Not to dismiss other people's advice, but the recurring theme in your post has been seeking approval from others, and now you're doing it here.
Or...you're pandering to people's desire to talk about themselves.
Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
161–170 of 269 posts
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
It very much depends on how you and the mother decided to split up the work load. If she is happy taking close to 100% of the work load and letting you do your thing then it shouldn't be impossible to have basically the same amount of time.
I'd argue that if you're spending ~0% of your time with you kids then you're doing it wrong. Something has to come first, and imho if you have kids then the kids need to come first. That means spending as much time as you can with them, both to help raise them, teach them, and also to experience parenthood.
Having a kid myself, and having turned down an awesome job opportunity since it would have kept away from my daughter for too long periods at a time, I totally agree with you. That being said, I know people who have made the opposite choice, and while I don't agree with it, their kids seem to be turning out OK.
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#163One of the most important lesson I have learned is the importance of savings and living a frugal life. Even if you are independently wealthy, living a frugal life can give you a sense of introspection that is hard to understand for most when you are wealthy. Save. Save. Save. They say you learn your biggest life lesson as you stumble through your experiences in life. Poverty is something you would NOT want to experie…
i disagree, although i don't look it as the dichotomy between "save your money" vs "spend your money on stuff", either.
i don't feel like you should stockpile your money for the nebulous future. yes, you should save it up to have an emergency fund. yes, you should start saving some for retirement. yes, you should save your money to make larger purchases instead of using credit. etc..
but you shouldn't let the drive to save money create anxiety and thereby lock you into a lifestyle. save, yes, but don't let the need to save dictate your life and your career choice. if you're much happier doing something where you don't have the $ to save as much, life will be much better.
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
what is the advantage to being well rounded? I always thought that was a euphemism for average.
Being average at many things allows you to communicate with the wide range of people who are also average at one of those things. For a startup founder, that kind of domain knowledge can be extremely useful. IMHO, highly specific expertise is overvalued by young people. Academia is the only place where specialization really shines; everywhere else you need to get along with people who don't understand your field.
>IMHO, highly specific expertise is overvalued by young people. Academia is the only place where specialization really shines; everywhere else you need to get along with people who don't understand your field.
really? from what I've seen of the Engineering field, there is rather a lot of tolerance for people who can't communicate with 'normal people'
My experience as a business owner has been that yeah, dealing with people outside your field is the hard part. Sure, if I had a better understanding of law, that'd be great. I'd be able to better choose lawyers.
But would I choose that better understanding of law at the expense of Engineering experience? hell no. I've set up my business so that as long as I don't make completely abysmal legal decisions, my legal decisions won't matter all that much. There aren't any weird legal twists to my business plan. As long as I can avoid getting sued into oblivion, my lawyer is doing what I want him to do.
But even a relatively small difference in the skills of the engineers I can hire for the amount I'm paying can make a huge difference, and at this point, I'm pretty much counting on my ability to spot 'diamonds in the rough' - last week a mistake made by both myself and an employee (the mistake was that it took us 8 hours to spot a problem that we should have seen in 30 mins) cost us north of ten grand in SLA credits. If I was just a little bit better (or had just a little bit more sleep) we'd have saved the SLA credits /and/ we would have saved a pretty big bruise to our reputation.
Obviously, choosing a different business model would have required that i could identify and economically purchase other skillsets; but there really is no getting around the 'It takes one to know one' principle. If you run a business, you better be good at the core things that the business needs to be good at. For me, this is why I chose the business I chose, and why I chose to bootstrap rather than run with investors.
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#165- Shiny things are nowhere as much fun after you get them as before, even if they have some value. So yes, that Kindle or iPad or whatever will have a real use, and you will be marginally happier with it than without, but not as much as you think - You can talk yourself into (or out of) anything. The only difference between smart people and other people is that smart people do this with bigger words and more complex…
"Forget philosophy and meaning-of-life shit. You're too young. For now, you are what you do. Go do something worthwhile"
You aren't too young. This is his philosophy which he's telling you to forget: forget every philosophy except his.
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the track record thing but it is important to compartmentalize here. Somebody might have a track record of being a womanizer but might be good at what they do eg. Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, JFK, or they might have a gambling problem, reference Michael Jordon. With that said, only judge people on track record in the category you need them to perform in.
I don't know, I think character is a really important trait. If someone is a womanizer and consistently breaks his commitment to his spouse, why should we believe that he will deal any differently with us? One is to have the most intimate, enduring, unbreakable commitment to his spouse, and if this person considers such an intimate connection worthless, why would he place any value on your professional relationship?…
"I don't know, I think character is a really important trait. If someone is a womanizer and consistently breaks his commitment to his spouse, why should we believe that he will deal any differently with us? One is to have the most intimate, enduring, unbreakable commitment to his spouse, and if this person considers such an intimate connection worthless, why would he place any value on your professional relationship?"
From what I can tell, this seems to be a common way of thinking in the US, especially in politics. Much less so in Europe (and maybe other parts of the world, I don't know). Personally, I don't see the connection between a person's romantic affairs, and their political decisions... one involves raging hormones, the other (hopefully) does not, so the decision making process is likely very different. (One could say, there are different body parts involved in the decision making... :-)
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#167The main things I learned:
- don't smoke. total waste of health and money.
- don't drink/hang out in bars. total waste of time and money
- make an earnest attempt at becoming a professional BMX racer or late night talk show host or whatever your REAL childhood dream was before spending too much time programming the internet.
- make a lot of friends
- if a girl doesn't sleep with you after the 3rd date, don't call her back
- always have about $30 grand in a bank account somewhere. this will give you the peace of mind to not feel pressured to stay in a job that you hate
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sports stars are something of an unusual situation. Things like instability generate publicity for the given player and his team. Rodman was good for the Bulls because: a. the Bulls is show business; people pay to see characters like Rodman b. celebrity tabloids/news pick up on "unstable" behavior and make a show out of it, which is good publicity and marketing for the subjects c. a long-term steady relationship is n…
[I didn't downvote you, I think you are making some valid points] What I'm trying to point out is not paint with broad strokes. But evaluate everything and everyone independently of rules. Flaws of people admired: 1) Gandhi - Racist 2) Martin Luther King - Copy someone's work for his phd. Also an adulterer. 3) Edgar Allan Poe - So disrespectful that he was disowned by his guardians. 4) Tesla - Hated fat people. 5) St…
Gandhi, "racist"?
Would you mind very much googling "Harijan"?
You seem to have latched on to a very strange definition of "racist". Gandhi might have believed during that early period in his life in keeping races separate, which is not surprising given his orthodox upbringing, but he did a very great deal, later, to unite people of all religions and races and motivate them to think of each other as equals, persuading them to literally call each other 'brothers and sisters'.
I cannot accept that that is the same as what is commonly understood as "racist".
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Like, there's tons of literature on good parenting. How many people read it? Like, none." I think that's a really bad example. There's a lot of bullshit in the parenting literature. In a way I find it very disturbing, that we need to learn how to parent our children.
"In a way I find it very disturbing, that we need to learn how to parent our children." Really? Why? I've never understood why people look at parenting differently than any other skill you have to learn.
The problem is that most parenting literature is based on one person's subjective opinion. There is a dearth of real evidence to prove that one technique actually produces better outcomes than another. So how are we to know what skills to learn?
There is a tremendous variation in individual children so mostly it has to be a trial and error process until you figure out what works for each.
Re: Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?
#170I believed that I would always have hair.