I couldn't agree more. I find myself somewhat dumbfounded when I think about where I am these days and where I could be. My career path has been a series of serendipitous events that I could not have possibly planned out. I've mostly just responded to opportunities given to me, accepting the fear of rejection if things don't work out. Anyway, great advice.
Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
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Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#32A closely related story, from HN user kenjackson ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1647146 ): "How long will you need to find your truest, most productive niche? This I cannot predict, for, sadly, access to a podium confers no gift of prophecy. But I can say that however long it takes, it will be time well spent. I am reminded of a friend from the early 1970s, Edward Witten. I liked Ed, but felt sorry for him, to…
How did he get accepted into all of those graduate programs? I'd love to try
my hand at a new field but i have no idea how to get into a phd program.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#33Meh. Lucky people always love to talk about how easy it is if you just do what they did - though they usually have a hard time explaining exactly what it was that they did. How does he explain all the happy-go-lucky young fliberdygibbits who ended up serendipitously taking their first job offer in 1998 from Pets.com? Or those of us who labored under the impression that "as soon as DataPower takes off" there'll be bon…
You seem to be missing the point. There are no guarantees. Ever. Our lives are ruled chance. You can't duplicate my life, but you can create an interesting life of your own.
There are no guarantees of success. It's usually possible to guarantee failure, e.g. by not returning the call.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#34A closely related story, from HN user kenjackson ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1647146 ): "How long will you need to find your truest, most productive niche? This I cannot predict, for, sadly, access to a podium confers no gift of prophecy. But I can say that however long it takes, it will be time well spent. I am reminded of a friend from the early 1970s, Edward Witten. I liked Ed, but felt sorry for him, to…
How did he get accepted into all of those graduate programs? I'd love to try my hand at a new field but i have no idea how to get into a phd program.
Step 0: Be Ed Witten.
More generally, if you can get into one Ph.D. program you can probably get into most of them. Profs, like any employer, want the two key things: be smart, and get enough done to justify their investment in you. Except that students are really cheap, especially in the first year or two, and especially in math or theoretical physics where their cost is mostly in office space, ever-cheaper computer time, adviser hours and coffee.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Survivor bias is the phrase that comes to mind. The other one is "notoriety bias:" Only the stories with a spectacular ending get made into movies, so you read about the big successes and the big failures, but nothing in between.
Yeah, I know. Meanwhile, there's now an industry built on telling children their dreams really can come true if they accrue enough ycombinator karma. Way to harness that aptitude, baby. edit: yeah, rate me down for telling you what you didn't want to hear. I'm not the one who throws $18k at a time down a well just to get a high school kid to suck up to me and think I'm a god.
I thought the point of the article was not to have dreams, but rather to be awake to the world around you, because much of the goodness in it will pass you by if you're fixated on something else.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#36the part about ego based fear is really good. meditation helps with that
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#37Eh, I just got approached by Google via LinkedIn and went for it even though I was sure I wouldn't get it. Sure enough, I did not get it, but it was nevertheless a valuable experience. I have learned two things:
1) An n^2 algorithm runs in polynomial time, but it is no longer good enough when n ~= 100000000. Assuming 1000000 operations a second, that is still a few hundred years. I have never thought of it because I've just never encountered that sort of scale. I may never do, but it was still a revelation for me.
2) It confirmed that I am really rusty at algorithms due to one too many jobs writing CRUD web apps. I need to do something about this. For a start, practice in my free time and secondly, look for a job that allows me to develop in that area.
I'm not saying that it wasn't disappointing even though I knew my chances weren't good, but I gave it my best shot and I am choosing to use the experience positively. Is that serendipity?
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#38The problem I have with this is that you're extracting a formula (or non-formula rather) after the fact. It seems as if you lived your life like any other person, and things just eventually happened to you.
It sounds like he has lived like any other person with the difference being his attitude ("Opportunity is all around us, but we have beliefs and habits that block it."). He might just be lucky. It also might be the case that that attitude is a powerful tool.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Survivor bias is the phrase that comes to mind. The other one is "notoriety bias:" Only the stories with a spectacular ending get made into movies, so you read about the big successes and the big failures, but nothing in between.
Yeah, I know. Meanwhile, there's now an industry built on telling children their dreams really can come true if they accrue enough ycombinator karma. Way to harness that aptitude, baby. edit: yeah, rate me down for telling you what you didn't want to hear. I'm not the one who throws $18k at a time down a well just to get a high school kid to suck up to me and think I'm a god.
I seriously don't want to live in your world.
So what would you tell kids? Do not aspire for anything because chances are, you will likely fail.
You can choose how you look at things.
"For every good story, there is a bad story."
"For every bad story, there is a good story."
I choose the latter.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think PB is too consistent to dismiss him as merely lucky. He didn't just happen to be an early employee at Google. He also wrote GMail (which entailed not only a redesign of the email experience, but also was a pretty dramatic evolutionary step in web apps because of its then extreme use of Javascript), built the first version of AdSense, and was the one who came up with "Don't be evil." It's unlikely to be a coin…
I'm not saying the guy isn't smart. Just throwing out a little "outliers" to grease the wheel for the rest of us donkeys. Sometimes reasons to hope are not best expressed by those who have nothing to regret. This is one of those times.
I'm with you on this one. After the initial 'serendipity' of google, PB's reputation was sealed and he could pick his title and company.
While it's interesting to speculate if PB had chosen a pets.com instead of google what would have happened to his career, it's not particularly constructive.
The idea that our success is largely beyond our control is sufficiently pernicious that we're all better off just pretending it is not the case and keeping our heads down and trying our damnedest.