A Project of One’s Own • Hacker News Board

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#351

Post by tsukikage » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #292

greghinch wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a developer? Nobody ever asked me anything about my education. Maybe you need to find the right workplace. And this is still if you're doing the employee way. You can find other ways to create value in society and make money out of it.

Agree.

Anecdata: am doing interviews with prospective new people right now.

Things I care about in my software engineer hires (for whom this is not their first job):

* that you're able to talk about stuff you've done in the past, involving diving into technical detail at will, and showing some understanding of what was happening one level of abstraction below/above whatever bit you were working on. (I don't actually care what you did. Don't tell me proprietary stuff. I want to know that you understood what you were doing, why you were doing it, what it depended on and what depended on it, and that you are able to communicate this to me.)

* that you're familiar with the languages/tools/environments you said in your CV you are, and are able to communicate this to me

* that you have some general data structures+algorithms awareness, and ability to apply this knowledge to at least trivial problems rather than merely recite the textbook contents on demand

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#352

Post by speapr » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

quartesixte wrote: post #305

roland35 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "Tiger Mom" became popular when Amy Chua (Chinese American) wrote a book about how she pushed her kids hard. I am sure the term existed before but I am not sure! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Chua

As an aside, it’s really strange how this book picked up so much steam at its time of publication. The book mostly centers around the mom pushing her two kids to be world-class violinists and her pushing causes one of her daughters to abandon the instrument. [1] If, anything, it’s a cautionary tale. [1] the violin is an incredibly difficult instrument to begin with and becoming a world-class violinist requires a metr…

She has since written some extremely questionable things about race and identity, and been credibly accused of grooming her law students to be sexually harassed both by her own husband and by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#353

Post by speapr » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

99_00 wrote: post #179

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…

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…

But this still isn't the whole story. The Chinese-American population is bigger and more diverse than the Indian-American or Pakistani-American one. There are lots of families in all these groups where the generation that immigrated to the US was well-educated and professional. Even if that generation had to work extremely hard to get a foothold in the new country, the children benefited both from the high education level of the parents, and from the hard-working/aspirational mentality of the recent immigrant, and (she argues) from the traditionalist approaches to discipline and education which the parents brought with them.

These are the people whom Amy Chua is talking to and about.

The average Chinese-American income reflects relatively fewer of these highly successful immigrants, because there are many more Chinese-Americans who arrived in the US poor and with few options. That doesn't disprove what she said.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#354

Post by bentcorner » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

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…

My kid is in University right now and is doing an internship - recently he's been getting deep into contributing to an open source mod for a game, and I'm worried it's distracting him from his internship work and ultimately his final year of school. I see him on steam during the work day playing the game he's modding and he's taken time to show off his modding work and how it's put together - he's really proud of it, and honestly I am too.

I've been tempted to say something to him to make sure he balances his time appropriately and fulfills his other commitments.. but maybe I'll let it go a little while longer. I think he's getting a lot out of his project and I don't want to discourage him.

I suppose ultimately he's an adult and should make his own decisions and suffer his own consequences. But I worry.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#355

Post by eloff » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #300

borroka wrote: post #296

"This is why it is a mistake to insist dogmatically on the 'work/life balance'. In fact, the phrase 'work/life' alone embodies an error: it assumes that work and life are distinct." A beaten horse if there is one. It's not a matter of being dogmatic or seeing the 6 sides of a die. It's that, as PG says between the lines, for most people there is no particular excitement about work. For some it depends on the working…

> It's that, as PG says between the lines, for most people there is no particular excitement about work. It's because "most people" earn money by selling their labor out of a finite 24-hour day, but PG is a Venture Capitalist whose capital works 24/7.

Wow, that's spectacularly missing the point of the essay. Did you even read it?

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#356

Post by eloff » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

borroka wrote: post #296

"This is why it is a mistake to insist dogmatically on the 'work/life balance'. In fact, the phrase 'work/life' alone embodies an error: it assumes that work and life are distinct." A beaten horse if there is one. It's not a matter of being dogmatic or seeing the 6 sides of a die. It's that, as PG says between the lines, for most people there is no particular excitement about work. For some it depends on the working…

It's an interesting point that you make, there are definitely differences in personality in how we approach work.

I think you could learn to like putting in 12 hour days if you were working on something that you enjoyed sufficiently that it didn't feel like work. I feel that way sometimes with side projects ( read attempts to bootstrap a software business.) Sometimes I have to drag myself away from it, and I think about it when I'm showering, eating, on vacation, or even sometimes during sex (that last one doesn't end well.)

I was like PG in that I never played sports or did exercise, and was terrible at both, but now I'm a gym rat. So people can change.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#357

Post by SuoDuanDao » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #165

dpogorniy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because parents are afraid that their child won't be competitive enough to have a decent life. If only parents were relaxed, if only they knew that their child can live full life without grinding through exercises. Then child just would pursue what they love, interested (unless it's unaffordable to their social strata). I wonder what we can do today to make this happen sooner. On the side note. There is a grea…

> If only parents were relaxed, if only they knew that their child can live full life without grinding through exercises. Isn't that how young people end up with liberal arts degrees saddled with debt they have little chance of ever repaying? I guess it might be a full life still but I haven't met many people in this position who enjoyed it.

I feel like most of those young people did liberal arts degrees because their parents pushed them to do university, for the same worries GP cited.

If children just loved reading classics and writing their thoughts on great works and thinkers of the past, I don't think their first thought would be to pay for a degree.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#358

Post by borroka » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #356

borroka wrote: post #296

"This is why it is a mistake to insist dogmatically on the 'work/life balance'. In fact, the phrase 'work/life' alone embodies an error: it assumes that work and life are distinct." A beaten horse if there is one. It's not a matter of being dogmatic or seeing the 6 sides of a die. It's that, as PG says between the lines, for most people there is no particular excitement about work. For some it depends on the working…

It's an interesting point that you make, there are definitely differences in personality in how we approach work. I think you could learn to like putting in 12 hour days if you were working on something that you enjoyed sufficiently that it didn't feel like work. I feel that way sometimes with side projects ( read attempts to bootstrap a software business.) Sometimes I have to drag myself away from it, and I think ab…

People can change, but in the end it's all probabilities and statistical distributions: it's much easier to be constantly exercising all our lives or working hard all our lives than to have a Damascus moment and radically change our ways (and it's much easier to move in the direction of less, rather than more, effort or commitment).

I don't want my comment to be seen as dunking on PG, who I only know through his work, which we all respect if not admire. But I remember seeing a picture of PG taken at one of the YC events a few years ago and immediately thinking " this physical condition is approaching heart-attack risk". From reading his tweets, from which it's clear how much he loves his kids, it's easy to come to the conclusion that we all have some sort of ongoing cognitive dissonance and convenient rationalizations for whatever behavior we support or defend. I could make up all kinds of rationalizations for why work-life balance is important and spending time with our families is fulfilling and cite that shaky study about people on their deathbeds who say they regret spending too much time at work and not enough time with their loved ones.

Yes, a more exciting work environment, with more agency, surrounded by brilliant people is more inviting (for some!) than working in a top-down, no-agency workplace. But most of all, I confess that I don't like to spend too much time working, which doesn't mean I love not doing anything, but that I don’t like working the way we normally think of it, which can include: managers, deadlines, commuting, finding someone to cover for us when we have to go to the hospital when a parent isn't feeling well, performance reviews, or the usual start-up issues we all know.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#359

Post by omarhaneef » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

shmageggy wrote: post #337

omarhaneef wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the majority of his stuff were posted anonymously on another domain nobody would notice or care. That may be true, but it does not contradict anything I said.

What? Yes it does, directly. You said he is held to a higher standard, and I gave a (hypothetical) example of how he is held to a lower standard. HN readers (IMO) give an outsized amount of attention and respect to his articles due to the author's name rather than the quality of the work, thus applying a lower standard.

We agree on attention, but the "and respect" part is the whole point of the what the poster I am responding to just said. (I get confused if that is the OP or GP)

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#360

Post by borski » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

lq313c wrote: post #318

jdmoreira wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is this not just an argument over terminology? I think most people realize that grades are just an approximate measure of learning ability. I doubt many parents would prefer that their kid cheated on every test to get straight A's rather B's from honest studying. When most parents tell their kids to get good grades, they mean "study hard and show me you learned", not "go get good grades by any means necessary". If th…

It is downright wonderful that you think “when most parents tell their kids to get good grades, they mean "study hard and show me you learned", not "go get good grades by any means necessary".”

That’s simply not true in many cases. There are tons of parents out there to whom the grade matters more than the learning. Those aren’t good parents, and mine weren’t like that (I would’ve been destroyed, frankly), but many of my friends’ were. I suspect the proportion is much higher than you’d suspect.