How Smart People Sabotage Their Success • Hacker News Board

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#91

Post by Aloha » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

throwaway713 wrote: post #82

I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone. I think the hypothesis was that these people tended to develop a perfectionistic (or even people pleasing) approach, and that this strategy works really well for "doing what you're told".…

Its not just that - being successful in high school is very different than being successful in the real world.

High School is a very structured environment, where success is easily and narrowly defined - in addition following the rules alone can often lead to significant success alone.

In the real world, bucking the system may be (and often is) a requirement for success.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#92

Post by Arnt » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

friendly_chap wrote: post #38

_red wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager of a dev group, I've migrated away from trying to hire "10x developers" and now optimize for "intelligent and persistent". The "10x" developers are seductive, and can supercharge a project into getting version 1.0 off the ground in months instead of years. However, each one we've hired has left us worse off than before once they got bored and left us in the weeds trying to piece together what they had do…

That's not a 10x developer if they don't know how to write maintanable software, you just thought they are. The dev you describe sounds like a junior who can crank out code at high velocity.

I've met someone who I'd call 10×. I've worked with him. He once wrote a usable spreadsheet, with a fine set of formulae and an entirely plausible UI, in an evening and a night.

His code had major issues, but that's not to say that he couldn't write software. He could, in a manner completely different from me. Amazingly well, yet frustrating.

Above a certain level, one developer isn't universally better than another. It's not linear any more.

He's a CS professor now.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#93

Post by ohithereyou » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

friendly_chap wrote: post #38

_red wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager of a dev group, I've migrated away from trying to hire "10x developers" and now optimize for "intelligent and persistent". The "10x" developers are seductive, and can supercharge a project into getting version 1.0 off the ground in months instead of years. However, each one we've hired has left us worse off than before once they got bored and left us in the weeds trying to piece together what they had do…

That's not a 10x developer if they don't know how to write maintanable software, you just thought they are. The dev you describe sounds like a junior who can crank out code at high velocity.

The best way to get a 10x developer is to have a productive senior closely mentor 10 juniors - pair programming, code reviews, testing strategies, deep dives into architecture, bi-directional knowledge sharing.

It's a case where the whetstone sharpening the knives also gets sharper by virtue of what they learn from the juniors they mentor.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#94

Post by CPLX » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

josephjrobison wrote: post #51

bootsz wrote: post #4

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learnin…

This part was also key: "Solution: Try taking a 30,000-foot view of when it’s worth tolerating some boredom to collect easy wins when it comes to your overall success. Instead of attempting dramatic change, decide when tolerating short periods (a few minutes or hours) of boredom could have a very beneficial impact on your success. For instance, devoting 5 hours a week to an activity that’s monotonous but lucrative. A…

> Anyone know of a book that goes into this in detail?

As cheesy as it sounds, the best book I've found on this topic is Getting Things Done.

I struggle with a lot of the issues in this article, and resisted that kind of thinking for years, but learning how to break up the insane overload of ideas and things in my head and bring them into manageable chunks, living in an outside system, has really really helped.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#95

Post by peteradio » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

strken wrote: post #54

AWildC182 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the 10x is a unicorn. HN likes to shift the definition every time it's found to have some quality we don't like. In the real world there is a broad spectrum of devs and their capabilities. Each one has strengths, weaknesses, areas of expertise, and character flaws. You'll basically never find one that just blindly produces 10x the code of the rest of your team without some downside.

I reckon that if there's such a thing as a 10x dev, they'd act as a force multiplier rather than a faster assembly line worker. Fixing architectural problems early raises the productivity of everyone who ever has to touch the code, as does setting up practises like code review and automated testing, and as does culling bad features early on.

I agree and it might not be possible to recognize such a person as a 10x dev.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#96

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #80

WalterSear wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nature of the work doesn't allow that. Coding takes all your thought - even when it's boring and monotonous. The comparisons being made to washing dishes aren't realistic.

I've done some refactoring work that didn't take any more mental effort than dish washing.

Sure. Is most work like that, though?

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#97

Post by munchbunny » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

bootsz wrote: post #4

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learnin…

Over my admittedly not that long career, I've found that minimizing the overhead that the daily grind creates in your productivity is by itself an art form. The grind isn't avoidable, but you can be more or less productive despite it.

As an example, I recently had a project where most of the drudgery was changing one line, testing the whole thing (including manual tests), realizing another one-liner was needed, doing it all again, etc.

Automating testing wasn't a good idea at the time (high risk code, so you don't want to pile a refactor on top of a risky change), but I figured out approximately how long the builds would take, so I started setting timers on my phone. Kick off a build, switch tracks, come back when the alarm hit. By doing that I was able to context switch more efficiently to an unrelated project rather than twiddling my thumbs for twenty minutes every time I needed to wait for the build.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#98

Post by robertAngst » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

andyidsinga wrote: post #88

> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. Bright people are accustomed to succeeding through their thinking skills, but can sometimes overlook when a different approach would be more beneficial. This really resonated with me. One of the "problems" with over thinking things and "figuring out all the potential problems" is that when presenting the ideas/concepts/…

I disagreed with that point, thinking through things means not making the mistakes later.

Presenting your data should spark questions or proposals or agreement regardless how much time you put into it.

I agreed with the first 4 points, but the last one seemed weak.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#99

Post by longerthoughts » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

thwy12321 wrote: post #84

throwaway713 wrote: post #82

I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone. I think the hypothesis was that these people tended to develop a perfectionistic (or even people pleasing) approach, and that this strategy works really well for "doing what you're told".…

I think it's actually that individuals with high levels of academic success don't need to start a company, they already have very good high paying career options. And so starting a company has a high level of opportunity cost.

Do you think most founders didn't have decent career prospects before starting a company? Are you suggesting that people start companies because they think being a founder is likely to be a high paying job? What founders are trading up in salary when they're starting their company?

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#100

Post by allenu » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

robertAngst wrote: post #98

andyidsinga wrote: post #88

> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. Bright people are accustomed to succeeding through their thinking skills, but can sometimes overlook when a different approach would be more beneficial. This really resonated with me. One of the "problems" with over thinking things and "figuring out all the potential problems" is that when presenting the ideas/concepts/…

I disagreed with that point, thinking through things means not making the mistakes later. Presenting your data should spark questions or proposals or agreement regardless how much time you put into it. I agreed with the first 4 points, but the last one seemed weak.

I read that point as sort of analysis paralysis where you just end up spending a lot of time researching and thinking through and not enough time taking action. For me, I've noticed there are times when I use thinking as a crutch to avoid actually doing. Often, doing, making a mistake, and then correcting is more expedient than analyzing all options to find the optimal one.