Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope) • Hacker News Board

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#121

Post by michaelochurch » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 1:48 PM UTC

iwallace wrote: post #116

michaelochurch wrote: post #108

I've come to the conclusion that success in business is like the game Rochambeau (Rock, Paper, Scissors). People will argue to death whether it's a game of luck or skill, and often it gets very emotional, with people who've had success attributing it to skill and the rest attributing their lack of success to bad luck. In reality, it's neither. It's a game of strategy in the academic, game-design sense (interaction ra…

Thank you for this post. I'm in nearly the same boat (41 years old, < 1M net worth, on my fifth startup with < 100k to show for those efforts) and watching seemingly complete idiots pass me by. I'm too old to be infuriated by the vagaries of chance, however, it does make me wonder if I've done something wrong. I suspect that the numbers are slightly skewed - that there are far fewer people having wild success than th…

The conclusion that I've come to is that VC-istan isn't actually technology, at least not in this current social-media fueled bubble. It's old-fashioned social climbing and self-promotion with a bit of technology in the back end.

Do startups actually succeed based on technical merits, or on how well they market themselves? In this social media bubble, it's the latter. I'm not going to claim that technical skill doesn't matter. I just don't think it matters as much. You can back-fill the technical stuff by hiring the right people (contrary to our overblown claim that non-technical CEOs have no hope of finding technical talent because they can't individually judge it) but if you build great technology and can't sell it, you never get off the ground.

It's exceptionalism that leads people to think that the VC ecosystem is in some way (or should be) morally superior to Wall Street, Hollywood, the fashion industry, or Madison Avenue. Sure, what we do is cerebral, but so was advertising in the Mad Man era. VC-istan isn't worse than these other industries, but it's not better. When you have a "creative" industry, there are a lot of opportunities to do great work and profit by doing so. But there are also smiling-idiot narcissists who pile in and fuck everything up because they think they're "creative"... and of course, what gives them this opportunity is that there are other idiots in power who will put them ahead of the people of substance like us because they don't know any better.

It's the expectation of meritocracy that makes us unhappy, but human organizations and ecosystems and societies all turn to shit over time no matter what so this is an unreasonable expectation.

There is a place for people like us, the virtuous soldiers who get rich slowly, building our skillset until we're just really good at a few things... but there's also a place for smiling idiots. And smiling idiots are always going to be the "cool kids", and it's the cool kids (not people of substance) who get those stupid TechCrunch articles written about their 7-Couric products. It's the expectation of fairness in human structures, which is just unreasonable at scale, that creates the unhappiness.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#122

Post by ygmelnikova » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 1:58 PM UTC

oijaf888 wrote: post #99

ygmelnikova wrote: post #45

Are these things the compass to success? That's rather depressing. I can relate a little. I dropped out in grade 11. Built N. America's first fully graphical ecommmerce site (1992), Canada's first Windows IIS webserver (sorry), country's first 56K internet access, $10M IPO in 1998, client list includes Eckhart Tolle and Oprah. So what. I recommend you learn success from those that who mastered it over the eons, and t…

What graphical ecommerce site was that? Given it predates Mosaic and the commercial use of the web I'm surprised its not more well known.

Before the interweb was popular they had this little thing called a BBS and RoboBOARD/FX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboBOARD/FX

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#123

Post by will_work4tears » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 1:59 PM UTC

bluedanieru wrote: post #4

Why are none of the sentences capitalized? It makes it difficult to read (so I didn't finish it). What I did read wasn't very interesting anyway, so no big loss.

I'm probably the opposite of Dave in some ways. I was never held back, but while people always said I was "smart" I was far from a prodigy. I never skipped a grade, though I was never held back either but it came close a few times. I did the military and didn't go to college until I was 26. I also never programmed or did web development until I was closer to 30. I'm a huge failure in that regard, I'll never, ever be the top 5%.

That said, at least I can follow 5th grade English conventions.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#124

Post by gosu » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 2:18 PM UTC

fromdoon wrote: post #53

Wired.com: How do you maintain your optimism? Musk: Do I sound optimistic? Wired.com: Yeah, you always do. Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work. Whatever the odds you face, there is nothing in life you cannot achieve, if you have committed yourself wholeheartedly to the cause. Old/Young. Experienced/Inexperienced. Adept/Inept…

What you sound is pleasing to me, but it also makes me anxious. As one of your listed role models might say, I don't know if it's really so helpful to pin such wild hopes to yourself. When I start feeling like a failure, it helps me to stop comparing myself to Napoleons, but rather to focus on exactly who I am now and what I want now, and to live according to my own personal life schedule.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#125

Post by kinleyd » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 2:31 PM UTC

arthurrr wrote: post #106

is74 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is already extremely successful, and not only in his career: " and at 40 hadn’t accomplished much other than finding a good woman who was foolish enough to marry me, and somehow managed to have two wonderful children that I was vastly unqualified to have fathered" So all he needs to enjoy the spoils of his success is to change his point of view. It can be done. But if it is not done, then it may be impossi…

Finding a good woman is a very difficult task, NP Complete I would say, depending on how you optimise. If you've solved that problem in your life, everything else is just noise. Starting a startup is trivial by comparison.

I concur. It is a difficult task, and sometimes you just get very lucky as well. Either way you find Mr/Mrs Right, and when you recognize and appreciate the fact, you are well on your way.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#126

Post by chiaro » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 2:31 PM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #90

count wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the type of competitive folks you talk about (of which I am definitely one), I think the Internet has really changed things - your 'scope' of competition is now 7 billion people , rather than the roughly 400-500 folks you could reasonably know in your 'home town'. Now, even in New Hampshire (to steal your example), you can subconsciously see yourself competing against folks in NYC or San Francisco or Beijing, who…

I think the message he's communicating is that he knows he hasn't fully committed himself ever. He's shied away from it, danced along the edges of it. But never done it. I'm of a similar age, and a similar childhood. I get where he's coming from, even though he's far more successful than me. He's comparing himself to what he knows his potential to be. Or what he believes it to be, anyway, which might as well be the s…

I agree. I've felt the same way for a long time, and still do occasionally. I guess I realized that I was only not committing myself fully because if I sabotaged myself (did work at the last minute etc) I provided myself with an excuse for failure. Because I'm moderately intelligent, I could get away with that all through high school and university, but eventually I had to radically change my outlook to actively embrace failure.

Putting everything into something and failing is better than succeeding without putting anything into it. Don't hold your passions at arm's length.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#127

Post by rockmeamedee » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 2:46 PM UTC

For all the self-deprecation in the post, I think we can all empathise, at the very least with:

> and so here I am: still standing in the arena, in hand-to-hand combat with demons mostly of my own > making, aiming to make a small dent in the universe. nowhere near a great success story, yet > fighting the good fight and perhaps helping others to achieve greatness as I attempt a bit of my > own.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#128

Post by chiaro » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 2:57 PM UTC

jim_kaiser wrote: post #96

simonsarris wrote: post #7

Well he's not a late bloomer to the vast majority of people. I think no matter your lot in life, if you're competitive, you get the feeling that you missed out on a lot that you could have accomplished. Stories of kids learning programming at 6, or starting companies at 16, etc, feed into this. Even I feel like I would be much farther "ahead" if I had only started programming before high school, if I had been more gu…

"it would have been easy at any point in this journey to rationalize my limited success, and accept being a small cog in a bigger wheel, at likely much better pay and much less stress. but I was still hoping I had a little fire in the belly, and maybe a little gas left in the tank to make something more of myself, before I ended up with just a broken spirit and a comfortable life. and so here I am: still standing in…

What struck me about that quote is that maybe he's approaching things from the wrong direction. Why make a dent in the universe? What explicitly do you hope to accomplish with that?

Not attacking personal philosophies here, but this seems to run along the same vein as the desire to be "famous for being famous". Focus on building something, on creation and life. All the dents you make will be relative anyway, because as many have said - there's always someone doing something better. First, know what you want to do, second, do it to the best of your abilities. The dent that makes on the world is dependent on a plethora of influences most of which will be beyond your control.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#129

Post by kinleyd » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 2:59 PM UTC

alexkearns wrote: post #89

At 33, I was single, penniless and back living with my parents. I had spent my twenties partying and getting drunk, somehow managing to carve out a career as a middling journalist during the sober bits. Journalism does not pay well and I was always teetering over the edge of my overdraft limit. In my early thirties, I sobered up a little and noticed that my career was going nowhere. I decided to sack in my reasonably…

Nice post. It serves as a good reminder that you can get more than one chance in life. It's not success or bust, the end. You get to pick up the pieces, reflect and learn, and continue successfully, however one defines success for oneself.

Re: Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope)

#130

Post by SethMurphy » Sun, Jul 08, 2012, 3:08 PM UTC

bluedanieru wrote: post #4

Why are none of the sentences capitalized? It makes it difficult to read (so I didn't finish it). What I did read wasn't very interesting anyway, so no big loss.

I find that people who don't capitalize, especially their names, tend to lack confidence in themselves. So in a way the lack of capitalization actually makes a point.

The other reason may be that he sees capitalization as unnecessary as punctuation already performs the same task (akin to the JS semi colon debate.)

Personally, I find it a bit arrogant to ignore such a basic grammar rule, but it does not bother me so much as to not read it.

I would like to know his reasoning behind it.