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Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

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Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#121

Post by M_Grey »

enraged_camel wrote: post #106
ryandrake wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hero worship of successful people is just survivorship bias in action. Out of a population of people flipping coins, we (after the fact) find the ones who flipped heads 10 times in a row and fawn over them, asking them how they became such great coin flippers and what we can do to improve our coin flipping skills. See also: Good To Great or any similar business book.

The other possible explanation is that there is a formula for success. It's just extraordinarily complex and we haven't figured it out yet, so we just attribute it to this thing called luck, the same way ancient people didn't understand thunder and attributed it to gods expressing their anger.

I think we have enough examples of people being paid a fortune to run a company into the ground to dispel the myth of some link between compensation and success. Unfortunately many many people still conflate the concepts, since compensation is generally meant to indicate success.

I don't see a lot of people doubting that someone like Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates figured out a viable pathway to success, for which luck plays(played) a role, but is not the only factor. The problem is that for every Buffet you have dozens of clowns with platforms, massive egos, and cults of personality.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#122

Post by exclusiv »

ryandrake wrote: post #54
exclusiv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Although I don't think work in the car would be the same quality - if you use that time to handle emails it could be a big boost to get most emails addressed before you get to the office. I live about 12 miles from my office and going to the office removes about 1.5-2 hrs per day. Getting ready, 30 mins each way. I try to schedule phone calls for my commute but I don't always have calls to handle. I've worke…

I don't know. I've got a 2 hour commute each way. There's no way a company would accept my rolling in at 10AM and leaving at 4PM just because I'm working from 8-10 and 4-6 in my self-driving car. More than likely, self-driving cars will mean workers are still expected to get their 8-to-6 on-premesis face time, and then use their self-driving time to catch some shut-eye.

That's a good point. It would be a hard sell for most companies. But you could probably take a longer lunch because you got work done earlier. Or I suppose use the time for ongoing professional development instead which has a lot of value.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#123

Post by icebraining »

wincy wrote: post #74
pasbesoin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current buzz is "basic income." While I'm not opposed to the idea that if you're born -- and if so much of the world values human life including and especially in the womb -- then you should have the opportunity to at least "get by" and not be per force exploited, much less sickened and killed. While I'm not opposed to it, there is a pre-cursor of ostensibly more limited scope, and perhaps of greater benefit than…

I would have a thousand children if I could. If I can pay for them all and don't draw benefits, who cares? People might think I'm eccentric, but it's not like I'm taking more than my fair share. Once the government is paying every one of my kids, suddenly people wants to have a say in the number of children I can have. I also want my insurance to spend a million dollars if it means I can live for an extra week. Even…

Here in Europe, many governments already pay for each child, with the intent of convincing and helping people have more.

You can also pay for your $1M never-let-me-die insurance policy over what free healthcare provides.

What makes you worry that people would try to intrude into your decision of how many children you want to have, or how much to spend on healthcare?

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#124

Post by M_Grey »

fanzhang wrote: post #112
whack wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

When I first joined ten years ago, most discussions were highly technical, or oriented towards doing a startup with no politics on either side. The politics stayed in their own threads. I agree that the forum has been on a ten year trends towards slipstreaming in politics, ideology, and dogma on more and more articles. They follow very similar templates: a standard liberal rant about how we need more benefits for the…

I've never been part of an online community in which veterans didn't feel that the community had "lost its way". Sometimes they're correct, and sometimes not, but I would be shocked if ten years of success didn't radically change something beyond what you'd have recognized then.

The reality is that stasis leads to the stagnation and death of any community, and it's the only way to avert change. If you're into frontiers though, the good news is that there are always new frontiers.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#125

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

krat0sprakhar wrote: post #111
whack wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

> I realize that me posting this isn't going to do anything. FWIW, comments like yours are helpful to people like me in that they provide the assurance that I'm not alone in largely disagreeing with the sentiment expressed in the top HN comments in threads like these.

Also, I'd like to add that I think the GP post was a good reminder to me of "Hey, you're right. Everything doesn't need to be a comment battle." It's easy (at least for me) to get caught up in these kinds of battles, even if they're not full-fledged "flame wars", and miss the point of useful discussion where both sides learn something. Thanks for this reminder.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#126

Post by dave_sullivan »

BurningFrog wrote: post #113
bambax wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. > Self-driving cars, for example, could potentially put 5 million people involved in transportation jobs out of work. And creating 5 million new jobs for them seems impossible with net monthly job gains typically in the hundreds of thousands. “Five million jobs seem like a lot of jobs. It is a lot,” Andreessen says. But looking at the big picture shows that “every year in the U.S. on average about 21 million jo…

These 5 million transportation jobs will not disappear on the same day. It will probably take a decade or so. This has happened many, many times over the 250 years since the Industrial Revolution. Each time, the old jobs have been replaced by newer and better jobs, and each time people have worried about mass unemployment and misery that did not happen.

I really think this time will be different. I agree it will take a decade, but those jobs aren't coming back.

One trend to consider: each "mega successful company" for the past 100 years or so (maybe longer?) has been extraordinary because of how few people were required to start the company, and how much profit per employee they generate. The unspoken side effect is "we need fewer people" (and they're hard to find AKA "90% of the people we talk to can't do the job"). As companies focus on these types of efficiencies, they're creating more value while providing fewer jobs. I think this is OK, but that's what's happening. So take this to its logical limit and you have mass unemployment. Now add A.I. as an accelerator to that and you have what will actually happen.

This is a very accessible video with a similar argument and much better examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

We're just going to have to start thinking about a society where 50% of the "eligible workers" are out of work at any given time. The way we're setup now, it'd be chaos. But there's a lot that can be done ahead of time to prepare, like expanding welfare until it looked more like a basic income and was socially acceptable.

In such a world, most people will have to be on the dole at some point in their life, and that will be OK. As opposed to now where our society thinks that's very much not ok and will punish you in various ways for it. Most people are simply not going to be economically useful and no amount of forcing them to be re-educated is going to change that.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#127

Post by pasbesoin »

wincy wrote: post #74
pasbesoin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current buzz is "basic income." While I'm not opposed to the idea that if you're born -- and if so much of the world values human life including and especially in the womb -- then you should have the opportunity to at least "get by" and not be per force exploited, much less sickened and killed. While I'm not opposed to it, there is a pre-cursor of ostensibly more limited scope, and perhaps of greater benefit than…

I would have a thousand children if I could. If I can pay for them all and don't draw benefits, who cares? People might think I'm eccentric, but it's not like I'm taking more than my fair share. Once the government is paying every one of my kids, suddenly people wants to have a say in the number of children I can have. I also want my insurance to spend a million dollars if it means I can live for an extra week. Even…

So, I got royally screwed by a few institutions and people. Things that have left lingering health effects.

I hope you're not one of them. Because, per your attitude, I'm free to kill you and take all you have.

Make people pay for their kids. That's fine with me. Make it expensive to have kids -- an expense you can't easily get out of, like credit card debt and student loans and, hey!, medical bills, during bankruptcy.

Why are you going to make the kids suffer? If someone is that uncaring to start with, the sight of their suffering kids is going to turn them around?

Why do I take care of other people, already on the earth? So I can walk down the street in peace and comfort.

Why do I pay for others' health care, meaning those not of my family? (And I have, including personally, maybe a lot more than you.) Because the world isn't perfect, and it screws people over. And physical discomfort engenders psychological discomfort and suffering. I can't fix the past, as history, but I believe we should do our best to ameliorate and alleviate its physical after-effects.

I've observed the benefit of helping others. And I've suffered the consequences of others' inconsideration.

For those reasons, I think we should guarantee each other's access to quality health care.

It's called "insurance". That is, insurance against many things. Because you don't know who life is going to screw over. And because you'd rather spend your day with healthy people, than miserable ones.

P.S. A major point of advice in life, including from many experts, is to "move on."

Do you want to spend years in court, and struggling to find ways to pay for the legal effort, to seek recompense for a past injury? Or maybe do you want to heal it as best you can and focus on the present and future?

And, HN tends to be populated with people who are not overly fond of lawsuits and unlimited liability. Well, what is a practical way of lessening those? Provide an avenue for mistakes to be addressed and for people to get on with their lives.

As the old saying goes, "Health is wealth." Restore their "wealth", in this aspect. Under those circumstances, I think and find that most people then choose not to dwell on the past. Including in court.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#128

Post by Mz »

whack wrote: post #103
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone. The linked article is almost always a sideshow, and simply acts as a prelude for the battle in the comments section. A battle which has little to do with what the article itself says, and is simply…

I only came to HN somewhat recently, around 2 years ago, but I've started to notice a very major change in the culture of this forum lately. There is so much vitriol and blanket insults being levied at anyone and everyone.

I am a woman. My experience of the forum has vastly improved during that time.

I am not saying that HN does not have problems. When I arrived, it had a real sense of community that it seems to mostly lack today, but that sense of community and mutually respectful conversation was reserved for the privileged few, some core group of members. It was not extended to me. I experienced all kinds of drama.

I do what I can to promote genuine mutual respect for all parties. I think there is certainly room for improvement in that regard. But I sometimes wonder if the changes HN has seen in terms of that initial core community apparently deteriorating were a necessary prerequisite for positive changes, such as being more welcoming of women. And while I sometimes wish that atmosphere of respectfulness had not been lost, I do wonder if its preservation would have continued to exclude some people, such as me.

I never quite know how to feel about such thoughts.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#129

Post by stagbeetle »

archagon wrote: post #116
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #33

I'm getting tired of all of the hot air coming from these tech oligarchs. They're so enriched by a tech boom and a decade of easy money that we worship at their feet. Their vision and goal for the future is simply more money for themselves at the expense of others. "Guys look! An hour long commute is actually a good thing because you can spend it with your kids!" Why is it so hard to spend time with our kids now?! I…

> I know that sounds harsh, but we seriously need to stop the hero worship in SV culture and begin building a society that benefits everyone, not a society that works itself to the bone just to eat the cake of a larger corporation and enrich the early investors. This sort of oligarchy is probably emergent from the way we structure our economy on a base level. What factors incentivize corporations to form into pyramid…

> What factors incentivize corporations to form into pyramids, with most of the wealth accruing on top?

Most people are incapable of managing high-level responsibilities. Those on the lower rungs assign/relinquish (depending on how you look at it) their responsibilities, and the fruits they bear, to those they perceive more capable than them. So now instead of having a smooth slope of compensation, it's top-heavy.

In layman's terms: The bulk of people who work are not motivated by the company's direct prosperity. They're motivated by other factors such as "work fulfillment," "passion", "making the world a better place", all of which don't align intrinsically with profit.

> Can we instead incentivize smaller, cooperative-style companies with more democratic managerial styles and more equitable distribution of wealth?

This is paradoxical for a few reasons. First, lead-by-many is much more inefficient than lead-by-few(usually one). See: democracy vs. democratic republic.

Second, good leaders have "ego," in the way that they have a certain modus operandi and goal they won't deviate from. Thus, if you were to populate your ranks with good leaders, it would be a shit-show. See: in-fighting nobility.

Third, incentives have always been abused. Take a look at any industry with "incentives" and subsidies. The companies are built around that subsidy, not upon being a successful business.

Re: Marc Andreessen: “Take the Ego Out of Ideas”

#130

Post by CPLX »

BurningFrog wrote: post #113
bambax wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. > Self-driving cars, for example, could potentially put 5 million people involved in transportation jobs out of work. And creating 5 million new jobs for them seems impossible with net monthly job gains typically in the hundreds of thousands. “Five million jobs seem like a lot of jobs. It is a lot,” Andreessen says. But looking at the big picture shows that “every year in the U.S. on average about 21 million jo…

These 5 million transportation jobs will not disappear on the same day. It will probably take a decade or so. This has happened many, many times over the 250 years since the Industrial Revolution. Each time, the old jobs have been replaced by newer and better jobs, and each time people have worried about mass unemployment and misery that did not happen.

> Each time, the old jobs have been replaced by newer and better jobs

lol

This statement is likely to be disputed by residents of huge swaths of the country from Flint Michigan to upstate New York.

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