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Running a business means contact with reality

fredkozlowski.com

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Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#21

Post by tourmalinetaco »

kragen wrote: post #19
monarchwadia wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose one could argue that both are equally real.

I remember one time at summer camp in the teen dorm I claimed that pain was an illusion, because it was subjective. A girl named Lisa picked up a wooden block and threw it at me. It hit my lip, which started bleeding, and she was immediately horrified at what she had done; but I had to acknowledge that subjective "reality" has an importance to me that objective reality does not.

Interestingly I had just re-watched the House episode with the CIPA patient in S3, and it touched on this if you squint. The girl, having CIPA, effectively can’t feel pain. She can’t even feel getting 2nd degree burns and it’s questionable if she even felt them poking around in her head or if she used that to escape (and fall down a 2nd story balcony). The only time she felt actual pain was seeing her mother relapse and be wheeled off for more surgery.

She cannot feel what should objectively cause her pain, but because pain is a subjective experience she can’t. However, truly subjective pain, that is pain derived from emotional connection, is literally the worst pain she can feel.

Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#22

Post by jmogly »

Some real honest and actionable advice here. I think the natural course for intelligent people that enjoy crafting things is very much in conflict with the real world. We care about the things we are building because we see them as an extension of ourselves. Anxiously perfecting our creations in a safe place, obsessing over ever smaller details of finished portions; working on detailing while ignoring the missing half of the ship. Its an ego thing. We see these things as pieces of ourselves, we’re afraid that the world won’t accept them, and by extension us. It’s not real though; nothing and nobody is perfect, and its okay.

I have a deep feeling that i can “do it myself”, yet i work for companies because deep down I like the anonymity and the safety of it; at a big company we get to be part of something established, we don’t have to show our own faces to the world.

Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#23

Post by kragen »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #21
kragen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember one time at summer camp in the teen dorm I claimed that pain was an illusion, because it was subjective. A girl named Lisa picked up a wooden block and threw it at me. It hit my lip, which started bleeding, and she was immediately horrified at what she had done; but I had to acknowledge that subjective "reality" has an importance to me that objective reality does not.

Interestingly I had just re-watched the House episode with the CIPA patient in S3, and it touched on this if you squint. The girl, having CIPA, effectively can’t feel pain. She can’t even feel getting 2nd degree burns and it’s questionable if she even felt them poking around in her head or if she used that to escape (and fall down a 2nd story balcony). The only time she felt actual pain was seeing her mother relapse…

This is a very deep story. Thank you.

Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#24

Post by NebulaStorm456 »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #21
kragen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember one time at summer camp in the teen dorm I claimed that pain was an illusion, because it was subjective. A girl named Lisa picked up a wooden block and threw it at me. It hit my lip, which started bleeding, and she was immediately horrified at what she had done; but I had to acknowledge that subjective "reality" has an importance to me that objective reality does not.

Interestingly I had just re-watched the House episode with the CIPA patient in S3, and it touched on this if you squint. The girl, having CIPA, effectively can’t feel pain. She can’t even feel getting 2nd degree burns and it’s questionable if she even felt them poking around in her head or if she used that to escape (and fall down a 2nd story balcony). The only time she felt actual pain was seeing her mother relapse…

I think you will like this Capgras Syndrome story.

https://youtu.be/dqBGzkz1oDU

The guy couldn't emotionally recognise his mother after seeing her and started calling her imposter. But when he heard her voice over telephone, he felt emotional connection and said the person on other end was indeed his mother. Emotional pathways provide salience information in conjunction with sensory pathways. Any disruption to emotional pathways can override even correct sensory data.

Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#25

Post by smallmancontrov »

Swizec wrote: post #13
victorbuilds wrote: post #9

After 20 years building software for other companies, I started my own thing a few weeks ago. The reality check hit fast. When you're an employee, you can hide behind process and blame the market. When it's yours, every signup or lack of one is direct feedback. No buffer.

> When you're an employee, you can hide behind process and blame the market. You can still blame the market. A good market makes everything easier, a bad market makes everything harder. But here’s the catch: You choose the market. To share an example: When I started my react teaching side business in 2015 it was so easy . Growing 2x year over year, I thought I was some kind of business genius. Then one day it stopped…

Those tides are really something.

In 2020-2022 I had a repair side-hustle that became unexpectedly profitable, so I started scaling it up and thinking about quitting my job. Then interest rates went up, assets stopped appreciating, and I realized that most of the value I thought I was adding was actually just asset inflation and the common wisdom that repair is a miserable business niche was correct after all.

Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#28

Post by jazzejeff1 »

Thank you for sharing. My wife and I have been down this road in physical retail, SaaS, consulting, and real estate. It always feels like the first time when you learn slowly, and you’ve done a Good Thing by helping us all learn faster.

FYI - I tried to leave this comment on your blog, but I got a database connection error. HTH

Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#29

Post by stego-tech »

Reality is subjective. There is no singular objective "reality" that everyone shares, so we get by with objective, repeatable measurements instead. Business in particular means contact with realities that are not your own, and that can be a real gut check to some people.

Thing is, working as a cog in a larger machine is itself another form of reality check. Both situations force you to confront data and perspectives that aren't your own, and to adapt to them. Reading through the comments here, I find myself resonating with folks who very much enjoy being cogs or have a desire to run a smaller business for themselves, profit-motives and moat-building be damned. Almost as if there's a desire to return to a simpler market devoid of the complexities that computers have allowed to thrive (algorithmic pricing, big data analysis, surveillance capitalism, etc), where what mattered was running a good environment with fair pricing rather than grandiose plans for expansion or market monopolization. I empathize with those goals, given my "fuck you money" pie-in-the-sky plans of running a small makerspace/net cafe in a community and eating the modest loss through ROI elsewhere in my investments.

To get back to the (still-down) article, running a business absolutely means confronting the reality of the fickleness of the marketplace. It means dealing with customers who are ill-informed and also ill-suited to critique or correction. You have to make a product others want to buy, rather than one you believe is best. The pressure is there to capitalize on every avenue, every opportunity, never turning down business for fear of it reverberating into collapsing other opportunities. It's a really immediate reckoning over what's more important to you in terms of success vs ethics, in an environment incredibly hostile to the latter (and exploitative of those who reside on that side of the proverbial fence). It's stressful, and it's why I refuse to open my own shop despite my dissatisfaction with corporate life at present.

Re: Running a business means contact with reality

#30

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #10

I haven't been someone else's employee for 20 years, so the title immediately drew my attention. One click later, "Error establishing a database connection". HN seems to have hugged this guy's site to death.

Reality - a simple blog should hardly ever need a database server for content.
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