Omid Malekan
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2015–2023
1:02 · 2.1M views · Jan 17, 2015
A one-minute scene from The Gambler in which John Goodman's loan shark explains the 'position of f you': having enough money to walk away from any employer or deal.
HN links it whenever the discussion turns to layoffs, saving, and having enough financial independence to say no.
14 comments from Hacker News
It's also known as "fuck you money", and there's a really good scene with John Goodman in The Gambler about it - this video So many people, especially in tech, work jobs that pay really, really, really well compared to most people and piss it away on stupid shit. You can choose to save a lot of that money instead and still have a very good and fulfilling life. Eventually, when you have enough savings/investments to cover you for a few years, your life changes. You don't have to worry so much if people are getting laid off, or if your job starts demanding unreasonable things. Here's the article that brought me to that video, and goes more in depth about the concept. I highly recommend it - [LINK]
This clip from the Gambler summed it up pretty well: this video (NSFW language) It's more about personal independence than anything and being able to take risks.
I own my own home and this idea being pimped to millennials that they should lease everything from car rides, music, movies, bicyles, and shelter is a fast curtain to a bad "third act." (read that as old age) John Goodman said it best while playing a loan shark in the the film "The Gambler..." Frank: You get up two and a half million dollars, any a-hole in the world knows what to do: you get a house with a 25-year roof, an indestructible [Japanese]-economy shit box, you put the rest into the system at three to five percent to pay your taxes and that’s your base, get me? That’s your fortress of Fucking solitude. That puts you, for the rest of your life, at a level of fuck you. Somebody wants you to do something, fuck you. Boss pisses you off, fuck you! — Own your house. Have a couple bucks in the bank. Don’t drink. That’s all I have to say to anybody on any social level... Did your grandfather take risks? Jim Bennett: Yes. Frank: I guarantee he did it from a position of f k you. A wise man’s life is based around fuck you. The United States of America is based on fuck you. You have a navy? Greatest army in the history of mankind? Fuck you! Blow me. We’ll fuck it up ourselves. this video
I’ve been working as a hands on developer [1] for over 25 years between 8 companies. I’ve worked for companies with 20 people all the way to AWS. I’ve always strived to “live in a position of f%%% you” ( this video ). Why would I let a company “burn me out”? When the pay/bullshit ratio gets too low, I send my always updated resume out, review my “career document” to prepare for behavioral/informal interviews (I don’t do whiteboard coding interviews), talk to people in my network and I get another job. Before my current job, I was a dev lead and then the de facto “cloud architect” at smaller companies. My current job is much less stressful. [1] currently my official title is not “software developer”. But for all intents and purposes, I still develop user facing software along with a crap ton of yaml, HCL, diagrams and PowerPoint slides.
Simple. In 25+ years of working professionally, I know two things. 1. No company has ever gone out of business because I left. 2. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, my employer would send my wife “thoughts and prayers” and they would have a req open for my position before my body was in the ground. My job affords me the ability to work from anywhere in the US and I am going to be taking advantage of that for at least the next few years to fly across the country and do the “digital nomad” thing. But I also “live in a position of f%%% you” ( this video ). It’s been over 15 years that I haven’t been confident that if the pay/bullshit ratio got too low that I could get another job.