[HN Gopher] All it takes is for one to work out
___________________________________________________________________
All it takes is for one to work out
Author : herbertl
Score : 201 points
Date : 2025-11-29 20:22 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alearningaday.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (alearningaday.blog)
| mhog_hn wrote:
| On the one hand it is a wholesome article. On the other hand - so
| much wasted potential of people squeezing out the last bits when
| competing. Nash equilibria can suck
| hugodan wrote:
| That's an aggressive problematic gambler mentality.
| xandrius wrote:
| When the outcome is positive, I see nothing wrong. Especially
| if you lose basically nothing in trying.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Your time, energy, etc are not nothing. If you think like
| that, you have already lost and are not making optimal
| decisions.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| Is it ? In gambling your odds are fixed, but in real life,
| wouldn't you get better at solving problems with each iteration
| ?
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Depends - are you meaningfully trying to improve or do you
| keep doing the same thing over and over not getting it?
| losvedir wrote:
| No it's not. Gambler's fallacy is "I just flipped tails so
| heads is more likely now". I read this article as "heads has a
| 50% chance of coming up so I'll get one eventually" (which is
| true - law of large numbers).
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I think none of those blanket statements here work.
|
| Really it's just odds of finding success vs effort / time
| spent. And whether that's worth it.
|
| Any of the blanket statements could be true depending on what
| the exact odds are.
|
| There could be near 0% chance of finding success and it would
| be better idea to rethink and spend time elsewhere, or yes,
| there's 10% chance of finding success and it's significant
| enough that trying 20 times is enough.
|
| If we are talking about e.g. finding a house, if you are not
| finding any it could very well be that your expectations vs
| budget is unlikely to find anything and you have to
| reconsider strategy.
|
| Someone could be repeatedly trying to find work, and thinking
| it's just a matter of time, but really time would be better
| spent on improving their strategy, resume, or other means.
|
| These statements to me seem like motivational non-sense which
| misrepresent how real world works or what the patterns really
| are like. At best they just give someone a false
| understanding of how the world works, at worst they make
| someone spend all their time in the wrong direction.
| Animats wrote:
| Indeed. "Just one more roll of the dice and I'll be ahead."
|
| Worse, this guy isn't trying to get a job. He's just trying to
| get into grad school. Which is no longer a guarantee of a good
| career, but may be a guarantee of a big debt. Remember that "I
| did everything right" post on HN a few weeks ago? CS degree
| from a good school, but nobody wants junior CS people any more.
| maest wrote:
| Related: You should expect to keep getting "no"s until you get a
| yes. That means, getting a "no" is actually normal, it's not
| failing.
| prophesi wrote:
| Reminds me of Veritasium's recent video[0] on power law
| distributions.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k
| legerdemain wrote:
| You've been trying for a long time.
|
| What do you do if the job that makes you an offer doesn't excite
| you? What if the house that feels like home needs more repairs
| than you can afford? What if the program that accepts you has
| crappy funding? What if the person who chooses you has red flags?
|
| Do you say "screw it," cross your fingers, and walk through the
| door that kind of sucks? Or do you keep looking as long as your
| resources last you?
| bgoated01 wrote:
| Right. All it takes is for one to work out, if you have several
| suitable options. If some of the options are only vaguely
| suitable, or it comes to light through the process that some of
| them are not suitable at all, then it takes more than just one
| working out. That's what I was thinking while reading this.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Every situation is different, and none of us can reliably
| predict the future. Sometimes dealing with a bad job until you
| get a better one is the right move. Sometimes it's the wrong
| move.
|
| Specifics, about the job and yourself, matter. If you feel like
| sharing, this is a pretty good community with good instincts.
|
| The magic in "all it takes is for one to work out" is in the
| strength it gives you to keep trying. Trying something that
| might fail is hard, even when we know that trying is the right
| thing to do.
| legerdemain wrote:
| My point is that, at least anecdotally, certainty is rare.
| Most of the time, for most people, the experience is less
| "yes!" and more "I guess."
|
| More widely applicable advice would be how to deal with
| compromise, not how to hold out for "the right one."
| kristianp wrote:
| Often the "one" you need isn't the ideal, it's just what gets
| you into the market. I'm thinking a job that gets you some
| experience and much needed pay or a property that lets you
| build equity while prices continue to climb.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Maybe consider that we are all calibrated to standards that are
| this hodgepodge of other people's messaging of what standards
| should be, and they communicate them for a variety of reasons,
| very few of which are truly designed for your reality, your
| situation.
|
| So when you say, 'kinda sucks', perhaps ask if the opinion is
| grounded in (your) reality?
|
| Once recalibrated to accept that what we are in, is inescapable
| true life, then we stop looking for something better, and
| instead focus on the challenge of making it better than it
| should naturally be.
|
| Happiness I believe, is a decision, we choose it when we feel
| it's a sustainable perspective. I think it's sustainable to
| allow ourselves to be happy, whenever we achieve marginal
| improvement on what is natural.
| jaychia wrote:
| Great article and a timely reminder for many :)
|
| Applicable not just for grad school applications, but also to job
| apps, startups, and relationships.
|
| Hang in there y'all, all it takes is for one to work out. Keep
| working hard, kings & queens.
| flatline wrote:
| We job hop, have multiple hustles. Many people on this board have
| started multiple companies, sometimes at once, on an ongoing
| basis. Do you only want just one friend? People tend to have
| multiple romantic/sexual entanglements, sometimes at once, but
| generally more than one over a lifetime.
|
| I think this can be a useful maxim to get you to the next day,
| but in reality it takes a lot more than one of anything for a
| fulfilling life. We grow and change and need novelty. We are held
| in a web of interdependent, ever-shifting relationships - with
| people, businesses, material goods, ecology. I think that
| generally people are seeking connection in a broader sphere. To
| be held in community, to have multiple significant identities
| (mother/wife/boss), to live in richness and abundance where any
| one thing is not make or break.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> in reality it takes a lot more than one of anything for a
| fulfilling life_
|
| We seem to view "reality" through different lenses. I've
| usually found "one" to be a magic number; as long as it's the
| "right one." That's the gist of what he's saying.
|
| In my experience, needing more than one, often signals issues
| that need closer examination.
|
| In my community, we have a joke: _" An addict is someone that
| needs two One-A-Days."_
| HPsquared wrote:
| I find the same, individual jobs or relationships seem to
| give supralinear returns.
|
| There's a lot of initial investment and groundworks, then
| once you're well-integrated, the marginal returns get higher
| for the most established relationships.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Getting from zero straight to _the one_ is like winning the
| lottery. Most people need to get through multiple "ones" to
| find "the one".
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Agreed. It's not what I'd call a "fulfilling" process,
| though.
| afro88 wrote:
| Do you really think that is what the author meant? They're not
| saying "you only need 1". They're talking about going from 0 to
| 1. It's sometimes a long and arduous 0. Your framing doesn't
| help someone trying to get from 0 to 1. Once they're at 1
| though, sure. But getting there can feel helpless, and that's
| what this post is about.
| j45 wrote:
| We can try to walk in 10-20 directions at the same time and
| move a tiny direction all, or none.
|
| Or we can realize we have some things to learn that we will
| learn no matter whether we pick the startup, or job to learn
| transferrable skills and also become better well rounded.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| It's also interesting to consider that we are such adaptative
| creatures that we will likely settle to a similar level of
| happiness no matter what the choice.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Purely poetic advice. If the local economy collapses, you will
| very much want to move. There's still a 50% chance the first
| spouse doesn't hold up until death. There are many schools that
| give out degrees that aren't worth a wooden frame in today's job
| market.
| deadbabe wrote:
| While it's true that all we need is one to work out, in general
| we strive to be in positions where we have multiple options, not
| just hinging everything on one passing chance. Life is less
| stressful that way, and that's why people today feel like they
| are under so much pressure and have little choice over how their
| lives unfold.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| Why are so many people in this thread purposefully
| misinterpreting the post so they can criticize it? The author
| obviously doesn't mean you only need one thing per domain to work
| out in your lifetime, but the present. I.e you don't need two
| girlfriends at once, even though you might have multiple
| relationships throughout your life...
|
| Sheesh. HN is grumpy today.
| jmward01 wrote:
| This is why having a safety net and resources to try again is so
| powerful. Given enough chances you will make it, big. That means
| the #1 factor in success is the number of chances you get to fail
| and try again, not necessarily how inherently good you are. I try
| to remind myself of this often. I have been given so many
| chances, and I took them.
| j45 wrote:
| Well said, this is the real game to pursue. Best of continued
| luck.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This always sounded intuitively correct to me, but looking back
| over the past two decades basically all of the successful
| entrepreneurs and business owners I know didn't come from
| families with a lot of resources and didn't have much of a
| safety net. They just went all in on their goals when they were
| young and had many years ahead of them to start over if it all
| went wrong.
|
| Contrast this with some of the people I grew up who came from
| wealthy families: A lot of their parents pushed them toward
| entrepreneurship and funded their ventures, but to date I can
| only think of one business from this cluster of friends that
| went anywhere. When you come from such resources and wealth
| that you don't need to succeed and you can drop the business as
| soon as it becomes difficult, it's a different situation.
|
| I don't know exactly what to make of this, other than to remind
| myself to keep pushing through the difficult times for things I
| really want even when I could fall back to an easy path and
| give up.
| jbs789 wrote:
| If you don't have a fall back, you have no choice but to make
| it work.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| Or fail miserably...
| fragmede wrote:
| Which we don't hear about. Except maybe via GoFundMe.
| bbarnett wrote:
| You know what?
|
| Peter used to say, that every successful company could
| look back at a defining moment early on, where they would
| have died had it not been for the courage, and the
| tenacity, and maybe the insanity of one visionary person
| who put it all on the line, even though it seemed like a
| huge mistake at the time.
|
| A moment where all the metrics and the numbers didn't
| mean anything.
|
| It was all about the emotion. It was about belief,
| rational or irrational.
|
| And I think...
|
| I hope that I just witnessed that.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| you can extend that to all Silicon Valley and the US in
| general.
|
| It has one of the weakest social security systems. Not even
| proper healthcare is guaranteed. Yet it out innovates all of
| Europe, Canada, Australia, other places that have incredible
| social "safety nets".
|
| I agree with the other commenter: safety nets and multiple
| tries are always good to have, but persistence and grit are
| even more important, and these come more from necessity.
| bequanna wrote:
| > Not even proper healthcare is guaranteed.
|
| ...except it is. Health insurance is available on a sliding
| scale based on income and essentially free for most low
| income people.
| nradov wrote:
| Sure, although in some areas healthcare is effectively
| unavailable to Medicaid plan members because providers
| have stopped accepting those patients. Being insured
| doesn't mean much if you can't schedule an appointment.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicaid-insurers-
| doct...
| agf wrote:
| In some areas and for some people, Medicaid probably does
| count as proper healthcare. But it certainly doesn't for
| other people / other places. Imagine there being one
| doctor within a multi-million person metro area who takes
| Medicaid for some sub-specialty. 90 minutes away from you
| by car. And you don't have a car. This is the reality for
| millions of Medicaid recipients, including ones I know
| personally in Chicago.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Most of the US graduates have their degree and a network to
| fall back on. It's nice to have actual money in the bank,
| but it can also be acceptable to have a high chance of
| getting a rewarding job if the moonshot doesn't work.
|
| In other words, human capital.
|
| Most of the entrepreneurs I meet are not going to be
| homeless if things don't work out. They'll be employed.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Exactly this many also have parents who can help
| subsidize them, stay on their parents health insurance
| until they are 26 and worse case move back home. This
| isn't just the privilege rich, this can also be your mid
| to mid upper income couple who can help their kids out.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Yep, and most of these fallbacks are insurance-like: you
| can always say you never asked your parents for anything.
| Like me. Thing worked out, so I didn't need their money.
| But if they hadn't, I would have a place to sleep and
| eat.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| You can have all of the "grit" you want to and still fail.
| You just never hear about the failures.
| exceptione wrote:
| > Yet it out innovates all of Europe, Canada, Australia,
| other places that have incredible social "safety nets".
|
| Probability: highly unlikely.
|
| Speaking for Europe, I see a lot of silent innovation. No
| press, no LinkedIn posts, not an article on their website.
| There are a lot of US firms that shop in Europe for high
| tech. (I know of instances were the US company buys the IP
| from the EU supplier + take public credit for it + forbids
| the supplier for showcasing their success in public.)
|
| What is different is:
|
| 1) the amount of money available in the US. The US enjoyed
| a very beneficial position post-WOII, enabling them to run
| high deficits.
|
| 2) the US has a positive attitude to entrepreneurship. You
| are not a failure when your company goes bankrupt, you
| learn from it and you go-go-go.
| enaaem wrote:
| Also the EU lacks a unified capital market where infinite
| VC money can be pooled together into any new hype. I
| would argue this the biggest reason.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Every single western "entrepreneur" who starts making a
| little more than 100k/year likes to tell itself this story.
|
| Did you have any (real, not GenZ) mental or physical
| disability?
|
| Did you have a house to come back to every day? Did you have
| a hot meal waiting for you whenever you wanted?
|
| Did you have a community that supported you through your
| business?
|
| Did you have a legal structure around you that allowed you
| not to worry about getting kidnapped/killed? A structure that
| enforces getting paid after you've earned your money?
|
| 98% of what you have was given.
|
| I do agree, however, that a lot of people don't even bother
| to put in the remaining 2%.
| LPisGood wrote:
| All of those things are great and should be afforded to
| every Person. In many places, they are.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| "Can you start a business without $10m of family capital"
| is a societal question.
|
| "Can you start a business on an empty stomach without a
| roof over your head" is not the same debate. Most people
| need a roof over their heads as a prerequisite to almost
| everything else in life and starting a business is WAY down
| that list.
| konaraddi wrote:
| > looking back over the past two decades basically all of the
| successful entrepreneurs and business owners I know didn't
| come from families with a lot of resources and didn't have
| much of a safety net
|
| There's probably some truthyness to this but it doesn't
| account for survivorship bias. And there's a baseline amount
| of resources necessary to take a risk and be able to try
| again (e.g., good luck taking a risk when preoccupied by
| [lack of] health, housing, food).
| enaaem wrote:
| There is also survivor bias at play here.
|
| Succeeding without safety net is hard -> only the best can do
| it -> the best entrepreneurs you know did not had a safety
| net
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| I've seen quite a few of these funded entrepreneur-lifestyle
| kids now; I've worked (briefly) with many of their companies.
| Many of them are making enough of a real go at it such that I
| can't tell them from others, but quite a few don't know
| enough about how a default alive business works and deliver a
| DoA even when the core idea or a short pivot works and has
| traction - these guys need so much better PMF to succeed.
|
| The best businesses I've seen parents find for their children
| are lettings agents (urgh) and basic manufacturing (last mile
| door assembly etc.). You can get the business model in a six
| month course, the staff are minimum wage, the product is high
| margin. If your parents buy the building you are so close to
| default alive its a joke. Grow the business, flip it, and try
| the big idea.
| fragmede wrote:
| That sounds good, but with a safety net, are you really going
| to be hungry enough to make sure your one shot at getting out
| of the ghetto doesn't fail? The entrepreneur that says to
| themselves, if this doesn't work, I'll just ask mom for another
| $300k at St Barts over Christmas doesn't sound like the one
| sleeping under the desk at the office to get the demo ready for
| TechCrunch Disrupt. Or maybe they are (to prove daddy wrong).
| The human condition contains multitudes.
| ikiris wrote:
| Ahh yes, classic HN: "People only succeed/work hard if their
| only other option is death"
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Gates, Bezos, Buffet, Musk all had enough hunger to beat out
| literally everyone else
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And they also all came from money.
| flag_fagger wrote:
| > doesn't sound like the one sleeping under the desk at the
| office to get the demo ready for TechCrunch Disrupt
|
| For what? Their garbage SaaS that barely works and is just a
| thin veneer for advertisers to gorge on my data?
| clichessuck wrote:
| That's a cliche and it sucks. A safety net and family resources
| correlate with nothing related to entrepeneurship and risk
| taking.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| This is definitely not true. How many people for instance can
| go into journalism and do unpaid internships without family
| support?
|
| The entire idea of most entrepreneurs pulling themselves up
| by their bootstraps in tech is a myth. Out of all of major
| tech companies now, how many of the founders came from
| disadvantaged backgrounds?
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Safety net and resources correlates heavily in almost all
| aspects of your life, having a better life helps immensely in
| any project you do in your life, including entrepreneurship
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's like a baseball game. Most people are benched their whole
| lives. They never get a chance at the plate. More privileged
| people with a lucky combination of the right family, the right
| education, the right timing, and the right opportunity get an
| at-bat, and they'll either strike out, or hit the ball. A few
| very lucky people will get to stand at the plate maybe once or
| twice more.
|
| The wealthy get infinite at-bats. They get to stand at the
| plate for however long they want, and swing and swing until
| they get their home run. I worked with a founder like this. He
| would always talk about his business's humble beginnings,
| starting from a garage and so on--you know the story. What he
| would neglect to admit was this was like his 7th try. Every
| time he failed, he'd just chill on his family's couch, dreaming
| up his next startup idea.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| I think it was _Outliers_ (Malcolm Gladwell) that talked
| about a similar concept as well. Ignoring the 10k hour thing,
| it also talks abut small compounding advantages that later
| add up to more opportunity (for those that take it).
|
| To go with the sports analogy, (paraphrasing, been awhile
| since I read it) it mentions how birth date coinciding with
| the youth sport season was a strong determiner of success at
| that sport because being ~11 months older in the same age
| group meant they were bigger faster more experienced and
| would be played more, compounding increases in skill.
|
| There was a similar concept floating around about darts,
| where the poor get maybe one dart to throw, middle class a
| few and wealthier get many. But I can't remember where I saw
| or read that
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| This is not true. No matter how many different teams I try out
| for, I as a 51 year old short male with a limp will never be a
| star basketball player or ever make it to even the D leagues.
|
| There are plenty of people who tried repeatedly to "succeed" in
| their own company and failed. Let's say I did try to start my
| own company at 22 10x and spent 3 years at each one. I'm now 52
| and would have been better off just working those 30 years and
| saving and investing with a lot less stress
| busymom0 wrote:
| I think the level of success one wants also require having a
| check for delusion and realism. If a "51 year old short limp"
| thinks they are going to be a star basketball player, they
| are delusional and no longer realistic.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| How many people right here on HN have you seen over the
| years who built something and have no idea about marketing
| or a go to market strategy or knew anything about sales?
|
| That's the equivalent of a 51 year old with a limp not
| being self award enough to know that I don't have the
| skills to be a basketball player just because I can
| dribble.
| LPisGood wrote:
| Out of curiosity (not accusation, I promise) how did you make
| it?
| stego-tech wrote:
| Needed this today. Apparently the HN hive mind agreed.
|
| All it takes, is for one to work out.
| throwaway150 wrote:
| I thought HN is supposed to upvote articles that gratifies one's
| intellectual curiosity. Does this article gratify intellectual
| curiosity? I don't understand why these shallow feel-good
| articles devoid of any intellectual curiosity always get upvoted
| to the top! There are so many high effort, substantive articles
| at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest that nobody upvotes!
| yehoshuapw wrote:
| because even when it isn't why people come here, and if there
| was too much of it you may be right - a message which brings up
| a smile or warm feeling is enough for people to be thankfull
|
| and that is a good thing
| throwaway150 wrote:
| Obviously the article is voted to the top. So the the lurkers
| at /newest and the general HN audience must like this. Still
| I wish though that upvoters stuck to the HN guidelines of
| upvoting stuff that really gratifies one's intellectual
| curiosity, not just some feel-good piece. There is no
| shortage of other places where I can find feel-good articles.
| I want HN to stick to HN guidelines.
|
| This is all the more sad for me because among all the spam,
| many high effort articles get posted to /newest but many
| don't get the upvotes. These shallow, feel-good articles
| always get the upvotes. I guess it takes more time to read
| and appreciate a high effort article. So I understand why
| this happens. But ...
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| I'm confused. This just seems like feel-good bullshit advice that
| only works for people in extremely good circumstances.
|
| There's a false equivalence between -
|
| "All it takes is for one to work out."
|
| and the following:
|
| - "You don't need every job to choose you. You just need the one
| that's the right fit."
|
| - "You don't need every house to accept your offer. You just need
| the one that feels like home. "
|
| The latter assumes that _every_ attempt you make has a chance at
| being "the right fit", "the one that feels like home". That is
| not the way things works for 99% of us.
| colecut wrote:
| Unless you interpret 'working out' as being 'the right fit',
| then it comes together pretty nicely
| phkahler wrote:
| And its always the last one you try. Just like every lost item is
| found in the last place you look :-)
| throwaway643384 wrote:
| The "one that works out" can also give you a misrepresentation of
| how the world works and a false sense of how lucky one should
| expect to be over a long period of time.
|
| At an earlier point in my life, I had been applying to many well-
| known big tech companies right out of school (not a top school
| either). I never got a reply from any of them so I ended up
| accepting a local job with a non-tech company after months of
| searching.
|
| But I didn't give up my hopes and kept applying to big tech, and
| while I did manage to get the occasional interview with some
| mediocre companies or the random startup, I also miserably failed
| all of them too.
|
| At some point during my long period of despair at never getting a
| better job, my very top pick (and arguably one of the best tech
| companies in the world at the time) reached out to me. Even more
| miraculously, I somehow passed their interview (the only tech
| interview I passed in the prior year) and accepted a job there.
|
| I _really_ enjoyed working there. Some of the best years of my
| life. And my performance reviews were great too, so the imposter
| syndrome from having failed so many tech job interviews sort of
| faded into the background. But after a while, perhaps due to the
| "hedonic treadmill" mentality, I thought I could do better. So I
| left to join a startup.
|
| Well, the startup failed, as startups tend to do, but what I
| didn't expect and what caught me off guard was that I was now
| back in the same situation I was in right after graduating from
| college. Don't get me wrong--having "the name" on my resume now
| meant I could get at least one chance at an interview about
| anywhere. But much like the first round that I tried to forget
| about, I once again failed all the interviews.
|
| Unfortunately, this second time around never procured a "get out
| of jail free" card.
|
| So I guess my lesson is: 1) there's a lot of luck involved in
| these things, 2) if life gives you a winning lottery ticket at
| some point, don't throw it away for the chance to win an even
| bigger lottery, and 3) that famous saying about "the only actions
| regretted are those not taken" is absolutely, totally wrong--
| almost all of my regrets in life relate to taking some action I
| shouldn't have rather than inaction.
| Sevii wrote:
| A lot of people experienced that during the 2020 boom. The
| lucky break wasn't a lucky break it was just a huge hiring
| boom. Once that's over the status quo returns.
| throwaway643384 wrote:
| My lucky break occurred many years before the pandemic, but
| after the original dotcom boom. Companies were neither hiring
| nor firing like crazy.
| _michaelhuang wrote:
| It just sounds like you are in a middle of another journey my
| friend.
| EdNutting wrote:
| Corollary: Choosing _not_ to do something is as much an action
| as choosing _to_ do something. Which shines a bright light on
| the meaninglessness of the phrase "the only actions regretted
| are those not taken".
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Bait & switch, though.
|
| "All it takes is for one to work out." is not the same as "You
| just need the one [job] _that's the right fit._ " or "You just
| need the one [house] _that feels like home._ " or "You just need
| _the one_ [life partner]. "
|
| Author's examples are, spiritually, the opposite of their
| friend's advice - in fact, "all it takes is for one to work out"
| is something often said to people who lost hope _because they got
| lost being too picky_.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Simplifications always leave something out. It's like the three
| body problem: people think one factor matters most, and one
| other factor controls it. But once they realize there is a
| third factor that alters one or the first two, or mediates
| between them, it gets more complicated.
| sdqali wrote:
| The article is good, but I am more impressed by how the author
| has been posting every day since May 12th, 2008.
| nebezb wrote:
| All it takes is one.
| j45 wrote:
| Beautiful piece and reminder.
|
| If you're never done growing, you're never done peaking, nor ever
| really done trying.
|
| One working out can lead to the next way.
|
| Wishing everyone well who this piece resonated with.
| otras wrote:
| On a much less optimistic dark humor note, this is the same
| argument in _If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies_ about a
| superintelligent AI emerging and being a threat to humans.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_...
| wacper wrote:
| This is a great approach! After every opportunity that closed on
| me another arose, and it always was the better one.
|
| Through these experiences I totally agree, and try to apply it to
| life, but it's hard, even knowing that it's true. How cool is it
| for every college, person, job offer, scholarship to want you?
|
| Even though we're looking just for "the one" it's very hard for
| me to mitigate the feeling of getting rejected, even knowing it
| was not "the one". Rejection generally hurts, when you care about
| the goal
| jh00ker wrote:
| Taking a break from studying for my interview in two days at a
| FANG company, I checked Hacker News and this article was at the
| top. I've been studying for this interview harder than any of the
| others in the past. I feel well-prepared, but there's always the
| luck factor. I hope this is a sign that this interview will be
| the one to work out!
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize this wasn't
| about exercising.
| EdNutting wrote:
| Unfortunately, the "one" which accepts you, is no guarantee of it
| being the one which "works out" (in the short or long term). My
| experience is now 4x "found one that ultimately doesn't work out"
| (each lasting 2 to 3 years).
|
| I'm now taking time out to try to figure out how to escape the
| confines of the career path I've taken to find something
| different.
|
| Open to suggestions of entirely different careers that I could
| switch to that might have higher odds of not being toxic rat-
| races full of people telling lies and bullshit just to survive.
|
| But broader experience suggests the world of work just sucks
| these days (and yes, it's these days - our parent's generation
| had a brief period of doing 9-to-5 jobs which paid well enough to
| afford homes, have families and social lives and holidays. We
| don't get that now.). No wonder large numbers of my generation
| are dropping out of the workforce...
| manicennui wrote:
| This is also the strategy of groups trying to pass oppressive
| legislation.
| pgt wrote:
| I read this as: all you have to do is work out.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| That's what it says.
| PyWoody wrote:
| Right? I thought the article was going to be about how
| constructive having even a simple daily workout can be for
| mental health.
|
| After reading the article, I like my version better.
| anonu wrote:
| The corollary to this is "keep walking"... As my mom always tells
| me.
| hereforcomments wrote:
| This St Peterburg paradox. I've just learnt it from Veritasium's
| last video.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| "Is this where you stop?"
| anttiharju wrote:
| Reminds me of AlphaGo
|
| It didn't try to maximise by how much it won, but just that it
| won. Apparently it changed the meta for human pkayers.
|
| If you have the time for it, the movie/doc is worth watching
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
| LunicLynx wrote:
| Another saying i repeat to myself, which if gotten from a friend.
|
| You have already lost, you can only win.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| I agree with his sentiments and his examples. But my fear is that
| on a place like Hacker News, people might not understand the
| difference between his advice and trying to have a successful
| startup.
|
| > _You don't need every job to choose you. You just need the one
| that's the right fit._
|
| When I'm applying for a job, I can apply for multiple jobs at
| once and interview for multiple jobs over a a few weeks. It's
| especially easy when I am both interviewing and working remotely.
| I don't have to make excuses to leave work during the middle of
| the day or worse case fly out for an interview.
|
| The same is true for buying a home, I can put bids in for
| multiple homes - or in my case just have my homes built in 2003
| and 2016. I know the world is different now.
|
| > _You don't need every person to want to build a life with you.
| You just need the one._
|
| This is one place where of course you can shoot your shot at
| multiple potential partners and date often. What you don't want
| to do is try marriage multiple times if it can be avoided. A bad
| marriage will wreck every part of your life and a divorce will
| set you back financially. (Happily remarried for 15 years after a
| horrible first marriage.)
|
| None of his examples are applicable to starting a business. 9/10
| startups fail and even out of those that "succeed" only a small
| number of those have an outsized return for the founder where
| they wouldn't be better off financially working a regular old
| enterprise dev job for those years let alone getting a job at
| BigTech.
|
| VCs can make multiple bets at one time and be more assured that
| they capture the 1/10 startups that succeed than a founder.
|
| There is a huge difference between being able to take multiple
| chances at once in all of those scenarios and being stuck with
| the 1/10 choices you make for multiple years.
| thom wrote:
| A corollary to this, for me at least, has always been: don't try
| to fake your way into an opportunity. Be yourself, let people
| pass on the real you if they want, because you don't want to land
| a job where you can't thrive as yourself. Obviously there's great
| privilege in that and sometimes you need to eat shit in order to
| eat at all, but if you have the option I hope you're able to wait
| for the right fit.
| colecut wrote:
| I read the title and thought it meant that if you just exercise
| everything else will fall into place.
|
| I should probably still try that.
| nextworddev wrote:
| It also takes just one big mistake to really make things
| tougher...
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Maybe you need only one. I need universal adoration! Everyone
| must love me!
| koinedad wrote:
| I basically repeated the same thing to my wife when I was
| transitioning into software engineering. It's so true!
| awesome_dude wrote:
| A (possible) restatement of the oft quoted "They have to be lucky
| all the time, we only have to be lucky once" (albeit only the
| second half)
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