I kept waiting for the virgina woolf reference, but it never came…
One (of the many) things that irks me about most of the writing from SV-bigwig-types: they almost never cite anything.
A Project of One’s Own
241–250 of 384 posts
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#242Another aspect of personal projects is that if they’re truly enjoyable they can be a kind of salve for burnout.* If you feel like you can’t even open your IDE, a personal project can generate the excitement that reinvigorates your passion. There’s also less of a speed limit with personal projects — the things like: “before you go down that road let’s talk with X; hold off on that idea for now; let’s wait until...” Th…
Paul Graham's essay really resonated with me - I was saying 'yes, yes!' as I read every sentence. But I think the most important bit for me is in your comment: "This freedom is conducive to learning new things."
I have many projects; I've always been this way. School work was interesting (sometimes) but things only got really interesting when I took something from school and turned it into something of my own. Like the time I decided that while atlases were really interesting, building my own atlas with different continents and countries would be much more fun[1]. Or the thing that happened when, after a couple of weeks of starting to learn French I decided: I can do better than that![2].
I taught myself how to build websites not because I wanted a job building websites - it turns out that building other people's websites is quite boring, though the money comes in useful. I learned to code because I wanted to show off my work on my projects to other people - even if the displays looked nonsensical (or, as family members have suggested: a waste of time). For instance I've learned a lot about designing and building fonts, and had much enjoyment doing the work, even though the end products will never be used by anyone else[3][4]. The face that, as a consequence, I can now have heated arguments with designers about font kerning issues is a useful byproduct of my hobby, nothing more.
[1] - Example map: http://rikweb.org.uk/map/images/bigmap.jpg
[2] - I called the result Gevey: http://gevey.rikweb.org.uk/
[3] - Example font: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/oyis/index.php?page=script
[4] - Another example font because this one is a bit mad: http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/wakat/index.php?page=script-...
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#243Earlier 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.
You are right: you can't get recruiters to look at such an application. This applies to CS as well, not just EE. They only look at the top 10 or so schools.
The trick is to get a job without a recruiter looking at your application. The only way they'll help you is to speed up the trip your resume takes to the bin. Your task is to bypass them.
However, once you get your first job in the Valley everything changes. Suddenly the very same recruiters will spam you with offers. They operate like web scrapers: ingest resumes from top 10 CS school grads OR employees of SV companies :)
So how does one get such a job? You'll probably have to take a chance on a small company that doesn't have a wall of recruiters yet and talk to the people who actually need to hire someone. Show them a project that will impress them.
PS: there are probably good recruiters out there, but the chances of meeting them are slim. Personally I'd go with the "bypass" heuristic for the first job.
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#244Good 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…
Tiger parents A largely Chinese-American concept, the term draws parallels to strict parenting styles ostensibly common to households in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. (wikipedia) The idea behind tiger parents is that Asians earn more money. And it's true, but not the whole store. But the problem is that average Asian incomes are pulled up by Indian-Americans. Chinese-Americans earn less than many Europea…
I think the idea behind it is the parenting approach. A hypothesis about it is that it results in children earning more money, but that's not inherent to the concept.
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grades still matter for the vast majority of people who aren’t born into mega rich families. Most people don’t become Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and even those that do benefit greatly from the pedigrees that academic achievement opens up (going to top colleges, working at desirable employers, although grades matter little there unless you’re right out of college). For everyone else grades are still used for trackin…
Grades don't matter. They matter if you really want to follow the beaten path. Sure, go ahead... join McKinsey or something like that. Being good a learning matters. Being good at executing matters. Being good at communicating matters. Being good at leading matters. Grades and credentials are just gatekeeping invented by people that are worse than talented people. Grades are for status not for wealth and even much le…
For most people the beaten path is how they get on the ladder towards building wealth. You can always hop off the well worn part of that ladder but you can’t easily get back on it once you’ve fallen off.
You can feel that way regarding status vs talent if you want. Reality to me indicates that learning and execution are only important if you can get yourself into a position where you can use them. If you are a peon it’s quite hard to make a difference in the world even if you have those in spades. The way you find yourself in such a position might vary but going through the well worn path is tried and true.
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a father of two kids who enjoyed this article, I clicked on the comments thinking, "I bet the top one is a criticism of PG." I don't understand how a predictable snide remark about PG's writing elevates this conversation. If the purpose of writing is to be read and to provoke thought and action, PG is a great writer.
Same thought. PG gets held to a higher standard than anything else on here. If some random smart person put up the same article, everyone would congratulate them for at least the effort. I can't tell if PG's (cultivated) simple style makes people think the "idea" is simple. In any case, even if people don't like something, they don't usually go out of their way to tell the author, especially when it is something as p…
> PG gets held to a higher standard than anything else on here.
This is a crazy statement to me. I'm sure you believe it, but I have the exact opposite impression: that if the majority of his stuff were posted anonymously on another domain nobody would notice or care.
> even if people don't like something, they don't usually go out of their way to tell the author
I think people do this because of the outsized home-crowd effect. His stuff is always (IMO) disproportionately upvoted here so that entices a reaction.
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#247Good 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
Interesting. Mileage may vary by company / area of work. I didn't go to Uni and went straight to work. Got a few A-levels but nothing special.
Wasn't even asked about them for my first job.
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#248Good 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…
My son and one of his friends spent a huge portion of their stuck-at-home time during the pandemic playing minecraft.
It turns out a lot of what they were doing while "playing video games" was learning how to make really complex and unique game scenarios using minecraft command blocks and redstone -- essentially creating both a RPG PvP arena and a multilevel party dungeon crawl w boss fights.
I run a small minecraft server for them to play and experiment on and I've resisted the urge to try to teach them anything about setting up and running servers, backing up data, or using text editors with syntax highlighting or source control to edit and preserve their command block commands.
I just show up for demos and let them know how cool what they're doing is and backup and reboot the server as needed.
I've messed up plenty as a parent but i think not trying to turn their interest in programming within minecraft into a learning experience has been one of my better decisions.
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
FYI: it's spelt segue . Segway is the brand-name of a self-balancing wheeled contraption that was supposed to revolutionize urban transportation 2 decades ago, but only saw success in the mall-cop niche.
Yikes! I guess I've never seen "segue" in writing before, always spoken. I didn't know!
I feel you! I mostly suffer from the opposite problem (seen words in writing by never heard them spoken, and end up pronouncing them wrong).
Re: A Project of One’s Own
#250Good 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…
> I never told any adults what I was doing until I was nearly an adult myself, out of fear they'd ruin my hobby like they did everything else.
I dropped out of college and was ~4 years into a successful career before it clicked with parents and other "adults" of what I had done and what I had "thrown away".
Having been through 3 serious tech jobs and dozens of interviews only one company rejected me due to my lack of a degree - Capitol One.
All said however I do think about going back to complete my degree at some point as I expect as my career progresses to upper upper management it might get in the way.