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Find Your People

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Re: Find Your People

#181

Post by defrost »

mirawelner wrote: post #179

I’m still processing that this is the Ycombinator cofounder. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing - although tbh it’s better this person founded Ycombinator than say, a nepo baby which is always what I had kind of assumed. But the idea that the cofounder of Ycombinator didn’t discover their ambition until after undergrad is going to take a bit for my brain to absorb.

> didn’t discover their ambition until after undergrad

I mixed with a lot of very ambitious people at university, some had a clear plan of how to exercise their ambition, not all of those plans worked as intended, many had ambition with no specific plan at that time other than to learn a breadth of useful knowledge, make good connections, take on early work with great networking potential .. and then pivot when they had a better handle on the world as it was at that time a year or three after graduation.

Ambition to succeed doesn't have to come with a specific predetermined path on how to succeed .. there's still room to adapt and morph as one moves forward.

Re: Find Your People

#182

Post by lurking_swe »

pton_xd wrote: post #180
Aurornis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I'm concerned, you are basically mentally stunted if you didn't work for pay in your teenage years. I worked a teenage job, too. Physical labor. It was a learning experience, but I don’t see it as this life changing pivot point that separated me from others. In fact, you meet plenty of people at a physical labor job like that who are clearly not on a path to being ahead of their peers, or who have been do…

> In fact, you meet plenty of people at a physical labor job like that who are clearly not on a path to being ahead of their peers, or who have been doing the same work for decades since they were a teenager. At least for me, the experience of doing physical labor alongside people like that as a teenager was a real eye-opener. It showed me exactly what my life might look like if I didn't focus and work toward my goal…

imo this is what good parenting should be about regardless of one’s class or upbringing.

It’s good to show kids which possible “doors” they can go down in life. It’s easy to claim that door X is better than door Y, but unless you have them _see_ the difference, or at least talk to someone that’s been through door Y, they won’t believe you.

There’s nothing wrong with focusing on a difficult track! But if you grow up to be an adult that doesn’t comprehend how a normal person lives, then you’ve got a problem lol.

Re: Find Your People

#183

Post by noisy_boy »

Aurornis wrote: post #142
orthecreedence wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've spent their whole life focusing on the next goal. No, they spent their whole lives being sheltered. Let's call it what it is. These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhoo…

I think you're assuming way too much. From my observations, having low parental involvement and excessively unstructured upbringing doesn't automatically produce determined and self-directed adults. From my familiarity with several small towns, I would actually say it does the opposite. I can think of many people I knew as a kid who ended up stuck in small towns at dead-end jobs simply because inertia was the only th…

> From my observations, having low parental involvement and excessively unstructured upbringing doesn't automatically produce determined and self-directed adults.

Sample of one, it indeed didn't. However being knocked around did help with being somewhat more ready and open to new things and uncharted territories. It also dramatically reduces the fear of the unknown and can be a significant confidence booster.

Re: Find Your People

#184

Post by Kamq »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #132
orthecreedence wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've spent their whole life focusing on the next goal. No, they spent their whole lives being sheltered. Let's call it what it is. These people were on tracks because they were put on tracks from a young age and told that the track leads somewhere, and any questioning of the tracks was often met with a harsh rebuke. They didn't play outside with the neighborhoo…

Those other things you mention are also "tracks". Getting a shitty fast food job is done not due to any kind of aspiration but simply because it's the default thing to do. Imagine not being able to get a shitty fast food job because you are disabled. Or just moved to the US and speak too weird and don't have anyone to vouch for you. Ditto for hanging out with the neighborhood kids. This assumes that you are one of th…

> Imagine not being able to get a shitty fast food job because ... Or just moved to the US and speak too weird and don't have anyone to vouch for you.

You've obviously never worked food.

Re: Find Your People

#185

Post by Kamq »

jemiluv8 wrote: post #152
brulard wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is easier and more obvious for kids from poorer families to figure it out they need to look around and try hard to earn some money. Do you need a laptop? Well you better earn some money to get one. Kids that get everything provided by parents often end up hopelessly lost when time to become independent comes.

And yet so many of them kinda rule the world by running the biggest corporations in the world. Your argument has so many holds, it can't hold water.

> And yet so many of them kinda rule the world by running the biggest corporations in the world.

Have you looked at the state of the world recently?

Re: Find Your People

#186

Post by parpfish »

Aurornis wrote: post #146
parpfish wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think its interesting that for so many college kids, the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad school. work at big3/faang, etc). it's not because they are any more prestigious or important, but because they provide a clear sense of achievement/external validation and kids that make it to the end of college are kids that have had decade…

> the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad school. work at big3/faang, etc). Graduate school is a mixed bag when it comes to prestige. It's fairly well known that grad student lifestyle is a grind, highly competitive, and a financial sacrifice. You go into it for a love of academics, not as a default next step. As for prestigious jobs l…

grad school is definitely a prestige move. not a 'get rich move', but def a prestige move. prestige is not just money.

for med or law school, there are very clear hierarchies about who's better than who and next steps in your career. you get money AND intellectual status.

but for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursuing abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever and not caring about financial success. it is very monastic in that people make a show of forgoing traditional measures of status in service of their "calling".

... but as high-minded as these people are there is still a very clear hierarchy that lets you compare rank/compare yourself against your other recent grads so you can talk about who's doing well and who isn't even though none of them have money.

BUT grad school for CS and engineering is different because there's so much money and employability at the end of the rainbow. these aren't really a calling in the same way, and are closer to MBA degree becayse it's just a thing you do to get more money later. A comp sci PhD with a job in industry is lauded, but those folks don't understand the deep sense of failure that a non-CS PhD feels when they have to 'resort to' an industry job in the private sector

Re: Find Your People

#187

Post by Aurornis »

parpfish wrote: post #186
Aurornis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad school. work at big3/faang, etc). Graduate school is a mixed bag when it comes to prestige. It's fairly well known that grad student lifestyle is a grind, highly competitive, and a financial sacrifice. You go into it for a love of academics, not as a default next step. As for prestigious jobs l…

grad school is definitely a prestige move. not a 'get rich move', but def a prestige move. prestige is not just money. for med or law school, there are very clear hierarchies about who's better than who and next steps in your career. you get money AND intellectual status. but for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursuing abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever and not caring about fina…

> for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursue abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever. it is very monastic in that people make a show of forgoing traditional measures of status in service of their "calling".

These comments are oddly cynical.

The people I know who went to grad school did it because they enjoyed the academic world.

That's all. There was no flexing or bragging. Those who went in for the wrong reasons very rapidly learned that it wasn't for them and dropped out.

Re: Find Your People

#188

Post by jaredhallen »

jll29 wrote: post #40
jumploops wrote: post #38

As someone who has “reinvented” myself more than once (mostly due to school/job transfers), it seems what wasn’t said is equally if not more important. Rarely can you “find your people” without letting other people go. The unspoken truth in this article is that it’s just as important to be willing to let go of relationships that aren’t helping you grow. Easier said than done. Whether it’s the negative influence of a…

> or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent For what it's worth, I teach my students not to listen to their parents, because while most parents want the best for their children, without doubt, their assumptions are typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.

Yikes.

Re: Find Your People

#189

Post by noduerme »

joshstrange wrote: post #54

> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…

I didn't want to go to college. I worked throughout high school designing websites for an ad agency for $8/hr, after school until 7 at night and 5 days a week in the summer. After high school I went to work for another agency full time for a year. Only after my father kept cajoling me did I finally try college. I got a scholarship and came in a year older and six years more experienced than my freshman class.

What I found myself in was a group of very sincere, optimistic, wonderful kids who had no idea how the real world of engineering or advertising or design worked, but were fully persuaded that this $30k/yr education would prepare them for it and hand them the next waypoint on their life path (while also allowing them creative freedom to experiment in ways that they wouldn't be able to later, in the corporate world). I dropped out after 3 semesters because it was pointless, although in the last semester I jumped ahead from Typography 2 to 5, and skipped a bunch of other stuff. I had poached a lot of clients from my former agency, which had folded.

Since then, my life has had no rails whatsoever. I'm good at what I do and I go where I want and choose who I work for, and the world essentially rewards me for being good at figuring things out.

All of this comes down to a lack of imagination, and parents (like my father) trying to instill a sense in their children that one must pursue certain predefined paths to be successful. But completing a predefined quest doesn't make us more valuable; in fact, it makes us interchangeable. Being a difficult, unique, tough, anal obsessive prick at what you do is hard to ever replace with a formal education. And experience is king. So start early and ignore all the tracks you can.

Re: Find Your People

#190

Post by socalgal2 »

ip26 wrote: post #51
jll29 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent For what it's worth, I teach my students not to listen to their parents, because while most parents want the best for their children, without doubt, their assumptions are typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.

As categorical guidance, that seems like a problematic thing to teach. First, parents don’t know everything, but they know their kids and have witnessed their journey, so they have a unique perspective to offer. Second, parents will begin to (justifiably!!) grow suspicious of your institution and develop resentment, which is a serious structural problem. Hopefully what you mean is something like you teach them to thi…

My personal experience is my parents’ advice was almost universally bad. Fortunately they still supported my own decisions. I still find it frustrating talking to them about my goals/issues as their takes are extremely irrelevant to my situation
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