[HN Gopher] Find Your People
___________________________________________________________________
Find Your People
Author : jl
Score : 702 points
Date : 2025-05-23 16:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (foundersatwork.posthaven.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (foundersatwork.posthaven.com)
| vzaliva wrote:
| It's a lovely speech. I'm older now and can appreciate it.
| However, I'm not sure if I would have in my twenties.
| Unfortunately, some things can't be advised or taught - you have
| to discover them for yourself through trial and error.
| apsurd wrote:
| Good speech. It makes me think of why the rich get richer though.
| More access to more types of people earlier and throughout one's
| life.
|
| The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide--as wide as
| they can stomach--orientation of all there is in the world. It's
| not curation, it's not "the best". it's volume and contrasts.
|
| I debate my friends about private school. they have kids, I don't
| yet. Private school is actually a narrow lens, is my argument.
| pc86 wrote:
| I don't think anybody would argue that it's a narrower lens
| than public school, the argument is that it's _better_. Not
| just academically, although that 's the case 99 times out of
| 100. But as you alluded to yourself in this very comment, the
| kids at private schools get access to other kids (and families)
| at that private school.
| ketzo wrote:
| Aside from the pure "networking" factor, the
| expectations/environment are a big deal too
|
| I went to private school and in hindsight it pretty obviously
| altered my life for the better -- I was a smart but lazy kid,
| and being surrounded by people who were dead-set on going to
| Harvard, and by teachers who _expected_ excellence, was a huge
| factor in making me actually try hard.
|
| If I was a smart lazy kid at a school where I had to _try_ to
| find that environment, rather than being thrust into it, I
| would have had a much lower trajectory.
| apsurd wrote:
| Environmental expectations and accountability is a great
| point. Hard to deny how wide the gap can be between various
| groups.
| cmehdy wrote:
| I was that other kid. Grew up in a pretty tough place, where
| dodging blades was no euphemism and emotional regulation was
| on permanent hiatus. Grew up with severe issues in personal
| life and balance of self, absence of anchors in family and
| social relationships. Was always curious, always loved
| understanding things.
|
| When you don't have good people around, you pay the price in
| time and pain. Those people will save you years and hundreds
| of thousands - or even millions, simply by showing you the
| most egregious traps to avoid and the more virtuous
| behaviours to adopt. They'll make your success more
| predictable, less reliant on the specifics of your genetic
| makeup, domestic instability, and odd moments of luck.
|
| I was a good kid. Didn't end up well at all. Figured I could
| at least try to be a good person to others as time goes on,
| and pass on the gotchas and virtuous habits I partly figured
| out myself.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't know what the axes are for your trajectory plot, but
| some of the people I know who seem to really enjoy their
| lives are not high achievers if you measure by status or
| finances.
|
| It's hard to find things that all of them have in common.
| They all come from supportive, functioning families and all
| of them are artistic people working in technical fields and
| have high EQ. They are all very curious but not scattered or
| unfocused.
|
| I didn't know if I should write creative or artistic above
| because they are so similar. They are different though,
| right?
| jimbokun wrote:
| > They all come from supportive, functioning families and
| all of them are artistic people working in technical fields
| and have high EQ. They are all very curious but not
| scattered or unfocused.
|
| Seems like it wasn't too hard to find things all of them
| have in common.
| criddell wrote:
| Yeah, rereading my comment I don't think I said what I
| wanted to say. It wasn't very insightful.
| bko wrote:
| > The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide--as wide
| as they can stomach--orientation of all there is in the world.
|
| This sounds good sure, but what if you give your child a wide
| orientation and they want to be an influencer, or club
| promoter, or grind it out in acting? They almost certainly
| won't want to become an accountant or nurse. Who would want to
| do that by choice?
|
| But maybe an accountant or nurse is the path to a good life.
| The extreme is celebrity children which often have issues.
|
| I think its good to have restraints. If you have an infinite
| bank roll and no real forcing function, you're likely to get
| lost
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > I think its good to have restraints. If you have an
| infinite bank roll and no real forcing function, you're
| likely to get lost
|
| You're absolutely right
|
| I wonder how many people graduate from prestigious
| universities, well connected and set up to succeed, and then
| don't ever really make anything of themselves
| softfalcon wrote:
| I mostly agree with you, as a person who went to a middle-of-
| the-road public school.
|
| I will point out though, anecdotally, my spouse went to the
| highest tier of public school in our city. She has a good
| balance of "seeing the world for what it is" while also having
| an edge of being personally networked to a ton of folks who are
| rich, well-connected, and capable.
|
| I look at the friend groups I built when I was a kid, and then
| I look at hers.
|
| - My old friend groups are all stuck in a range of poverty to
| lower-middle-class.
|
| - My spouses friends are all doing very well for themselves,
| live all over the world, prestigious careers, active hobbies,
| highly intellectual, cultured, etc.
|
| It's a stark contrast.
|
| There is something to be said for ensuring your kids go to the
| best schools possible. Those early networks are pivotal in
| forming an above average life.
|
| Competency is secondary to connection.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I went to a poverty level school, my partner went to one of
| the most elite schools in the US. My friends are also stuck
| in poverty or the lower-middle-class while my partner's
| friends seem quite conventionally successful. But several of
| my partner's friends are quite frustrated with their career
| choices. They feel like they were hemmed into high-prestige
| careers. A lot of them are not particularly successful in
| their careers because they don't feel the passion to succeed
| and feel like their choices were taken away from them. Many
| of them have very anxious memories from school of perpetually
| feeling like they were failing because of the high pressure
| of the school.
|
| There are many aspects of my low-income schooling I would not
| want to pass onto a child but there are also aspects of my
| partner's schooling that I wouldn't want to pass either. I
| don't really know what the answer is, but I feel like being
| at either end of the normal distribution of schools here
| isn't good.
| ketzo wrote:
| It's certainly true that there are real downsides to both
| ends of the spectrum -- but all things being equal I'd
| rather be wiping my tears with hundred dollar bills than
| tissues
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| You say that, until you start spending those hundred
| dollar bills on therapy. I'm only being a bit silly here,
| a pretty high number of these folks are in therapy
| dealing with the alienation they feel over their life for
| being forced into a career path they felt like they had
| no choice in.
| ketzo wrote:
| I mean, at some point this is a way-too-abstract point
| with no real answer
|
| But being in therapy and alienated from your life, but
| rich, is not comparable to being actually poor, to not
| being able to provide for the people you love, to not
| being able to meet your basic needs. I'm sorry, but it's
| just not.
|
| Let alone the fact that, trust me, lots of poorer people
| are alienated from their jobs/lifestyle too! They just
| can't afford the therapy!
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Like I said earlier: "I don't really know what the answer
| is, but I feel like being at either end of the normal
| distribution of schools here isn't good."
| BizarreByte wrote:
| > You say that, until you start spending those hundred
| dollar bills on therapy.
|
| The only people who wouldn't prefer that are ones who
| haven't endured true poverty.
|
| I have little sympathy for those folks unhappy with their
| conventionally successful lives when that same kind of
| life allowed me to escape. When you grow up without basic
| needs being met they come off as having a severe lack of
| perspective.
|
| I mean sure I hate my job, but I like having heat in the
| winter more than I hate my job.
| bradlys wrote:
| You say this like the people in poverty are any happier.
| They're not.
|
| The people from these rich schools that go on to have
| lives where they have ample money and resources _are also
| likely more capable of overcoming emotional struggles_.
| apsurd wrote:
| This is too easily a soundbite. Sounds good so people say
| it.
|
| It's only true at the extreme ends though. Reliable
| access to food and shelter is a prerequisite so let's get
| that out of the way.
|
| I do worry that "rich people problems" are in ways worse
| problems to have. They're sinister and they cut deep.
| People become utility functions. Inability to form or
| even understand authentic relationships. Hamster wheel of
| self-worth being tied to capitalistic productivity: also
| paradoxically management hijinks . Existential crises.
| Law of diminishing returns. There was a post about what
| the rich have access to that others don't. Takeaway was
| actually not much, not in physical goods at least.
|
| Stuff like that.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > There is something to be said for ensuring your kids go to
| the best schools possible. Those early networks are pivotal
| in forming an above average life.
|
| I think this might be more of an American thing tbh. Having
| early networks can help grease the wheels for an above
| average life maybe but it's not so straightforward.
|
| Personally, I went to an average public high school, I went
| to a small university (~9k students), and I'm now one of the
| top 3% of earners in my country just shy of a decade after
| graduating
|
| I didn't wind up keeping in touch with anyone I went to any
| of my schooling with, honestly. I had to move away from my
| hometown to find opportunities so those bonds faded
|
| It hasn't been easy for sure, it would definitely help to
| have that embedded network from childhood, but I don't think
| that is a requirement
|
| Being competent and working hard can get you a long way
| gen220 wrote:
| Having thought about this a good amount and collected anecdotes
| over the years... I think the prioritization order should be
| (1) live in a location in which the parents feel their most
| authentic/happy/self-actualized selves, (2) send your children
| to the most geographically proximate school where they won't be
| (overly-)bullied for their identity (inclusive of class) one
| way or another.
|
| Relative school quality (performance on standardized tests,
| admissions to fancy schools), and public/private are proxies
| for these more fundamental issues. Too many parents discount
| the value of (1) to zero, with the idea that they're
| "sacrificing themselves" "for their kids".
|
| An example of one good reason to not send your kids to private
| school: Burning yourself out on a series of high-stress job to
| afford sending your middle-class kid to an upper-class private
| school will traumatize them. If not for their education/social
| experience at school, then for your lack of calming and
| positive influence on their emotional/relationship-forming
| lives.
|
| I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" for some people to send
| their kids to a "narrow-lens" school, even if it's often wrong.
| It can be right for somebody else and wrong for you.
| ketzo wrote:
| I think this is an excellent comment. Not enough people talk
| about living near other parents in this way, and you're right
| that it's a massive difference-maker.
| alooPotato wrote:
| Agree that a wide diversity of people is great. Disagree on the
| private school - it is a narrow band, but so is public school.
| I think ppl overestimate the diversity in public school and
| underestimate it in private school.
|
| Neither is enough - def need to find ways to expand kids
| network, especially the network of adults they know.
| kayge wrote:
| As someone who wishes they could realistically afford private
| school for their kids (public school leaves a lot to be desired
| for 'gifted' kids these days), I think you've got good points
| but I land on the other side. Using some of your quotes:
| private school is "a narrow lens", but that lens likely
| includes a high percentage of the "rich get richer" network. I
| think my ideal would be private school to help find a better
| match for my kids' brainpower (2 of them anyway, tbd on #3 :D)
| and make some good high-value connections, but still make a
| conscious effort to encourage them to interact with a wider
| variety of people (through travel, public sports teams,
| community service, etc.)
| apsurd wrote:
| > (2 of them anyway, tbd on #3 :D)
|
| LOL; thanks this made my chill Friday very chill.
|
| On principle, I don't like feeding into wealth disparity so I
| don't want to pay for private school. Your perspective is
| most practical and likely something I'll lean into as I do
| have kids of my own. "Why not do both" basically.
| ip26 wrote:
| A wide perspective is good, but that is orthogonal to what they
| experience as normal. You can select for a good, healthy normal
| AND provide a wide experience.
|
| Your child doesn't have to attend a school where educational
| attainment isn't valued, to understand that perspective exists.
|
| Their "normal" will strongly influence their choices. For
| example, if you wanted your child to attend college, I would
| argue the _single best way_ to ensure they do is to enroll them
| in a high school where 90%+ of the student body later goes on
| to college.
| jgon wrote:
| I think its important to think about this point in the context
| that Jessica attended one of the most elite private schools in
| the US, Phillips Academy, with an annual tuition that is
| currently ~60kUSD/year. Notable alumni include both Bush
| presidents, and many billionaires or their children. Afterwards
| she attended Bucknell University, another private elite
| institution, tuition ~65kUSD/year, where the median family
| income is > 200kUSD/year, and 73% of the student body is from
| the top 20% income bracket.
|
| So its important to "find your people", but as always it's as
| important to situate advice in the context where the advice-
| giver issues it from, and in this case Jessica has spent her
| entire life as an elite, finding other elites in elite circles,
| and I'm going to hazard a guess that this is probably something
| that has had a positive impact on her life.
|
| I think your friends are probably on to something, realizing
| that you're responsible for helping to guide your child as they
| grow up has a way of crystalizing certain arguments, and
| various "hypotheticals" fall by the wayside as the attraction
| of an intellectual experiment and being the devil's advocate
| just doesn't really have the same pull anymore once it's your
| own child's future at stake and not just some thought
| experiment about "volumes and contrasts". As always people are
| free to make their own choices, and even listen to a speech
| from someone who was able have almost $200,000 of money spent
| on their high-school education, a speech about how to plan your
| career that is big on "gumption" and "stick to it" energy, and
| surprisingly short on "be born in the top 1% of economic
| circles", but given that this is a speech at the aforementioned
| Bucknell, I am pretty sure that most of the crowd is already
| pretty hip to the realities of the world they're about to
| enter.
| c0redump wrote:
| Surprised that I had to scroll this far down to find this
| comment. I didn't know anything about the authors upbringing,
| but just from reading the speech, I had a strong feeling that
| it was something like this.
|
| The reality is that the people who control the funding don't
| want anything to do with the average slob. "Find your people"
| is a euphemism for "be rich and well connected, and hang out
| with other elites"
| joshdavham wrote:
| With respect to private schools, I'm not necessarily against
| them, but I hate the idea of living in a society where public
| schools are seen as the 'bad' option for the lower class while
| private schools are for the middle and upper class.
|
| I've heard that it's kinda like that in the US currently but
| I'm not actually sure. I went to public school in Canada and it
| was completely fine.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In my case, the subway crashed into the station at about 100mph,
| and I had to crawl out of the wreckage, and repair the damage,
| before I could proceed. When I did proceed, I had to buck
| constant headwinds.
|
| Worked great. Would ride again. 10/10.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Say more.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's a long story, and probably not one for this venue, but
| suffice it to say that the skills one develops, rebuilding a
| shattered life, tend to give significant advantages.
|
| _> That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.
|
| - Freddy Nietzsche_
|
| _> Or leaves you weak and exhausted.
|
| - Bill Prekker's Corollary_
| epolanski wrote:
| I can relate and feel the same about myself. Disasters and
| dramas since young age made me quite resilient at embracing
| change and difficulty.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| All very vague
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| BTW: I don't "owe" anything more to anyone. I wrote
| something entertaining. It happened to be based on my
| life, but it really stands alone.
|
| Just because someone is curious, and _feels_ they are
| entitled to more information, doesn 't mean they are
| _actually_ "entitled," and that they will get it.
|
| I am grateful, when folks share intimate stuff with me. I
| have been in that position for decades, and I've learned
| not to pry for more. There's usually a good reason they
| don't go further. _I_ may not think it 's a "good"
| reason, but _they_ do, so what I think means diddly
| squat.
|
| The Internet has done weird things to personal boundaries
| and propriety. Kinda sad, really.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I feel like I'm too thoroughly cynical and jaded to take the
| tropes in "graduation speeches" seriously. Bringing someone back
| in who graduated in a totally different time, to a totally
| different world, in a totally different competitive, political,
| and economic landscape, to ramble about what they did when they
| graduated seems kind of pointless. Is her (or anyone's) story
| from the 90s really useful for someone graduating today?
|
| Ms. Livingston graduated around when I did. I can't think of
| anything that I (or she) did to launch a career, either pre- or
| post-graduation that would be applicable to someone graduating
| today. When we graduated, you could actually get an entry level
| job in an office as a generic English major. You were generally
| competing with others in your local area or state, not the entire
| world's best. You could spam a bunch of resumes out and count on
| a handful of interviews and a few offers. You had at least a
| little assurance that if you did a good job, you'd advance or
| job-hop your way to something better. Back then, your student
| debt was (usually) manageable post-graduation and not a ball and
| chain holding you back. With a little diligent saving, you had a
| shot at affording a home and getting on the real estate ladder.
| And, you could do all these things as a B or C student, without
| being the world's foremost expert in your field.
|
| I don't think any of these are true anymore. Graduates today are
| entering a dog eat dog capitalist slugfest where a lucky few
| winners take all. They're graduating into relative poverty and
| crushing debt, with no realistic opportunity to save. The job
| prospects for people without experience are generally awful.
| You're up against the world's best, plus a growing number of
| privileged elite "sons of the right people" sponging up all the
| really good jobs. Crappy work as a temp worker if you're lucky,
| stocking shelves or waiting tables if you're not. Good luck
| finding an actual full-time office gig related to your degree,
| unless you're top of your class. And even if you do, you're under
| constant threat of PIP, downsizing, or AI taking your place.
| "Find the people that you think are interesting" is kind of tone
| deaf happy-talk in today's reality.
| snapcaster wrote:
| What would you tell the graduating students?
| parpfish wrote:
| Also: the "find your people" advice would be far more helpful
| at the _beginning_ of college so you can maximize the various
| high-leverage opportunities around you.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Ms. Livingston graduated around when I did. I can 't think
| of anything that I (or she) did to launch a career, either pre-
| or post-graduation that would be applicable to someone
| graduating today._
|
| Really? Not a single thing? Not "work hard," or "be curious,"
| or "be willing to fail or be wrong?" Those aren't genetic
| qualities, they can be taught and they can be learned.
|
| I don't know when you graduated but I've been working
| professionally for nearly 2 decades now and I heard the same
| thing when I graduated - about how it was so much easier just
| 5, 10, 15 years prior, how I was in for a real battle, how I
| had an insurmountable amount of debt given my earnings
| prospects. And yes it was hard but I survived - I could have
| made smarter decisions to make it easier, I could have made
| worse decisions and ended up a barista in my late 30s. On a
| systemic level it might be harder now, it might not be. But
| they will survive as all previous generations have and will
| continue to.
|
| There seems to be a bimodal distribution in people 20-30 years
| post-college discussing today's graduates. It's either "these
| kids are so lazy noboDY wAntS To WorK ANYMore just have a firm
| handshake" nonsense, or "these children will be wage slaves
| forever and it is undeniably the fault of
| capitalism/AI/Musk/whatever boogeyman."
|
| I think it was hard when I started out. I think it's probably a
| little harder now. That doesn't mean it's any more of a "dog
| eat dog capitalist slugfest" than it was 10, 20, 30 years
| prior.
| jll29 wrote:
| > today are entering a dog eat dog capitalist slugfest where
| a lucky few winners take all.
|
| If you believe that to be true, perhaps it might be worth
| trying to become one of the few lucky winners.
|
| Or come on, learn some Python and take the second prize with
| a six digit salary in a corporation, private health insurance
| and benefits plan.
| leoc wrote:
| > I don't know when you graduated but I've been working
| professionally for nearly 2 decades now and I heard the same
| thing when I graduated - about how it was so much easier just
| 5, 10, 15 years prior, how I was in for a real battle, how I
| had an insurmountable amount of debt given my earnings
| prospects.
|
| On the whole the graduate market has indeed been getting
| fairly steadily worse, and student greater, for the past
| forty or more years, no?
| dartharva wrote:
| How about you actually go to today's college environments and
| talk to young people of this generation first? Look at how
| their life is, and what trends are affecting them firsthand?
| Would be much better than making wild declarations out of
| nowhere.
| dang wrote:
| This is the kind of comment that the newest HN guideline is
| designed to discourage:
|
| " _Don 't be curmudgeonly._" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| What counts as being curmudgeonly? Here's one heuristic: if a
| comment is flying close to the planet "Everything is worse than
| it used to be," then it probably is.
|
| There's also this one, btw: " _Please don 't fulminate._" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ryandrake wrote:
| Well, that one's news to me, thanks for pointing it out. Huh.
| I feel... mildly targeted, actually! We only want positive
| thoughts now, I guess.
|
| I changed my mind. The speech is great. New graduates should
| totally listen to it and follow it's extremely relevant
| advice.
| dang wrote:
| > _We only want positive thoughts now, I guess._
|
| Not so! Check out the next sentence: " _Thoughtful
| criticism is fine, but please don 't be rigidly or
| generically negative._" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| I'm sorry you felt targeted and promise you it's nothing
| personal. It's that we're trying for _curious_
| conversation, which the rigid-and-generic sort of
| negativity annihilates. There 's not much room for curious
| response when a comment insists that the world is nothing
| but a "dog eat dog slugfest".
|
| Btw, I believe that the deeper problem is that it's hard to
| tell how one's comments are going to come across. Most
| people underestimate the negativity they're contributing by
| a good 10x or so, which leads to quite a skew in
| perception. That could explain, for example, why you felt
| like I must be telling you to only do happytalk.
| ryandrake wrote:
| OK. The tribe has spoken. No more gloom and doom. I
| suppose there are other message boards for that. I
| appreciate the intentional and purposeful moderation
| here, even if I sometimes strongly disagree with the
| intent behind it.
| pvg wrote:
| I think the more accurate conclusion would be 'make your
| doom and gloom more interesting'. You can beat just about
| any of the local rules with interestingness, people do it
| all the time.
| wagwang wrote:
| Kids not feeling like they have agency is a huge problem in the
| asian community which likes to put their kids on steel tracks
| with 0 wiggle room, this speech resonated with me big time
| game_the0ry wrote:
| As a south asian person, I could not agree more.
|
| The irony is that my parents were immigrant entrepreneurs and
| my grandparents were also entrepreneurs on both sides. Yet my
| parents pushed me towards medical school or a stable job at the
| least.
|
| I think this was for a couple reasons:
|
| 1. Asian parents express their insecurities through their
| children. They wanted a stable and high income (which maps to
| "doctor") so they push their kids to become the version of them
| they never were.
|
| 2. Asian parents treat their children like status symbols.
| Nothing says "I am the best parent" than being able to say "my
| son/daughter is a doctor." Saying 'my son/daughter owns their
| own business" just does not have the same ring to it.
|
| In asian cultures, status and conformity are very valuable, and
| those do not map to high agency.
| herval wrote:
| This sounds wildly similar to Brazilian parenting
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| It's a spectrum. Many parents, across all countries act
| like this.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It tends to be associated with immigrants and parents who
| believe that they should have had a "better" job (even
| when they like what they do, they don't want their kids
| doing it).
| jimbokun wrote:
| Not Asian or South Asian. I'm sure what you're saying is
| true.
|
| But having parents that are not involved enough to push their
| kids towards anything in particular is a much bigger
| challenge to over come.
|
| If you have a degree from a prestigious university and the
| network that comes along with it, pivoting towards start ups
| or something more creative or entrepreneurial is a lot easier
| than if you never went to college at all or didn't finish
| high school.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| On both ends here it's bad. I know several Asian kids who
| have permanently frayed relationships with parents because
| of how they felt their parents imposed their desires on
| their lives. The best is in the middle.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| > push their kids
|
| I think complete apathy is uncommon. Parents mostly want
| their kids to succeed in what would loosely map to their
| own definitions, to be "content" and self-reliant. If they
| come from a blue collar background that will mean
| suggesting their kids pick up a trade. Educated parents
| will usually suggest college.
|
| You can't will ambition in someone else that isn't there,
| and it comes at a price. Some parents relentlessly make
| their kids train hard at sports, or studying, and they're
| miserable and resentful for it.
| rubitxxx15 wrote:
| It's a great speech, but I've listened to this "chase your dream"
| thing for decades. I took career and personality tests but
| nothing in them fit. I don't fit. I've gotten seriously jaded and
| live with crippling mental health problems and constant stress
| because I feel like I failed to find my people and now I just
| hide from my people.
|
| So, as an older adult, I think maybe we need to be teaching more
| responsibility to kids today rather than this Disney fantasy. If
| people just focus on trying to do the best they can, that's good
| enough. And spend that extra time improving your home,
| volunteering, and working on your finances like people did in the
| mid-to-late 20th century.
| smeej wrote:
| I came here to leave a comment related to this. This article
| has great advice, if you're normal enough that enough of "your
| people" exist to be able to find them and do something
| together.
|
| But if you've spent your whole life being told by the whole
| world--even people _you_ thought were really interesting and
| wanted to get to know--that you 're "just too fucking weird,"
| it lands more like, "Oh. More advice for _other_ people. "
|
| Similarly, if you're a person who likes all kinds of things--
| but only for 6 weeks to 6 months and then becomes utterly bored
| of them--there is no stable group of "your people." There's
| just "these people, for now, I guess," and you hold them
| lightly because you know in a matter of months, when you don't
| share the passion for the one thing they're _stably_ obsessed
| with, you won 't have enough in common anymore for them to
| tolerate you.
|
| I'm almost 40. I'm really at a decision point where I have to
| decide if I want to keep working on my underlying trauma
| wounds, in hopes that if I just work hard enough, I'll
| eventually break into the "fun kind of odd" category instead of
| "too fucking weird," and blend in enough to have "people," or
| whether I want to own that this is just how I am, and there's
| nothing to be done about it, so I should really do what I can
| to appreciate the fleeting tolerance of "people who don't know
| me very well yet" while it lasts, but invest most of my energy
| in trying to figure out if there's any way to be both happy and
| lonely.
| MicrosoftShill wrote:
| It sounds like you need some friends in the maker space or
| something similar where tinkering in something temporary is
| normal. I'd say you're among friends in the HN space where
| tinkerers are more common!
|
| Keep working on your trauma. Don't however think that your
| healing is a requirement to have friends, love, etc. We are
| all broken and hurt. We are broken together.
| smeej wrote:
| I've tried a couple times, but the interest in making
| physical things cycles through just like any other
| interest. Then it gets replaced by something like
| neurobiology or anthropology and I don't want to make
| things for awhile.
|
| It seems like I really enjoy the beginnings of things, like
| if we run Pareto ratios twice, I like the 4% of the
| learning that gets me 64% of the understanding. And then
| it's enough and I'm done. It's enough to ask questions of
| the interesting people without sounding like a total n00b.
|
| In the time it would take to master one thing, I become
| "barely proficient" in 25, but it's hard to build anything
| meaningful, including human connections, operating like
| that.
|
| I know healing isn't a requirement to _deserve_ the
| friendship of others. But if I keep operating like this
| because of it, it 's definitely an impediment to building
| those friendships.
| shayway wrote:
| > Similarly, if you're a person who likes all kinds of things
| --but only for 6 weeks to 6 months and then becomes utterly
| bored of them--there is no stable group of "your people."
| There's just "these people, for now, I guess," and you hold
| them lightly because you know in a matter of months, when you
| don't share the passion for the one thing they're stably
| obsessed with, you won't have enough in common anymore for
| them to tolerate you.
|
| My lord this cuts deep. Bonus points if you approach your
| interests in a way that nobody else seems to, leaving you
| feeling even more disconnected and alone when you're around
| people who share them.
|
| I've been wrestling with this since (dropping out of) high
| school, I'm in my early 20s now. I lean towards embracing my
| idiosyncrasies and letting go of attachment towards getting
| the kind of social fulfillment I want. Ask me on a different
| day, though, and the siren's call of having a 'people' is too
| strong to pass up.
|
| I like to think that learning to just be authentic to myself
| leads to both in the long run - if I can find a way to be
| okay with being alone, I'll be in a better place to reach out
| when the time comes. Still working on the first part of that
| hypothesis though.
|
| Would you be interested in chatting more about this sometime?
| Shoot me an email, sheyaway at outlook.
| scns wrote:
| Sounds familiar. Have you looked into ADHD and Autism yet?
| smeej wrote:
| Yeah, but the other symptoms don't line up. Screenings I've
| had have been negative.
|
| It seems more likely that I have complex trauma from
| gestation, birth, infancy, and early childhood that
| _really_ threw a monkeywrench into my neurological
| development. What we 're trying to figure out now is
| whether I have enough neuroplasticity left at this stage
| for it to be recoverable, or if I'm just going to be like
| this forever. I'm definitely not neurologically typical,
| but I'm also not neurodivergent in a well-established
| category.
|
| It does seem like there comes a point, though, where it's
| worth throwing in the towel on attempting to get "better"
| and just learning to make the most of what is.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| I generally agree but strictly speaking I don't think this was
| yet another canned "chase-your-dream" speech. She went out of
| her way to elucidate who this was for, and it's ambitious
| people that are aimlessly coasting.
|
| When you're young, particularly in tech, taking some swings
| (like with a startup) and not succeeding isn't a long-term
| detriment. It's a good experience that can help you land other
| jobs in the worst case.
|
| Which is to say, not all dream-chasing is created equal. If you
| want to play music, then you need to do a cost-benefit
| analysis: you will probably not sustain yourself very long,
| will probably want a dayjob and/or an out at some point, and
| this is an opportunity cost vs early career traction. If one's
| ambition only begins and ends with that, then it won't matter
| so much if what you end up with is "just a job" with lower
| income potential. All depends on what you're ok with.
|
| The common anecdote is trying to make the big leagues. But
| consider another: some elite athletes train for years ahead of
| the Olympics, and then it's all over and they never do it again
| (most often). Are they screwed? Well it arguably demonstrates
| discipline and grit and might look impressive on a resume. The
| lives of ex-Olympians go on. By the same token, someone who
| never makes the NBA or whatever can get a scholarship ride
| anyway (which compared to the cost of lifelong training, might
| be a small victory).
|
| Sometimes optimizing for the early career/education ladder-
| jumping isn't the "correct" move. But I think it's important
| that young people understand what's probably at stake
| dartharva wrote:
| Passion is just a buzzword. I much rather prefer Cal Newport's
| notions on work and success:
| https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/so-good-they-cant-ignore-yo...
| davedx wrote:
| Refreshingly unpretentious and clear. Love it, thank you
| komali2 wrote:
| That was enjoyable, and I appreciated the overall message. A
| little bit trickier of a pitch to introverted people, maybe.
|
| One bit though I'm interested in chatting about:
|
| > The truth is there are thousands of different places you could
| go work, and you have to consider them all and figure out which
| is the best. But that sounds impossible, right? You only had to
| choose between 60 different majors, and now you have to choose
| between thousands of different jobs? How do you even do that? The
| first step, is to acknowledge that you have to.
|
| Do you really "have" to? I guess we can relatively safely assume
| that basically 99% of those graduates have essentially the same
| life goals in terms of financial stability, retirement, etc.
| Lately though I've wondered about the basically unspoken premise
| we pitch to our kids from the get-go. I recently found a diary
| entry from me when I was 7 years old that had a line along the
| lines of, "I finally figured out what I'm gonna be when I grow
| up!" I noticed also that so frequently one of the first questions
| asked at parties or meetups is, "So what do you do for a living?"
| We really seem to be telling eachother that you go to school and
| then you do a career and that's how you define yourself, mostly.
| Differentiate based on hobbies you get to brag about during a
| "and tell us one interesting fact about yourself" portion of an
| icebreaker.
|
| I have a friend here that teaches English about 15 hours a week.
| The rest of his time he spends painting murals on the riverside
| (unenforced here in Taiwan, graffiti is kinda just considered
| public art) or drawing people he sees on trains. I asked him why
| he doesn't take up more hours, he replied that actually he'd work
| less if he could, but he needs to hit a certain minimum annual
| income in order to be eligible for permanent residency. Once he
| gets that, he'll work even less. He's one of the happiest people
| I know.
|
| I've been wondering if one of the responses to late stage
| capitalism will be more en-masse opt-outs. There's a recognized
| class of this in the PRC, called "Lying Flat People," or "Full
| Time Children," or my favorite, "Rat People." They scrounge
| together enough cash for a street BBQ and beers, and then spend
| their day just lounging, drinking, smoking, and bbqing. In Taiwan
| we have "Moonlight Tribe," people who spend all their money the
| second they get their paycheck and then live penny to penny until
| the end of the month. I'm guessing other countries have similar
| movements - I remember meeting vagabonds (their self-description)
| in New Orleans that were happily living a "post-capitalism" life.
|
| It's maybe short-sighted since it basically guarantees you will
| die younger than most, but then again none of us are guaranteed
| to make it to retirement anyway so I can also respect the choice.
| egypturnash wrote:
| You may die younger but is slaving away in an office to make
| money for someone else for most of your waking hours really
| _living?_
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Nope. I keep getting told _" career limiting"_ like that's a
| bad thing. _I 'm_ good, _it_ keeps wanting more. It mirrors
| that thing about food: _" eat to live or live to eat"_
|
| _edit:_ Despite now making 5x my first salary, I _still_
| feel my situation; less than Serfdom. For the same outcome...
| there _are_ easier /more rewarding paths.
|
| Under this light, with capital for a house I'll never afford
| sitting in the bank, less-than-mainstream options start to
| look more appealing. To borrow a term I've learned in this
| supposedly-fanciful Up-or-Out corporate life: my _'
| blockers'_ are legality/morality and... I wasn't born in _[or
| relocated to /kept in]_ the right ZIP code.
| codingdave wrote:
| What if you happily work in a low-stress office, enjoying
| what you do and with whom you do it, and are satisfied with
| your compensation?
|
| There are definitely healthy middle grounds available as life
| choices.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| There seem to be a very small chance of changing one's life
| trajectory after hearing these speeches. As it's difficult to
| change a persons track they've been on for years. The
| uncomfortable changes you must enact immediately is difficult.
| None the less, a small conversion is huge.
| ip26 wrote:
| One single speech might not do it. However, a short anecdote.
| Several years ago, while sitting through a training on first
| aid and cpr on infants, I was bored out of my mind and
| complaining internally about how this was a waste of time, yet
| another rehash of common sense. When suddenly it hit me - no,
| this was not common sense. I had been taught these things
| repeatedly ever since I was twelve. I didn't retain all of it
| after the first time, the second, or the third. But eventually,
| it was just _common sense_ to me. I couldn't always tell you
| where I learned it, or describe the textbook medical guidance.
| Why is it done precisely this way, who knows, but _obviously_
| this exact grip is how you hold the infant while delivering
| back blows.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| I wasn't expecting much, and I personally didn't get a lot from
| the article, but if I was in early 20s, I would've been hugely
| inspired. Jessica surely has a gift for clear and motivating
| writing.
| jumploops wrote:
| As someone who has "reinvented" myself more than once (mostly due
| to school/job transfers), it seems what wasn't said is equally if
| not more important.
|
| Rarely can you "find your people" without letting other people
| go.
|
| The unspoken truth in this article is that it's just as important
| to be willing to let go of relationships that aren't helping you
| grow.
|
| Easier said than done.
|
| Whether it's the negative influence of a toxic friend, or the
| mediocre advice of an overbearing parent (who is just trying to
| keep you on the rails), other people rarely have your best
| interests in mind.
|
| Losing the people who aren't "your people" is (usually) a
| necessary step to finding the right people.
| jll29 wrote:
| > or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent
|
| For what it's worth, I teach my students not to listen to their
| parents, because while most parents want the best for their
| children, without doubt, their assumptions are typically
| outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.
| ip26 wrote:
| As categorical guidance, that seems like a problematic thing
| to teach. First, parents don't know everything, but they know
| their kids and have witnessed their journey, so they have a
| unique perspective to offer. Second, parents will begin to
| (justifiably!!) grow suspicious of your institution and
| develop resentment, which is a serious structural problem.
|
| Hopefully what you mean is something like you teach them to
| think critically about their parents advice as one input
| among many, understanding where the advice comes from and its
| inherent strengths and flaws.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| My personal experience is my parents' advice was almost
| universally bad. Fortunately they still supported my own
| decisions. I still find it frustrating talking to them
| about my goals/issues as their takes are extremely
| irrelevant to my situation
| bkeyes wrote:
| For what it's worth, I teach my children not to listen to
| their teachers, because while most teachers want the best for
| their students, without doubt, their assumptions are
| typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they
| were young.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| Yikes.
| jll29 wrote:
| As Kermit the Frog in his Maryland commencement speech said,
| Jim Henson took people for "what they are":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/live/hLFa8zGeotI?feature=shared&t=74...
|
| Do NOT "fake it until you make it". Be yourself. And find
| people who accept you as you are.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| This is semantic baggage to me. Identity is best loosely
| held, and it's mostly determined by our actions. There's no
| real faking, just acting in accordance to, or against, one's
| preferences.
|
| Colloquially when people use the term "fake it till you make
| it" they don't really mean "pretend to be a different
| person". They just mean act in the face of uncertainty. You
| can do it with or without undeserved confidence, it's
| besides.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I tend to agree with you, but there's another saying: "play
| to your strengths", because people don't all have the same
| potentials. I think it's healthy to always strive for self
| improvement, but going with the grain of one's personality
| is easier and likely to land in a better place. That's the
| message I take from "be yourself", but I have to admit that
| it does ring a bit hollow when one is young and hungry.
| qntty wrote:
| I like the subway analogy. I'm sure I've heard some version of it
| before, but maybe because I was younger I didn't really get it.
| It really is a little strange to tell kids who have never really
| directed their own lives before to start doing it all of a
| sudden.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| There is a bit of a transition period; you have a lot more
| choice about what classes you're going to take in college than
| prior to that for example, and you're to a large degree
| choosing your own path there. But graduating is still the end
| of a structured path that you've been in nearly your whole
| life, so I think it's always going to feel pretty abrupt
| subjectively despite the fact that you have been acclimated a
| little bit over time.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| dejavu :) Here something i told my mentees 4 years ago:
|
| searching for answers.. does not make life interesting.
|
| search questions.. then You become interesting.
|
| and inconvenient. To the answer-manufacturers. (whole industries
| and institutions are dealing with only that)
|
| which.. by itself.. IS interesting.
|
| Most people are either answers - pretty boring - or not even
| answers.. only nondescript. banal.
|
| incredibly predictable and.. like nylon bag, you see through it
| but cannot get through.
|
| Search for people-questions.
|
| Search.
|
| ----
|
| Maybe it can help someone else too..
| ariztocray wrote:
| Underrated impact of good networking is that it increases the
| expectations you have for yourself and the potential you ascribe
| to yourself.
|
| My first job after finishing college was in a factory. After many
| more years of drifting, I finally had the dumb luck to start
| encountering people doing intellectually engaging things and
| actually making good money.
|
| When I started surrounding myself with those individuals, I
| started realizing I was underselling my capabilities. And I
| started having higher expectations of what I wanted to achieve in
| specific domains.
|
| I am definitely not successful by the standards of the corporate
| world, but I've superseded what my prospects should have been
| based on my track record in my 20's. And almost all of that
| started by rubbing shoulders with people in stages of life that I
| never considered before.
| jll29 wrote:
| The talk is suitable for the target audience, the young
| undecided.
|
| For the rest of us, especially here at HN, it would have been
| interesting to learn a bit more about how she got to that
| Fidelity job first and how she then "drifted" towards "her
| people", namely the startup people, and then the book and Y
| Combinator in specific. Some Y combinator early anecdotes would
| have been great, too.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to
| this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train
| tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college--
| it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've
| been trained to believe something that's not true: that all of
| life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make
| it stay like train tracks if you want, but really today is the
| last stop.
|
| Well put!
|
| This is something _so many_ college kids don't seem to
| understand. I had many friends who graduated then just stood
| around looking for where to go next. It hadn't come up in
| discussions but it became apparent they were surprised by the
| sudden end to the "tracks" while the students who saw them coming
| (or were told better/more often) all were befuddled, "How did you
| not see this coming?", "Did you expect someone to just walk up
| and offer you a job?", "You have never even interned in your
| field??".
|
| I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've spent
| their whole life focusing on the next goal, I talked about this
| specifically (in blog post) when I dropped out of college to go
| full-time into my profession. For me, learning "there are no
| tracks" and more importantly "you don't need to go to the end of
| the college track before you decide next steps" was freeing and
| empowering while also being a bit terrifying.
| parpfish wrote:
| i think its interesting that for so many college kids, the
| post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are
| _also_ treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad
| school. work at big3/faang, etc).
|
| it's not because they are any more prestigious or important,
| but because they provide a clear sense of achievement/external
| validation and kids that make it to the end of college are kids
| that have had decades of achievement/external validation being
| their primary measure of success.
|
| and because of that, those places do an amazing job recruiting.
| i remember toward the end of my undergrad days there was huge
| sense of competition to get a "teach for america" position,
| even among folks with no interest in education. it was
| appealing simply because it was selective and provided a clear
| framework for 'next steps'.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| The flipside is that going off the tracks, you need to decide
| where you're going and you might get lost. Some people try to
| do something and then waste a lot of time just spinning their
| wheels. For them, some structure and some tracks might be
| necessary.
|
| I guess we all need some amount of scaffolding in our life,
| at one point or another.
| cj wrote:
| I don't see why that can't be replicated in vocational
| trades.
|
| Main challenge there is you don't have a plumbing/electrical
| conglomerate like you have in tech to standardize recruiting.
| toast0 wrote:
| Trade unions and apprenticeships provide some of this,
| especially in places where trade work is heavily unionized.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I heard that quant finance companies target high-achievers by
| creating a sense of continuing tracks: recruiting based on
| high GPAs, an application process with a high-profile
| entrance exam, and so on. It creates an impression among
| their target group that such a company is where they "should"
| go to work, because it's at the top.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Agree in spirit though I'm a bit doubtful of your details
| (exams or GPAs, etc). I think part of this is presenting
| the work as looking more like university and less like what
| students might imagine work to look like.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| The weird thing with quant finance is that it basically
| started as a bunch of misfits from other disciplines.
| Mostly sub departments at banks and some funds no one ever
| heard of.
|
| Now its a well trodden career path with specialized degree
| programs targeting it, online forums full of 16 year old
| aspirational hardos discussing which college to apply to in
| order to get into job 1 which leads to job 2 which leads
| to.. So again, train tracks.
|
| Old quants are an interesting bunch to talk to. Guys who
| worked in plasma physics or are serious musicians or
| classically trained philosophy backgrounds, etc.
|
| Now every grad resume I see for job openings looks exactly
| the same. I no longer deal with grad/intern programs
| thankfully.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| > the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks
| are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to
| grad school. work at big3/faang, etc).
|
| I think it's the other way around: the more prestigious
| option becomes the track.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks
| are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to
| grad school. work at big3/faang, etc).
|
| Graduate school is a mixed bag when it comes to prestige.
| It's fairly well known that grad student lifestyle is a
| grind, highly competitive, and a financial sacrifice. You go
| into it for a love of academics, not as a default next step.
|
| As for prestigious jobs like FAANG: I think you're
| downplaying the extreme compensation offered by many of these
| jobs. It's not just about prestige, it's about unlocking a
| level of wealth that is hard to ignore. It delivers on the
| dream people have when they imagine a university education
| unlocking incredible career options.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| > Graduate school is a mixed bag when it comes to prestige.
| It's fairly well known that grad student lifestyle is a
| grind, highly competitive, and a financial sacrifice. You
| go into it for a love of academics, not as a default next
| step.
|
| Sorry to be contrary, but almost every graduate student I
| have met was doing it for the prestige. The fact that they
| were doing a research degree, the chance of having their
| name on papers, the fact that they were "smarter" than
| people who couldn't get into graduate school.
| parpfish wrote:
| grad school is definitely a prestige move. not a 'get rich
| move', but def a prestige move. prestige is not just money.
|
| for med or law school, there are very clear hierarchies
| about who's better than who and next steps in your career.
| you get money AND intellectual status.
|
| but for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about
| pursuing abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or
| whatever and not caring about financial success. it is very
| monastic in that people make a show of forgoing traditional
| measures of status in service of their "calling".
|
| ... but as high-minded as these people are there is still a
| very clear hierarchy that lets you compare rank/compare
| yourself against your other recent grads so you can talk
| about who's doing well and who isn't even though none of
| them have money.
|
| BUT grad school for CS and engineering is different because
| there's so much money and employability at the end of the
| rainbow. these aren't really a calling in the same way, and
| are closer to MBA degree becayse it's just a thing you do
| to get more money later. A comp sci PhD with a job in
| industry is lauded, but those folks don't understand the
| deep sense of failure that a non-CS PhD feels when they
| have to 'resort to' an industry job in the private sector
| Aurornis wrote:
| > for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about
| pursue abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or
| whatever. it is very monastic in that people make a show
| of forgoing traditional measures of status in service of
| their "calling".
|
| These comments are oddly cynical.
|
| The people I know who went to grad school did it because
| they enjoyed the academic world.
|
| That's all. There was no flexing or bragging. Those who
| went in for the wrong reasons very rapidly learned that
| it wasn't for them and dropped out.
| nosianu wrote:
| The mental human model that people are only what they
| consciously think about themselves is just wrong. Of
| course prestige matters, even if you were to pass a
| (functioning) lie detector test where you claim
| otherwise. You are so much more than your conscious
| thoughts. Your brain uses _all_ information, and that
| includes the "meta" you know about things.
|
| And...
|
| > _The people I know who went to grad school did it
| because they enjoyed the academic world._
|
| What does that even mean? Where are your thoughts about
| the _why_? Why does their brain tell them those are good
| jobs? You have not even considered it, that sentence is
| meaningless in the context of your argument if you leave
| out such important parts. What makes things
| "attractive", or not, in the first place?
| grey-area wrote:
| For some people external validation is not very important
| and they genuinely love and enjoy the pursuit of
| knowledge and have little interest in what others think
| of them.
|
| Sure everyone requires _some_ degree of external
| validation and there is a hierarchy in every group but
| all is _not_ vanity.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't think you're wholly wrong, but if you look at
| longitudinal surveys of students, it presents a less rosy
| view. The majority select their primary motivation as
| getting "very financially successful."
|
| Now those surveys are undergrads, but considering that
| grad school has become more common path, I don't see any
| reason why grad students would be of a wholly different
| mental makeup.
| grey-area wrote:
| I don't see it as a judgment - some people are motivated
| entirely by money and external validation like status,
| some see these things as less important than pleasure,
| discovery or knowledge. Perhaps those seeking money are
| in the majority.
|
| Both types of people are useful but I feel it is highly
| reductive and simplistic to reduce the world to one
| motivation for all people.
| bumby wrote:
| A couple things:
|
| 1) The main point I was trying to convey is that the
| distribution of the types you outline may be getting
| skewed in one direction as part of a broader cultural
| shift. I think that matters, and may support the other
| point
|
| 2) I've elaborated elsewhere [1] but I think it's a
| mistake to pretend there's a relatively large group of
| people who aren't motivated by status. They may be
| motivated by a different kind of prestige, but it's still
| (at least in part) a status play.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44080708
| bumby wrote:
| I think both can be true. The majority of people I knew
| who went to grad school genuinely liked academic life so
| it's natural they want to continue it.
|
| But we are also social creatures that value status.
| That's also why many people try to construe their
| academic careers while also enhancing their open
| prestige, whether that's defined by the institution they
| attend, the advisor they have, the grants/thesis they
| pursue or any number of dimensions. To pretend someone
| isn't motivated by status denies a very human quality.
|
| Will Storr writes about this status seeking across three
| domains: dominance, success, and virtue. I bet if you
| look, most people who choose grad school value status in
| one of those domains. Maybe their identity is in being
| the smartest person in the room (dominance), or supremely
| competent in their field (success), or following a thesis
| because of what it contributes to humanity (virtue).
| Whatever the reason, prestige is still part of the
| equation.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| The weird thing for me is the number of times the word
| "prestige" turned up in this thread. I don't remember
| once hearing this word used 25 years ago in high school /
| college / job pipeline in my friends circle. And some did
| go onto Ivies, FAANG, HF partners in 20s & retired by
| 30s, etc.
|
| But it's unmissable how much it is drilled into kids
| heads now. On some of the job forums I frequent, every
| other week some kid is asking about "the most prestigious
| [college / degree / masters program / banking job / bank
| / team within bank / type of fund / specific fund /
| specific team within fund].
|
| What's crazy to me is these kids are targeting such a
| narrow narrow funnel they might as well be asking about
| "how do I become a quarterback for a team that has won a
| Super Bowl in last 3 years". Like good luck kid, 1 of
| those seats opens up per decade (if at all), and theres
| 100 of you asking about it every week.
|
| To me the whole point of a good college education is that
| there are thousands to millions of jobs in the field to
| go after. Why on earth would you fixate on a role that is
| basically 1-in-a-million?
|
| Part of it is clearly the mentality of kids who have been
| "on the tracks" since their teens, and having made it
| thru a 99% rejection college admissions process think
| they can make into this seats. Which is mathematically
| literate since even limiting just to Ivys there are
| 1000-10,000s of you looking for finance jobs each year.
| So the 1-seat-per-decade fever dream is like a 99.99% to
| 99.999% rejection rate.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't know if it's more pronounced now, but I do think
| it was prevalent before. It may just be a cultural
| artifact of certain terminology being in the zeitgeist.
|
| Decades ago I remember talking to a classmate about what
| college we'd go to. They couldn't fathom why I decided on
| a "lesser" school when I was accepted into a more
| prestigious one. When I asked why they thought the
| prestigious school was a better choice, the only answer
| was "everyone just knows it's better." Now they didn't
| use the word "prestige" but the same status-climbing
| mentality was still nebulously present. So I don't
| necessarily think it's a new phenomenon.
|
| To your point though, in the book "Excellent Sheep" Ivy
| League students were queried about what kind of people
| they would like to be. One student stood up and said
| something to the effect of "we already know who we want
| to be. We're the type of people who get into Ivy League
| universities." I think that speaks to how much of one's
| identity is wrapped up in achievement in western culture.
|
| > _To me the whole point of a good college education is
| that there are thousands to millions of jobs in the field
| to go after. Why on earth would you fixate on a role that
| is basically 1-in-a-million?_
|
| The view of college as a means to vocational success is
| also a cultural change. Previously, students were more
| likely to say their goal in college was to "develop a
| philosophy of life."
|
| Besides grad school, ivys largely produce students who
| predominantly go into a handful of fields: tech,
| consulting, law, or medicine. That's even when they
| explicitly have different, social-status goals during
| school, like working for a non-profit. To me, that speaks
| to the fact that many are still on the "prestige" track.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I wouldn't blame only western culture given the
| demographics of ivies now
| bumby wrote:
| It's a good point. Buy I also wonder if there's a
| sampling bias: those from other cultures who attend
| western universities may be more likely to have more
| westernized values?
| tough wrote:
| Maybe elites values are the issue regardless of western
| or eastern bound
| bumby wrote:
| Id agree with the caveat that "elite" may be the status
| that anybody, regardless of culture, are drawn towards.
| Maybe we need a tighter definition of what you mean?
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| Have you considered that maybe metriculative education
| systems, and the prestige- and status-seeking behaviors
| they invoke, aren't exclusively Western at all? You might
| give "The Scholars" a read:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scholars_(novel)
| tl;dr (it really is quite long): Famous/influential Qing-
| era comedy novel about "successful" scholars in the
| Chinese imperial education system, with much of its humor
| revolving around their prestige- and status-seeking
| behaviors. (And lots of fart and poop jokes.)
| tofuahdude wrote:
| I've worked with many people who directly stated that they
| went to grad school because they "didn't know what else to
| do". As well as several who couldn't get a job, so they
| went back to school.
|
| It definitely isn't always for the love of academics.
| squigz wrote:
| > and because of that, those places do an amazing job
| recruiting
|
| I think the absurd compensation helps a bit there too
| levocardia wrote:
| Interesting, too, how many institutions are very willing to
| jump in and put you back on an endless subway train. e.g.
| graduate school, postdoc, junior faculty, assistant professor,
| full professor...the ride never ends!
| brulard wrote:
| I think it is easier and more obvious for kids from poorer
| families to figure it out they need to look around and try hard
| to earn some money. Do you need a laptop? Well you better earn
| some money to get one. Kids that get everything provided by
| parents often end up hopelessly lost when time to become
| independent comes.
| jemiluv8 wrote:
| And yet so many of them kinda rule the world by running the
| biggest corporations in the world. Your argument has so many
| holds, it can't hold water.
| Kamq wrote:
| > And yet so many of them kinda rule the world by running
| the biggest corporations in the world.
|
| Have you looked at the state of the world recently?
| dartharva wrote:
| They used to rule the world when its state was better
| too. In fact, their proportion was higher.
| theonething wrote:
| I don't see your point. When has the state of the world
| ever been ever been good?
| therein wrote:
| Very true and a good social circle consisting of people with
| ambitions and aspirations helps too. I remember back when we
| were in college, freshman year we formed a circle of some sort
| and moved to apartments next to each other for the sophomore
| year. My roommate in this setup out of the blue got an
| internship at a big company in the Bay Area, surprised all of
| us in this group. He was getting paid a really large amount per
| hour and at that point we didn't even know this was possible.
| That made us all realize that this is a thing and the job fairs
| from that point on weren't going to be bullshit like other
| events before. People were coming in with actual intent to
| hire, and were ready to pay interns a lot of money. And we saw
| once these people made friends in these internships and
| demonstrated themselves, they got hired through internal
| priority queues. We did the same, applied to places,
| interviewed, got flown for in person interviews. Got
| internships, and then those turned into full time offers.
| Everyone in my friend group had an internship from a well known
| company and had offers by the time they were graduating.
|
| And then there was the other kind. It's not like we didn't
| enjoy our college days or go out to party more than we should.
| It's not like we studied extra. It was just this one guy in our
| friend group that did what he did, we saw what he did and got
| the message it was time and anything after that would be
| unnecessarily risking it.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've
| spent their whole life focusing on the next goal.
|
| No, they spent their whole lives being sheltered. Let's call it
| what it is. These people were on tracks because they were put
| on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads
| somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with
| a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhood
| kids, they were at soccer practice. They didn't get a summer
| job at a shitty fast food joint, they were doing summer school
| or learning piano. Everything they've done from start to finish
| has been curated. Of course when the track ends abruptly it's
| catastrophic.
|
| Independence, curiosity, and self-quesitoning and awareness are
| often not taught because "getting ahead" is more important.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Those other things you mention are also "tracks". Getting a
| shitty fast food job is done not due to any kind of
| aspiration but simply because it's the default thing to do.
|
| Imagine not being able to get a shitty fast food job because
| you are disabled. Or just moved to the US and speak too weird
| and don't have anyone to vouch for you.
|
| Ditto for hanging out with the neighborhood kids. This
| assumes that you are one of them, and not a victim/target for
| them.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| What a strange response. Anything is a track if you only do
| that one thing. The point is that having diverse life
| experiences that challenge you make you a much more well-
| rounded person that can adapt and handle difficult
| situations.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Well, I think people like you are strange: how weird
| would it be to go through life assuming that everyone
| thinks the same way as you!
|
| How is working at McD's more "diverse" than playing
| soccer, or even tinkering with a computer at home? It's
| only "better" in a very specific value system, that of
| the American lower middle class
|
| Or put differently: the cliche thing that every teenager
| does in every American movie is "diverse"? How?
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Going outside and playing with other kids is "diverse"
| because it's unstructured time. What do you do with the
| time? It's up to you to decide. Do you build a fort? Egg
| cars? Sell plants? It's an activity that requires some
| amount of creativity, and it's outside the normal zone of
| operation (home/school/etc). The only reason I could see
| this as a negative is if you wish your children to grow
| up as cogs and automatons who are unable to think for
| themselves and find their own place within social
| structures.
|
| As far as getting a job, I have to say it benefited me
| quite a bit. I was already tinkering at home (I've been
| programming since I was 8) but getting a job before I
| left home did many things for me. I got to see how things
| are for a lot of people in the world around me. Some
| people _need_ this shitty job. I was lucky enough to be
| able to do it because my parents mandated it, not because
| I needed to make ends meet. That gave me an enormous
| amount of perspective and humility. "This is how things
| could be for you." It gave me the drive to want to do
| better than working in fast food, and it gave me
| compassion for the people who are in that situation.
| Compassion that, to be frank, a lot of people I've met
| who have _not_ done customer service or shitty jobs lack
| quite a bit. Secondly, I had to get that job myself. My
| parents didn 't pull strings, they made me go out into
| the world, do applications, "sell" myself, etc. It was a
| growth experience. The world isn't going to bend to your
| whim, you are going to have to do things you don't like,
| and you are going to have to compromise.
|
| TL;DR: playing outside: independence + creativity. Job:
| independence + compromise + humility + compassion.
|
| None of that you learn by doing homework.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Getting a shitty fast food job is done not due to any
| kind of aspiration but simply because it's the default
| thing to do.
|
| This is the kind of "tracks" I'm most familiar with:
| Especially in small towns where ideas like individual
| freedoms, bucking the trend, and turning your nose up at
| higher education are common, you don't see it translating
| to a lot of success in life. You see it trapping people in
| cycles of poverty and dead-end jobs.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| ??? I got a job as a teenager because I wanted to buy a
| guitar. It had nothing to do with tracks. It's the same for
| most teens, they want to make a few extra bucks. Let's not
| forgot the majority of people on this forum were on a track
| of sorts that differs very much from the rest of the
| population. Being a bright nerdy kid is not the norm. Teens
| got jobs and mowed lawns to buy a car, weed, a guitar, etc,
| not to pad their highschool resume. That is not the norm
| unless you're at an expensive private school or already in
| the upper middle class or something.
| Kamq wrote:
| > Imagine not being able to get a shitty fast food job
| because ... Or just moved to the US and speak too weird and
| don't have anyone to vouch for you.
|
| You've obviously never worked food.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I think you're assuming way too much.
|
| From my observations, having low parental involvement and
| excessively unstructured upbringing doesn't automatically
| produce determined and self-directed adults. From my
| familiarity with several small towns, I would actually say it
| does the opposite. I can think of many people I knew as a kid
| who ended up stuck in small towns at dead-end jobs simply
| because inertia was the only thing they knew. Nobody ever
| jumped into their lives to push them to try different things
| or explore paths that weren't sitting right in front of them.
| jemiluv8 wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. Parental guidance or lack thereof
| can work differently for different people. There are
| incompetent and more competent parents everywhere. But that
| is beside the point. You can do better now. You can start
| steering your own ship. That degree you were pushed to get
| might come in handy or not.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > From my observations, having low parental involvement and
| excessively unstructured upbringing doesn't automatically
| produce determined and self-directed adults.
|
| Sample of one, it indeed didn't. However being knocked
| around did help with being somewhat more ready and open to
| new things and uncharted territories. It also dramatically
| reduces the fear of the unknown and can be a significant
| confidence booster.
| jemiluv8 wrote:
| But yeah, how they got where they were was never the point.
| The point was now you know. Now you understand you've been
| chasing a goal you never knew about. It is time to stop.
| Start thinking for yourself. Start steering the wheel. Stop
| drifting.
| rconti wrote:
| > These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks
| from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and
| any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh
| rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhood kids,
| they were at soccer practice. They didn't get a summer job at
| a shitty fast food joint, they were doing summer school or
| learning piano. Everything they've done from start to finish
| has been curated. Of course when the track ends abruptly it's
| catastrophic.
|
| It's not clear to me how the "tracks" were significantly
| different in, say, the past 80 years, at least in America.
| Compulsory schooling has been a thing for a long time.
| Getting an after school job delivering newspapers so you have
| a little spending money is not exactly a clever endeavor, and
| it's not clear to me you learn more life skills than you do
| having to manage homework (for example).
|
| Get married to someone of the opposite gender, go to church
| every sunday, have kids. Work a job with a pension for 30
| years, retire with a gold watch. (or the blue collar
| equivalent). Those are tracks.
|
| I don't disagree with the premise that kids are more coddled
| today than they used to be, but the "tracks" metaphor is, if
| anything, less valid now than ever. There is more choice, and
| less stability, as far as I can tell.
| mlsu wrote:
| You learn quite a lot by working a regular job and getting
| a paycheck as a kid. It is utterly baffling that there are
| some kids graduating _college_ that never worked a regular
| job. It 's a problem that young kids in our modern world
| don't seem to even _want_ to get jobs.
|
| As far as I'm concerned, you are basically mentally stunted
| if you didn't work for pay in your teenage years.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > As far as I'm concerned, you are basically mentally
| stunted if you didn't work for pay in your teenage years.
|
| I worked a teenage job, too. Physical labor.
|
| It was a learning experience, but I don't see it as this
| life changing pivot point that separated me from others.
| In fact, you meet plenty of people at a physical labor
| job like that who are clearly not on a path to being
| ahead of their peers, or who have been doing the same
| work for decades since they were a teenager.
|
| I also know plenty of people who didn't have any jobs
| until they graduated college and they turned out fine.
|
| I think some of the lofty claims about teenage jobs being
| life changing or how teens who don't get jobs are
| "mentally stunted" are getting absurd.
|
| It reads like people who have developed a chip on their
| shoulder about their own upbringings being superior to
| others because they were more difficult.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > In fact, you meet plenty of people at a physical labor
| job like that who are clearly not on a path to being
| ahead of their peers, or who have been doing the same
| work for decades since they were a teenager.
|
| At least for me, the experience of doing physical labor
| alongside people like that as a teenager was a real eye-
| opener. It showed me exactly what my life might look like
| if I didn't focus and work toward my goals. That was
| already my plan, but seeing the alternative first hand
| was pretty motivating nonetheless (and frightening).
| lurking_swe wrote:
| imo this is what good parenting should be about
| regardless of one's class or upbringing.
|
| It's good to show kids which possible "doors" they can go
| down in life. It's easy to claim that door X is better
| than door Y, but unless you have them _see_ the
| difference, or at least talk to someone that's been
| through door Y, they won't believe you.
|
| There's nothing wrong with focusing on a difficult track!
| But if you grow up to be an adult that doesn't comprehend
| how a normal person lives, then you've got a problem lol.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Yep. 17 year old me working alongside a 70 year old dude
| working the same job as me... I knew that's not what I
| wanted for my life.
|
| That said, I think I've still wafted through life on
| tracks. I just concluded that FAANG was the next track
| after uni so I made it happen. Not sure I'm happy any
| more though. Maybe I need to reinvent myself.
| immibis wrote:
| > It's a problem that young kids in our modern world
| don't seem to even want to get jobs.
|
| Literally nobody wants a job. You do it to get money.
| People want to do something and not be bored, but that's
| got nothing to do with jobs.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Delayed adulthood is a real thing. Even 25 years ago
| many/most high school kids have after school and/or summer
| jobs. Now it is almost unheard of.
|
| Their entire young lives are structured, parentally planned
| and resume padding. Then theres stuff like college
| admission consultants which have become very normalized,
| with allegedly 26% of parents hiring them per some study.
|
| I worked from 14, had a crappy retail job throughout high
| school and my college prep was the $20 Kaplan CD lol.
| Whatever sports I played were the $50/season local league
| your parents drop you off at a couple nights a week. And my
| parents weren't poor, they were totally normal upper middle
| class low 6 figure earnings.
|
| Nowadays the above is akin to smoking on an airplane with a
| baby in your lap.
| ericd wrote:
| Eh there are certainly some parents like that. Most of
| the ones I know aren't, though - they're still mostly of
| the local league variety. We never brought a car seat
| into an airplane, laughable security theater.
|
| There's also a big push to not provide kids with
| smartphones until high school.
|
| Our parent groups might just be weird, though.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| One reason is because people believe the trope you said: "
| Get married to someone of the opposite gender, go to church
| every sunday, have kids. Work a job with a pension for 30
| years, retire with a gold watch. (or the blue collar
| equivalent). Those are tracks."
|
| Sans the watch, we know that grafting onto community while
| accomplishing the statistically most meaningful tasks (per
| all psychological studies) opens all the doors to a content
| life full of more paths than can be explored before this
| short life is over.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| These changes only occurred due to the dual income trap
| though.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| The first bit is too similar to what a typical college kid
| would go through in India.
|
| My assumption was that this would NOT be the case in the USA.
| You hear about kids dropping out and starting startups, or
| people just skipping college to work on what they like, or kids
| joining trade schools to get into welding.
|
| Isn't this the norm in the USA / most of the developed world ??
| Your comment confirms the same thing.. you dropped out..That's
| all I read and see everywhere about America, that you are free
| to take decisions like this (and often encouraged)
|
| It feels odd to think to that kids in the USA are on a somewhat
| fixed train track, when there are so many opportunities +
| freedom + less judgement overall in the society.
| jaggederest wrote:
| It's a relatively small percentage that want to do something
| outside the norm, and it does not go very well for a lot of
| them. There's a lot of survivor's bias in hearing about
| dropouts.
| jmtulloss wrote:
| The kids that fall into this bucket talk about it a lot (when
| they're successful). The vast majority of successful people
| in America (for some definition of success) did not drop out,
| and the vast majority of drop outs do not find this type of
| mainstream success.
|
| This is not to say that dropouts without that kind of success
| aren't happy. I do believe that America does afford a lot of
| leeway for people to be happy and comfortable in non-
| traditional life paths. They're just not the ones being
| discussed din this comment.
| eastbound wrote:
| Dropping out is so "Silicon Valley" that the first episode
| of Silicon valley starts with a billionaire encouraging
| youths to drop out, and a kid successfully raising funding
| from him by touching him to his core: "If I don't raise
| funding, I might... go to uni". It's a joke on SV.
| jmtulloss wrote:
| What's your point?
|
| Peter Thiel and the people that did his fellowship don't
| represent the majority of career paths people take in SV,
| but they do make for good (or too close to home) fodder.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The lifetime value of a college degree in the United States
| is very high.
|
| College is expensive, but it's nowhere near as expensive as
| the high private university tuitions you read about ($200K+).
| Most people have access to state universities that are much
| cheaper. Even at private universities most students are on
| sliding scale payments with scholarships. It's common for
| 10-20% or more of a university's students to be paying
| effectively $0 tuition.
|
| While you definitely can skip college and still have a good
| career, the trades never really pay as well as internet lore
| suggests and the number of people who start startups and
| succeed is very small.
| EGreg wrote:
| The Full Time Employment crowd is the people who continue the
| tracks.
|
| Chilling by the watercooler, being paid for 8 hours a day with
| health insurance etc. while working 2 hours a day and/or
| bitching about your job. Or just enjoying life after work.
|
| These people would be as much at home in Soviet Russia as they
| would in today's USA. They want more security. The EU has
| become the new USSR for this. Lots of protections.
|
| It's what people want. They don't actually want the AI
| disruption. But it's coming because their employers don't care
| what they want.
|
| However if you claim to love capitalism and hate socialism, or
| whatever, then get a taste of it. Go hunting in the market for
| clients. Go spar and learn sales skills. Build your own company
| and service your own clients.
|
| Or let the employer do it for you. But then you are just like a
| renter, not an owner -- except on the supply side of the
| economy. And they may rent your time... for now.
|
| The "American Dream" btw has become about renting money from
| banks -- to finish college, to pay the mortgage on that house,
| etc. But the cost of all of it has gone up much more than your
| grandparents. It is just indentured servitude with a choice of
| landlords. At the end of the day, they want you to rent the
| money from banks to create demand for the money, so you can
| work for 30 years and pay it off. But the AI will break even
| that social contract.
|
| Jobs will be going down
|
| Entrepreurship will be going up
|
| Find your people. And in the sense of getting a team of loyal
| badasses together. Build something new. Use AI. Don't let your
| employer tell you how to use AI or use it to replace you.
| tilne wrote:
| [flagged]
| tacitusarc wrote:
| Do you know who that is? I don't. So I don't know if it's
| unearned certainty or not.
| tilne wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how
| wrong someone is or you feel they are.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| keybored wrote:
| I think you pumped the HN smugness too hard for HN.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| So I graduate, I call him up long distance, I say "Dad, now
| what?" He says, "Get a job."
|
| Now I'm 25, make my yearly call again. I say Dad, "Now what?"
| He says, "I don't know, get married."
| bumby wrote:
| The book "Excellent Sheep" has an interesting portion on this.
| At one point someone from a non-traditional background is
| bemoaning the mentality of his colleagues at a prestigious
| university. He says they are so used to following a template of
| moving from point A to point B that they are completely
| rudderless when put in a situation where there is no template
| defining "success".
| steveBK123 wrote:
| If you aren't careful though, the tracks can also continue. At
| BigCorp they have lots of titles to create a sense of urgency
| and box-ticking to progress from A to B to C to..
| immibis wrote:
| This is obnoxiously commonplace. At my first job they
| upgraded me from a level N engineer (1 or 2, probably) to a
| level N+1 engineer with a 10% pay rise or something.
|
| The year after that I stumbled upon a new job which paid more
| than their highest value of N. They definitely don't want
| this to happen. They want you striving for (N+1)+1 only, so
| they can give it out whenever they think you feel like you're
| not progressing, and keep you in their system.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| My wife was stressed out the other year because what was
| formerly a title system at her BigCo of A -> B -> C ->D got
| fragmented even further.
|
| They added some system of "well to get from C to D, there
| is now C1->C2->C3->C4, and we've classified you as a C3,
| congrats".
|
| Of course this week out of the blue her boss calls her with
| the "great news" that she's been "put up for promotion
| process for C4, but no guarantees"..
|
| Anyway few understand this but even in these types of
| roles, the compensation bands are very very wide, with
| overlaps, and differ across departments. So just ask for
| money over title until your title limits their ability to
| give you money. You can't eat title.
| noduerme wrote:
| I didn't want to go to college. I worked throughout high school
| designing websites for an ad agency for $8/hr, after school
| until 7 at night and 5 days a week in the summer. After high
| school I went to work for another agency full time for a year.
| Only after my father kept cajoling me did I finally try
| college. I got a scholarship and came in a year older and six
| years more experienced than my freshman class.
|
| What I found myself in was a group of very sincere, optimistic,
| wonderful kids who had no idea how the real world of
| engineering or advertising or design worked, but were fully
| persuaded that this $30k/yr education would prepare them for it
| and hand them the next waypoint on their life path (while also
| allowing them creative freedom to experiment in ways that they
| wouldn't be able to later, in the corporate world). I dropped
| out after 3 semesters because it was pointless, although in the
| last semester I jumped ahead from Typography 2 to 5, and
| skipped a bunch of other stuff. I had poached a lot of clients
| from my former agency, which had folded.
|
| Since then, my life has had no rails whatsoever. I'm good at
| what I do and I go where I want and choose who I work for, and
| the world essentially rewards me for being good at figuring
| things out.
|
| All of this comes down to a lack of imagination, and parents
| (like my father) trying to instill a sense in their children
| that one must pursue certain predefined paths to be successful.
| But completing a predefined quest doesn't make us more
| valuable; in fact, it makes us interchangeable. Being a
| difficult, unique, tough, anal obsessive prick at what you do
| is hard to ever replace with a formal education. And experience
| is king. So start early and ignore all the tracks you can.
| martin82 wrote:
| Modern society tries very hard to lay tracks for everyone all
| the way to final station: The old folks home.
|
| In my opinion, there are TOO MANY tracks.
|
| We have plastered the entire map with so many tracks, that
| experiencing true freedom has become virtually impossible.
| eastbound wrote:
| We're also too many people on Earth to continue living in a
| green field world. Fantasizing about freedom and the absence
| of tracks is a Western thing; I don't think you can afford
| trial-and-error paths or separating from the cohort of
| applicants when you live in Singapore, Taiwan, or China.
| Kalzumeus had to show his bride's mother his revenue sheet
| before asking her hand, because startup creator is second to
| homeless in the humiliation ranking.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| > Kalzumeus had to show his bride's mother his revenue
| sheet before asking her hand, because startup creator is
| second to homeless in the humiliation ranking.
|
| That's how marrying into an elite family worked in most of
| the world for most human history. See e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Shakespear#Engagement
| -
|
| > In 1911 Pound returned from America and in October
| formally approached Dorothy's father asking permission to
| marry her. Pound told Shakespear he had a guaranteed annual
| income of PS200 in addition to earnings from writing and
| Dorothy's own income of PS150 a year. Shakespear refused on
| the grounds of insufficient income believing Pound
| overstated his potential to earn money writing poetry.
| [...]
| yard2010 wrote:
| That's 20,306 pounds in 2025
| 9dev wrote:
| Yep. The illusion of Freedom is sold as a product, however,
| and people make a lot of money with it.
| somedude895 wrote:
| What do you mean by that?
| Jgrubb wrote:
| Any car ad where they're tearing through the forest, with
| the kids in the back, with the ad finishing at some Grand
| Canyon overlook with a campfire.
| killerstorm wrote:
| Some of my university classmates just stayed in university
| after graduation... Even though most of them didn't have much
| interest in academic research or teaching. It was just the
| easiest things to do: just imagine tracks going further in the
| same direction. Inertia is powerful.
| dcreater wrote:
| It's funny that the train tracks continue on for Asian kids in
| the dorm of grad school or engineering jobs
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I will highlight this part of your post, in context with the
| article [speech?]'s drdiving point:
|
| > "You have never even interned in your field??".
|
| The article is for people _who don 't have a field_. In some
| circles, this is not a concept people speak about, but I think
| it represents many or most people who graduate university (in
| the US at least). The specialized fields like _doctor_ ,
| _lawyer_ , _engineer_ etc you hear about represent a minority
| of students and jobs. Many or most graduates end up in some
| variant of the _fidelity customer service_ job.
|
| The world is filled with office buildings, and generic office
| jobs. You need a college degree to get them, and no special
| skills.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| > I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better.
|
| Blame parents, teachers etc. When I mean blame, really blame
| them unapologetically, I have no sympathies for them.
| fossuser wrote:
| School beats agency out of students. It's particularly bad
| because agency seems relatively rare and if someone has the
| spark, the highest leverage thing that a society can do is to
| encourage it.
|
| By the time most kids get out they're institutionalized and
| don't even know what they want.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| "Which leads me to my final point about getting ambitious plans:
| you have to be immune to rejection. People are going to dismiss
| you at first. If that's enough to stop you, you're doomed. So you
| have to learn to ignore it. And that's harder than it sounds--
| social pressure is so powerful. But everyone who does ambitious
| things has to learn how to resist it."
|
| Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and
| destruction in their wake. I don't care if you need this attitude
| to be a founder, it still sucks.
|
| I worked at a startup where the technical founder had this
| attitude and was, at least with respect to the product at hand,
| totally incompetent and it was truly catastrophically absurd and
| stressful and a huge waste of tons of people's time and money.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and
| destruction in their wake.
|
| At the same time, lots of people who do this end up being
| extremely successful.
|
| The difficulty is knowing _which_ rejection and criticism to
| ignore. Imagine losing out on a multi-billion dollar business
| because your initial pitch was dismissed by people saying your
| business is pointless and redundant because rsync already
| exists[0].
|
| On the flip side, there's a lot of founders who... have more
| determination than experience, let's say, and when told their
| idea won't work, instead of using factual data points (or
| getting an MVP out to collect data points) operate purely on
| belief until they run out of money.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| nathan_compton wrote:
| "Each time you have to make a decision, make the right one"
| would be what I would say in a commencement speech. Truly
| sage advice.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > "Each time you have to make a decision, make the right
| one" would be what I would say in a commencement speech.
| Truly sage advice.
|
| It honestly is great advice. Most (useful) business advice
| I've seen amounts to "how to make better decisions". This
| includes things like doing market research or a business
| model canvas (to make better decisions about your
| customers), releasing MVPs quickly to test the market (to
| make better decisions around product and pricing), picking
| which metrics and data points to measure (so that you can
| evaluate if your decision was actually correct and quickly
| course correct if not), etc.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Each time you have to make a decision, measure.
| m3047 wrote:
| I don't have a college degree. I made a deal with the head
| of the college math department that he'd sign me in to
| (senior level) Numerical Analysis (this was the early
| 1980s) if I taught myself calculus first; which I did. He
| had misgivings about this self-guided selection of study,
| and summed it up thus: How do you know
| what's important?
|
| Now of course ML is all the rage, but that question has
| stuck with me. I still ask myself that question, and I
| don't always know the answer.
| wapeoifjaweofji wrote:
| > end up being extremely successful
|
| At making money, likely true. Leaving a trail of destruction
| in your wake is just not my idea of success.
| mizzao wrote:
| It's truly a challenge to know which is which -- the foolish
| and the prescient both look like people with similarly bad
| ideas when they first start out.
| lubujackson wrote:
| "Immune to rejection" and "consider all criticism" are both
| useful but much, much harder than doing one or the other
| reliably. Lots of assholes are immune to rejection and a lot of
| doormats consider all criticism. Doing both means you keep your
| ears open but are resolute (and maybe delusional) about a few
| core ideals. And maybe even those change with criticism.
|
| There is a reason you see lots of asshole business owners and
| not many doormats, though - you need to filter criticism or it
| will always screw you up in the end. Accepting criticism can
| help you course-correct and produce better/happier, but isn't a
| requirement for success.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Finding your people a theme in Kermit the Frog's speech over at
| UMD
|
| https://apnews.com/article/kermit-frog-university-of-marylan...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44075293)
| phkahler wrote:
| How much of that is hindsight? Was she drawn to Y-combinator or
| did she drift into it like she did Fidelity? Recognizing it was
| the right people and the right thing obviously happened, I'm just
| questioning when she actually knew that.
| alwa wrote:
| She co-founded it, didn't she? Created it to operationalize her
| ideas, which, from the sound of her speech, confused people
| around her at the time? Or am I misunderstanding what you're
| asking?
|
| > _When we started Y Combinator, everyone treated it as a joke.
| We were funding kids right out of college and only giving them
| small amounts of money. How could these startups ever succeed?
| Now everyone knows it 's a good idea to fund young founders,
| but twenty years ago, it just seemed lame. But we didn't care
| what people thought of us. We knew we were onto something. In
| fact it was good that we seemed lame, because that meant it
| took several years before people started to copy us._
| harrall wrote:
| I don't know about her but when I found what I really actually
| liked, I looked forward it every day, no matter what challenge
| it gave me.
|
| And it's still the same excitement every day 5, 10, etc. years
| later.
|
| I suppose I'm saying is that when you find it, you know.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Hmm ok. What she's arguing for is "fake it till you make it".
| Think about it, the first thing this person did when she started
| steering, was write a book about startups even though by her own
| admission she didn't know anything about startups.
|
| I liked the rails/steering advise, disliked the fake it till you
| make it advice.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| Kudos jessica. You are still the same unstoppable machine from
| long ago. Even now you are selling and recruiting, and even
| passed all opportunity to gloat. all business.
| mclau157 wrote:
| Tangential to this but why does there seem to be a correlation
| between rock climbing gyms and tech oriented people?
| macintux wrote:
| I have no idea, but personally after 30 years of IT work, I
| definitely regret not finding _something_ to strengthen my
| hands. They 're barely useful for anything besides typing, and
| often not even that.
| nssnsjsjsjs wrote:
| Not too late right?
| AaronAPU wrote:
| I don't know, but I've made a specific effort not to rock climb
| because I felt it may cause long term hand related injuries
| which could impact my ability to work.
|
| Not even sure how well founded that fear is, but I would
| otherwise love to do rock climbing.
| mclau157 wrote:
| I believe the hand injuries would be most felt if you were
| climbing very difficult "crimpy" climbs multiple times a week
| without enough rest, these are the climbs where you really
| put stress on tiny individual parts of the fingers to grip
| onto very tiny holds, otherwise "juggy" climbing where you
| can grab onto a hold with a large portion of your hand uses
| more shoulder and back muscles which can get fatigued but
| definitely not as damaged as tiny individual parts of the
| fingers
| hasbot wrote:
| That's a completely unfounded fear. I've climbed on and off
| for 35 years and have injured my finger tendons a few times
| but never to the extent that it interfered with my
| programming job. Injuries do happen but one can learn to warm
| up to prevent injuries, what is likely to cause an injury,
| and when to back off before an injury occurs.
| hasbot wrote:
| Short answer: problem solving. At the mid-level of climb
| difficulties, a climber needs to figure out footwork, body
| tension, balance, and move sequence to advance up the climb.
| whall6 wrote:
| Unrelated to tech, but I wonder if this is why so many people
| seek the IB to PE to HF route that seems so well trod. They just
| need rails that point them to the next stop.
| 65 wrote:
| Care to explain what IB, PE, and HF mean?
| apsurd wrote:
| investment banking, private equity, hedge fund. I think
| netvarun wrote:
| I think they refer to: IB - investment banking PE - private
| equity HF - hedge funds or High Frequency trading (?)
| pokemyiout wrote:
| IB: Investment Banking PE: Private Equity HF: Hedge Fund
| throe73848484 wrote:
| > So I'm going to tell you about a trick you can pull right here
| at the point where the train tracks end. You can reinvent
| yourself. I wish I'd known I could do that. I was lazy in college
| and got bad grades
|
| I googled study fees for that university. $69000 per year plus
| expenses for accommodation, food and books.
|
| After you finish such school, you should be top level motivated
| professional with highly lucrative job lined up. If you drop
| quarter of million dollars for paper, just to discover at end you
| need to "reinvent yourself", you are probably highly highly
| privileged person, or just not so smart.
|
| 18 years old kids need to hear this speech. Not students before
| graduation!
| charlie0 wrote:
| The main "trick" here was moving to where the next center of
| power was going to be and meeting the right people through hard
| work (but really the main differentiator) sheer luck.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| If I could downvote a post, this would be it.
| lucasfcosta wrote:
| Thanks for writing this, Jessica.
|
| This is a great paragraph:
|
| > If you want to, you can just decide to shift gears at this
| point, and no one's going to tell you you can't. You can just
| decide to be more curious, or more responsible, or more
| energetic, and no one's going to go look up your college grades
| and say, "Hey, wait a minute, this person's supposed to be a
| slacker."
|
| I've often seen people get too attached to an unproductive
| "identity" instead of looking at things as they are. It's way too
| common for people to fail once and think they're a failure,
| rather than thinking that they just failed at that particular
| time.
|
| By the way, I remember meeting you during the S23 batch and how
| genuinely excited you were to meet us, young founders who were
| just getting started. It does seem like you found your people!
| jackphilson wrote:
| Right. I feel like cultural fit is very important. You need to
| find the community you're most aligned with (share same memetic
| space) and go to them. This is why I think network states will
| succeed
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I suspect very strongly that we live in a "post-community"
| world. There are no communities, and haven't been for a very
| long time, likely since before your grandparents were in their
| prime. We have any number of entities that function as
| surrogate communities, but without the benefits the real thing
| would provide. Quite often though, they have many of the
| disadvtanges of those, plus a few extra.
|
| The community you're most aligned with, that you rush into
| hoping to feel as if you fit in, it might be more like an
| angler fish just waiting for you to jump into its jaws.
| jackphilson wrote:
| Well, we have it mildly solved on the internet layer
| (hackernews). Issue is these bonds aren't very strong because
| they're not supported by physical space (can't use
| evolutionary hardwiring). This is why I think network states
| are good because they're a projection of community on the
| internet layer onto the physical layer. I think community is
| very important, and the world will tend more and more towards
| happiness (generally speaking), so the resurgence of
| community living I think is inevitable. I think the
| atomization is a temporary blip caused by increased
| convenience (tiktok, amazon).
|
| I think the characterization of a community as an angler fish
| has some merit but might be a little pessimistic. In any
| case, it's way better than interacting with people who you
| know are definitely not your community.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Communities still exist, but you have to make an active
| effort to find and become a part of them. Hobbies often have
| communities, same with fandoms, church groups, etc. Online
| and offline, whichever you prefer.
| farahkh wrote:
| "And if you find yourself working at a place where you don't like
| the people, get out"
| joshdavham wrote:
| > Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on
| train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school,
| college [...] And there are some jobs where you can make it stay
| like train tracks if you want
|
| I've never envied the people who graduate college and then
| immediately go to work at big tech companies where they start off
| as an "SDE 1", then "SDE 2", then Mid level, senior, staff,
| principal, etc. There's definitely more security and stability in
| that, but I think these people are also missing out on a lot.
| coolcase wrote:
| Startups might be the new SDE1 while trying to do stuff outside
| of capitalism might be the new startup.
|
| Not in terms of financial reward of course. But in terms of
| rewarding career off the beaten path.
|
| Personally while I want to do a startup I am finding the boring
| path you mention quite fascinating!
| epolanski wrote:
| Every time I'm assisting those Ama/MS/Apple labels for their
| rate race I want to cringe so hard to be honest.
| udev4096 wrote:
| It does not matter. Everyone is a code whore. You will work at
| a place which pays you the highest, regardless of the ethics.
| Majority of "big tech" are unethical places and yet people will
| sell their souls to work there. Tells you a lot about the
| majority of CS grads
| neilv wrote:
| Final sentence:
|
| > _Find the interesting people._
|
| Note that this isn't advice for everyone. Go back to earlier in
| the piece:
|
| > _But in the middle, there 's a group who wish they had
| ambitious plans, but don't. This speech is for you. I'm going to
| tell you how to get ambitious plans._
|
| The "Find Your People" of the title is the more general advice,
| for a larger audience.
|
| Your people might well be a quiet small town environment that's
| doing OK economically, has good school(s) for children, people
| are neighborly and supportive, not a lot of inequity and all that
| follows, etc.
|
| You might not think of that as interesting, at least not in the
| abstract, but it might be your people.
|
| For myself, who seems to be a natural startup person (maybe
| including a little bit of both Swartz and Altman), I've been
| thinking that I'm most likely to find a concentration of my
| people in a town with a good liberal arts college, intermixed
| with economically OK non-college people, and easily accessible to
| a major metro area -- without feeling cut off too much from
| activity and opportunity, and with having a regular infusion of a
| little freshness/change.
|
| (I'm not convinced that Cambridge/Boston, San Francisco, or NYC
| can be that place, long-term, unless you have enough money to
| insulate yourself from the VHCOLA downsides. And then maybe you
| end up mostly only associating with people who also have enough
| money to be sufficiently insulated, which isn't the complete
| breakfast.)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| VCOLA - Very high Cost Of Living Area
| tosh wrote:
| agency! very timely
| famahar wrote:
| If your country allows it and you can afford it, I recommend
| every graduate to do a working holidays visa in another country.
| Embed yourself in the community. Volunteer, work odd jobs,
| practice art , learn a language. You'll find what you
| unexpectedly love and hate during that time. Following the tracks
| of life and getting a career out of college sounds safe and
| comfy, but you'll be surprised what new joys life can throw at
| you when you go off the beaten path a bit.
| agcat wrote:
| such a timely advice
| andrewstetsenko wrote:
| Such a wake-up call to take ownership of your direction, rather
| than waiting for the next "station" to appear.
| compumike wrote:
| > This fact is so terrifying that a lot of people try to remain
| in denial about it.
|
| I remember talking as college seniors about how: for two decades
| there's always been some near-future end-of-school-term date that
| we're all marching together toward, and isn't it so strange that
| the whole cycle is about to disappear? if
| next_end_date.nil? # ?!? FIXME end
|
| Some rhythm of starting and efforting and finishing and relaxing,
| before starting the next cycle.
|
| Of course it's somewhat possible to join new calendar cycles. A
| two-week engineering sprint. Even YC's batch concept recreates
| this for a few months, to great effect! But not the same.
|
| But for the most part, when the calendar rhythm is no longer the
| source of medium-term stability and inspiration and motivation, I
| think this makes a good point that the people you surround
| yourself with can be. If not, what else?
|
| Thank you, Jessica.
| jamesgill wrote:
| It's great advice. Reminds me of Steve Jobs' statement:
|
| _When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it
| is and you're life is just to live your life inside the world.
| Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice
| family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited
| life._
|
| _Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact:
| Everything around you that you call life was made up by people
| that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can
| influence it, you can build your own things that other people can
| use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again._
| throwaway1921 wrote:
| I find myself in the former position more than ever. Feeling
| kinda trapped... it's what my parents and their parents did
| before me. Not sure how to break out? It becomes much harder to
| take risks once you have an entire family to take care of.
| buggyipadmettoo wrote:
| Just gotta compare it to the risks of not having a family to
| take care of.
| eastbound wrote:
| If you don't succeed enough, most men experience that the
| wife drops us.
|
| You _must_ take those risks. And if you fail, they will be
| no-one for you. We try to hide this to teens because it's a
| raw deal, but generations before us were sent to war without
| much thought either.
|
| You _must_ succeed at life above the others, or there will be
| no family thing. At each generation, 30% of males don't
| reproduce at all, and there is no plaque for them, no
| memorial, people simply won't talk about you.
|
| Do a startup and do not fail, you do not have a real choice
| here.
| shutupnerd0000 wrote:
| Sir, this is a Wendy's.
| Balgair wrote:
| This is going to sound really strange to you and totally
| glib. Sorry for that, but it'll make sense after.
|
| Read Plato's "Apology," "Crito," and "Phaedo." Yes, in that
| order.
|
| https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html
|
| https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html
|
| https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html
|
| If you know nothing of these dialogs, that's almost better.
|
| I know that some internet rando telling you to read a bunch
| of Plato is, like, never going to happen.
|
| But on the off chance that you do, the less I tell you, the
| better. And if you do decide to do this, you can cheat and
| read along with the sparknotes and use an LLM to help read
| along too. But do try your best to read it first, then use
| the other resources to guide you. It'll make more sense after
| you read them. Again sorry, about this being really strange.
|
| But it is worth your time and effort, I promise you.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| I went to my daughter's (high school) graduation yesterday. The
| speeches were uniformly weak except for the school trustee, who's
| job is basically campaigning or speaking at graduation
| ceremonies. Part of it was a graduate talking to his former
| principal at the 25-yr reunion: says the alumnus: "...and I've
| tried to live my life by the advice you gave to me that day."
| "Can you refresh my memory?" asks the principal. "You said to me
| 'keep moving! keep moving!'"
| gilbetron wrote:
| > You fall into three groups
|
| She lost me at that statement. I hate these kind of reductive
| statements that are presented as a thoughtful statement. There
| are vastly more than three groups in that audience (granted, it
| is self-selected elite University, so the number of groups is
| still constrained comparatively).
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| She mentions "want ambitious plans, have ambitious plans",
| "don't want ambitious plans, don't have ambitious plans" and
| "want ambitious plans, don't have ambitious plans".
|
| What are the vast number of groups outside of that set? Of
| course there's "have ambitious plans, don't want ambitious
| plans", which would probably be more interesting than the other
| three, but what are the other missing groups?
| jemiluv8 wrote:
| You might as well add other categories about their majors or
| gender or age groups. I wouldn't call this reductive so much as
| a way of thinking about a group of college graduates. This
| classification was never presented as universal, just as a way
| of looking at things.
| thomasjudge wrote:
| I wish Jessica would write essays
| susiecambria wrote:
| Watching the speech, had a flashback to early 1986 when I was
| trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do now that I
| had graduated from college. In addition to what Jessica talked
| about, I left school a semester early having earned enough
| credits. I was quite off-balance, didn't have any peer support or
| friendship.
|
| I moved in with my parents and I'm grateful for that. But they
| were not helpful in any way with helping me think through what
| was next for me. As I've said here before, it was a long road of
| mental health and drinking challenges and I finally got it
| together enough to have a direction somewhere.
|
| As I reread this, I recognize how whiny this privileged white
| girl (!!!) sounds. But I also know that my not-so-great
| experiences got me where I am and I desperately want more for my
| grandkids and hope that I can be what they need me to be for
| them.
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| "I would have liked to work hard on something I cared about. But
| I didn't have anything I cared about"
|
| This is one of those sentences that make me jealous I didn't
| write it. Just such a perfect description of early adulthood for
| many.
| nntwozz wrote:
| I channeled most of my energy into playing MMOs in the early
| 2000s, I have some wonderful memories but it fried my dopamine
| reward system and it took me more than a decade to wean myself
| off of the bad habit.
|
| Not having something real and tangible to care about can be
| devastating.
| angrydev wrote:
| I'm between jobs (burnout) and have found MMOs (Classic WoW)
| to be the only thing that makes sense anymore. What did you
| do to replace this and move on?
| nntwozz wrote:
| I changed my lifestyle from mainly indoor hobbies
| (series/movies/games/music) to mainly outdoor activities.
|
| I bought a dog, I started riding mountainbikes again (as I
| did when I was a kid) and I got into bushcraft. Now I live
| off grid with solar and firewood.
|
| In a sense I replaced the grinding part I did in the MMOs
| with taking care of the property.
|
| I hand fell trees and process them for firewood, the
| branches go into a wood chipper. I trim the grass, use
| pruning shears etc.
|
| I live in a timber house that's 125 years old, there's
| always something to work on be it painting, renovating etc.
| It's fun to develop real skills and use power tools.
| There's immense satisfaction in seeing the results of your
| own work.
|
| When I want to play I ride my bikes (I also enjoy servicing
| them); I still enjoy music and movies/series but I no
| longer have any interest in actually gaming. I occasionally
| read/watch videos about it as a nostalgia trip.
| elric wrote:
| Not just early adulthood. It's a very good description of how I
| felt after I got laid off.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Very relatable, unfortunately. Wish there was an obvious way to
| find something you do really care about, that also happens to
| be financially viable. Jessica's advice to find interesting
| people, and caring will follow, might just work. Curious if
| others have found another "fix" here.
| raywu wrote:
| Jessica - if you are reading the comments, I have to say -
| Founders at Work changed my career trajectory. I read it fresh
| out of college in 2008. I told a buddy to read it and it also
| changed his trajectory.
|
| Guess what, after years of meandering (YC, Series A, big tech) I
| still come back to the moment I first discovered your book.
|
| Also, please tell PG, I knew about your book before I knew what
| YC was :-)
| babyent wrote:
| I agree with this so much.
|
| You really do need to treat your friends as a revolving/evolving
| Rolodex.
|
| Get rid of "friends"/people who hold you back. Their problems are
| not your problems. You have your own goal in life. They can deal
| with their own problems, and maturity is realizing it's up to the
| individual to change.
|
| Get friends in your life who add value to your life. These will
| be hard to find, but once you have such friends they are friends
| for life. These are people who are riding the same wave as you,
| who yearn for better waves. They love the sport of life.
|
| I don't talk to anyone I went to college with because I realized
| they're not on the same wavelength. I'm not interested in
| cruising through life. They didn't really add value to my life,
| and I didn't want to be bored or annoyed. I'm talking nihilistic
| people who are ok with just status quo. Yuck!
|
| The friends I've made since have improved my life. They've shown
| me how to really make the most out of life. Challenging myself to
| be better, and they're smarter than me which is encouraging as
| well.
|
| I have maybe a dozen close friends. I'm glad that I'm one of
| their close friends too.
|
| Sorry if I sounded harsh ESL btw.
| mirawelner wrote:
| I'm still processing that this is the Ycombinator cofounder. It's
| not a good thing or a bad thing - although tbh it's better this
| person founded Ycombinator than say, a nepo baby which is always
| what I had kind of assumed. But the idea that the cofounder of
| Ycombinator didn't discover their ambition until after undergrad
| is going to take a bit for my brain to absorb.
| defrost wrote:
| > didn't discover their ambition until after undergrad
|
| I mixed with a lot of very ambitious people at university, some
| had a clear plan of how to exercise their ambition, not all of
| those plans worked as intended, many had ambition with no
| specific plan _at that time_ other than to learn a breadth of
| useful knowledge, make good connections, take on early work
| with great networking potential .. and then pivot when they had
| a better handle on the world as it was at that time a year or
| three after graduation.
|
| Ambition to succeed doesn't have to come with a specific
| predetermined path on _how_ to succeed .. there 's still room
| to adapt and morph as one moves forward.
| rr808 wrote:
| I kinda like the speech but she was also super lucky to be in the
| right place at the right time - advice is possibly still relevant
| but I dont see any bright spot for new grads to go to.
| yapyap wrote:
| If you saw the bright spot easy enough from an outsiders
| perspective it would be oversaturated already.
|
| Truth is nowadays it's really about networking however messed
| up that might be. Inherently that's pretty luck based but it's
| a near guarantee to bring you _something_ as long as you don't
| give up.
| udev4096 wrote:
| YC is a joke. Imagine letting your company be in the hands of
| soul less venture capitalists who do not care anything about your
| "vision". They want their instant paycheck by getting you ready
| for an IPO. That's their goal, not to nurture you. YC is
| delusional and so are the people who take funding from them
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Most of us try get a job for money to survive
| tchock23 wrote:
| Really liked the recap in the last paragraph. I wish more
| speakers would do that.
| mizzao wrote:
| Is it true that every field that originally started with no
| rails, eventually leads to rails being constructed there? Every
| trailblazer can create a well-trodden path
|
| For example, startups were one of the most canonical examples of
| going off the rails. Yet now, many people equate doing a startup
| with (1) apply to YC, (2) raise a round from a prestigious VC,
| and other rail-like things. Some even go down these tracks with
| no firm idea of what they want their company to be, hoping that
| the train tracks will reveal it to them.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Rails become constructed when there's a need for a large volume
| of good talent. E.g. there are well-established tracks into
| careers such as software engineering, investment banking,
| medicine, big law etc.
|
| Since the VC game relies on volume, it is natural for tracks
| like YC to have emerged.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Many thanks for the openness that offers some insight into
| success, and the kindness that can see and unlock the potential
| in (underperforming) people.
|
| "Find your people" is presented as finding those who can unlock
| you, show new worlds and opportunities. It can sound like the
| wonderful promise of networking bringing you opportunities (like
| a land of milk and honey).
|
| But at the same time, you're told you must tolerate rejection and
| disbelief.
|
| So perhaps the key is first to find something you believe in
| enough to stake a claim to it. Then some people will reject you
| (and leave), but you'll find others who buy in. Then you'll have
| the terrifying responsibility of making it true, for yourself and
| for them, and your (mutual) commitment becomes, well, serious.
|
| Are they "your" people? Are you leading them, or following what
| you've targeted? When you need to pivot, are they following you,
| or are you all following the moving target?
|
| It's complicated, but there's a phase/governance shift from
| interaction to trusting and being trusted that makes the entire
| dance possible.
|
| It's your reliability in your commitment that leads them to trust
| your vision and direction, and willingly fill your many gaps and
| blind spots.
|
| So I wouldn't mis-read "find your people" as "suck up to those
| handing out opportunities you want". It's not just getting off
| the tracks, but setting your own direction - reliably - that
| might secure other's trust.
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