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

Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

calnewport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#61

Post by vumaasha »

aangjie wrote: post #12
nefitty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older I get, and as my family grows, I find it harder and harder to invest time in projects outside of work. If I can rig or find a job that fulfills my need for mastery, it ticks one of my most important needs. I can go home and focus on my family instead of having my attention wander to another task.

Here's the catch in that, my master's experience convinced me that even academia, isn't as free as it is hyped up to be. There's a strong marketing drive to hype up the freedom in academia, but there's a strong guide/suggestive coercion from the guides, to do your work along the lines and plans they have. Eventually i decided not to do a ph.d. Note: This is the case of an average coursework. Perhaps cal newport was a…

Well said. Most of the Phd students have to follow or atleast allign with their guide's vision

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#62

Post by frogpelt »

z-tech wrote: post #15

What have I gained from reading this other than learn that the author is a high achieving person? I'm a software engineer in my late twenties in America. I would guess this blog is geared toward people like me, yet the author seems comedically unaware that very few, remarkably close to zero people, have opportunities like pursuing a PhD at MIT. So you chose MIT... I think most people would have. This is just a self c…

I don't think he was focusing on the opportunities themselves but the choice between them and why he chose what he did.

It could apply to a broke high school dropout too. Choose the path that provides more opportunities to grow. Don't choose based only on the starting pay.

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#63

Post by jasim »

z-tech wrote: post #15

What have I gained from reading this other than learn that the author is a high achieving person? I'm a software engineer in my late twenties in America. I would guess this blog is geared toward people like me, yet the author seems comedically unaware that very few, remarkably close to zero people, have opportunities like pursuing a PhD at MIT. So you chose MIT... I think most people would have. This is just a self c…

I wanted to cheer to this because I'm plainly jealous of the author. There is nurture, and there is nature. And there is privilege (of many kinds and hues) and luck. Some people get an unreasonable amount of it, some others make the best of what they got, but the majority of the world simply struggles against both externalities and self-imposed limitations.

But this is Cal Newport, and he's shared what made him successful by heaps of writing - both his blog and his books, esp. "Deep Work" and "So Good They Can't Ignore You". You can't get his genes or his upbringing, but he's generous enough to teach what makes him tick. And if he's ostentatious, it is of the intellectual variety, and not of power or wealth, which is a minor lapse that doesn't deserve attention.

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#64

Post by lsc »

z-tech wrote: post #15

What have I gained from reading this other than learn that the author is a high achieving person? I'm a software engineer in my late twenties in America. I would guess this blog is geared toward people like me, yet the author seems comedically unaware that very few, remarkably close to zero people, have opportunities like pursuing a PhD at MIT. So you chose MIT... I think most people would have. This is just a self c…

On the other hand, in 2004, I was... not that much older than the author... and making not that much less than the author said microsoft was offering them (of course, instead of 4 years of school, I had ~6 years of post highschool work experience) I totally would have qualified for the next tier down from the author in industry... while in school? I'd have qualified for the very bottom tier.

The point may simply have been that while the microsoft job might have seemed special to someone without family/friends in the industry, it wasn't that much better than what was available to someone the educational establishment would see as bottom-of-sight, while a computer science PhD at MIT is certainly something very special, something I almost certainly will never have the opportunity to get.

(I am currently trying to get into a good school... and it's super interesting and different from anything I've ever tried before, in that the good schools? they judge you as much on your failures as on your successes. In industry? it seems to be the other way around; my failures, if anything, are bonuses. I failed at this that or the other and I learned these things and you should hire me because of it. In getting into college, though? as far as I can tell, they want someone who hasn't failed, because they are afraid of you failing at this, too, and ruining their stats. Of course... I guess that's part of why I want to get into an elite program, too; I figure that if you have a 90+% graduation rate, you are setup so that people don't fail. I mean, I know you pick good people on the frontend... but I know these people from work, and they aren't superhumans who don't fail in the real world when it comes to tasks that I personally consider quite a bit easier than academia.)

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#66

Post by ryandrake »

barrkel wrote: post #19

This article is bordering on tautological, with post-hoc rationalization. Something is a bargain when it has a large ratio of value to cost. The trouble with career choices is that the value is in the future - it is, at best, only probabilistically estimable. Thus this advice merely moves the problem from choosing between alternatives to estimating future value of those choices. This doesn't really decrease the probl…

Survivorship Bias. Take existing successful people, ask them what they did and what traits they had, and then draw a conclusion that those actions/traits lead to success. Ignore the people who also did those things and had those traits who did not meet with success.

See also: any “how to succeed in business” book like Good To Great.

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#67

Post by askafriend »

majos wrote: post #13
collyw wrote: post #7

Wow, having worked as a database guy in a number of academic institutions I find it hard to believe that he is suggesting academia over a high paid stable career in MS. Maybe CS PhDs are different, but biology ones who I have worked with are low paid, stressful, and highly competitive to get past a couple of postdoc positions. It might be more interesting work, but is your work the only real interest you have in life…

CS PhDs are different than biology PhDs. They are still low-paid relative to industry, stressful, and competitive. However, multiple postdocs in CS are pretty uncommon, and it is not uncommon for a PhD candidate to get faculty offers with no postdoc (though many do a year of postdocing anyway, since it's less pressure than being junior faculty but at least twice the pay of being a grad student). I think a reasonable…

With CS, it's not twice as much, it's more like 4x-5x as much if it's something like ML/AI, Security, etc.

$1mm-$5mm+ compensation packages are not rare by any means.

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#68

Post by csomar »

Making life decisions is no different than trading Bitcoin. I learned this the hard way. Sure there are the obvious ones: If you make a bad choice (ie: do drugs and not save any money on your young years the trading equivalent of "you invest in a scam ICO), it'll end badly.

But given two similarly good options, it's a shot in the dark. The OP could have gone to Microsoft and became a CTO or CEO. Then he'll be writing how his Phd friends wasted their time in an academic career blablabla

You can't "see into the future of something". Especially when we are talking very long time frames (10-15 years). Someone who moved into Asia in the last 10 years would have done massive growth compared to someone who would have invested in south America (ie: Venezuela).

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#69

Post by staunch »

z-tech wrote: post #15

What have I gained from reading this other than learn that the author is a high achieving person? I'm a software engineer in my late twenties in America. I would guess this blog is geared toward people like me, yet the author seems comedically unaware that very few, remarkably close to zero people, have opportunities like pursuing a PhD at MIT. So you chose MIT... I think most people would have. This is just a self c…

This is the same fundamental flaw that dooms Paul Graham's startup essays to near irrelevance for 99% of people. He was seemingly oblivious to how much financially security and Ivy League pedigree assisted him at every turn of his startup founding and investing career.

The lesson to learn is that good advice applies to your situation and bad advice does not.

Re: Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

#70

Post by dean »

"the right way to build a remarkable life is to first identify the traits that define your vision of “remarkable,” then pursue only jobs that will reward you with these traits if and when you master rare and valuable skills."

That's a tough read. I think I read this sentence 10 times, and I still didn't know what it meant.

Finally moved on to the rest of the article to discover that he's talking about aspects of a job, such as having an impact.

So to rephrase, if you want to make an impact in your career, take the job that will allow you to make an impact if you do that job very well. Substitute 'impact' for whatever aspect of a job you'd like to have. Maybe a bit obvious when stated this way.

Post reply on HN