I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected • Hacker News Board

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#371

Post by JamesBarney » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

badpun wrote: post #343

JamesBarney wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine smart people have done more good for the world than good people. The big lasting improvements to our lives have almost exclusively come from technology and when you look back at technology the vast majority of it was created by smart people(a lot of whom were good too). Vaccines, antibiotics, and farming technology have probably saved more people than every charity that has ever existed combined.

Good != charity. Good people voluntarily enlisted in war to fight tyrants. Or sacrificed to give decent upbringing to their kids, often against extreme hardships, so that they don't become degenerates or criminals. Etc etc.

I don't know much good on average wars do. For every good person fighting a tyrant, there's a good person fighting for the tyrant.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#372

Post by nugget » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

antoinevg wrote: post #353

nugget wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally I agree with your view, but there are real hiring problems that have to be solved first. >if Elon Musk comes out and says SpaceX considers a cert from $NetflixOfEducation as equal to an engineering degree from MIT on a resume... then it's all over. If 50 developers apply for a job and 3 of them are from MIT and 47 are from lesser known schools, using the MIT signal as a filter is efficient. If $NetflixOfEdu…

> If $NetflixOfEducation is too accessible and half of the applicants have it, then it loses its value as a hiring signal. Only for companies who hire for signals. For companies that hire for throughput this does not hold.

What do you mean by "throughput" and how do you measure it ahead of an interview? Given 50 resumes for an open position, how do you select whom to interview? Does your process scale to many dozens or hundreds of open positions per year?

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#373

Post by badpun » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

redisman wrote: post #348

badpun wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, my goals are to have an interesting job (i.e. using a modern tech stack) I always wonder why using a modern tech is interesting? Let's say there's a job where you're using J2EE 1.4 or some other outdated technology from the early 2000s. The thing is, I remember when that technology was hot shit and people considered working on it very interesting. So, it looks like, over the course of time, doing the ve…

I think it's mostly job security. I've worked on many technologies that I really enjoyed despite the flaws that every tech has (Flash for example) that have 0 jobs 10 years later.

Oh yeah, I agree with that - but that's not job being "interesting", that's just job security.

I wrote my comment because I felt some disingenuity in the OP saying that jobs with modern tech stacks are interesting for him. It means that he's either genuinely intersted in following the tech frameworks threadmill, and jobs with modern tech stack allow him to do that - or, he's lying to himself that he's intersting in it, to make getting up for work every day a little bit easier.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#374

Post by jxub » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

jl2718 wrote: post #300

microtonal wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not necessarily have to do anything with laziness. The further you get the fiercer your competition. Most people around here were probably the best in elementary school and high school, perhaps even university. But if you go further up the intelligence or economic ladder, you will compare yourself to peers who are at the same step or next step. And the competition is much fiercer. You are 'competing' with peo…

This forum in particular attracts a certain type of ‘lazy intellectual’: people that value thought and introspection above constant action. They were the type of children that easily mastered early school subjects without working, but are so fascinated by ideas that mere action bores them. I think it’s important to recognize the advantages and limitations of this mindset. I’ve considered the possibility that it is si…

On the pop-psych Jungian scale they (we) would represent the INTP type.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#375

Post by l_t » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

badpun wrote: post #341

harimau777 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, my goals are to have an interesting job (i.e. using a modern tech stack), have the resources to pursue my hobbies, and have the autonomy to be eccentric if I want to. However, meeting those goals require a lot of money. This is especially the case since interesting tech jobs, access to niche resources, and tolerance of alternative lifestyles are all associated with living in a large city. Therefore, I fin…

> Personally, my goals are to have an interesting job (i.e. using a modern tech stack) I always wonder why using a modern tech is interesting? Let's say there's a job where you're using J2EE 1.4 or some other outdated technology from the early 2000s. The thing is, I remember when that technology was hot shit and people considered working on it very interesting. So, it looks like, over the course of time, doing the ve…

I think it's a heuristic signal. Old tech stacks are usually used in old projects that solve old problems.

I doubt the OP would mind building a J2EE project from scratch to solve a novel problem. But nobody does that -- usually if there is a J2EE job, it's maintenance, which can be less interesting. And if there is a novel problem, it will likely be solved with the current status quo ("modern") technology.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#376

Post by eitally » Fri, May 31, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

nugget wrote: post #208

throwayEngineer wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole prestigious school thing means little imo. After you meet a few dunces from a top school and the rare genius who went to CC, you really stop caring. College is what you make it. If you aren't networking a top school, I don't see the purpose, we all learn math.

I would argue that as University education has scaled up and become commoditized, the value of a generic degree as a signaling function has decreased, and that in response the value of matriculation to a top school has only increased. Schools are just brands and become an extension of the personal brands of their students and alums. Unless you're studying a hard science or similar, I'd bet that the value of lower ran…

As a hiring manager, I don't agree with this. Frankly, although I always look for a person's education history, the only time this actually matters is if it allows me to make small talk with them during introductions.

Additionally, a person with a hard science BS from a small college may well have received a far superior education than someone graduating from a top tier university in the same discipline. It makes a huge difference for many students how engaged their professors are in teaching, vs research.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#377

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 31, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

throwayEngineer wrote: post #167

karmelapple wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m so glad I had parents who encouraged in me what you are encouraging in your children. I was accepted to a very prestigious university, and as my friends, their parents, and other adults (including some family) found out, there was mostly encouragement to just go there. The attitude was, “why wouldn’t I want to go there? Just think of the opportunity!” They we’re shocked I was thinking of attending a state school…

The whole prestigious school thing means little imo. After you meet a few dunces from a top school and the rare genius who went to CC, you really stop caring. College is what you make it. If you aren't networking a top school, I don't see the purpose, we all learn math.

[deleted]

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#378

Post by lalos » Fri, May 31, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

Bakary wrote: post #369

lalos wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why/how did you come to that conclusion? I'm surprised to see that self-reflection and conclusion of following rules is a character flaw.

First of all my statement should be taken with a huge grain of salt. I make no claims towards any sort of universal observation about human nature, but rather a set of general principles that I believe to be worth examining. - Breaking rules can help you grow as a person. Anecdotally, the people from my youth who ended up being the happiest adults were those who tested the boundaries early on and fit the "lovable rog…

Thanks for taking the time to answer and for such a great response. Impressed by your observation skills and high introspection which made you arrive at this conclusion.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#379

Post by filmgirlcw » Fri, May 31, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

This resonates a lot with me. I've said before that all the success I've achieved has been in spite of the "gifted" label, not because of it.

Unlike the author, I was lucky enough to experience failure before college, so I didn't enter it thinking I was "special." So many of my peers (as well as my older sister), didn't know how to deal with not being "the best" or having competition from others.

But that doesn't mean I overly excelled in college -- in fact, I didn't really care.

I had a pretty typical quarter life crisis timed with the great-recession and didn't go to grad school or law school, and was in kind of a listless "what am I doing with my life" place for a few years.

My relatives DID comment "it's a shame what happened to filmgirl" -- but in my case, it was absolutely said with judgment (and not a small amount of schadenfreude -- because both my sister and I grew up "beautiful," "talented," and "brilliant" (and in her case, she was also very popular) and then wound up not taking over the world, while my relatives kids became doctors, etc.) and family friends would whisper about all my wasted potential.

For a time, I felt that way too -- and then I got over myself, realized (again), I'm not fucking special and that just because I was given a label that created bullshit expectations on my future, didn't mean I was going to freak out because things didn't go according to plan.

Ironically, within a few years of that quarter-life crisis, I was on TV all the time, I was interviewing high profile people, and doing well for myself in my chosen field. And now I'm in a different field and I work at a large company in a high profile role and make a very good living. On paper, it certainly looks like I've lived up to my potential -- even though the story of how I got there is a lot different.

Which, to me, sort of underscores what bullshit so much of all of this really is.

The schools, the test scores, the labels, they don't matter. They can help, sure -- but having them ins't a guarantee for "success" and not having them doesn't mean you'll never go on to do anything.

For what it's worth, my parents never pressured me and didn't care when I was a fuck-up. They loved and supported me anyway. But I still felt like a failure and a fuckup for not living up to my potential because of the external pressures put on me as a child.

Re: I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected

#380

Post by Retra » Fri, May 31, 2019, 8:18 PM UTC

ordu wrote: post #338

sanxiyn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think I am smart." That's really cute! I mean, it's pretty much impossible to hide smartness. If you are smart, you will know. I am not attractive, but I also heard that if you are very attractive, it's pretty much impossible not to realize that.

> If you are smart, you will know. The point is not to hide smartness, the point is not to allow your child to came to an idea that to fail to be smart means that parents would be disappointed and would love him less. If you praise your child on being smart, that he/she will come to such a stupid idea. It doesn't mean they would be able to express this idea in words, it means that their mind would operate in such a w…

That depends on the child. It's not the case that every child would rather know they are loved than that they are intelligent. Love doesn't create any fewer unwanted obligations than intelligence does.