[HN Gopher] Early Work
___________________________________________________________________
Early Work
Author : harscoat
Score : 441 points
Date : 2020-10-20 11:18 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| Mizza wrote:
| Obligatory Ira Glass quote:
|
| "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone
| told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because
| we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple
| years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be
| good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing
| that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is
| why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past
| this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting,
| creative work went through years of this. We know our work
| doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all
| go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are
| still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most
| important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a
| deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only
| by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap,
| and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took
| longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met.
| It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just
| gotta fight your way through."
| cyberdrunk wrote:
| It's missing the bit where he explains that doing good work is
| in many fields (in precisely the ones that people are attracted
| to) is not enough to sustain yourself. You need to be super
| good or be lucky, have connections or some other form
| advantage.
| HorizonXP wrote:
| I got put onto this quote/video by @garry here on HN, when he
| included it in his most recent YouTube video where he discusses
| how he made his channel grow & be successful. It's definitely
| something I've struggled with for a long time, and I wish I had
| found it sooner.
| blakesmith wrote:
| This article reminded me of the same quote! Here's the original
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE
| maverickJ wrote:
| This ties in with the theme of this newsletter
| https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/take-the-role-and-pr...
| about Nikola Tesla and starting your first job in an industry
| you're new too.
|
| "Many a-times, brilliant young people join an organisation and
| want to start right at the top or at a glamorous role. They get
| aggrieved when they are not given the shiny, glamorous role that
| commands respect or gives social proof. This tends to result in
| them doing a poor job of whatever role they have been given.
|
| I posit that we can learn from the Tesla story described above.
| Take the job and prove yourself once an opportunity presents
| itself. It might not be what you envisioned last year before the
| pandemic and lockdown. It's important to get into the door and
| then set the standards to where you believe you belong."
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I'm your target audience, seeing as this year was my first year
| in the workforce and I'm young.
|
| I don't see the point in trying to prove yourself in most
| situations, since most organizations have little opportunity.
|
| I just quit my first tech job. The first team I was on had very
| little agency and was basically told what to do, the second
| team I was on had an "architect" who dictated how everything
| was going to be.
|
| Without going into boring details, I was told by management and
| other team members I was doing well and it showed compared to
| most of the other Juniors I worked with.
|
| I don't want a glamorous role, or one that gives me social
| proof. I just want to have some agency and the opportunity to
| take on responsibility and advance.
|
| It seems like that's hard to come by, though.
| nickff wrote:
| I think Tesla was right, but the attitude issue reflects on the
| individual's mindset (in addition to the focus issue he aptly
| described). Some people will do any job to the best of their
| ability, whether it's sweeping the floors or managing a
| company; others will continually lust after the more
| prestigious position, and never accomplish the tasks at hand.
| maverickJ wrote:
| Interesting points raised.
| cafard wrote:
| Scholars of literature sometimes speak of "juvenilia", the work a
| writer does when beginning. This can be quite readable--Jane
| Austen's are very funny--but not up to the standard of the mature
| work.
| redshirtrob wrote:
| I wonder if a good hack would be to think in terms of how I would
| react if a (my) child showed me something they made? Children are
| often doing something for the first time. I've noticed this
| breaks down my barriers to what I consider impressive.
|
| Founders are in a similar situation, but since they're almost
| universally adults, we tend to apply adult prejudices to their
| work.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Why do certain days seem better suited to doing good work?
|
| Most days, I feel like doing nothing. But some days, the computer
| calls to me, and it would be foolish to ignore it. If I've done
| anything impressive, it's during those days.
|
| But why? And can those days be maximized? Is it strictly a
| product of one's environment? It can't be; the institute for
| advanced study showed that you can have a perfect environment but
| make no progress.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Seems like a strange comment for the article but since you made
| it,
|
| For me its not that I don't feel like doing work on most days.
| Instead I have periods where I am super uber productive and
| days where I feel completely exhausted. I can't tell if its a
| mental thing or rather there's actually something physically
| wrong Lol. My mind tends to be blurry like its rebelling and if
| I force myself to work hard I start feeling feverish. I have
| trouble figuring out if I'm not working hard enough or working
| too hard.
|
| I wonder if its also like that for some of the successful
| startup founders out there too
| amsilprotag wrote:
| I don't know whether this is true, and I'm writing this out
| of curiosity and not bad faith, but the most parsimonious
| explanation for this being the top comment is that both the
| writer and voters assumed (as I did before reading) that the
| essay was about time-of-day work rather than time-of-project-
| lifespan work.
|
| But it's a good point! Faith fluctuates by day, and those
| low-faith days are when a small project is abandoned. I think
| graham's solutions (supportive friends, ambitious city,
| historical examples) are a good way to hold the faith when
| the general public and the project itself don't seem to
| warrant it.
| blueshirtguy wrote:
| I really connected with how you said you are feeling because
| it is how I have been feeling. I work for a small innovation
| group (not a startup), so my work environment is flexible. I
| am also trying to bootstrap a startup project in my free
| time. I will have days that I am super productive and can get
| through a ton of work, but then I have other days that I just
| can't bring myself to work. It feels weird cause when I force
| myself to work I get way less done, so I then feel like it is
| pointless cause I get such little done compared to when I am
| in the mood for the work. I don't really know how I should
| feel about it cause I feel guilty on the days that I don't
| get as much done, but it feels like a waste of time and is
| draining to just sit there and force out a small amount of
| work.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't have an answer for you, but I have a very similar
| experience. some days I wake up and it's "go time", sifting
| through source files and crushing multiple bugs in eight hours,
| often forgetting to eat lunch! other days I'll try over and
| over to start working, but every time I look at a line of code,
| I feel an immense pressure to alt-tab to the browser or get out
| of my chair and pace around my apartment. if nothing else, it's
| good to know other people are like this.
|
| I've tried to examine correlations between my focus at work and
| my sleep schedule, diet, social life, etc. and I don't really
| see anything. sometimes my best weeks of work will coincide
| with eating bad takeout and staying up til 2am playing factorio
| every night. sometimes I go to bed at 10pm, eat three healthy
| meals a day, and accomplish absolutely nothing at work.
| PrabhackerNews wrote:
| Hear hear for 2am factorio
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| What's the perfect environment?
| martin_a wrote:
| That differs from person to person and you'll have to find
| out for yourself.
|
| I enjoy the late afternoon hours when most of my colleagues
| are already gone, the phone rings not as often and I can put
| some music on headphones. Takes me about 15 minutes till I
| get into the flow state and am highly productive.
| tartoran wrote:
| Likewise and I have to add that mornings I am usually not
| very productive anyway, regardless of the environment. I've
| been working from home for the past few Covid months and
| the bulk of my work is done in the afternoon. That's not
| very convenient for me as I'd like to enjoy my time off
| after 5, but I usually end up past that to take advantage
| of the momentum built.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| For me after significant journaling and recording, it seems to
| be when nutrition, sleep and stress are all correctly managed.
| I can even have several days in a row that are optimal for deep
| work if I'm careful, but life likes to throw in a wrench from
| time to time of course.
|
| The big things for me have been to eat a very nutritionally
| heavy breakfast (I hate eating breakfast, it still takes me
| forever) and to calorie count both to make sure I'm getting
| enough and to make sure I'm getting a decent balance of
| carbs/protein/fat. For sleep, going to sleep early and having
| wind down time so I sleep well (tea and a book are a winning
| combo for me there usually).
|
| Stress is of course the difficult one we have the least control
| over. Exercise is a huge help but that can also change up the
| nutrition equation. Even then, it's still easy for bad stress
| days to also muck up the sleep side of the equation and it can
| take days to get that sorted out.
| sfpoet wrote:
| If those days go into all-nighters, you might have bipolar
| disorder. I went undiagnosed for years, and didn't believe it
| myself until I charted the moods with the help of roommates and
| a doctor. I began to notice being happy at inappropriate times
| (funerals), and sad at others (weddings). My moods would
| mysteriously cycle and I really had to take advantage of the
| upswings.
|
| I went undiagnosed for such a long time because managers would
| often point at me as an example of startup dedication, and then
| when I crashed and they got disappointed I would jump to a new
| startup.
|
| Now I stick to a schedule and never deviate from it. When I do,
| the monster returns.
| nikivi wrote:
| I think removing frictions from starting new things & automating
| the mundane things like project setup, doc setup etc. goes along
| way to cross the bridge from 'wanting to build something' to
| 'building it'.
|
| As well as ability to track things being worked on sorted by
| priority. I currently do that part in Notion.
| (https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/ideas)
|
| Working in public on anything is very useful too as there is a
| long time inbetween making something and 'truly releasing'
| something. I remember the talk on how
| https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent started off as a simple
| readme. Got lots of interest & comments and only then was the
| idea validated and got built on, already with community.
|
| Here is the great talk about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqnvKP1DYRI
| jacobush wrote:
| It can also be a great distraction to fiddle around with the
| supporting tools instead of the thing itself.
| rraghur wrote:
| This is unfortunately, me.. I've slowly come to the
| conclusion of not using to avoid it completely (that's to
| hard), but rather timebox it when i catch myself drifting
| TacoSteemers wrote:
| Fiddling around can also be okay, if it is relaxing.
| nikivi wrote:
| True but the project templates is a solved problem. I haven't
| chosen one I liked yet but here are some options:
|
| https://www.notion.so/nikitavoloboev/Project-
| generator-3cd74...
| russnewcomer wrote:
| I had one thought forming while reading this piece, then read to
| Carmack's quote in the footnote which encapsulated it. I learned
| how to program modding games as a teenager, and as an adult now
| looking back on it, I realize how rough and ready the game
| engines were in 1996-1998, and how that rough and ready state,
| combined with my teenager's imbalance between time and money, led
| to a bunch of what Graham is calling early work where my bad 3d
| modeling skills, terrible art sense, and ability to sling values
| around in text files and use tools that other community members
| made, allowed me to make an entire faction for Total Annihilation
| that was clearly lower quality than the originals, but really not
| that much worse. Contrast that to about 2017 when I looked into
| what it would take to make a very small mod for XCOM, and boy oh
| boy, so much more work. What advantages I gained from being in
| that place at that time...
| musingsole wrote:
| I've never heavily modded anything, but I made some mods for
| Skyrim and Fallout 4. In that case, the game engine is
| anticipating the extensions, so it's a bit easier. Add in
| community tools and it was stupid easy to do any sort of
| scripting alterations to a game. I can only imagine the
| complexity you have to grapple with when wading into a modern
| game not built to enable it.
| munificent wrote:
| _> but really not that much worse._
|
| This is an important and often overlooked aspect to creativity.
|
| When people get into some thing, they naturally compare
| themselves to the people out there that are best at that thing.
| In Ye Olden days before the Internet and social media meant
| literally the world's best examples of every single thing were
| right at your fingertips, the "best" often meant "the best in
| your town" and the level of difference between your novice
| skill and that was not so great as to be disheartening.
|
| But now, the first day you ever decide to fry an egg, you can
| watch Gordon Ramsey and Jacques Pepin do it and watch your soul
| die with the realization that you'll never reach that level. Or
| you pick up a guitar, then go to YouTube and see some kid who's
| been practicing twelve hours a day since infancy and lose all
| hope.
|
| A somewhat perverse trick to combat that is what I think of as
| _low ceilings._ If the thing you get into has some limit to how
| _good_ you can be at it, then the difference between you and
| the world 's best isn't so great that it kills your motivation.
| I'm an ex-game developer, and I've seen how many people really
| love PICO-8 and other deliberately constrained game making
| environments. I think a big part of that is because when you're
| making a PICO-8 game, you aren't comparing yourself to the
| world's best games, but just to the best PICO-8 games. Those
| can be surprisingly impressive too, but they don't feel so
| _unattainably_ distant from your own first steps.
|
| If you don't want to choose a medium that is instrinsically
| limited, another approach is to find a _scene_. Find a group of
| like-minded individuals at roughly the same skill level as you.
| Enough better than you to inspire you, but not so far that you
| don 't feel you could ever reach their level. Immerse yourself
| in that group, an you'll naturally compare yourself to them and
| not the world at large.
|
| Back when I used to be in a band, we played shows in small
| venues with other local bands. I knew we were never going to be
| the next Oasis or Tom Petty, but "Orlando's third-best rock
| band" was close enough within reach to be worth striving for,
| and it really helped keep me going.
| bluedino wrote:
| >> Or you pick up a guitar, then go to YouTube and see some
| kid who's been practicing twelve hours a day since infancy
| and lose all hope.
|
| On the other hand, that same thing can inspire you.
|
| I was never a musically inclined kid in any way, shape or
| form. Nobody in my family played, I never had an instrument
| as a child, but when I heard Days of the New for the first
| time, I ran to Guitar Center and bought an acoustic.
|
| For about a month, I practiced and played and played. I never
| got anywhere, gave up after a month, and looking back on it,
| I should have realized that level of playing was going to be
| years away, even if I had a professional teacher. But I
| didn't care at the time.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > Or you pick up a guitar, then go to YouTube and see some
| kid who's been practicing twelve hours a day since infancy
| and lose all hope.
|
| on the flip side, most skills seem to respond asymptotically
| to practice/effort (rapid progress at the beginning,
| diminishing returns near the top). the very best guitar
| players in the world are not radically more technically
| proficient than the classical/jazz guitarists at your local
| conservatory. you can see this in esports a lot. players come
| out of the woodwork all the time who have trained hard and
| smart at a game for two or three years and dethrone people
| who have literally been playing since they were eight.
|
| being the world's best X is usually more about gaining
| proficiency in adjacent skills Y and Z and having a bit of
| luck than it is about being lightyears ahead of everyone else
| at X itself. this is how roger federer dominated tennis for
| so long. he wasn't the world's best at any one stroke, but
| each one of his strokes was among the best, and he invested
| heavily in a style of play that was uncommon on the tour at
| that time.
| russnewcomer wrote:
| Scene is another big thing, and in the article, Graham draws
| on SV as a scene, too. That community can be really
| sustaining, even when you move past the organizing reason. I
| have not modded Total Annihilation in nearly 20 years, but I
| still post on the community forum at times because of the
| people still there.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I had the same experience except modding Motocross Madness and
| Carmageddon.
|
| Carmageddon was especially easy to mod because it was all self-
| documented data files in .txt format [1] and you could mess
| with literally everything from graphics to physics.
|
| The huge difference between this and now is that if I wanted to
| mess around with any kind of game I would need an IDE - which
| for a kid without a technical parent/mentor/friend would be a
| non-starter.
|
| [1] https://carmageddon.fandom.com/wiki/Data_file
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Modding is definitely one of those things that has become
| harder. Often due to lack of availability but definitely in
| terms of skill level to get near a similar quality bar.
|
| But at the same time it's never been easier to make a game from
| scratch in a whole host of different and easy to use engines.
| aliakhtar wrote:
| Here's my ugly duckling: naminus.com
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Clickable: https://naminus.com/
|
| I tried entering "tpu" which broke it. :) But then I tried
| "test" which worked. Nice site!
| thesausageking wrote:
| One reason why I believe TikTok took off so fast is that they
| made it ok for videos to not be very good. They're not supposed
| to be overly polished and perfect. On Instagram, what you post is
| a reflection of you and how you want the world to see and judge
| you. TikTok is the opposite: videos are ephemeral, fun little
| things that you don't have to take seriously.
| jzer0cool wrote:
| > One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great
| work is the fear of making something lame.
|
| I see this more concisely written as:
|
| One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great
| work __is the fear is fear itself__
|
| Anyone have some examples? I have some.
|
| * For example, not taking a job upon offer, for fear of failing.
|
| * I witness some mananger's/companies inducing fear, rather than
| embrace failure as one of the options. Without enabling high
| risk, high reward, people settle for safer low risk and mediocre
| results.
|
| I think some of the best works also results from beginners. They
| add the new perspective needed & creative flair as new source of
| input.
| watt wrote:
| Are you _this_ good going from abstract to practical? I know I
| am not. For me the it 's a revelation that _fear itself_
| actually is _fear of making something lame_. So, I don't really
| see the value of expressing this "concisely" because if will
| never arrive from A to B, if A is abstract pattern. Though once
| you have shown me that A is equivalent to B (the practical), I
| do agree, A is equivalent to B. But, unless you show me B
| upfront, just concisely stating A to me is of no value: I can
| not make the connection from Abstract to Practical. Only from
| practical (something lame) to maybe abstract (fear itself).
|
| This is also why I don't really buy in to the whole
| "conciseness" thing - I prefer things spelled out. I suspect
| many others do too.
| staunch wrote:
| An example of tricking oneself came to mind:
|
| _" I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be
| big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."_ -- Linus
| Torvalds on comp.os.minix in 1991
| alexashka wrote:
| > One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great
| work is the fear of making something lame.
|
| No, the biggest thing holding people back from doing great work
| is resources. Everything else is a distant concern.
|
| Remember what Y Combinator does? It connects people with
| resources, to people who claim they'll do great work.
|
| Good, boring, mundane redistribution of resources from old rich
| people to young capable people. Good, do more of that and please
| spare us your 'wisdom' - it leads to bullshit artists whose sole
| skill is 'appreciating' your 'wisdom' to insert themselves into
| the process and ruin the whole thing.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I think he had it right... the thing holding most people back
| is fear, most of the time.
|
| It's only after you get past the fear, does the need for more
| resources come into play.
| dang wrote:
| YC adds resources to people who are already making something.
| It may not be what they'll end up with (Segment, recently
| acquired, started with an entirely different idea) but they've
| started.
|
| In the passage you quoted, PG is talking about an earlier stage
| than that. ("They're too frightened even to start.")
| [deleted]
| asaph wrote:
| Why doesn't http://paulgraham.com/ redirect to
| https://paulgraham.com/? And why doesn't https://paulgraham.com/
| have a valid SSL cert? I expect better from PG.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It's actually using yahoo store builder. pg has no control over
| it, because yahoo owns it. He mentioned that to me when I
| reported that the mobile interface broke various parts of his
| site.
| aliakhtar wrote:
| He made this site in the early 2000s using the store builder he
| coded in the 90s. His framework probably doesn't even have
| support for SSL (because it was written in the 90s).
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| This is really a good question, especially for someone who's
| presenting themself as a programmer.
| rogerdickey wrote:
| I don't disagree with the point on overconfidence but it is a bit
| exhausting to be surrounded by 10,000+ overconfident CEOs of 3
| person companies in Silicon Valley, most of whom will never
| succeed. It contributes to a culture that can be toxic and
| alienating for other personality types. Maybe that is the price
| we pay for innovation.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Dunno, I just think of:
|
| > The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the
| unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
| himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable
| man.
|
| Of course, there's no telling how much extra baggage you've
| stored in the word "overconfidence" here, but without
| overconfident risk takers, there aren't many people left to do
| the job.
| vikiomega9 wrote:
| Perhaps we don't need as many overconfident risk takers, and
| I think of this whenever I read about the quiet millionaire
| or people who have a flourishing business that is not sexy.
| jlangemeier wrote:
| I think that's more the product of VC culture; as a founder
| you're in a constant case of "selling your company" which in
| most cases is also selling yourself to people, i.e. investing
| in a startup is tantamount to investing in the person in the
| early stages. I haven't seen this mentality nearly as much in
| folks that are bootstrapping without the "extreme growth"
| required by VCs.
|
| And, although PG is in the Silicon Valley bubble (where only
| cool things happen, and it's the hub of cool in tech, duh), the
| advice he has is fairly general. In the board game creator
| community there's a lot of advice on making things that fail
| and making things that don't sell "for the fun of making the
| thing," because let's face it... most of your shit doesn't sell
| and never has any market value, but that doesn't make it any
| less useful or instructive.
|
| TL;DR: Being okay with "failure" is a major part of any
| profession or hobby, and isn't intrinsic to Silicon Valley or
| VC backed startups...
| kamilszybalski wrote:
| I don't think there's anything wrong with being confident and
| contrarian, as look as you have some type of validation, or
| driving force, grounded in a reality. Often founders,
| especially those with less founding experience, over-value
| confidence "hustle" and under-appreciate experience and advice;
| I don't have much empathy when dealing with that particular
| cohort.
| timr wrote:
| I have the same reaction. Also, there's definitely a local
| optimum for being surrounded by people who are all trying to
| hock their crazy "world-changing" dreams at the same time.
|
| A population of 10% crazy dreamers is inspiring. A population
| of 90% crazy dreamers is maybe inspiring in limited doses.
| Being surrounded by that kind of person, every day, all the
| time, is tedious and uninspiring. I can see how it's great for
| investors (who only really care about that 1 success in 100),
| but for the other 99 people involved, it's enough to make you
| very cynical.
| dzink wrote:
| There is creating new work and there is judging early work. One
| hack I've used for both is to realize that your brain is
| different at different times of day and in different levels of
| exhaustion/sleep/context etc. You are almost a different person
| as time passes. That novelty gives you new perspectives and new
| ideas with time. So always document new ideas (i have even built
| a new tool to make that as fast as possible) and then live with
| them for a bit. A good one will haunt you in that it will keep
| showing itself and resurfacing in other contexts. If the regret
| of not having it is heavier than the effort to put it together
| just use a weekend to put it together.
|
| For judging ideas, you should pay even more attention to regrets.
| Your choice is a psychological anchor, so if you chose poorly you
| may not know it as your brain will automatically try to justify
| your choices, but if you find yourself angry at past rejections
| you've made on an idea, that's probably regret talking to you,
| and that means you've been subconsciously haunted by something
| you should be paying more attention to.
|
| Now I've learned to note what upsets me about an idea and at
| times dig in deeper and consider it extra points towards the
| idea.
| Sodman wrote:
| Has paulgraham.com never had TLS or is it just more obvious now
| because of Chrome UI changes? I find the old-school style &
| minimalism helps focus on the content, but shouldn't he at least
| have a LetsEncrypt cert up there or something? Or is the argument
| that because the site has no interactivity, it's not a big deal?
| snazz wrote:
| It has a TLS certificate for the Yahoo Store domain if you
| browse to the https:// version, but I agree that PG should add
| something easy like Let's Encrypt or put it behind Cloudflare.
| It's been "modernized" with a mobile version already, so I
| think that HTTPS is a good next step. It can't hurt, at least.
| GCA10 wrote:
| I like Graham's points about overconfidence, peer groups and
| (judicious amounts of) ignorance, all of which he champions quite
| strongly. But drilling deeper on "rate of change" is an
| undervalued element that deserves a closer look.
|
| The best innovators are really good at taking Version 1.0 and
| figuring out what rework will turn it into a better 2.0, and then
| 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, etc. This is an identifiable skill! It can be
| cultivated. Once you've got it, the failings of Version 1.0 do
| not ruin your self-esteem. You just get to work on fixing them.
| And not enough people think about this systematically.
|
| One of my favorite museum stops of all time was the British
| Library, where a glass case held Paul McCartney's first draft of
| "Yesterday." You could see, cross-out by cross-out, how a
| somewhat awkward ballad got turned into a pop classic.
|
| I'll submit that almost everything that looks like genius from a
| distance is a lot of step-by-step craft when viewed more closely.
| I did some consulting at Facebook in 2008 and it was quite
| amazing seeing how rapidly and incessantly Team Zuckerberg was
| not just adding features, but also rejiggering the way the feed
| worked; the layout, the everything.
|
| Once you develop the ability to iterate your way to greatness, or
| at least to have a fighting chance of doing so, you're much more
| willing to crank out dodgy Version 1.0s and see what you (and
| your allies) can turn them into.
| CerealFounder wrote:
| "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." -
| Marky Mark Twain
| jasim wrote:
| There are two places where it is possible to see early, "lame"
| work. One is YouTube - most channels with well-made videos would
| retain their earliest works, and the first few dozen can be quite
| instructive.
|
| Second is GitHub - the first few hundred commits of many
| successful open-source projects. It is a wonder to see sprawling
| codebases starting at its first commit, and plodding its way over
| years before gathering momentum.
| mauriziocalo wrote:
| Two other great examples where you can get a peek of early
| versions of companies/products that ended up being huge:
| Wayback Machine and Show HN.
|
| e.g.
|
| Wayback machine:
|
| - Airbnb (2008):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080310025433/http://www.airbed...
|
| - Uber (2010):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101126114649/http://www.uberap...
|
| - Twitter (2006):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20061127012643/http://twitter.co...
|
| Show HN:
|
| - Analytics.js / Segment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912076
|
| - Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| njarboe wrote:
| Foot note number 8 of the essay notes that Michael Nielsen made
| the same two observations when reading an early version of the
| essay. For some reason Paul Graham has decided to make the
| footnote labels almost invisible in the text of the essay. I
| agree that it is best that in short essay reading that skipping
| the footnotes until reading the whole essay is usually the best
| way to approach them, but I like when they were more visable.
| In the spirit of the essay though, it is nice he has not
| changed older essays to fit this new style and one can go back
| and see the footnote indicators get lighter over time.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Webcomics work that way - quite a few webcomics have been
| written over the course of many years, and you can see the art
| style slowly changing and the artist's skill improving.
|
| You don't notice it if you're subscribing/following the comic,
| until you jump back to an earlier strip and see how much less
| skilled the early work was.
| ultrasaurus wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1/ is a great example of exactly that
| phenomenon.
| teddyh wrote:
| If you want examples, here are a couple:
|
| Compare this:
| (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3) to
| this version of the same strip, drawn much later:
| (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1601).
| That's the same artist. There was no abrupt change in
| style, either, the artist's style just slowly changed over
| time.
|
| Almost as large an improvement can be seen by comparing
| this first strip:
| (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-06-12) with the same
| strip, redrawn much later:
| (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2020-07-27). Same thing
| there; same artist, no abrupt change in style, just slow
| improvements over time.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| One of my favorite podcasts [1] is a great example of this. A
| friend recommended it to me and told me to start at the
| beginning (already a couple years of back catalog at that
| point). I almost stopped after the first few episodes, which
| were interesting but not very well produced.
|
| The creator stuck with it though and the quality improved
| dramatically and pretty quickly.
|
| [1] https://www.philosophizethis.org/
| postcynical wrote:
| And Joe Rogans podcast #1:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWBCnvOuXK8
| chubot wrote:
| Funny comment: "This Guy Pulled Off Making 2013 Look Like
| 1997"
|
| I think it's actually from 2009 though, since wikipedia
| says that was the first episode? It was just uploaded later
| I guess.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joe_Rogan_Experience
|
| Still, it's crazy how much video has improved in quality,
| and exploded in popularity, since just 2009 or 2013 ...
| damn.
|
| I guess this is a little like early bloggers in the early
| 2000's who were already writers in other mediums.
|
| The people who are really successful are the ones involved
| in the old paradigm (multiple TV shows in Rogan's case),
| AND who actually embrace the new paradigm.
| ed_balls wrote:
| > One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great
| work is the fear of making something lame.
|
| Any evidence to back up this claim? Maybe it's true for SV where
| there are a lot of angel investors. For me, the biggest blocker
| for starting a "lame" idea is money. Ideally, Fuck-You Money +
| capital to prove the business model.
|
| An example of lame idea: A new footwear company. The main goal
| would be to optimize for minimal waste. Shoes designed to last
| 10x the time. The would cost more to purchase, but the cost per
| month would be the same - so something like a subscription model
| would need to be in place.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I mean you can already buy really nice expensive leather shoes
| that will last a long time. To last even longer you buy two
| pairs and alternate them. You can also then get the sole redone
| if the upper remains in good shape.
| ed_balls wrote:
| Is there a company that give you 10 years warranty?
| confidantlake wrote:
| If the shoe lasted 10x as long, why would you need a
| subscription? Buy it once, no need to buy it again for 10
| years?
| ed_balls wrote:
| Because the initial price would be steep. Let's say you spend
| $70 dollars on shoes and they last 2 years, so that's $350
| for 10 years. It would be hard to design a single pair of
| shoes, especially at the beginning, at lasts 10 years. The
| goal would be to replace that pair after 5 years.
|
| No one would pay $350 for a pair of shoes from an unknown
| company, but if I'd offer them for $3/month it's a different
| story.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| And if they stop paying they return the shoes? This sounds
| more like a loan than a subscription.
| arthurjj wrote:
| The two paragraphs in the middle about how it gets harder as you
| get older is exactly the problem I'm having right now. Your
| standards rise, which is generally good, and you have fewer long
| blocks of time. Both of these problems are from success both
| professionally and personally e.g. good career and happy family.
|
| The only trick I've found that helps with this 'problem' is only
| do one new thing at a time.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > Of course, inexperience is not the only reason people are too
| harsh on early versions of ambitious projects. They also do it to
| seem clever.
|
| It's ~100x harder to create than critique. I find it's often much
| more important to ask "why might this work" than "why won't this
| work?" People will freely tell you the latter, but rarely the
| former.
| tcgv wrote:
| That's my standard approach to work, I always try to invalidate
| an idea before investing my time (or the team's time) in it. If
| we can't invalidate the idea I feel much more confident that
| we're going in the right direction.
|
| On the other hand a lot of people spend too much energy trying
| to support the idea, which often is a reflection of
| confirmation bias / wishful thinking in their thought process.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Invalidating an idea is a bad idea because old ideas are bad
| until they're suddenly very good. For example, before
| Napoleon, cannons were often a terrible idea: unreliable and
| rarely decisive. Then the technology caught up to the idea.
| username90 wrote:
| Which is why it is good to know why things are bad so you
| know when they no longer applies. If you just try to be
| positive then you'd try to use cannons when they were still
| not good enough to be practical on the field.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| In theory yes, but it often takes a believer to push
| through the naysayers. Facebook seemed a terrible idea
| when it first came out. Ditto for Airbnb.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Facebook seemed a terrible idea when it first came out
|
| It's funny, this. According to the movie, they just ask
| MZ to clone another uni's digital facebook. Presumably
| because that one worked well enough.
| tcgv wrote:
| > old ideas are bad until they're suddenly very good
|
| Sure, for an idea to become suddenly very good you either
| have to rely on technology advancements / innovation, as in
| the case for cannons that before Napoleon were unreliable
| and dangerous, or you have to make a controlled bet to test
| your hypothesis, as in the case of Venture Capital that
| invests in hundreds of startups (selected according to
| their investment model) estimating that a small percentage
| of them will turn out successful.
|
| So my key point is, if an idea becomes very good (i.e.
| through innovation) it'll be harder to invalidate it, and
| if you invest in an idea that you aren't comfortable with
| yet (i.e. venture capital) there'll be a higher risk
| attached to it.
| abernard1 wrote:
| > as in the case of Venture Capital that invests in
| hundreds of startups (selected according to their
| investment model) estimating that a small percentage of
| them will turn out successful.
|
| This. VCs have an endless supply of disposable
| entrepreneurs in their portfolio.
|
| For every 1 person that has PG's version of edgy, devil-
| may-care entrepreneurialism and succeeds, there's 99 that
| fail. VCs operate more like brokers than entrepreneurs.
| The only place they're not playing a numbers game is in
| fostering business connections and hiring.
|
| Acting as if the SV financial Goliath is David is just, I
| dunno, old. That assembly line has been cranking out the
| same "apply software to an existing problem" model for a
| long time now. And they do it because it works, and
| actually building things takes longer, has less leverage
| because of up-front capital, and is much higher risk (and
| taxation).
| marttt wrote:
| > I find it's often much more important to ask "why might this
| work" than "why won't this work?"
|
| A recurring thought I've had for years: the latter -- "why
| won't this work?" -- seems like a fairly common mindset for
| Eastern European engineers schooled in the 1960s. Brilliant
| people who need to understand everything to the bare
| essentials. And -- they produce strikingly simple solutions to
| almost every technical problem in the house.
|
| Fairly often, though, this mindset seems to come with quite a
| complicated, uneasy personality.
|
| My dad was a kind person, but I remember something he said
| about his civil engineering studies in the 1970s Soviet Union:
| for certain exams, not a single mistake was allowed. One wrong
| answer, and you failed. For if you build a house and
| miscalculate (e.g.) the needed strength of a crucial beam,
| you'll risk with fatalities.
|
| I'm not an engineer, and I've always been in the "why might
| this work" boat myself. But I do understand this critical view
| precisely for that reason. For a lot of occupations, there is
| no unlimited Ctrl+Z.
| sfpoet wrote:
| _The right way to deal with new ideas is to treat them as a
| challenge to your imagination -- not just to have lower
| standards, but to switch polarity entirely, from listing the
| reasons an idea won 't work to trying to think of ways it could._
|
| An easier way than seeing them as a challenge is to method act
| the ideas. The source of new ideas is often a new, lived
| experience. I think of how AirBnB was in the beginning: links
| from CraigsList to a website where host and guest could message.
| Payment was in person and in cash! The lived experience of being
| your own BnB rather than going through all the bureaucratic and
| government hoops was there, it just needed to be coded.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Seems a little too "rah, rah, Silicon Valley!". Silicon valley is
| becoming less a geographical location and more of a state of
| mind.
| nilpunning wrote:
| "It also helps, as Hardy suggests, to be slightly overconfident."
|
| You do not need to cultivate this personality trait in our
| culture. Far more people go too far with this than not far
| enough, myself included.
|
| Overconfident people believe they know more than they actually
| do, so they are more eager to criticize your novel idea. This is
| the type of thinking Graham says he wants to avoid in earlier
| paragraphs.
|
| Instead of cultivating overconfidence through the deadly sin of
| pride, we should cultivate increasing true confidence through the
| cardinal virtue of courage. You can build your confidence by
| taking greater and greater courageous action. Courage is the
| choice to confront pain, ridicule, and the unknown all for an
| uncertain reward.
|
| Graham says, "being slightly overconfident armors you against
| both other people's skepticism and your own." Acting courageously
| does this much, much better. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising
| if Graham agreed. The rest of the essay does a pretty good job
| explaining how to go about acting courageously, just without
| using the word.
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| This reminds me of the saying that the three virtues of a great
| programmer are laziness, impatience and hubris.
| davebryand wrote:
| So much of the advice I see from YC (PG in this case, I know he
| isn't YC, but it's all cut from the same cloth) is about how to
| change your outer circumstances to accommodate inner impediments,
| such as Fear. They'll offer hacks or "mind games" to trick
| yourself into moving past the fear, as PG talks about here:
|
| "But it's a bit strange that you have to play mind games with
| yourself to avoid being discouraged by lame-looking early
| efforts."
|
| Unfortunately, I don't see anyone over there talking about
| conquering fear permanently, such that these issues fall away and
| what is left is boundless creativity.
|
| One tool offered here is to "switch polarity", which means to
| take the other side of the argument. Fine, but real wisdom comes
| from transcending polarity.
|
| Another tool offered is to tap into the motivation of curiosity.
| That's great as "early work" on the inner game, but there are
| much more robust ways to conquer fear when one looks at cutting
| edge work on consciousness evolution, such as Integral Dynamics,
| or studies Eastern traditions like Vajrayana or Zen.
|
| I look forward to the day where YC elevates this discussion
| toward awakening themselves and their network to more
| transcendental tools.
| nostrademons wrote:
| You don't want to conquer fear entirely. Fear is an important
| signal. Physical fear keeps you out of danger; ego fear keeps
| you from wasting lots of time on fruitless things or doing
| things not in accord with your values.
|
| You want to _control_ fear. Put it in a little box so that it
| 's a signal and not a dictator. Process it so that you're aware
| of what precisely is making you afraid and can rationally think
| of ways to mitigate that concern. Fear is a reason to be
| vigilant and aware, not a reason to freeze up and stop doing
| what you're doing.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Not the poster who you are replying to, but from the
| references he gave, I assume he was more or less saying the
| same as you.
|
| In meditation what you want is to become aware of your
| feelings/emotions/sensations to a level where you can then
| very consciously choose what to do when something happens,
| instead of triggering a knee-jerk reaction.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Or you know a good course in cognitive behavioral therapy. I
| often think YC should have an in house therapist or two.
| jlokier wrote:
| > One tool offered here is to "switch polarity", which means to
| take the other side of the argument. Fine, but real wisdom
| comes from transcending polarity.
|
| I suggest real transcendence of polarity comes from holding
| both sides of the argument in your mind at the same time until
| they merge, and spending some time really understanding the
| other side than the one you're attracted to is a route there.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| You are right, there is huge potential in broader knowledge and
| practice of "consciousness practice".
|
| Wim Hof has been making the rounds on HN lately. His latest
| book just came out, and I would recommend anyone who is looking
| for a super straightforward and practical way of systematically
| facing and overcoming fear, to check out either the book or
| just download the Wim Hof method app to do the breathing and
| the cold showers. You really don't need to "believe" anything,
| just need to try out the basic exercises and see what you feel,
| then decide if it's something that you want to keep doing or
| not.
| davebryand wrote:
| This is exactly the type of thing we can explore that pays
| dividends in ways that has a halo effect over everything in
| our life, not just our startup performance. Thanks for
| mentioning!
| nudpiedo wrote:
| > Unfortunately, I don't see anyone over there talking about
| conquering fear permanently, such that these issues fall away
| and what is left is boundless creativity.
|
| Constant reinforcement made by little, constant and almost
| predictable successes. Read the psychological literature on
| self confidence (but skip bloggers and influencers)
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| I've found one way to conquer fear and develop perseverance is
| to just (gradually) go thru enough hard things and learn to be
| okay w/ discomfort.
|
| I've never been as active as I wanted in my young years due to
| weak health, and recently started engaging in outdoor
| activities I always wanted to do (long-distance hiking,
| climbing, scuba diving), mostly because I don't enjoy hitting
| the gym and looking at a wall, but I didn't anticipate the
| benefit it would have in my psyche.
|
| Now, when faced w/ hardships of life or random sources of
| stressors, I can relate back to some past experience and think
| "hey, I did that crazy thing, of course I can handle this other
| thing here". I don't know if this psychological phenomena has a
| name, I would only describe as "developing thick skin". I think
| it also happens naturally to individuals who had a hard
| upbringing and are hard working nonetheless. Maybe there's some
| idea to explore here.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Yes, this! I start my days by jumping into an unheated
| swimming pool (or stepping into an ice-cold shower, when the
| pool's covered for the coldest months), and one of the main
| reasons / benefits is the self-mastery involved. "No, I don't
| want to do this. Yes, I can do it anyway, and start my day
| with a small victory."
| tomhoward wrote:
| I've been (mostly) quietly working on this for several years,
| after my initially-promising YC (W09) startup failed to take
| off, having been afflicted by what I realised on deep
| reflection was mostly fear, egotism and self-sabotage.
|
| Like you I think the concept has huge potential, and I've found
| some modalities that you haven't mentioned but that I've found
| particularly powerful, and could be more broadly beneficial for
| founders and creators generally.
|
| Feel free to hit me up (email in profile, or in Bookface) if
| you want to connect and discuss further. (Offer is open to
| anyone else interested too.)
| davebryand wrote:
| Thanks Tom! Your profile quote pretty much sums it up:
|
| "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct
| your life and you will call it fate" -- Carl Jung
| bob33212 wrote:
| Humans naturally think linearly. This is because our lizard
| brains have evolved over millions of years in environment where
| linear processes were the most important to understand for
| survival. When we see a lion that is 1 mile away we know that we
| have 2x the time to run away than when the lion is .5 miles away.
|
| So when we see a crappy project that took a few months to create,
| we naturally assume that it will be slightly less crappy in a few
| more months. We can't even imagine what it would look like if it
| was 100x more useful in 9 months. Even PG and other great early
| investors only have a slight notion of what that would look like.
| carterklein13 wrote:
| I have to disagree - I feel like most successful investors
| explicitly look for ideas that can grow in the exponential
| fashion you describe. YC particularly doesn't seem to show any
| interest towards linearly-scalable businesses AFAIK.
|
| EDIT: Or, rather, I agree with the point you're making, but I
| think it's pretty commonly-held belief.
| jstanley wrote:
| Related: Ira Glass on "The Gap":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91FQKciKfHI
|
| > Nobody tells people who are beginners -- and I really wish
| somebody had told this to me -- is that all of us who do creative
| work ... we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like
| there's a gap, that for the first couple years that you're making
| stuff, what you're making isn't so good, OK? It's not that great.
| It's really not that great. It's trying to be good, it has
| ambition to be good, but it's not quite that good. But your taste
| -- the thing that got you into the game -- your taste is still
| killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what
| you're making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I
| mean?
|
| > A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at
| that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you
| with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does
| interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years
| where they had really good taste and they could tell what they
| were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be -- they knew
| it fell short, it didn't have the special thing that we wanted it
| to have.
|
| > And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through
| that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it
| right now, if you're just getting out of that phase -- you gotta
| know it's totally normal.
|
| > And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of
| work -- do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so
| that every week, or every month, you know you're going to finish
| one story. Because it's only by actually going through a volume
| of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that
| gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your
| ambitions. It takes a while, it's gonna take you a while -- it's
| normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way
| through that, okay?
| pawannitj wrote:
| Amazing adaption of same quote by zen pencils :
| https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beg...
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| It can be discouraging, even if you know this is true for so
| many people, though, to see the "young genius" types. They're
| exceptions to almost every rule by definition, but it can be
| hard to remember that when you see someone years or decades
| younger burst onto the scene and seem to eclipse what you can
| do with far less effort.
|
| But yes, it's important to remember that even in fields with
| famous examples of luminaries like that, there are still
| countless other experts who practiced and practiced and
| continually got better to achieve their expertise out of
| willpower more than sheer transcendent prodigy.
| boris wrote:
| > But your taste -- the thing that got you into the game --
| your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that
| you can tell that what you're making is kind of a
| disappointment to you, you know what I mean?
|
| _" Talent is feeling how should not be."_
| pram wrote:
| IMO this has little to do with "taste" and more to do with
| analytical/critical ability. The more experienced and
| knowledgeable you become in a creative endeavor, the easier it
| is to self-critique and (especially in visual art) see
| mistakes. When you're starting out drawing for example, you
| literally can't see your mistakes. You intuitively know it
| sucks but you don't know exactly why. Figuring out that last
| part puts you on the road to mastery.
|
| The rest is accurate though. It does take a lot of grit and
| working through lots and lots of bad stuff. Developing a
| creative talent can be a pretty horrible experience because of
| that ;P
| pdonis wrote:
| _> You intuitively know it sucks but you don't know exactly
| why_
|
| I think that is what the GP is referring to as "taste". You
| already have that intuitive sense that some things suck and
| others are good. What you need to develop, as you say, is
| being able to tell exactly why something isn't good when it
| isn't, so you can fix it.
| jdoliner wrote:
| I believe experience and knowledge in a creative endeavor
| that makes it easier to critique (self or otherwise) is what
| Ira Glass means by taste.
| gfodor wrote:
| This sucks.
|
| This sucks, because...
|
| This doesn't suck.
|
| The three phases
| microtherion wrote:
| I think what Glass misses in the grandparent post is that
| this analytical/critical ability is not innate, but acquired
| along with the performance skill, and at times the analytical
| ability gets ahead of the skill.
|
| Many years ago, when I was in a youth choir and we were
| practicing a lot for a festival, I asked our director why we
| sounded worse at each practice. His explanation was that we
| actually sounded _better_ , but that our analytical abilities
| developed even quicker than our singing skills.
| [deleted]
| allenu wrote:
| That video is one of my favorites as it really hits home for me
| when I try to learn something new. You can know what makes
| something good, but you don't quite have the muscle memory or
| skill to reproduce it and it's frustrating.
|
| You might know what a good painting looks like, but you can't
| move your arm in the right way to create those strokes. You
| don't know how to mix the paints to get the colors you want.
| When you are sketching out a scene, you're not quite adept at
| positioning elements of a scene on the page to have the
| aesthetics you're aiming for.
|
| Another thing this reminds me of is learning how to dance. It's
| easy to watch someone walk through steps and mentally you know
| exactly how they are moving, but you just can't quite move your
| body in the same way. Super frustrating! What's worse is the
| first time you watch a video of you dancing. There's a huge
| disconnect between how you think you look and how you actually
| look and it's quite discouraging.
| underdeserver wrote:
| > t also helps, as Hardy suggests, to be slightly overconfident.
| I've noticed in many fields that the most successful people are
| slightly overconfident. On the face of it this seems implausible.
| Surely it would be optimal to have exactly the right estimate of
| one's abilities. How could it be an advantage to be mistaken?
| Because this error compensates for other sources of error in the
| opposite direction: being slightly overconfident armors you
| against both other people's skepticism and your own.
|
| I disagree. Being overconfident compensates for the amount of
| _luck_ you need to succeed. If 100 people are overconfident, and
| 5 of them succeed, it paid off for these 5 to be overconfident -
| because when you have that kind of luck, overconfidence is the
| appropriate level of confidence.
|
| For an excellent demonstration of the importance of luck:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I&vl=en
| Hongwei wrote:
| I've always told people interested in startup to "start a
| project, not a company." I haven't been able to verbalize why yet
| until this:
|
| _But there is another more sinister reason people dismiss new
| ideas. If you try something ambitious, many of those around you
| will hope, consciously or unconsciously, that you 'll fail. They
| worry that if you try something ambitious and succeed, it will
| put you above them. In some countries this is not just an
| individual failing but part of the national culture._
| povik wrote:
| How can you know that such an impulse is part of some country's
| national culture?
|
| I sometimes think about what sets successful and less
| successful countries apart, and how profound an effect can
| cultures have. Assuming that smart people are born everywhere
| at similar rate, and disregarding unfree societies with
| authoritative regimes or paralysing religious dogmas, I would
| naively expect similar outcomes among countries. I would like
| to know to what degree can the observed difference be
| attributed to culture, but I guess I will never know.
| Kluny wrote:
| In Denmark it's so prevalent that it's codified as Jante's
| Law. It's not a prescriptive law, despite the way it's
| phrased. It's more descriptive, a satirical summary of the
| way Danes think of ambitious people.
|
| - You're not to think you are anything special.
|
| - You're not to think you are as good as we are.
|
| - You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
|
| - You're not to imagine yourself better than we are.
|
| - You're not to think you know more than we do.
|
| - You're not to think you are more important than we are.
|
| - You're not to think you are good at anything.
|
| - You're not to laugh at us.
|
| - You're not to think anyone cares about you.
|
| - You're not to think you can teach us anything.
| quadcore wrote:
| _I would like to know to what degree can the observed
| difference be attributed to culture_
|
| I believe you can have a grasp of the magnitude of it by
| thinking that people are the product of their birth (genes
| and whatever) and their experience. Certainly we can think of
| experience as very significative in the way people act and
| think. Also if you replace the word _experience_ by
| _education_ (see as being the same thing here), you end up
| with anything from study environment, to culture to politics
| that actually determine a lot how people behave.
|
| That's actually my main criticism of the politics in my
| country. It's not so much that the politicians are saying
| dumb things, they actually are great people if you look
| closely. It's just that their politic is not how I would
| "educate" people, the way people experiences it is the bad
| part in my feeling.
|
| In short, I think those impulses have a lot to do with
| experience/education.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _How can you know that such an impulse is part of some
| country's national culture?_
|
| Singaporean here. I've seen this "crabs in a bucket"
| mentality since the days of formal education. It's often
| known as being "kiasu" (afraid of losing to others, in
| Hokkien dialect) [1] in the 90's.
|
| These days, it's sometimes known as the "sinkie pwn sinkie"
| phenomenon [2].
|
| [1] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/kiasu-is-oxford-
| engli...
|
| [2] http://asingaporeanson.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-sinkie-
| pwn-s...
| markkat wrote:
| A couple of decades ago, I set forth to create something every
| day. It could be as simple as a bit of prose, writing some code,
| or as involved as a birdhouse. I haven't succeeded in creating
| every day since, but I did successfully create a habit of
| behavior that I cannot break. I've built games, websites, apps,
| written blogs, filed patents, built siege engines, been
| published, painted, carved wooden toys, remodeled houses, and
| much more. I've also started a couple of companies, one of which
| went through YCS17 and is still growing.
|
| It's sad that there exists any cynicism around creation at all.
| Our ability to create might be the most human of our qualities.
| We literally make the world we live in.
|
| The creations that excite me most are those that enable people to
| create even more. I really appreciate what PG is saying here,
| what he believes, and the dream factory that is YC.
| [deleted]
| defen wrote:
| > But the most conspicuous feature of Theranos's cap table is the
| absence of Silicon Valley firms. Journalists were fooled by
| Theranos, but Silicon Valley investors weren't.
|
| Not really a good defense of Silicon Valley, considering that Tim
| Draper was Theranos's first investor and a pretty big proponent
| of them
| https://twitter.com/RebeccaJarvis/status/974435962930548736
| pchristensen wrote:
| Tim Draper was friends with Holmes's family and his kids grew
| up with hers. He invested personally, but I don't think his
| firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson did.
|
| Theranos' fundraising was primarily from outside of SV:
| "Documents unsealed in a lawsuit brought against Theranos
| reveal a number of the high profile investors who had a stake
| in the nearly worthless start-up: The Waltons, founders of
| Walmart, with $150 million; Rupert Murdoch, with $125 million;
| and the DeVos family, including Education Secretary Betsy
| DeVos, with $100 million. The investments were made between
| 2013 and 2015, according to the Journal." -
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/theranos-devos-other-investo...
| hugs wrote:
| You can go directly to the SEC's website for the information.
|
| In Theranos' earliest SEC filing, "Draper Fisher Jurvetson
| Fund VII, L.P." is listed as a Beneficial Owner.
|
| Filing Date 2005-01-03
|
| File/File Number 021-72626 05000011
| [deleted]
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