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

Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 248 posts

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#101

Post by robryan »

kabdib wrote: post #24

Close call: My dad (a college prof) saying to me (when I was 17) that computers were a dead end and that I should do something else. I ignored his advice. I've had a fantastic career and shipped a bunch of different products. 30 years later, he apologized to me.

Parents still to this day share this sentiment. Although my Dad has come around a lot in recent years when I've explained how some internet startups have done and the types of jobs available in programming.

Plus it's easier to see now, Dad uses the internet every day now so it's easier to see how much job opportunity is there.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#102

Post by starpilot »

"Happiness comes from achieving goals"

I achieved plenty, but realized late in college that constantly studying was a defense mechanism for depression and loneliness. It's my biggest college regret. I even think that if I had studied less and spent more time getting to know housemates and classmates, I would have been happier and more relaxed, leading to higher grades. Sharing life with others is a reward in itself though, which took me a while to understand.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#104

Post by Xurinos »

j_baker wrote: post #77
iamwil wrote: post #8

"It'll just happen when you least expect it." It's just something people say to console, not actually anything that's remotely useful or true. Magic never happens on its own. You have to go out there and make it happen.

I'm honestly not sure I'm understanding you properly, but if I am, this is true up to a point . We like to believe in a world where everyone's results are directly correlated with how much work they've done, but that's just as much a fantasy as it is to believe that all you have to do is sit around and wait for the right opportunity to magically appear. I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in soc…

I hate to break it to you, but the most successful people in society usually got there not only from hard work but from being in the right place at the right time.

According to studies on "luck", one key is to be in a LOT of places. It increases your chance of being in some right place at some right time. Another key is a positive attitude, of seeing opportunities and taking advantage of them.

So it is difficult to tell when someone's behavior (work) causes a success versus when it truly is a lucky break.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#105

Post by robryan »

Wilduck wrote: post #10

"You're smart." It took me five years of coasting on that presumption before I realized that being "smart" isn't nearly enough. I'm still working (after a few more years) to develop the habits that would have come from hearing "you're a hard worker."

Even worse is when people are told they are smart when really they might just be about average or a little above and really need to put the hard yards in rather than coasting.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#107

Post by po »

kabdib wrote: post #24

Close call: My dad (a college prof) saying to me (when I was 17) that computers were a dead end and that I should do something else. I ignored his advice. I've had a fantastic career and shipped a bunch of different products. 30 years later, he apologized to me.

When people ask me about "computers" I often remind them that it's the only skill that will allow you to work in just about any industry. Art, hard science, medicine, whatever...

If I were a blacksmith in a mediaeval village I would make sure my kids knew that they were tool makers, not blacksmiths. People will always need tools weather they are made in a forge or a factory.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#108

Post by petercooper »

I wouldn't go quite as far as "messed up" but between 2003-2007 I was frequently hassled by people to "buy a house" because it "never goes down (much) in value."

I argued that that was a nonsensical claim, although over the previous 30 years it was pretty much true (the UK dip in the early 1990s was quite short and localized). In mid 2007 I noticed prices continuing to go up and up and bit the bullet. Naturally, I exchanged contracts the very month before prices started to go down. Out of principle, I'm stuck with this house until it's worth more than I paid for it ;-)

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#109

Post by lisper »

"Honesty is the best policy." This is quite possibly the single biggest lie we tell our kids. There are times when dissembling or even outright lying is the right thing to do. It's important to learn to recognize when telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is not the right thing to do. It's not easy.

Re: Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?

#110

Post by orangecat »

Almaviva wrote: post #85

Variations of "you'll just meet someone" and "dating will get easier in your 30s" and "the important thing is you do well in school, and everything else will follow". Fuck that. Someone should have shaken the shit out of me when I was 18, forced me to go to a school with a normal gender ratio, and gotten me to strike while the iron was still hot while I still had some sexual attraction to women, and never take for gr…

Right there with you. My life would probably be much better had I spent more (well, any) time drinking and partying in high school and college. The traditional advice to be responsible and avoid peer pressure is correct for the majority of the population, but geeky introverts need to develop social skills much more than we need to incrementally improve our GPAs.

"dating will get easier in your 30s"

Supposedly this really is true for men. Not for me yet.

Post reply on HN