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A Project of One’s Own

paulgraham.com

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Re: A Project of One’s Own

#21

Post by tmotwu »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #10

> It's a bit sad to think of all the high school kids turning their backs on building treehouses and sitting in class dutifully learning about Darwin or Newton to pass some exam, when the work that made Darwin and Newton famous was actually closer in spirit to building treehouses than studying for exams. The current educational system seems to turn off high school kids (anecdotal evidence being my own) from pursuing…

People need incentives, and being competitive in school-like activities provides them.

Universities have been moving away from evaluating candidates from raw academic or scholastic perspectives. For instance, removing standardized testing from the process. [1,2,3] This has raised concerns and considerable pushback from parents. It raises the uncertainty of admission, even if they raise a child to do everything right and mold them into the standard high achieving student.

Of course, not unwarranted concerns: how do we fairly evaluate a student's external achievements without picking favorites. There is no objective measure to solve that problem.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/SAT-scores-uc-universi...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-university-wont-require...

[3] https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/a-special-announcement...

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#22

Post by swalsh »

myth2018 wrote: post #18

> What proportion of great work has been done by people who were skating in this sense? If not all of it, certainly a lot. I used to think like that. However, the years I spent on my masters and on my startup were a watershed. I was finally working on projects of my very own. But, after some months of extreme excitement, I was resorting to medicine and self help articles to heep me motivated and focused, especially w…

If it helps, I used to be motivated out of sheer wanting to get that thing that was in my head out, and see it working. That might be enough for a youtube video or a product demo with some executives at the company. Heck you can turn that 80% into a real career booster (I've done this), but it's not a production ready product. The last 20% of the work will take 80% of the time. It's really hard to be motivated for that last part. It's all the hard stuff that seems insignificant... and you've already got the cheese.

If you can accomplish it, the trick to staying motivating is to figure out the mental gymnatics to move where you put the cheese in the trap. If you can do that... you have a real chance at being motivated past the proof of concept.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#23

Post by christophilus »

austincheney wrote: post #13

If I had to choose between my kids getting good grades and working on ambitious projects of their own, I'd pick the projects. And not because I'm an indulgent parent, but because I've been on the other end and I know which has more predictive value. When I was picking startups for Y Combinator, I didn't care about applicants' grades. But if they'd worked on projects of their own, I wanted to hear all about those. Tha…

Anecdotally, but the thing that got me into FAANG companies was my resume, not my grades. I had started a company in college, and that ambitious project opened a whole lot of doors.

I've been in charge of hiring many times, and not once have I looked at grades. I don't even bother looking at the "education" portion of resumes (except when looking at the rare candidate who has no work experience).

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#24

Post by monoideism »

austincheney wrote: post #13

If I had to choose between my kids getting good grades and working on ambitious projects of their own, I'd pick the projects. And not because I'm an indulgent parent, but because I've been on the other end and I know which has more predictive value. When I was picking startups for Y Combinator, I didn't care about applicants' grades. But if they'd worked on projects of their own, I wanted to hear all about those. Tha…

> common sentiment reminds me of reading history about lynchings in Jim Crow era and sun down towns

I'm about as far from woke or PC as you could imagine, but that's an incredibly inaccurate comparison.

Reading some developer scorn or arrogance, no matter how unfortunate or annoying, shares no common features with an actual lynching.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#25

Post by paulcole »

> If I had to choose between my kids getting good grades and working on ambitious projects of their own, I'd pick the projects. And not because I'm an indulgent parent, but because I've been on the other end and I know which has more predictive value. When I was picking startups for Y Combinator, I didn't care about applicants' grades. But if they'd worked on projects of their own, I wanted to hear all about those.

If all you have is a hammer, you’re going to go around looking for nails.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#26

Post by olly_r »

ximm wrote: post #5

I kept waiting for the virgina woolf reference, but it never came…

Why has this been downvoted? Does no one else think it's strange that the title of the post is a direct reference to Woolf but she's not mentioned at all?

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#27

Post by walugipnts »

austincheney wrote: post #13

If I had to choose between my kids getting good grades and working on ambitious projects of their own, I'd pick the projects. And not because I'm an indulgent parent, but because I've been on the other end and I know which has more predictive value. When I was picking startups for Y Combinator, I didn't care about applicants' grades. But if they'd worked on projects of their own, I wanted to hear all about those. Tha…

Seriously, lynchings? Is this the type of comparison you really want to make here? that was the first thing that came to mind? Do we really need to double down on the perception that HN consists solely of out of touch white men?

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#28

Post by ampdepolymerase »

> If I had to choose between my kids getting good grades and working on ambitious projects of their own, I'd pick the projects. And not because I'm an indulgent parent, but because I've been on the other end and I know which has more predictive value. When I was picking startups for Y Combinator, I didn't care about applicants' grades. But if they'd worked on projects of their own, I wanted to hear all about those.

That's quite rich coming from pg considering that the YC application explicitly states that they may ask for transcripts if you are still in school.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#29

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Tangentially related, I am writing a book each with each of my (older) kids. Its nothing much (just some fun sci-fi that got them a bit interested in the project(s) at all) but it is theirs. Its rumbles along as they have ideas - I try and type up and edit a bit, we sometimes kick around ideas at 'storytime' (which is a bit less fun for them as they enter teens).

The final goal will be a few copies printed off the Amazon-whatjamacallit and read 'for real'.

But yes. Something real, that is theirs.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#30

Post by UncleMeat »

austincheney wrote: post #13

If I had to choose between my kids getting good grades and working on ambitious projects of their own, I'd pick the projects. And not because I'm an indulgent parent, but because I've been on the other end and I know which has more predictive value. When I was picking startups for Y Combinator, I didn't care about applicants' grades. But if they'd worked on projects of their own, I wanted to hear all about those. Tha…

> mention explicit use of events or the DOM and the common sentiment reminds me of reading history about lynchings in Jim Crow era and sun down towns

Mass murder with no judicial punishment resembles people being mean to you at work? Black people were disemboweled and burned alive by gangs of people who did it for fun. This is the most ridiculous comparison I think I have ever seen on this forum.

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