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A Project of One’s Own

paulgraham.com

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Re: A Project of One’s Own

#231

Post by robotresearcher »

caseysoftware wrote: post #223
opportune wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the high paying professions outside of software require the degree and that first job to break into them. Sure for banking and consulting it’s not a hard requirement, but it’s much harder to get into them with bad grades or a degree from a non-target school. It’s really only in the software bubble where people are able to prove themselves to break into it, due to various factors including engineers being in v…

"Sure nobody asks for my grades now that I’ve been out of college for a while, but they still look at where I went to college.." How do you know that? Do they mention it? I'm really curious on this one. Other than the rare alum, I haven't had anyone comment on my undergrad more than a year or two out of it. Recent jobs and projects make up the vast majority of any conversation.

Biases work quietly. A recruiter that favors Ivy League grads does not comment on that to the candidates they contact, and obviously doesn't to the ones they don't.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#232

Post by saalweachter »

celrod wrote: post #208
grahamburger wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our generation had distractions, too. TV, for example. I don't know the direct answer to your question but at least part of it is that 'not-forcing' your kid in to programming means they might just never be in to programming. My oldest is at least kind of in to programming (and also plays a lot of Minecraft and watches a lot of YouTube) my youngest two have shown zero interest in programing, but have interests of the…

Growing up, what my late father probably wanted most from me is for me to find a project of my own. When I was in high school, he once threatened me with "get a life, or I will get you one". Engines, and especially motorcycles, were always a passion of his. He grew up on a farm, and "was rebuilding tractor engines when the other kids were learning to ride bicycles." He still holds a few land speed records he set with…

> Hearing all the stories about people starting and getting hooked when they were 11 makes me feel like I lost a dozen years of my life.

To be totally honest, most of us who start programming when we are don't really get that large of a head start.

I'd probably count all of my programming experience from ages 10-20 before I switched from math to CS as "no more valuable than 1-2 years of dedicated undergraduate experience".

The biggest value of early programming experience is learning if you enjoy it well enough to not hate a career at it.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#233

Post by triceratops »

jdmoreira wrote: post #221
zamfi wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will never allow my children to play that game I can see not forcing them to play the game, but "will never allow my children to" always struck me as a weird tone.

I will also never allow my children to gang up on and beat homeless people in the streets. Sounds like a weird tone?

Beating up people is immoral and illegal. Grinding for grades is neither. I don't really see the connection.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#234

Post by 0xFACEFEED »

thrower123 wrote: post #20

This touches on one of the most demotivating facets of modern work: the obsession with collaboration. If you never have any autonomy or space to develop a sense of ownership, outside of being yoked like an ox in a team or mired in the tyranous mediocrity of committees, it's extremely difficult to care about what you are doing.

I don't think the problem is an obsession with collaboration. I've observed that it's mostly a defensive measure.

The amount of damage that (sorry for putting it this way)... stupid people... can do is unbounded. The potential blast radius of bad decisions grows with the size of the company. Recovering from bad decisions is also very costly.

The flip side of autonomy and empowerment is just that. When it's in the hands of a person that has a sense of pride in their work, a high bar for quality, determination to get the job done, loves the customer/user, etc then it's a recipe for productivity and happiness. When it's in the hands of a person who constantly ships broken code, has no work ethic, blames or doesn't care about the user, is jumping on every newest fad, etc then it can kill a whole company or a department.

The only solution I've seen is hiring VERY defensively ("one bad apple..."), keep the team small, and keep the scope/focus very narrow. That's just not possible in the enterprise space though.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#235

Post by lr4444lr »

chubot wrote: post #109
rossdavidh wrote: post #41

Jared Diamond, in his book "The Day Before Yesterday", talks about how children in Papua New Guinea when he was an anthropologist there would play at making a garden or raising pigs. The kid would have a toy, wooden pig, and then eventually be given a piglet, and then gradually their "play" would become more realistic until it shaded into adult work. My daughter, as a youngun', wanted to play "coffeeshop" where she w…

Yeah I'm pretty sure that Christopher Alexander makes this point in one of his books, maybe A Pattern Language He says that suburbs are configured "wrong", in a way that's antithetical to life. Because the children go to school somewhere nearby, where they are babysat, and the fathers (at that time) commute to work in the city. And the children have no idea what their parents do, and that is alienating. The configura…

I fail to see how living in a city changes this substantially. The white collar knowledge work that's driving the economy of modern cities is not something kids there see much of either.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#236

Post by opportune »

withinboredom wrote: post #209
opportune wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the high paying professions outside of software require the degree and that first job to break into them. Sure for banking and consulting it’s not a hard requirement, but it’s much harder to get into them with bad grades or a degree from a non-target school. It’s really only in the software bubble where people are able to prove themselves to break into it, due to various factors including engineers being in v…

> but they still look at where I went to college (based on high school achievement) and my first job (based on college achievement) and subsequent jobs (much easier to get because of where I worked at my first job), etc. No one has ever asked me about my schooling and I haven't had a school on my resume in over 10 years. Do they look at it because you put it on your resume?

I am still early in my career. And many jobs I have applied for/am interested in unfortunately index on having gone to a good school. I’ll probably never work for one but I’m pretty interested in HFT and quant hedge funds, and have interviewed with them before, and am of the understanding that having a name brand college on your resume is a soft requirement.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#237

Post by opportune »

caseysoftware wrote: post #223
opportune wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the high paying professions outside of software require the degree and that first job to break into them. Sure for banking and consulting it’s not a hard requirement, but it’s much harder to get into them with bad grades or a degree from a non-target school. It’s really only in the software bubble where people are able to prove themselves to break into it, due to various factors including engineers being in v…

"Sure nobody asks for my grades now that I’ve been out of college for a while, but they still look at where I went to college.." How do you know that? Do they mention it? I'm really curious on this one. Other than the rare alum, I haven't had anyone comment on my undergrad more than a year or two out of it. Recent jobs and projects make up the vast majority of any conversation.

To echo the sibling comment, it’s more for getting past screening than for anything involving interviews. Although it likely does add some implicit bias even for later interviewers/hiring managers who see my resume even if they don’t mention it.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#238

Post by prtkgpt »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #224
opportune wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the high paying professions outside of software require the degree and that first job to break into them. Sure for banking and consulting it’s not a hard requirement, but it’s much harder to get into them with bad grades or a degree from a non-target school. It’s really only in the software bubble where people are able to prove themselves to break into it, due to various factors including engineers being in v…

I really wish I hadn’t bothered studying electrical engineering at a mid-tier school. There’s zero EE jobs available for that kind of graduate. You just can’t get recruiters to look at your application. Half of my graduating class is stuck doing self-taught DBA work for the local bank, telephone pole, or health insurance company. It’s so frustrating.

I agree with you 100%. Almost all of my EE group of friends weren’t able to find jobs right away! Even internships were limited. Almost everyone learned coding languages in demand around Silicon Valley and were able to find employment! 4 years of EE went to waste. Sad.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#239

Post by distribot »

grahamburger wrote: post #196
asadlionpk wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait so how do I 'not-force' my kid into programming these days? Our generation didn't have roblox, youtube and minecraft to distract us much.

Our generation had distractions, too. TV, for example. I don't know the direct answer to your question but at least part of it is that 'not-forcing' your kid in to programming means they might just never be in to programming. My oldest is at least kind of in to programming (and also plays a lot of Minecraft and watches a lot of YouTube) my youngest two have shown zero interest in programing, but have interests of the…

Imo TV is so much worse than the kind of entertainment the person you're replying to listed.

The cable TV I watched as a kid was just garbage. I know it's still all ad driven, but the stuff kids watch now seems much more useful. Roblox is programming.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#240

Post by greghinch »

brhsagain wrote: post #131

Good essay overall, but this footnote in particular stood out to me: > [2] Tiger parents, as parents so often do, are fighting the last war. Grades mattered more in the old days when the route to success was to acquire credentials while ascending some predefined ladder. But it's just as well that their tactics are focused on grades. How awful it would be if they invaded the territory of projects, and thereby gave the…

It’s funny that he wrote this now living in the UK. As an American living in England for the better part of a decade now, it still shocks me how much grades matter in the hiring process for professionals with many years of experience. If you don’t get a first or at least a 2:1 in uni, and/or do poorly on your A-levels, it will hold you back for the rest of your life here
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