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The days are long but the decades are short

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#141

Post by PieSquared »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #114
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? As long as you have lived through some period of life and can see the consequences of the choices you and others have made during that time, you can give advice. If anything, a mid 20s to mid 30s individual giving advice on college would be more relevant than a 60 year old doing the same, because college has a whole has changed so much in the last ~40 years.

What are the major ways in which college in 2015 is different from college in 1975?

For one thing, it's much harder to pay your own way through college now (impossible, depending on who you are). [0] [1]

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/the-myt... [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/03/22/its-impossible-to-work...

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#143

Post by bengali3 »

> "having enough money so that you don’t stress about paying rent does more to change your wellbeing than having enough money to buy your own jet"

remember the old adage future billionaires of HNs: "if it flys, floats or flirts, it's cheaper to rent it".

Rarely does it make sense to buy a jet until you're utilizing over 100 hrs annually. Charter->JetCard->Fractional->Ownership

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#144

Post by guelo »

simi_ wrote: post #94
georgemcbay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you were effective at your job, said boss needs to examine what is important to him, slavish respect-mah-authortai-style following of rather arbitrary rules, or having a "bird-in-the-hand" competent employee who gets shit done (perhaps 5 minutes later than the boss-man would like). It is kind of sad how many boss/manager types still fail miserably on this point, and then complain about not being able to hire…

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.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#147

Post by VLM »

mathattack wrote: post #72
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #33

I was 5 minutes late to work every morning, because of taking my son to school in the neighborhood where our new house was being built. I didn't want him to have to move schools in the middle of the year. Boss said "This won't do. You'll have to examine your priorities." I thought about it all day, that night. Next morning I got to work (5 minutes late), went in his office, said "I examined my priorities. Work is #12…

I can absolutely see this at an investment bank, or at a job where physical presence is mandatory (such as a security guard, a teacher, or a bank teller). In a creative job like software, it's absurd. Especially when so many places say, "Come when you want".

As a contrarian view, I kinda like the strict schedule. Lets face it, you're going to have to suffer thru primate dominance rituals. This particular dominance ritual is well understood and easily worked around and isn't all that painful and usually isn't very punishing. What I'm getting at is the alternatives for the boss to throw some weight around and show who's boss are generally worse than a mere schedule.

"Oh, so that's your game. Well, I know it, can play it, can play it well. Bring it on."

Of all the situations to invoke the famous quote "Thank you Sir may I have another" I feel the best with a simple schedule.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#148

Post by georgemcbay »

simi_ wrote: post #94
georgemcbay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you were effective at your job, said boss needs to examine what is important to him, slavish respect-mah-authortai-style following of rather arbitrary rules, or having a "bird-in-the-hand" competent employee who gets shit done (perhaps 5 minutes later than the boss-man would like). It is kind of sad how many boss/manager types still fail miserably on this point, and then complain about not being able to hire…

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.

Are you sure the working relationship with the people "this" has backfired with wouldn't be strained anyway, even without the loose rules?

I'm fully aware there are people who are "smart" but don't "get things done". However (though I am lacking any rigorous data to back this up) my suspicion is that people in this category who are prone towards taking advantage of employers are going to do so no matter what and being lax about strict attendance rules won't have a substantial impact on it.

IOW, just because they are (forced to be) present from 9am-5pm or whatever the defined working hours are doesn't mean they won't spend most of that time fucking off on reddit on their personal cellphone or whatever and they would have been problem employees whether or not the rules were loose -- if anything I suspect having loose rules makes it easier to identify when someone is not pulling their weight because there's a lot of ways to appear really busy to others while doing nothing when you're actually physically present.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#149

Post by bbcbasic »

bengali3 wrote: post #143

> "having enough money so that you don’t stress about paying rent does more to change your wellbeing than having enough money to buy your own jet" remember the old adage future billionaires of HNs: "if it flys, floats or flirts, it's cheaper to rent it". Rarely does it make sense to buy a jet until you're utilizing over 100 hrs annually. Charter->JetCard->Fractional->Ownership

>> ...or flirts...

That is so not politically correct. It's funny.

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