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

Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

threadreaderapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 506 posts

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#171

Post by mLuby »

bambax wrote: post #39

> Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. This is oft repeated, but not always true. Take the Nazis (bear with me). The Nazis had the best execution ever . They almost drowned the whole British army, which had previously conquered the world. While fighting battles all over Europe and being one of the most bombarded country in history, they continued to produce tanks, planes, submarines, oper…

That Nazis were extremely efficient is a myth, which makes sense if you think about how they organized their government/economy. [1][2]

Though they were effective at killing large numbers of (defenseless) people…

Also they didn't lose the war because of some flaw in their ideology, they lost due to manpower and industrial shortages (inflicted by Soviet and Allied militaries) that limited their ability to wage war.

For more, I recommend watching the Hitler Channel (err History Channel). [3]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths...

[2] http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170903-why-people-think-ge...

[3] https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#172

Post by brucephillips »

> Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution.

This is wrong, and I'm surprised it's repeated so often. Some ideas are better than others. If you doubt this, ask yourself if, when starting a company, you would choose a random idea or your best idea.

Of course you would choose your best idea, which implies ideas have different value.

EDIT: I'm happy to debate this point with anyone who would otherwise downvote me. Critical replies welcome.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#173

Post by taejo »

Domenic_S wrote: post #156
taejo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In real English, as native speakers and good writers use it, allows "which" as as "that" in restrictive relative clauses (although it no longer allows "that" -- only "which" -- in supplementary clauses). See http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/001464... ("although there is a clear frequency difference between the dialect groups [British and American English], ... both that and which are grammatical…

Nope. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/which-vs-that/ http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/which-ver... http://www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/grinker/LwtaThat_Versus...

Those are exactly the "grammar checkers" and "pedantic pamphlets" that I referred to (Grammarly is literally a grammar checker). Why should we consider them right and Brontë, Dickens and Melville, and their editors, wrong?

That is not purely a rhetorical question. While I do think that Brontë, Dickens and Melville are right and the authors of your links are wrong, I also would like to know why you and many others think it's the other way round.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#174

Post by allenz »

compiler-guy wrote: post #123
allenz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about that fact. The author argues that programming schools should be vocational schools (while ostensibly presenting a list of objective facts).

The author doesn't seem to be making a normative argument here. Rather he is observing that something many people believe (someone with a CS degree will be a trained programmer) isn't true.

I replied to your sibling comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827977

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#175

Post by JepZ »

eightysixfour wrote: post #103
rhaps0dy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them. Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

> Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

Yeah, thats part of the pattern. Generalists often do not appear as professional as specialists (which does not mean that everybody who looks unprofessional is a generalist).

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#176

Post by monktastic1 »

md224 wrote: post #104

> Charge more. Charge more still. Go on. This might sound stupid, and maybe it's my inner hippie talking, but did this make anyone else slightly uncomfortable? I get that it's "good business", but something feels kinda gross about saying "extract as much money from other people as you possibly can." Like... shouldn't you just charge whatever you think something (a product, your time) is worth? I realize that "what so…

I took it as something more like "people are probably willing to pay a lot more than you think they are." Like you said, pricing is subjective. Sometimes people are willing to pay more than you thought, and they still feel they're getting a good deal. Other times, they pay because they feel they have no other choice. Perhaps there's some wisdom in telling the difference.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#177

Post by danjoc »

toasterlovin wrote: post #51
drewrv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

>Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests.

I think you're wrong about that,

http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#178

Post by pessimizer »

chefandy wrote: post #102
pavlov wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If IQ tests were a reliable measure of any job capability, surely the brilliant minds at Mensa would already have made a mint by selling recruitment services.

Well, part of the problem is that mensa is a total crock of shit.

Whatever it is, it's a group filled with people who score very high on iq tests.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#180

Post by benji-york »

jogjayr wrote: post #101
toasterlovin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

> because they are not allowed to use IQ tests There's actual employment law that prohibits using IQ tests? I'd never heard that before

Here's a little bit of discussion: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/iq_and_hiring_d....
Post reply on HN