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Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

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Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#111

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

watwut wrote: post #78
homefree wrote: post #6

It's more about resilience and what sets the stage for it. He argues resilience is created through suffering (which plays into the idea that if you want to know who will be a good founder, ask about their childhood). It makes me curious though about the direction of the causality - how much is resilience actually about temperament and genetics vs. the environmental experience of suffering. Why do some people become r…

If you are low key insulting your child regularly, they won't de better then kids of parents who treat them well. Kids who think low of themselves usually don't even try. So, I am skeptical.

I think the truth is more subtle than that. I think suffering can act as a filter; some people able to build resilience while others are trapped by it and never improve. But I DO NOT think that suffering is necessary to build resilience, nor that suffering is necessarily the best filter to use. I think it is better to build resilient habits, such that if suffering is encountered one won't be filtered out, but not to seek out suffering in the hope that experiencing it will force resilience.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#112

Post by OldGuyInTheClub »

saulpw wrote: post #108
OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current crop of ultrabillionaires may lack many things but I don't think backbone is on the list. They are as ruthless as any robber baron or industrialist of old. They can buy, sell, and eliminate people and governments as they see fit. Good luck getting close enough to take actual or metaphorical aim.

The ones who "made" their billions, sure. Not their kids.

The Trump children haven't fallen far from the tree. Don't know about Bezos, Gates, etc. but if their kids (if they have them) were off doing socially redeeming works I'm sure it would be known. Private security is pretty good insulation against consequences, spine or no spine.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#113

Post by neilv »

matwood wrote: post #109
neilv wrote: post #74

Thinking of this as startup founder... > “People with very high expectations have very low resilience—and unfortunately, resilience matters in success,” Huang said during a recent interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations.” People with family money need much-much less resilience than those without family money. Compare... serial founder w…

This. And I'm sure many here can relate, but when I left home there was no home for me to ever go back to. Even just knowing that I had a childhood room available to crash in would have allowed me to take larger risks in my 20s.

Thanks for saying that. FWIW, you and people with whom your comment resonates are not alone. Situations like that are sadly more common than we'd think.

When I see someone extolling the virtues of adversity, I guess I'm wondering: Just how much adversity are we talking about here? I wouldn't wish too much of it upon anyone.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#114

Post by op00to »

sanderjd wrote: post #103
sahila wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1:1s are okay when you're an IC and have it with your manager. The problem is the flipside is when your manager has many ICs, then it doesn't scale properly. Imagine Jensen having 58 reoccurring 1-1s! In fact I see this with my coworkers, especially PMs, who have their schedules full of 1-1s daily. No doubt there's useful work that gets done in them _sometimes_, but I have doubts its efficiency over the long term wit…

Yes, but this is (IMO) just one of the important reasons that one manager should not have 58 direct reports. Now, maybe this is fine for someone who manages other executives, where the primary touch points can be, like quarterly budget and strategy reports or something (I honestly have no idea what people like this do day to day, so I'm totally guessing on this...). But out near the "leaves" of an org, managers exist…

There are almost certainly unwritten reporting lines at nvidia. No one can be an effective manager with 58 direct reports.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#117

Post by tester756 »

Draiken wrote: post #21
Ninjinka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a Taiwanese immigrant who graduated early and built his own company. I think he contributed some hard work himself.

That's somewhat irrelevant IMO. There are hundreds of thousands of hard workers (probably millions) that are smarter than him that will never become billionaires. The difference is: he got lucky. This is the nature of survivorship bias.

Luck is an intersection of preparation and opportunity

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#118

Post by Pet_Ant »

sahila wrote: post #98
Pet_Ant wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feedback is given constantly (up and down.). If you don't make time for things they rarely happen unless the people are particularly fired up about them. I don't even know who my current manager is to even reach out to. My coworkers don't unit test until reminded on the PR. I honestly forget to smoke-test until called out on it. So unless your culture is about feedback and everyone truly embodies that and is on boa…

Some of these seem a bit far-fetched and out of the norm. Not knowing your manager - do you even know what team you're on? Engineering culture dictates much more strongly regarding unit and other tests than constant human feedback. It's also easy to add automated lint coverage tests to your PRs, and creating a documented process to check whether smoke-tests, etc.

I know my team and project manager. I was sent the contact of my on-boarding buddy who is on my team. In a matrix organization, it's common to not have any day-to-day contact with your manager. In my current organization, I have no idea who they are. I'm sure if I signed into the HR help portal and looked up by profile it'd say who is my manager, but I've had no interaction with them. Just got an email containing my year-end evaluation, no conversation. Maybe there name was in the email, maybe it was just the app that sent it.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#119

Post by tester756 »

Draiken wrote: post #39
m3kw9 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So being unlucky makes one more qualified?

No? The point is: he's no more qualified than anyone else. Whatever he's saying is simply not reproducible and most certainly not what made him a billionaire. Otherwise we could all just replicate whatever any billionaire does and inevitably become one. That's not how it works though, is it? It's easy to say it was hard work that got you there after you're the 1e-20% that made it.

>The point is: he's no more qualified than anyone else.

On the other hand to what you're saying

He had to make fuckton of decisions over his whole time as a CEO and that's where it brought him, so he definitely had at least some idea, vision, direction supported by some traits.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#120

Post by tester756 »

Draiken wrote: post #47
cpach wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was luck involved? To some degree I guess. But come on, to say it’s pure luck, is that credible?

I'm not saying it's pure luck. I'm saying the only relevant part is luck. If you get billions of smart hard working people, you still only get a few hundred billionaires. The only differentiator is luck. You're one of the lucky that could migrate, went to the right schools, met the right set of people, were born in the right year and so on. It's purely the logical conclusion. Some people get inspired through quotes l…

>If you get billions of smart hard working people, you still only get a few hundred billionaires. The only differentiator is luck.

There are no billion equal people.

There are other differentiators than just opportunity: environment, background, culture, childhood, experience, vision and maybe traits.

>It's purely the logical conclusion. Some people get inspired through quotes like that, and it's probably good to lie to yourself that your hard work will inevitably pay off. But we should all know that it's ultimately a lie.

That's not a lie, it just doesn't guarantee success. But it increases probability (when you talk in general, not some specific person).

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