Could you help me explore your view a bit more?

Parent's advice is about favouring team and striving to be an enabler/multiplier rather than sweating over individual perfection of craft. It's a fairly common conclusion that some people arrive at.

What are you contrasting that to? How does that relate to money problems and health problems?

Is becoming a multiplier mutually exclusive from chasing financial success in your opinion?

EDIT to elaborate on the concept of a multiplier. Say you can become a mythical 10x engineer or you can become a mentor. If you can mentor 5 normal engineers from 1x to 2x then you've now got 10x engineering and the org also has reduced bus factor.

What about if those 5 2x engineers can bring another 25 0.5x engineers up to 1x engineers. Suddenly your org can become much more than a single 10x engineer can accomplish.

This is quite spurious and 9 mothers can't have a baby in 1 month but it's a useful mental model for the value of individual contribution vs coaching/managing.

In reality while people like to balk at the idea of the 10x engineer, the truth is there are probably 100x and 1000x engineers out there. Von Neumann is probably a 1000x or more. Linus and Page&Brin are probably at least a 100x etc - those multiples are made up, power laws make numbers go big

I never had the pleasure of working with a manager that cared about me, nor I had contact with any other form of a "multipler" person, other than my parents. So I don't think I'm a good candidate for discussion in this subject, because obviously I won't really know what I'm writing about, and I'm certainly not knowledgable about what you care about.

I only had the impression that the OP tells his subordinates that "they shouldn't oversweat, do some meaningful stuff but remember it won't really matter in the end". This is while working for a company that was created by a person who has probably worked their ass off, and maybe even sacrificed their private life for pursuing a dream of having a large company.

All I'm saying is that money, success, power, connections are so important in life that they give happiness even for other people. If we're poor, then where do we go for help? To those who are richer or more powerful. They enable our happiness in our time of need (that is, if they choose to help us).

I'm not sure what kind of luck you're talking about. I'm not "post-money" and have to work for a living. I've never gotten a startup exit. I am well compensated the way someone with 25 years of work experience would be. I don't know about 30, but I've had this stance for the last 15 or so. I'm now pushing 45. I've had my fair share of family cancers and health crises. I've seen loved ones pass.

And it's those people that are in my head when I think about my world view and shape my views on engineering management. So yeah, my advice to young adults would be (and has been) "plan for waking up one day and finding that work isn't all that important anymore and have a diversification strategy. The real startups are the friends we made along the way."

I can speak to the situation you mentioned, as it happened twice.

However almost no money had to be thrown at the problem, and the outcome was the best that could have been wished for.

I live in Europe where we generally have universal healthcare.

Perhaps the author you responded to is also living in a similar situation?

I for one would take the same view as them. Work to live, and try only to do meaningful work. Life really is too short and fragile not to.

I guess "universal healthcare" works in your country. But generally "universal healthcare" has treated my grandmother for sleep problems, but later when she died they figured out that the reason was intestine cancer. No doctor gave a sh*t that day. With money and private healthcare this could be avoided.

My mother when visiting a "universal healthcare" doctor (queues are several months long) for digestion problems AND having a genetic history of cancer was given Xanax for depression. She fortunately tossed out the receipt for it after leaving the doctor office, because she's not stupid, certainly not depressed.

So I think mentioning a mythical "universal healthcare" in my direction doesn't have the outcome you'd like it to have. Even more, it kind of proves my point, that you don't need money if everything goes well. You need it when things go to sh*t.

Why do you think private healthcare would give you a better answer? You accepted the first answer the jniversal healthcare system gave you. Do you have any reason to believe you wouldn't accept that answer if given by a private clinic?

Money + private healthcare gives you options. You can go to different doctors several times a week to get a possibly different diagnosis. It costs money, so having it is a prerequisite. But giving money acts as a motivator here, because doctors want money.

In "universal healthcare", you can only go to a doctor once, or two times a year. Because the waiting queues are so long sometimes. And even if you change the doctor, the previous diagnosis will be in the same system, so if the doctor will get lazy, they'll just repeat the diagnosis. There's no motivator here (well, during communist times, a popular form of motivator was a "present" for doctor, so people found ways to motivate doctors).

1. What you're describing seems to be a criminally underfunded universal healthcare. In properly funded ones, you aren't limited to one or two visits to a doctor a year.

2. Public healthcare does not prohibit people from using private doctors. People who can afford to go to the private doctor can still do it. Whereas people who can't (or can, but just choose not to), get their lifes saved by the state.

3. Profit motive is deeply flawed in all businesses, but it's especially problematic in something as critical as healthcare. If the doctors are primarily driven by money and not by doing their job properly, they'll fleece their customers. It's not uncommon among dentists (who are largely privatised even across Europe) to make up expensive, unnecessary procedures so that they can buy their next Porsche or a house on the Spanish coast etc.

1. It's not about some rule that limits the number of visits, it's about that you can't physically do it, because an appointment for urologist made today will get you an appointment on october. Because the queues are so long, people make appointments even if they don't need it, and then don't show up. This makes queues even longer.

2. Yes, public healthcare does not prohibit from using the private sector, fortunately. But the amount of money I pay for the "universal free public healthcare" every month dwarfs my expenses to private sector. It's like I'm paying for a really expensive service, and I can use it twice a year with questionable effects. So not only public healthcare is extremely expensive for me, I need to pay above that to use the private sector. I understand what the money is for -- so that other people can use it that are less fortunate than me. So they kind of rely on my sacrifice, on my life choices, my risk.

3. Maybe it's flawed, but it's the reality. Trying to change that isn't really my fight. If you know how to fix that then by all means go ahead. I need to spend my energy elsewhere.

> 1. It's not about some rule that limits the number of visits, it's about that you can't physically do it, because an appointment for urologist made today will get you an appointment on october. Because the queues are so long, people make appointments even if they don't need it, and then don't show up. This makes queues even longer.

This was also my experience with the private health care system as well.

Alot has to do with the lack of specialists in certain fields. This is not an easy problem to fix because there are only so many residency slots available, and its hard to increase them. The best you can do is poach from other countries.

I live in Germany, and had cancer, and my experience with the public health system is completely different from yours. I got prompt treatment and asked for second and third opinions (which I also got at short notice, from different doctors at different hospitals) before treatment.

I know from friends there are places where the public health system is so underfunded (e.g. Bulgaria) that they basically had to get private health insurance to get good treatment. In other words YMMV.

Good for you I guess. But people who live in better environment shouldn't impose a world view for people who live in worse environments. They should at least have a decency of understanding what is their privilege, and that there are people who don't have it.

Meanwhile, on HN, the only reaction I can count for is a downvote for telling my life experience. That's why I love HN, you often disappoint, correcting my life expectations closer to reality :heart: !

I’m not imposing anything, I’m suggesting you’re (probably) suffering from a specific shitty healthcare system rather than your implied conclusion that universal health care systems are inherently shitty.

In fact I immigrated to Germany from a country with shittier (underfunded) health care system myself so I can very much relate.

I don't think you are getting downvoted for sharing your life experience. You're getting it for projecting that single experience onto an entire institution, without evidence that your single experience is representative.

Everyone in my whole country has similar experience.