Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 454 posts

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#231

Post by ghaff »

adonovan wrote: post #185
diggan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I've been on a somewhat James Burke binge for the last 6 months or so. For the ones who don't know, Burke write books and makes TV shows talking about inventions/technology and how they're all connected, often by chance and randomness. And the amount of discoveries we (humanity)…

Which Burke books do you most recommend?

The Day the Universe Changed and Connections were his two big series. I think I have the former book somewhere but I'd probably be inclined to find and watch the two series.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#232

Post by ckmate-king-2 »

zikduruqe wrote: post #143

Surviving a concentration camp seems a tad difficult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning Everyone should read this at least twice in their lives.

One of the most famous accounts, also universally acclaimed, is Primo Levi's Survival at Auschwitz.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/22/primo-levi-aus...

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#233

Post by deltarholamda »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #154

Endurance - about Ernest Shackleton and his crew during their 1914-1916 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance:_Shackleton%27s_In...

Second this suggestion. The one by Caroline Alexander is also very good.

It's a story of the most incredible leadership during spectacular difficulty overcoming multiple seemingly impossible things.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#234

Post by ghaff »

silvestrov wrote: post #188
jbullock35 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one huge respect in which tech is different, at least in the USA: worker compensation. In the book, Tracy Kidder writes repeatedly about how Data General (the company at the heart of the book) is proud of its austerity. It doesn't pay well. It's proud of having an ugly, austere, warehouse-like building. It puts its critical engineers in the windowless basement of this building. Kidder is describing a…

Is a windowless basement that much worse than the open officies of Facebook? I'd rather have a small room with silence than work in a well lit factory with tons of noise like this: https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag... There isn't any dividers or other stuff that blocks noise.

Offices were pretty much for managers. The standard was (high-walled) cubicles. Although a lot of the people involved here were in hardware so a lot of their work was in open labs.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#235

Post by ErigmolCt »

jll29 wrote: post #115

Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT g…

Every success story is built on a path of failures. I like to believe in this. It motivates me not to give up. (If I understood everything correctly...)

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#236

Post by sjm-lbm »

InkCanon wrote: post #134
jll29 wrote: post #115

Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT g…

I have a contrary opinion: most important things are started by apparently small things, but there is a huge amount of training, effort and persistence behind getting to that small thing. Zuckerberg was a serial entrepreneur who already made a few successful websites/apps before Facebook, Nvidia spent decades becoming the world's best GPU manufacturer (when they started there were ~300 graphics processor companies),…

Since we're talking about books, this statement reminds me of one that OP might want to look at: Super Founders.

It's been a while since I've read it, but off the top of my head: most successful founders are older than you probably think, have less industry experience than you probably think, start (like nVidia) with more competitors than you think, but (to your other point) are more likely to have more entrepreneurial experience than you think (even very young famous founders like Zuckerberg or the Collisons had another venture before the one that made them very well known).

Honestly I found Super Founders kind of dry, but it's one of the only data-driven books about what differences exist between founders of businesses with exception outcomes vs founders with less successful outcomes that I've read.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#237

Post by ErigmolCt »

buzzardbait wrote: post #220
gamebak wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your thoughts. Sometimes you just need to be at the right place, at the right time, solving the exact problem and this is troublesome, especially in this era when so much is already invented. Maybe I just have a wrong view, but I don't know how to decouple from this.

Success comes from hard work and perseverence. Success comes from being at the right place at the right time. Both of these statements can be true at the same time.

I would say that hard work and perseverance create the foundation, but timing and opportunity often determine the outcome.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#238

Post by ghaff »

Gooblebrai wrote: post #24
readyplayernull wrote: post #5

The Soul of a New Machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

Feels like season 1 of Halt And Catch Fire

Different segment of the industry but about the same time period (HaCF is maybe set a few years later).

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#239

Post by Mordisquitos »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #235
jll29 wrote: post #115

Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT g…

Every success story is built on a path of failures. I like to believe in this. It motivates me not to give up. (If I understood everything correctly...)

That made me think of my favourite motivational poster, which is titled «Mistakes»: https://despair.com/collections/posters/products/mistakes?va...

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#240

Post by ErigmolCt »

zikduruqe wrote: post #143

Surviving a concentration camp seems a tad difficult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning Everyone should read this at least twice in their lives.

We read this book in book club when I was a teenager. It was incredibly impressive. I think it's time to read it again...
Post reply on HN