HACKER Q&A
📣 introvertmac

How do you balance creativity, love for the craft, and money?


Considering with AI an experienced engineer can build anything much faster and we had a discussion around "single person unicorn". How are you balancing your love for the craft and creativity. I see copycats of copycats generating decent $ per month, sometimes I wonder I should I also do the same and leave my job to pursue the unicorn dream? As every 2 years there is layoff, AI taking over... not sure if this make sense or this is just me bored on a weekend.


  👤 raw_anon_1111 Accepted Answer ✓
What you don’t see are the 9 startups that outright fail after struggling for a few years where everyone there is making pennies. It’s kind of tautological that you only see the few successes. No one brags about their dumb idea that made no money snd had no customers after a year.

If you are worried about layoffs, what do you think is going to happen when your startup statistically fails? What are you going to do about income while trying to get the company off the ground?


👤 smokel
There is a difference between wanting to make money and wanting to have money.

If you understand the difference, it is often painfully obvious that most of us are in the last boat.

If you want something, you would typically be doing it already. Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch, but you might be more interested in asking questions than in giving answers. In that case, just try to enjoy life as long as it is smiling to you.


👤 osigurdson
>> single person unicorn

I've mused about this hypothetical as well. I think, it would only happen if someone has a really good idea, is really skilled in many areas and also (and this is the key) is dead set on it being a single person unicorn.

Why? Well, once money starts coming in there will always be areas where adding another human (or a hundred) can help. In other words there might not be much distance between a single person unicorn and a zero person one (in which the AI comes up with idea and does everything else too).


👤 fuzzfactor
>creativity, love for the craft, and money

All respectable accomplishments, but some of the most accomplished may not be the most balanced :\

Money would be the one that could be taken away from you most easily, or even completely lost inadvertently through no fault of your own.