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What I Worked On

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Worked On

#311

Post by selimthegrim »

egypturnash wrote: post #230
dhskdhakdh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that the art world's way of thinking didn't rub off on Graham. It's not clear to me that he ever had a genuinely creative attitude to art making. He didn't get the art world and it didn't get him. As a technical term, "art world" refers to the professionalized aspects of art production—and explicitly not the business of actually working on your art or training as an artist. It's the nonsense…

Art is my career and trust me, the "nonsense and PR side of art" is an important part of making it work. One I am absolutely terrible at and do the bare minimum I can get away with, because it's just not fun, and because getting good at it requires some very different mindsets from getting good at art. Anyway. I think Paul Graham should think about his time trying to be an artist, take some of the absurd amounts of m…

I hear Julia St has plenty of gallery space these days...

Re: What I Worked On

#312

Post by whatshisface »

Afton wrote: post #293
sjg007 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the low end eats the high end: that it's good to be the "entry level" option, even though that will be less prestigious, because if you're not, someone else will be, and will squash you against the ceiling. This happens with jobs too.. especially software jobs. Nobody wants to do software QA, want to know how to get a software engineering job when the market is tight or otherwise inaccessible... software QA.

Incidentally, I think being in QA and being a good engineer is a recipe for a very good career. A surprising number of QA software developers are... just not very good developers. Working with a good developer that just happens to specialize in QA is an amazing experience.

Would that good-engineer QA specialist have a good career in terms of appreciation and remuneration, or merely a good career in terms of being the least likely to get laid off, and providing a lot of value to the company?

Re: What I Worked On

#313

Post by dpritchett »

Balgair wrote: post #306
aerosmile wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a fair bit of luck, he manages to become wealthy, but not wanna-be-space-cadet wealthy. You might be underestimating the value of the YC portfolio and PG's stake in it.

It's 'only' ~$50M or so [0], per what I could find with a quick googling. Other resources would be appreciated though! [0] https://www.wealthypersons.com/paul-graham-net-worth-2020-20...

This article suggests that he and JL were half of a self-funded YC that took 6% of each company they funded. The YC portfolio is estimated at $300 billion from a random article I just Googled.

3% of that would be nine billion, assuming all four YC founders had equal shares and disregarding dilution as the portfolio companies took on more investors.

Likely off by an order of magnitude in one direction or the other but still fair bit higher than 50 million.

Re: What I Worked On

#314

Post by afterwalk »

judofyr wrote: post #4

> Working on Bel was hard but satisfying. I worked on it so intensively that at any given time I had a decent chunk of the code in my head and could write more there. I'll have to say reading this makes me feel a bit sad for pg. It seems that he worked on Bel extensively for four years, and the end result was something which appeared on the front page of Hacker News for one day and then disappeared. I haven't seen it…

Give that pg is someone who can walk away from running YCombinator to work on other stuff for fun, he probably doesn't care about maximizing utility or impact at this point.

Re: What I Worked On

#315

Post by joubert »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #194
breck wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is non linear, with discrete inflection points. Some of those points are outside of your control, but some are points where you made an important decision that correctly anticipated a non linear outcome. All positive non linear outcomes take time to compound, however, hence why you can’t connect the positive dots until enough time has passed to look back.

What do you mean by non linear there?

there are many paths to Yes.

Re: What I Worked On

#316

Post by Balgair »

dpritchett wrote: post #313
Balgair wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 'only' ~$50M or so [0], per what I could find with a quick googling. Other resources would be appreciated though! [0] https://www.wealthypersons.com/paul-graham-net-worth-2020-20...

This article suggests that he and JL were half of a self-funded YC that took 6% of each company they funded. The YC portfolio is estimated at $300 billion from a random article I just Googled. 3% of that would be nine billion, assuming all four YC founders had equal shares and disregarding dilution as the portfolio companies took on more investors. Likely off by an order of magnitude in one direction or the other but…

Welp, yeah, nevermind then, he's in wanna-be-space-cadet tax brackets.

Re: What I Worked On

#317

Post by goodmattg »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #83

This comment really resonated with me, I found myself in this exact situation at 25, in a "very prestigious and selective place" for AI nonetheless. It took me a couple years to realize the smart people are just playing the game, the unsuspecting losers are "playing it straight" and getting endlessly frustrated. I found my balance by, frankly, taking advantage of a system that is FUBAR. Incidentally, I also took some…

As someone who came out of the same "prestigious and selective place as you", this take hits hard. I will say, part of what you learn doing research is if you even enjoy doing research.

You play to win the game.

Love the artwork!

Re: What I Worked On

#318

Post by gary_0 »

soniman wrote: post #310
hinkley wrote: post #120

> One of the most conspicuous patterns I've noticed in my life is how well it's worked, for me at least, to work on things that weren't prestigious. You might be able to reinterpret this through the lens of the old saying about how, during a gold rush, the people who "made shovels" made most of the money while a few miners got all the press. We don't usually hear about the folks making provisions or shovels. If you d…

I've heard the "sell shovels" advice a million times but I've never heard of anyone getting rich selling shovels.

A tongue-in-cheek observation: Over the past 2 years, NVDA is up 290% but BTC is up 1160%.

Re: What I Worked On

#319

Post by Tycho »

Interesting that pg never really had a corporate job. Once you get into a big organisation, the risk adjusted ROI of focusing on your career within the corporation (or industry) just seems hard to beat. I suppose if your skills are marketable enough you don’t need to worry, but for others the switching cost seems prohibitive.

Re: What I Worked On

#320

Post by xiaolingxiao »

goodmattg wrote: post #317
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #83

This comment really resonated with me, I found myself in this exact situation at 25, in a "very prestigious and selective place" for AI nonetheless. It took me a couple years to realize the smart people are just playing the game, the unsuspecting losers are "playing it straight" and getting endlessly frustrated. I found my balance by, frankly, taking advantage of a system that is FUBAR. Incidentally, I also took some…

As someone who came out of the same "prestigious and selective place as you", this take hits hard. I will say, part of what you learn doing research is if you even enjoy doing research. You play to win the game. Love the artwork!

ha! I remember seeing you around the building. To be fair I really enjoyed the subject, it's just art is soulful in a way that other subject can never be for me. I imagine it's the same for music for a lot of people. I still code now and would never do art as a job.
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