- Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
- A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts
Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
241–250 of 454 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And the way he trampled people. Bill Gates is a respected philanthropist today, he too did all kinds of shady, ruthless stuff to get to the top. Everywhere I look, same story - Amazon, Facebook, Google... The only big company I think is okay is Costco - either th…
sounds cynical but I'm shifted to believing not. If you don't do it there will always be someone else who will. Not to say you should, that's a personal choice of course, but in a competitive environment there will always be someone or lots of someones who will do anything.
This is why its vital to make unethical corporate malfeasance costly. Meaningful fines and criminal convictions for individual executives responsible for law breaking, wage theft, and intentional violations of regulation, provide meaningful deterrent. In their absence tax evasion and white collar crime become normative, which changes the game for anyone working in executive level roles.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Success comes from hard work and perseverence. Success comes from being at the right place at the right time. Both of these statements can be true at the same time.
I would say that hard work and perseverance create the foundation, but timing and opportunity often determine the outcome.
Yes. Although I suspect many would disagree since there's an entire subreddit dedicated to them! r/antiwork
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#244The Soul of a New Machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
This is a good one. I read it twice just to experience the 70-80s development atmosphere. The daughter of Tom West did complain on Reddit a few years ago that Tom neglected them during the period, but I still admire such personality. The same admiration goes to David Cutler in "Showstopper".
Tom was very intense. Dotted line worked for him for a while. Latterly he had an internet-related effort that didn't pan out (welcome to the crowd) but also was fairly instrumental in CLARiiON RAID disk arrays and an early NUMA architecture, neither of which ultimately saved Data General but probably helped keep it running for longer than it otherwise would have.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#245“Walt Disney” by Neal Gabler. The man was reinventing himself through his life. Disney is sort nowadays stereotypical corporate americana but by god, it actually was started by the whims, passion, skill & vision of Walt. A must read imo to anyone interested in creation and building.
Walt Disney's story was always fascinating for me! How one person's vision could shape an entire industry and cultural legacy
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#246[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#247American Genesis covers a few inventors around the turn of the century 1900, including wright bros IIRC, inspiring stuff.
in the fiction realm i think the martian fits the bill too!
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#248Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT g…
I'd recommend Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It covers the trials and tribulations as well as the brilliance and ruthless tactics taken to build Standard Oil.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And the way he trampled people. Bill Gates is a respected philanthropist today, he too did all kinds of shady, ruthless stuff to get to the top. Everywhere I look, same story - Amazon, Facebook, Google... The only big company I think is okay is Costco - either th…
Aaron Greenspan created the early version of what Facebook became, and has loudly criticized the zero-sum tactics used by Zuckerberg, Gates, and other billionaires: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_7... Some interesting books in this category: * Masters of Doom. It’s about John Carmack and the team that built Id Software * Einstein. By Walter Isaacson, author of the Jobs biography. Einstein’…
I read the Einstein biography. Highly recommended. But to the parents point, I came way think Einstein was a huge asshole, especially given his pop culture representation as a kindly old grandfather type.
Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things
#250My favorite on this topic is The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. It’s a deep dive into the emergence and evolution of the oil industry. Technological innovations, financial developments, political shifts and so on.
I've been finding The Prize surprisingly light on technical details - I'm 1/3 of the way through the book and half way through the chronology of the oil industry and it hasn't even mentioned a distillation column. Does it get more technical?