How to Do Great Work (2023)

Either A) he used a rhetorical device, or B) he tried to be relatable and failed (for you, assuming you represent the typical intended audience) or C) he tried to be relatable and succeeded, but you are not part of the intended audience he aimed the piece at. Which is 100%, absolutely, perfectly fine; there is nothing wrong in being in that "very ambitious" group of people Paul Graham is likely refering too. I am not even sure if doing great work is great life advice for the target group, depends on how measures "success at life" or however one would call it.

In any case; I think you will get the most out of the article if you do not pay the relatility too much thought: Even if C) would be true and you (or me or others) are indeed not part of the intended audience, I am sure there are still interesting thoughts in the essay on can think about and potentially apply to ones own life.

I didn’t read the whole essay, but it seems to be more like: find something you are interested in, interested enough to work very hard at it, and don’t worry about what others think too much. It seems basically true (and legitimately good advice), if a bit generic. It doesn’t seem particularly tied to start-ups or whatever.

I didn’t get much from it, but I’ve gotten that sort of advice my whole life, so it was a little boring. As a result of being bored, I skimmed it. As I skimmed it, it started to feel repetitive. It is possible that a deeper reading would reveal some non-repetitive aspect to the parts I found repetitive. It seems like a good blog post to give to a smart teenager.

Edit: I think we’ll get some dismissive responses here because most of the posters here are at least somewhat mid-career, so they’ve already gotten and acted on this kind of advice. Imagine reading it before college, though. I’d have enjoyed it.

I generally dislike PG's articles as very tone-deaf and billionaire-having-all-the-time-in-the-world centric, but this one was okay. Figured I'll give it a chance and I don't regret it (this time; a pleasant exception, usually I feel like I wasted my time reading his essays).

Things I do appreciate that are good-ish nuggets:

- Don't try to work on something "prestigious". I agree with that; a lot of people became poor out of ego, myself included a few times in the past.

- Working on something that interests you deeply is a great way to become a super specialist which is honestly a coin toss; it can make you a highly-sought-after expert commanding serious rates... or yet another burned out nerd who knows something very deeply that nobody wants to pay for. I mean OK, I love being satisfied and fulfilled but I can't be like that if I can't pay bills. So that passion is never the #1 priority and that's a fact of life for 99.9999%+ of humanity.

- Investing in something on the side a few hours a week sounds great until you wake up 10 years later _still_ not having the side hustle doing you $2000 a month. As above: coin toss. But I agree that's the right and the pragmatic strategy for working people. Success is not guaranteed and that's of course not a reason NOT to try. Still: work-life balance!

- Getting to the frontier and then filling the gaps is a solid strategy, yep. As per above: make sure you work on something people would pay for, though.

- When to be earnest and when to be [faux] sophisticated is generally not clear and cut. There are events during which you have to be a bit posh or nobody would take you seriously, and sadly those are often the events that might be life or death sentence for your new business idea. I think us the tech nerds are earnest way too much and too often, and don't know when to be "sophisticated". Me putting a formal shirt and pants and pretending to know more about a field than I really did, did net me money that my impostor syndrome screamed that I didn't deserve (but years later, with the objectivity that a brutal hindsight can give you, I absolutely did).

- Ownership of one's work is a great advice, probably the best one in the article... until you realize most startup CEOs understand this and will give you +30% more salary than everyone else because they love having somebody on a stable wage who does 80% of their work and does not ask for percentages of the Series A/B/C/D tranches. Nah, thanks. As we say on the Balkans (butchered translation): "The quality of the music depends on the quantity of the tip". I'm done taking your cause so seriously that I don't have time for my wife. Dangle $25k+ a month in front of my face and we'll talk.

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So my TL;DR is: yes, compound knowledge and work on what you like and try to make it a side hustle, absolutely. Put on some suit when you get to events. Don't always be super humble, that by itself can be a turn off and no you cannot afford to gamble your future on this so yes, sometimes be posh and sophisticated. It frakkin helps with some people! And I don't care if you don't want to be associated with them; many of them are gatekeepers of wealth so, deal with it.

I'll agree: passion shines through and wins people over. It's not enough, though. "Making it" requires making good decisions on multiple lanes.

'Great' is subjective. If you care about the same things as he does, a lot of his work is great. If you care about totally different things, none of his work is great.

Whatever you feel about it, it would be inaccurate to say that he has not found success. Clearly he has. So it is up to each person to decide whether or not any products of that success, including his writings, matches their own definition for 'great'.

I don't think PG posts are aimed at us normies. I do read his blogposts when they are published, and for all these years I've always thought that they were aimed at ambitious students and professionals alike, but with a certain pedigree/background.

When Ivy League educated VC billionaires tell people that they can do great things and change the world if they want, one assumption is that you already have to be pretty close to the in-group.