Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The days are long but the decades are short

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 406 posts

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#181

Post by rimantas »

putzdown wrote: post #32
samsolomon wrote: post #3

Those of you on HN that are past the 30+ mark. What would you add to this list?

Your twenties are the age of proving yourself. But this is a self-defeating goal: a person worthy of the respect and success you yearn for doesn't need them as badly as you do. Your thirties expand and narrow your world: expansion into parenting (for many) and to richer relationships, if you can survive them, with spouses. But now you know your limits, and the sky is no longer it. There's a contraction of options, bu…

You should replace "Your" by "My".

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#182

Post by kenjackson »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #96
mortality wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

34yo here. Experience something horrible. I grew up in a ridiculously perfect fantasyland. My parents, who have an ideal marriage, told me I was the best at everything, encouraged every dream I had, paid for college and insulated me from all of life's difficulties re: money, stress, etc. To make matters worse, I excelled right along with the praise -- made good grades, got into a top-10 college, started a company aft…

> My parents, who have an ideal marriage, told me I was the best at everything, encouraged every dream I had, paid for college and insulated me from all of life's difficulties re: money, stress, etc. Related to this: if you have kids yourself, or you're in a position of providing guidance for kids, keep providing a safe and consistent environment for them yourself , but teach them that the world is not fair, that adu…

This is a place where sports are great for kids. They will almost certainly lose. They'll meet kids that are better at the sport. They'll get hammered, bruised, scraped. They'll have to get back up and keep trying. They'll want to get back up and keep trying. To quote Snoop Dog, "Are you hurt or are you injured?!"

Sports, IMO, are one of the best ways that families that have everything "put together" can show their kids some adversity. And for kids, everything is local. So while losing a basketball game, isn't like a dad losing a job, for the kid it can still seem like a really big deal.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#183

Post by tspike »

guelo wrote: post #144
simi_ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the counterexample - I like letting capable people as loose as possible, and more often than I'd like this backfires. I'd appreciate some effective pointers on how to deal with this issue.

You only need one metric: is the job getting done. Everything else is a distraction.

How do you measure that?

My team just took tons of heat because there was a complex performance issue that needed our full attention. We clearly communicated that we would need a large chunk of time to solve it, and while we tried to stay responsive, a lot of stuff had to just get ignored for a while to be able to make any progress on it.

We're finished now, and what we did will eventually save the client literally months of time over the long run, but because we weren't constantly placating the people who wanted to see the job "getting done," we put ourselves at risk of losing the contract.

All's well that ends well, I guess. We finished the task, and now we're back to churning through the high visibility low-effort issues and everyone's happy again, but all of those small issues combined don't have as much impact as the big task we just finished.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#184

Post by vonmoltke »

mathattack wrote: post #172
vonmoltke wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why bother with an office at all? We have discussions here about remote work and private offices disrupting team communication, but if your team isn't all in the office at the same time I don't see how that is any better.

There's a lot of space between "Don't be 5 mins late" and anarchy. My firm is "10-5 is encouraged, but there's some flexibility, and be available early morning or late night to accommodate customers and employees in other locations."

"Come when you want" sounds pretty close to anarchy to me.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#186

Post by testingonprod »

johnward wrote: post #97

" On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work." How do you fix this? For the last 10 years of my life I've basically woken up each morning and wished I hadn't. I don't like what I do. I can't afford to not do it anymore. I don't even know what, if anything, I would actually enjoy waking up for.

What do you do?

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#188

Post by JoblessWonder »

innguest wrote: post #42
MrZongle2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Father of two here. It's true that having a child forces any responsible adult into revisiting their priorities, and some things that seemed important before parenthood suddenly aren't . I don't think it eliminates a desire to be successful: I think that it changes the parameters by which you determine success. And having a child throw up/mess on your nice clothes and shower the inside of your nice car with food and…

> It is worth it, and anybody without kids who says otherwise knows not of which they speak. That's some gross generalization. Any childless bachelor could know what the "path" is like by staying over with a friend that has a child and helping out for some time. On the other hand, parents that walk the path and later find out they're not cut out for it, have to suffer quietly, and can't voice their true opinions, bec…

> Any childless bachelor could know what the "path" is like by staying over with a friend that has a child and helping out for some time.

I'm childless and I don't really agree with your point. Staying with a friend that has a child and helping out isn't the same as having a child. You are able to (and will) leave at some point.

A parent has to deal with the, in my opinion, heavy knowledge that this human being's continued existence and future is mostly in their hands. That small and large decisions will now have small and large consequences for not just themselves but for their child/ren. It changes your perspective on just about everything because of this and most people can't fathom that change (is the argument.)

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#189

Post by vonmoltke »

rifung wrote: post #169
vonmoltke wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why bother with an office at all? We have discussions here about remote work and private offices disrupting team communication, but if your team isn't all in the office at the same time I don't see how that is any better.

I like coming in the office to be honest. I prefer face to face communication and also usually am much more productive at work than at home. I think it's just easier to get into the mood when I'm at my desk at work. Also, even though not everyone comes in at the same time usually there are "core hours" where everyone is expected to be in the office. At my last job this was from 10-3. I don't think it's too unreasonab…

> Also, even though not everyone comes in at the same time usually there are "core hours" where everyone is expected to be in the office. At my last job this was from 10-3. I don't think it's too unreasonable for a team to be able to find some time when everyone can be in the office, especially when it's only a few hours long.

I don't think it's unreasonable, either. In fact, I think it's necessary to run a successful business with more than one person. However, it's not "absurd" to have some definition of late or to expect some consistency in when particular people arrive. That said, the original described case is overly and unnecessarily rigid.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#190

Post by lamuerteflaca »

astrocat wrote: post #68

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will b…

I'm not part of the elite. I do what I love even if that means I'm broke. Saying that you cannot do what you love because you are not priviledged are just excuses. Sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed otherwise don't whine. Find a way otherwise you were never meant to do it if you give up too easily.

Most people are just talk though. They will do what they love if you hand them everything in a silver platter. Well the universe doesn't give a damn about you. You are just star waste.

Post reply on HN