I think best when walking.
Does anyone know if these essays are available in Audiobook format?
I can obviously do text to speech per URL, but would be awesome if Paul, or someone else, just hosted them on Spotify or elsewhere!
What I’ve learned from users
211–220 of 339 posts
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly I waited tables for 5 years. That experience has been a massive boost to putting myself in end users' shoes when designing systems.
I think any work that puts you in direct personal contact with thousands of people is going to be valuable. I sometimes used to think how fun being a waiter could be compared to car sales, because the interaction in nowhere near as tense and adversarial. In the best of sales, you quickly become and stay friendly with people, but the bottom 25% are mini wars and that beats on you after a while.
Yeah waiting tables almost always ends well. And there's something satisfying on a primal level about feeding people and watching them leave happy and full.
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
As opposed to buying a(n always more expensive) scammer's car on purpose at a used car dealership?, the choice seems easy.
Very few franchise dealerships would ever sell a car with problems knowingly. It does happen, because people trade in cars with intermittent problems without telling the dealership. Compared to Craigslist where there is no shortage of people selling cars directly with current problems, intermittent problems, hidden problems, and massive paperwork issues that can stop you from registering the vehicle all together unti…
That’s why you always ask to take the car to a well known 3.party that don’t benefit on the sale, and check the car for you for any hidden problems.
So you still can buy from Craigslist without the risk.
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#214> The educational system in most countries trains you to win by hacking the test
How can we raise a generation of kids that, as a rule, don't hack the test?
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd like to think that, but no, there are plenty of dealers that will TELL you they're happy to negotiate everything by email/phone and then you just show up and get the car, but once you're there they want to change the deal and will still make you sit in a little office with someone that tries to add-on warranties, paint protection, prepaid services, etc.
You mentioned you liked dealers that don't negotiate. So I mentioned you can buy without negotiating at any dealership. The advertised price is pretty fair at 90% of dealerships. Beyond that, their advertised specials are spectacular deals usually. Who spends money and attention advertising specials that don't even compete with the competition?
The problem is that you feel like a chump if you don’t negotiate. No one wants to feel like they didn’t get a deal especially on a used car. But the last time I bought one it was from a dealership that didn’t negotiate, a fact I discovered when I started negotiating. And then to see if it was true I started pushing pretty hard and they stood firm and the end result was great, I left very happy with my purchase.
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing that fascinates me about UBI (apart from the right wing capitalists promoting socialist utopias) is the effect it (presumably) will have on salaries and companies. I mean HN is populated by people who mostly enjoy their STEM related work, but even so if we did not have to pay mortgages tomorrow I suspect 75% would hand in their notice and go something else - still working but working on their own start ups…
The B in UBI is pretty important and seems to be at odds with what you're thinking. It's meant to be a basic income that guarantees you won't starve or be homeless somewhere in the country. That's it. A backup to fall upon or a subsistence if you don't want to/can't work or a life booster for low income earners. No fancy cars, apartment in a coastal city, big house, vacations, meals out, etc. How many HN readers woul…
I think the biggest impediment to UBI is the 'U'niversal part. It can only be one way, at 18yo you start getting a monthly UBI check, no questions no conditions.
It will never be that way, it will always be muddied by some conditions. Like income restrictions bonuses based on various protect group clauses and million other details.
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#217Oddest part of this post to me is that the author founded HN, but largely abandoned it because dealing with the users was a huge mental sinkhole for them; not able to find the quote, but clearly recall him saying this, though might be wrong. As it relates to HN, PG what have you learned from the users? If HN was a startup, would it make it into YC?
Found the PG quote I mentioned:
____________________
>> Here's a little known fact about the history of Y Combinator. The single biggest source of stress, for me at least, was not picking startups or advising them or Demo Day or even fighting with people on the startups' behalf. It was running HN.
>> Don't start a forum.
____________________
Above was posted to Twitter Jul 11, 2020 — please see link below for additional context:
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#218"The first thing that came to mind was that most startups have the same problems. No two have exactly the same problems, but it's surprising how much the problems remain the same"
I'm out.
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you buy a Toyota following the Tesla model, where you call and say "I'd like to buy the car you have, for the price you have listed", you will also have a generally good experience.
My Toyota experience was okay, but I still needed to sit at a dealership for almost two hours to deal with the paperwork, wait for financing, etc. Tesla allowed me to take care of all of that from the comfort of home. Buying a Ford was the worst experience I've had with a new car, but that could have been entirely on the dealership.
Yes, they are there all day, until closing time, or longer. Usually, the longer you stay, the more likely you are to buy their car, or give them more money. They control the situation and the incentives are in their favor. This is one reason we loathe car shopping.
Re: What I’ve learned from users
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scope of pg's posts have narrowed dramatically. Back in the Hackers & Painters days, it seemed like he was writing about a wide variety of topics. Startups were among the things he wrote about, but it wasn't exclusively about them. There were things about management styles, programming languages, even why nerds are not popular in high school. At some point, I think around the time YC started to become really succ…
If you look at the list of essay titles at https://paulgraham.com/articles.html , I think there are a lot of interesting topics that are a lot broader than startups - e.g. "heresy", "putting ideas into words", "how to work hard", "donate unrestricted", which are all from Feb 21 or later pg actually reminds me of Eliyahu Goldratt, who developed the "theory of constraints"("TOC"). Dr Goldratt was a physicist who then t…
TOC is quite interesting and not as mainstream as something like SCRUM, but could be a better option.
I like that it is more evidence-based and thought out. However I think applying this is challenging - for the same reason as scrum - because methodologies like this require leaders to let go of their control-ego and trust the system. And systems like TOC which require a lot of thinking, understanding and are easily corrupted by misunderstanding it are fragile to the reality of a hierarchical team structure where the bosses personality can dominate processes more than the process. As such I believe (may not be true) that taking good principles from TOC would be better.
I have seen TOC tried to be applied in a software job and it turned into the typical "JIRA-style" nightmare of estimations, pressure, short term thinking and so on. I don't think that is what TOC is about, but what it can end up with when it hits the ground. SCRUM has the same issues of course. Because these methodologies are not meant to be an al a carte menu of options, where the ones that make the bosses eyes light up are chosen. But they are complete systems. Like it might be fun to only do bench presses at the gym and nothing else, and still eat badly, but that won't work - you need to do the whole regime!
That is why in reality I prefer systems that can be offered al-a-carte. Maybe TOC can be I am not an expert and haven't read the book. But I like for example if someone comes to lead a team and sees how things are done and slowly tweaks things towards a long term goal. For example come in and get people work as a team not individually so that work is delivered sooner and there is less WIP.
A bit rambly but those are my thoughts!