Why he is there and I am here
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Why he is there and I am here
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#2Yes, focus on your strengths. I like this quote:
"For years I have urged managers to concentrate their efforts in areas in which they are strong and to waste as little effort as possible trying to improve the areas in which they don't have much competence."
Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005), Austrian author of management-related literature
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#3This part is a little too ambiguous:
> I wanted to know why he can pull that off and I can’t. He’s 42; I’m 29. I asked what changed for him in the last 12 years. Was he always this good?...The first thing he said was this: Yeah, I was always this good. So were my cofounders...[but] I was also doing lots of stuff I wasn’t good at. The only thing I changed in the last 12 years is that I stopped doing those bits."
I think it's possible to think that part of being "good" is knowing "good" from "bad", or, "wisdom" as others might put it. I don't think it's necessary to think of "being good" as different from "being experienced"...as the two qualities are so tightly co-dependent in something like programming/designing/business-building.
It's an important distinction to make because I don't think we have to attribute the success of young hacker/entrepreneurs to plain raw talent. Did Facebook become the biggest network because Zuckerberg was the best PHP developer in all of Harvard? I think the young people who hit it big do so because they're in a phase of life when trying big risky new things is encouraged, and these provide opportunities and insights that are less available to a middle-aged person of the same raw talent.
So, if you believe in karma and a purposeful universe, there's a nice balance here...young creators have growing/hungry minds and fewer shackles...older creators have more wisdom...and so there's a great number of avenues to success for young and old.
(I'm leaving out luck/connections/privilege in this discussion, but they are obviously factors for young and old)
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#4Except 90% of jobs want to pidgin hole you. People have very little control over what they end up doing in their jobs. The market dictates. You can't just stop doing the stuff you don't like, and do the other stuff.
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#5This part is a little too ambiguous: > I wanted to know why he can pull that off and I can’t. He’s 42; I’m 29. I asked what changed for him in the last 12 years. Was he always this good?...The first thing he said was this: Yeah, I was always this good. So were my cofounders...[but] I was also doing lots of stuff I wasn’t good at. The only thing I changed in the last 12 years is that I stopped doing those bits." I thi…
Regarding luck, this was here on HN recently: "What if successful startups are just lucky?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794612
And the top comment (by pg): All successful startups are lucky, but they're never just lucky.
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#6Yes, focus on your strengths. I like this quote: "For years I have urged managers to concentrate their efforts in areas in which they are strong and to waste as little effort as possible trying to improve the areas in which they don't have much competence." Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005), Austrian author of management-related literature
This is in contrast to a lot of recent advice on improving cognitive skills, which tells us to do things that are hard, not those we are already good at (basically the old specialist vs. generalist debate).
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#7Well... sorry, but without more details, that's just fluff.
* How did they handle the stuff they weren't good at?
* Was this tested with other people? Is it possible to apply the method to people who were previously doing stuff they weren't good at and see results?
* With a startup, that does not have much money, the founders are responsible for doing everything. Presumably, they are not good at all of it. What should they do?
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#8Except 90% of jobs want to pidgin hole you. People have very little control over what they end up doing in their jobs. The market dictates. You can't just stop doing the stuff you don't like, and do the other stuff.
I don't know too many circumstances where you can take a $5 million payout when you're working for someone else.
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#9Yes, focus on your strengths. I like this quote: "For years I have urged managers to concentrate their efforts in areas in which they are strong and to waste as little effort as possible trying to improve the areas in which they don't have much competence." Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005), Austrian author of management-related literature
Another quote that comes immediately in my mind:
"97% of advice is worthless.".
Honestly, I can't think of any reason why a person must not extend his / her scope to different activities.
Re: Why he is there and I am here
#10Well... sorry, but without more details, that's just fluff. * How did they handle the stuff they weren't good at? * Was this tested with other people? Is it possible to apply the method to people who were previously doing stuff they weren't good at and see results? * With a startup, that does not have much money, the founders are responsible for doing everything. Presumably, they are not good at all of it. What shoul…
I think he means the general field of the startup catered to his skill set, not the entirety of the project.
Also with X amount of founders presumably if one person cannot say design the site, maybe another once can. I would assume not all of his cofounders have exactly the same skill sets, but complimentary ones.