity to hunt for additional work.
Contractors are subject to the health care plans of the company they work for (or whatever they buy on the individual market, if they are self-employed). Part-time employees (less than 30 hours per week, IIRC, although that's probably state-by-state) also receive different treatment. Some companies have started to manage hours to have more part-time workers instead of fewer full-time workers as a means to game the heath care laws: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/06/w...
A new street food vendor only competes with other food vendors in the area. A new game developer competes globally, against both established studios and hobbyists happy to work for free because it's fun. You have people who want to make games so badly they'll fight to get in, knowing fully it's low pay and long hours.
Any way you look at it, the reason game developer salaries are relatively low is because supply for the jobs is higher than the demand.
It's a bit silly to compare the two because the economics are so different (local, non-scalable product vs. global product with zero marginal cost), but I stand by my assertion that there's no inherent reason why game developers should earn more, on average, than food vendors.
The top tiers of any of these industries, however, pay millions. I'm not talking millions because people started their own businesses and got acquired. I mean millions in salary and/or bonus per year, as employees. This is because, as you put it, the supply of extremely talented and skilled workers at the higher tiers is outpaced by demand. (And also because they're hit-driven businesses -- and, absent any real data as to a causal relationship between Superstar A's presence and Supergame B's performance, Superstar A receives the full benefit of correlation).
So you end up with a sort of pyramid structure to the business: lots of workers at the bottom, slightly fewer at the middle, very few at the top, and the compensation flows disproportionately from the top down.
A lot of industries function this way, but the various entertainment industries have especially interesting distributions because they're so inherently attractive to potential applicants.
Where I work we have a good mix of veterans and recent graduates. Typically they are from top North American Universities including Stanford and Waterloo.
Given how fast I've been going through potential (literal) burger flipper cooks at my restaurant, I'm not sure that's totally the case. Some people are surprisingly _terrible_ at a job that many people consider to be the lowest of the low.
There is also a never ending demand for food ;)
You miss the key part of the equation though. More people want to make video games than want to sell street food...
It's not sad that the conditions for a street food vendor are better, it's sad that the conditions for a game programmer are so bad.
More people need sex than food, yet we pursue it with greater fervor than food.
More people don't need social networks, yet HN is filled to the brim with new social network or social site.
You got a point about it being a more desirable/glamourous job than selling food.
My point was that people get away with that kind of abuse of employees (and yes I'm aware its due to supply/demand).
You mean like being a human being who is currently alive on the planet Earth?
It won't kill you to have more dry powder rather than less. But then, I tend to be a bit conservative and paranoid about money. :)
I guess the equivalent in software engineering would be someone who can only implement designs and algorithms from other people, and any ambiguities or questions about the design would result in them stopping work until a clarification is received from the "engineer".
(not particularly relevant, but I have friends with similar qualifications and experience as you who work / worked in the industry at... shall we say more mediocre studios. I suspect their perspective on this topic is somewhat different from yours.)