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You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

paulgraham.com

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#21

Post by amanaplanacanal »

wavemode wrote: post #6
lordkrandel wrote: post #3

If I hear the argument of "naturality" and "natural design" I explode. We are "naturally" meant to die at 21, after getting whatever illness, never to move with massive transport, not even speak. 'cause all we naturally are is monkeys, right? AaaaaRGHHHH This argument makes me nuts

> We are "naturally" meant to die at 21 Not really? Historical life expectancies were low because it was so common to die in infancy and childhood (thus dragging down the "average"). For people who made it to 20, it was common to live past 60.

Yeah people get that one wrong all the time. They don't realize what a bad argument it is.

I'm guessing they are ignorant of historical facts and are just repeating what they heard from somebody else.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#22

Post by airstrike »

tetromino_ wrote: post #19
rglullis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of what processes and management was used for pyramid building For what, a glorified tomb? I fail to find anything in history that advanced the sciences or the arts through "collective effort of hundreds or thousands of humans". It's only for war or to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling class, never for the benefit of society at large.

> It's only for war or to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling class Consider Egyptian and Mesopotamian irrigation and flood management, Persian and Roman roads, Chinese canals...

Roman aqueducts, modern railroads, the moon landing, the LOTR films, CERN, or Wikipedia...

This seems like an open-and-shut case of failing to look for disconfirming evidence.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#24

Post by dangus »

This whole subject is very annoying coming from a wealthy capitalist of this type.

If PG thinks we weren’t meant to live this way, I’d like to see him out there fighting for universal housing, universal healthcare, universal education including no-tuition college, higher tax rates for billionaires and upcoming trillionaires, abolishing excessive wealth (e.g., we should tax all wealth and assets over $999 million 100% and/or force employee/community ownership of company shares of excessively wealthy individuals), abolishing for-profit prison labor, etc.

If you think this is extreme I would like you to explain how one person being a millionaire 300 times like Paul Graham is isn’t extreme. And then you realize that Elon Musk is as wealthy as 1000+ Paul Grahams.

I don't need to hear another VC giving a management seminar about how unnatural modern work is. I’d like to see them start changing people’s lives for the better, maybe they could start by advocating for the basic needs of the poorest people in our society or something like that.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#25

Post by Arodex »

wavemode wrote: post #10

None of what pg writes here is factually wrong per se, but he is obviously making a bigger deal out of a lot of these things than they really are (that is, he was obviously writing this to convince more people to start and join startups - hopefully at YC). Some people (most people?) are perfectly happy with just working a stable job within a giant corporation. Either because they are capable of still finding fulfillm…

In the decade I have been reading pg, my opinion of him is that he is like Nietzsche, or Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or Hayek or (the HN frequent front-pagers) Scott Alexander or Maciej: catnip for "free thinkers", a ready-made meal for people who crave thinking different; but ultimately fairly empty compared to the hype. Making grandiose theories, out of the flimsiest of observations, that fail at the slightest contact with reality, and only good at motivated reasoning.

Modern-day sophistry.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#26

Post by rglullis »

tetromino_ wrote: post #19
rglullis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of what processes and management was used for pyramid building For what, a glorified tomb? I fail to find anything in history that advanced the sciences or the arts through "collective effort of hundreds or thousands of humans". It's only for war or to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling class, never for the benefit of society at large.

> It's only for war or to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling class Consider Egyptian and Mesopotamian irrigation and flood management, Persian and Roman roads, Chinese canals...

What about them? These technologies already existed, the only thing that changed is that economies of scale enabled by the centralized power. Smaller tribes and villages could have gone by implementing more localized solutions.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#27

Post by ACCount37 »

wavemode wrote: post #6
lordkrandel wrote: post #3

If I hear the argument of "naturality" and "natural design" I explode. We are "naturally" meant to die at 21, after getting whatever illness, never to move with massive transport, not even speak. 'cause all we naturally are is monkeys, right? AaaaaRGHHHH This argument makes me nuts

> We are "naturally" meant to die at 21 Not really? Historical life expectancies were low because it was so common to die in infancy and childhood (thus dragging down the "average"). For people who made it to 20, it was common to live past 60.

Yeah, you were just meant to "naturally" have 7 children, of which 2-4 die before they get a name. But the ones who live? They might make it past 60.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#28

Post by amanaplanacanal »

lordkrandel wrote: post #3

If I hear the argument of "naturality" and "natural design" I explode. We are "naturally" meant to die at 21, after getting whatever illness, never to move with massive transport, not even speak. 'cause all we naturally are is monkeys, right? AaaaaRGHHHH This argument makes me nuts

I think there can be a middle ground here. Yes the appeal to nature fallacy is a thing. However, it's not obviously wrong to say that humans evolved in a specific environment, and to question whether moving them to a completely different environment is going to make their life worse.

We evolved living in smaller cooperative groups, and spending most of our time in nature. The farther we move away from that the more we might want to question whether any individual change is actually going to make our life better. Likely some tradeoffs are absolutely worth it and some probably not.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#29

Post by k_plankenhorn »

Reading this the day before I launch my own product. I built it over several months while working full time. The work I do on my own thing feels completely different than the work I do for someone else. One drains me. The other makes me feel like myself. Tomorrow I find out of the product works.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#30

Post by Aurornis »

Re-reading old Paul Graham essays is revealing for how much my startup experience has changed my views. I remember this essay resonating with younger me.

Reading it now, I spot the reader-directed flattery much earlier (it literally starts in the title). I also have years of experience with a couple successful and even more failed startup founders behind me.

Maybe this essay was discussing narrowly the breakout YC company founders like Dropbox, AirBnB, Doordash, and the other top successful CEOs they saw. Most things in venture capital focus on the survivorship bias of the best companies and forget the others.

My experience with startups has been the opposite: The founders who "weren't meant to have a boss" either because they told you so themselves or they failed out of big companies due to being unmanageable or fighting their boss were the people who also had conflicts with cofounders and early employees. They'd get into fights with investors and the one or two board members you get after early funding rounds. Since they'd never successfully let themselves be managed or work as a team, they didn't know how to manage other people.

Some of them saw the founder role as equivalent to being king, with employees as their indentured servants who owed them 16 hour days in exchange for 0.05% of their empire, vesting over 4 years.

I haven't been lucky enough to be an early employee at one of the unicorn startups, but the successful startups I was part of had mature leaders who did well in other companies before founding their own. The "not meant to have a boss" founders I worked for are the periods of my career I wish I could go back and erase.

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