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Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

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Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#141

Post by ghaff »

mattjaynes wrote: post #76
petercooper wrote: post #54

I know this is just one person who was in a different time and under different circumstances, but I've found it inspirational to put age into perspective. Grace Hopper first entered computing at age 38, completed the first compiler at age 46, influenced the design of COBOL at age 53, wrote COBOL for the Navy through her 70s, retired from the Navy aged 80 and only then became a consultant for DEC. So for me , at least…

And to continue the Grace Hopper example... Remember that she transitioned to computing from being a Mathematics professor at Yale, so she was able to leverage her previous training into the new career. Try and do the same if you can. Leverage what skills you've already gained to switch into a career where they are a big advantage. Then you are starting nearer to those already in the field, not the beginning.

>Leverage what skills you've already gained to switch into a career where they are a big advantage.

Absolutely. In many cases, there are often a wide range of related/adjacent jobs that are significantly different in various ways but can nonetheless be a fairly natural transition. (Though key word can. I've seen examples that worked and examples that didn't.)

On the other hand, I'll go back to school and get a Masters degree in this very tangentially related STEM field is probably going to be a lot harder.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#142

Post by MilStdJunkie »

The 10k hour rule has been debunked many, many times.

I don't think Gladwell is intentionally a charlatan, but he's astonishingly sentimental given his choice of subjects, and notably, was never a practicing scientist.

At worst he's a fluffy-haired priest to the rentier class, paid to soothe the intellects of Manhattan financialist pirates in the same way William Sumner once stroked the egos of Carnegies and Rockefellers.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#143

Post by haspok »

Two additions to the many comments saying the 10k rule is bullsh*t:

1. To quote one of my favourite coaches: "Practice doesn't make you perfect. _Perfect practice_ makes you perfect."

2. It can save you enormous amounts of time if you find the right teacher and teaching resources (eg. books, courses, etc.). But how do you know which ones are the right ones - for you?

Also, note that you can certainly reach a fairly high level in almost anything you want, but it is much harder to improve on that. Unless you have talent or you started learning the thing in your childhood, there is definitely a glass ceiling, and it may be lower than you think. But then again it may as well be higher, and you don't know which until you try it. But then, of course, it is too late :)

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#144

Post by piscatorialvet »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #37

The 10,000 Hour Rule is misnamed. It's not a rule. It's a rough estimate. Also, when you read the small print, it does not guarantee success. It simply say that *if* you aim to achieve mastery - to be towards to the top of your given field - then expect to put in *at least* 10,000 hrs. It's a generalization and will vary from individual to individual and skill to skill. As a side note, I recently started reading "The…

Rules are rough estimates. Do this and this could happen or not. Roughly stating a generalization of consequences. Every rule breaker does not get punished and vice versa.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#146

Post by Bakary »

spoonjim wrote: post #139

The 10,000 hour “rule” is complete bullshit. I, for example, was a prodigy at art and a complete dunce at music. I got better at drawing much faster than my peers but I was more interested in music, where I simply could not figure out anything. Eventually that was frustrating and I gave up music but I can imagine that I would have been a world-class talent with 10,000 hours of drawing (I went into computer programmin…

Given Stable Diffusion maybe you made the right choice!

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#147

Post by just_boost_it »

toss1 wrote: post #140
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #86

In my admittedly still short life, I have started to notice something: you can broadly divide the world into two groups - those who do things and those who keep wondering if they should have done things. So for what’s worth, here is my advice to you: drop Gladwell and self-help books, if you want to and can switch to a new job, do it. Should it work or fail, you will have experienced trying. If you don’t feel like it…

YES!! If you have a deep interest and anything resembling the skills required, go for it. Perseverance is the most important characteristic. That said, Gladwell is completely FOS about the 10,000 hours — it bears repeating completely Full Of Sh*t. Not only is "mastery" ill-defined, but so is what counts as "practice", and it completely ignores that some people will after 10K hours fail to get to the top, and others c…

Gladwell's english was very approachable, so outliers was an easy and enjoyable book to read. I even believed it the first time I read it. Once I read his later stuff though, I noticed a couple of things that didn't quite add up for me, and that sort of shone a light for me on the pattern he was using. I wouldn't put any more weight on his work now than I would on a random blog from the depths of the internet.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#149

Post by pbhjpbhj »

andrew_ wrote: post #125
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #86

In my admittedly still short life, I have started to notice something: you can broadly divide the world into two groups - those who do things and those who keep wondering if they should have done things. So for what’s worth, here is my advice to you: drop Gladwell and self-help books, if you want to and can switch to a new job, do it. Should it work or fail, you will have experienced trying. If you don’t feel like it…

The older I get the more I recognize that most of the people I've encountered, in one way or another, have a great lack of confidence and courage.

Meh. You can be as confident as you like, if people won't take on staff as "juniors" who are older, then the whole process of retraining - wrt career change - has been a waste of time.

I've never been involved in corporate HR, I'd want advice. Similarly, if I was doing a bungee jump for the first time I'd ask someone to check my harness ... (to spell it out, you seem to be berating someone for doing a reality check, as if reality [of the jobs market] were open to someone to define individually; ignorance and confidence can be easily confused)

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#150

Post by djcjr »

That book is nonsense, so I would disregard it in this context.

Programming language matters. You can't really achieve expertise with some in any amount of time. Choose a simple language at first. Also, I recommend learning more languages than just one. It gets easier the more you know.

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