• tswerts@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Perhaps the takeaway is that opportunities don’t come that often and don’t sell yourself short by assuming you won’t be able to succeed?

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So… Nearly all US government contracts. Gotcha. Going to make a new company focused in the military industrial complex.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You know it’s bad when I can’t tell if you are critical of the budget and schedule overruns or the reason behind the budget and schedule overruns.

        But I can tell you one thing: if it hasn’t already been done, you don’t know how long it will take. no matter what they try to tell you, no one can adequately predict the future.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think it’s just the really egregious ones where clearly the original vid wasn’t realistic at all, and the company contracted bet that the government will just pay for cost overruns as a sunk cost instead of stripping the contract and giving to another company.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The kind of statement that only someone with enough financial backing to be set for life even if it doesn’t work out can make.

    • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I know plenty of people who implemented this type of strategy when young and poor and are doing well for themselves now. Sometimes you crash and burn, and sometimes it works out. But it’ll never work out if you never try.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What type of strategy? Getting lots of financial backing and becoming wealthy?

        If everyone was successful in such endeavors we wouldn’t make such a big deal of rags-to-riches winners. Such successes are the exception, not the rule, which is why we highlight the exceptions.

        • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I’m not talking about financial backing, or being wealthy. I’m talking about taking jobs or projects they didn’t really know how to do and figuring it out along the way, eventually becoming upper-middle class when they started out in poverty.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Survivors bias. 1 success doesn’t invalidate the hundreds of crash and burns that you never hear about.

          • dustyData@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Crashing and burning is way easier when you have generational wealth to soften the blow. A crash and burn is lethal for people who are a paycheck away from homelessness and drowning in debt.

          • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It’s a setback if you don’t like being on fire, which I’d wager is most people.

        • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          So what’s your point? Never try to improve your life? Never jump at opportunity? You’re not guaranteed to succeed, but you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t try. The only people I know who haven’t improved their life are the people who never tried.

              • dustyData@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                If you lack reading comprehension, I don’t know what are you doing here then. I’m not responsible for your bad faith imaginary online arguments.

                • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Oh, and I’m the one being aggressive and arguing in bad faith. Sure bub. Have fun with your attitude, I guess.

    • Kedly@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Tbh, I’ve never been more than “can put a little bit of money aside” and am currently not even that, but that’s how I’ve rolled in life and its served me alright.

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      And it assumes people just give you opportunities every once and a while.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There’s always opportunity.

        But that’s like asking someone in the lower middle class to offshore their money, make LLCs, and invest in failed businesses on the premise of turning them around for a profit. None of that makes sense. It’s far too high a risk. Too much of the average person’s capital is just wrapped up in daily costs.

        Opportunity has a cost, and that cost is too high for the vast majority of people.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Although we can’t know if you just let opportunity walk right by you and you ignored it or judged it. No one is obliged to slap you in your face with it or hand it to you on a silver platter with your exact order in mind.

        I’ve known too many people who turned down a job while they felt they were inexperienced/oversold their experience for the pay rate/ had many reservations(besides pay) about the job over innocuous things like they didn’t like equal opportunities and kept comparing themselves as too good for everyone else. Or refused to go in on entry level when they had no experience to begin with. Or purposely price themselves out of what a client can afford. …and while they dawdled the job gets given to the next candidate and then they complain they can’t find a job or ‘someone is stealing their jerbs’

        Not finding a job and not taking a job aren’t the same thing.

        Chances are: opportunities are more frequent than a person using common sense

        • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s so much easier to judge people as stupid/lazy/afraid than to understand that taking risks is a luxury not everyone can afford…

          • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And yet that still isn’t the argument to support opportunity ‘never’ knocks. It only gives a reason for a person to not take it. Not that it never happens.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m doing really well financially without taking stupid risks or making trite billionaire statements, and an understand that failure when making millions vs a few tens of thousands every year are not remotely in the same category.

        Do you blame everyone for not being rich while thinking your hired yard service costs too much?

  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit

    Virgin Orbit was a company within the Virgin Group that provided launch services for small satellites. The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism venture to develop and market the LauncherOne rocket, which had previously been a project under Virgin Galactic. LauncherOne was an air-launched two-stage launch vehicle designed to deliver 300 kg of payload to low Earth orbit.

    On December 30, 2021, Virgin Orbit underwent a SPAC merger with NextGen Acquisition Corp, and became a publicly traded company (symbol VORB) at the NASDAQ stock exchange. At the SPAC merger Virgin Orbit was valued at $3.7 billion.

    LauncherOne made six flights from 2020 to 2023, resulting in four successes and two failures. After the second failure, in January 2023, and an inability to secure additional financing, the company laid off 675 people, or approximately 85% of the staff and suspended operations in March 2023, finalizing Chapter 11 bankruptcy auction on May 22, 2023. The company’s remaining assets were sold off to various aerospace companies for a total of $36 million, less than 1% of the company’s valuation upon IPO.

    I suppose he’s speaking from experience :)

  • NAXLAB@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think this says more about just how mediocre these rich people can actually get away with being. Once you own so much that you don’t have to work, whatever work you do is pretty much guaranteed to be easy.

  • tweeks@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    “Create this new custom integration with complex banking software protocols for us that you usually need multiple certifications for to ensure things are implemented securely and user data won’t be compromised. You’ve got 2 weeks.”

    I said no.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      pfft just learn how to create a new custom integration with complex banking software protocols without certification or compromising security in 2 weeks - problem solved.

  • spudwart@spudwart.com
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    1 year ago

    “Amazing opportunity” - Pays well enough to live

    “If you’re not sure you can do it” - If you know you’re not qualified

    “Say yes” - … Say yes, despite everything stated before.

    “Later” - never

  • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, just yesterday I was reading a story about some contractor who was very good at his job took a different kind of job thinking it would be easy, then ended up fucking it up and making things worse, the moral of the story being “stick to what you’re good at”. I guess that’s just the man trying to keep us down.

    • Stamets@startrek.websiteOP
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      1 year ago

      My favorite example of this is Dr. Ben Carson. So ignoring all the political affiliations and what not, the man is kind of a medical genius in helping develop a surgeries and what not. Very smart man. However he also said that the pyramids of Egypt were built to store grain.

      We need to make the idea of like ability scores and skill trees more popular in society. Help explain to people that you did not spec properly at all.

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Otherwise known as failing upwards and is a method only available to stinking rich who can weasel their way around accountability and law. Case in point: Try promising people a great feature that you are pretty confident will be ready for prime time this year and you will be able to travel to space with it and it only costs 10k$ a pop. The moment you get any money and not deliver you end up in prison. Buuut… if you are Elon, you are a visionary and that is just another of your attempts to help humanity.