271–280 of 301 posts
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Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but I wonder how many of the folks bashing this guy thought it was brilliant how Steve Jobs pressured his engineers by saying “If it would save a person’s life, could you shave 10 seconds off the start up time?”
This guy is no Steve Jobs
The whole "just get it done" thing sounds impressive, but it doesn't hold up in reality. Just cure AIDS. What are you waiting for? People are dying! Get that cure finished by Monday.
Also note that there's a large border zone where things are possible but require sacrifice. They could get it done by sacrificing their leisure, their health, their social status, their unrelated duties, their morals.... It's up to them to decide how much of that is worth it. This is not a decision to take lightly.
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Because his other employees are working other jobs or, as "Sebastian" points out, in classes. That's why. He's not willing to sacrifice his other project, but he's asking them to sacrifice theirs. If you're asking people you're leading to make sacrifices you're not willing to make, you're a bad leader. Period.
Ok, that's the context you picked up on. I did not. What I got was that he set a timeline for project A. But that timeline did not work out. Now Sebastian is busy with project B. To empower the team on project A, he gives them a cc and the decision-making authority to get the project going. He also throws in some hannibal and "joker" stuff to rally the troops and make a point about sticking to commitments, forging th…
This sounds terrible. I would be very unhappy with my life if my job involved regularly receiving emails like this.
Telling someone not to go to their university classes so that they can crunch on your $generic_web_app should be a jailable offense.
To say that is to miss the point completely. He's not telling someone not to go to their classes, he's illustrating the sort of behaviour change necessary between "I tried" and "I did it". He doesn't "want a cookie" for working 20 hours on a Sunday night, he's illustrating the attitude shift between "I tried" and "I said I'd do it, so I did it".
Are they really jokers, or were the tasks unreasonable in the first place? The only way to know is to understand the tasks in detail, which I suspect the author doesn't. The whole "just get it done" thing sounds impressive, but it doesn't hold up in reality. Just cure AIDS. What are you waiting for? People are dying! Get that cure finished by Monday. Also note that there's a large border zone where things are possibl…
Yes it does, you're just not reading it properly. Assume you're being attacked by a wild animal, which attitude is more helpful out of the following?
1) I will do anything to overpower it and kill it, or any acceptable substitute such as distracting or trapping it, or escaping in any other fashion.
2) Well, it might be too powerful for me, and maybe I'm too tired, and if it's getting dark I can't see it as well, and I guess I'll try, but it's unreasonable to think I can win, and in this situation having precisely accurate beliefs is my highest priority, so I'll start off by assessing how energetic it looks and estimating how powerful it is before I start doing anything, if it's too big I won't bother.
It's "duh" obvious that in a survival situation, the former might get you out, the latter might not. It's "duh" obvious that you might not win, whatever you do, but that's not relevent because you don't get points for trying, you either survive, or you die.
Now, comparing a survival situation to a project, or a company, or any everyday life situation, isn't really a fair comparison. But comparing the attitude you hold can be a fair comparison.
By your reply you are implying the OP is so dense they don't understand that some things can't be done. Do you honestly think that's true? You're giving zero credit to their intelligence at all.
The "just do it" attitude is not supposed to be telling you that "you can do anything rah rah just will it and it will happen, laws of physics and human limits be damned".
It's supposed to be telling you that hurdles are OK, you will meet them, and you can jump them, or go round them, or plough straight through them, or move them, or pay someone else to move them, or rent a car and drive through them, or burn them down, or argue the race to different track with different hurdles, or setup your own athletics federation and recruit athletes and viewers for races without hurdles, they're all fine, but doing nothing won't help, nor will giving up. If you want to solve a problem, getting points for trying won't get the problem solved.
"Just get it done - you can" isn't meant as a literally true fact you have to agree with, it's a helpful attitude to hold and act on even while knowing it's not literally true.
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he's a complete egotist "Whenever I compared myself to people similar to me, it wasn’t even close. I worked more, accomplished more, produced more, did more meaningful things, was traveling the world. I read more books, did more writing, was generally healthier and more disciplined, spent my time well. I was the top 1% for my age, and even better than that if you measured me against people from similar backgrounds."…
This is very far fetched armchair psychology but people driven _THAT_ incredibly much are usually not fueled by positive energy (alone). Together with the almost compulsive comparing to other people, sounds a lot like coping mechanisms for an inferiority complex or worse. OP should consider some therapy to learn about why he is so focused on comparing to others and why he is so hell-bent on work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To say that is to miss the point completely. He's not telling someone not to go to their classes, he's illustrating the sort of behaviour change necessary between "I tried" and "I did it". He doesn't "want a cookie" for working 20 hours on a Sunday night, he's illustrating the attitude shift between "I tried" and "I said I'd do it, so I did it".
This is such Americanized bullshit. There's no difference between the two.
The outcome may appear no different - success or failure - but the mental state is different, and the path to the outcome may be.
This is the same dude who ripped into patio11 for not living up to his potential. Personally, I would feel that HN can do without this tone-deaf self-importance.
Our language, our culture has "self-importance" as a negative attribute. It's ridiculous.
Like yourself. Feel that you are important! What are you living and fighting and dieing for, if you feel unimportant and think everyone else should too? That's no way to be. :(
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written a lot of brilliant code that's running the guts of a couple businesses and maybe even an East Bay school district still. Even without revealing your identity or violating your privacy, this is more substantive information about your career accomplishments than I can find about Sebastian. Maybe it's there and I'm just too stupid to figure it out. In which case there is a simple solution: You (or anyone else) c…
Er, I'm not looking to fight any kind of fight or make anyone look like a fool. I just wanted to point out that dismissing someone because you don't know about their accomplishments (or lack of) is probably going to mean that you're going to miss out on some pretty great people. (For clarity: generic "you" in this case, not specifically you; and I'm not lumping myself in with "great" people.)
The problem with keeping everything quiet about your accomplishments is that HR departments and company owners won't know anything about you and you may get passed up on jobs as a result.
As a result, the people that lie or don't actually have good accomplishments get better jobs because they have better self PR.
You can fight it all you want, but if someone doesn't know anything about you, they most likely won't want to hire you either. Being connected on linkedin and through old co-workers and people that know all about my accomplishments has helped me find many great jobs.