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Find Your People

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Re: Find Your People

#241

Post by bumby »

grey-area wrote: post #237
bumby wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’re wholly wrong, but if you look at longitudinal surveys of students, it presents a less rosy view. The majority select their primary motivation as getting “very financially successful.” Now those surveys are undergrads, but considering that grad school has become more common path, I don’t see any reason why grad students would be of a wholly different mental makeup.

I don’t see it as a judgment - some people are motivated entirely by money and external validation like status, some see these things as less important than pleasure, discovery or knowledge. Perhaps those seeking money are in the majority. Both types of people are useful but I feel it is highly reductive and simplistic to reduce the world to one motivation for all people.

A couple things:

1) The main point I was trying to convey is that the distribution of the types you outline may be getting skewed in one direction as part of a broader cultural shift. I think that matters, and may support the other point

2) I’ve elaborated elsewhere [1] but I think it’s a mistake to pretend there’s a relatively large group of people who aren’t motivated by status. They may be motivated by a different kind of prestige, but it’s still (at least in part) a status play.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44080708

Re: Find Your People

#242

Post by bumby »

steveBK123 wrote: post #234
bumby wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both can be true. The majority of people I knew who went to grad school genuinely liked academic life so it’s natural they want to continue it. But we are also social creatures that value status. That’s also why many people try to construe their academic careers while also enhancing their open prestige, whether that’s defined by the institution they attend, the advisor they have, the grants/thesis they pursue…

The weird thing for me is the number of times the word "prestige" turned up in this thread. I don't remember once hearing this word used 25 years ago in high school / college / job pipeline in my friends circle. And some did go onto Ivies, FAANG, HF partners in 20s & retired by 30s, etc. But it's unmissable how much it is drilled into kids heads now. On some of the job forums I frequent, every other week some kid is…

I don’t know if it’s more pronounced now, but I do think it was prevalent before. It may just be a cultural artifact of certain terminology being in the zeitgeist.

Decades ago I remember talking to a classmate about what college we’d go to. They couldn’t fathom why I decided on a “lesser” school when I was accepted into a more prestigious one. When I asked why they thought the prestigious school was a better choice, the only answer was “everyone just knows it’s better.” Now they didn’t use the word “prestige” but the same status-climbing mentality was still nebulously present. So I don’t necessarily think it’s a new phenomenon.

To your point though, in the book “Excellent Sheep” Ivy League students were queried about what kind of people they would like to be. One student stood up and said something to the effect of “we already know who we want to be. We’re the type of people who get into Ivy League universities.” I think that speaks to how much of one’s identity is wrapped up in achievement in western culture.

>To me the whole point of a good college education is that there are thousands to millions of jobs in the field to go after. Why on earth would you fixate on a role that is basically 1-in-a-million?

The view of college as a means to vocational success is also a cultural change. Previously, students were more likely to say their goal in college was to “develop a philosophy of life.”

Besides grad school, ivys largely produce students who predominantly go into a handful of fields: tech, consulting, law, or medicine. That’s even when they explicitly have different, social-status goals during school, like working for a non-profit. To me, that speaks to the fact that many are still on the “prestige” track.

Re: Find Your People

#243

Post by ericd »

steveBK123 wrote: post #174
rconti wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 neighborhood kids, they were at soccer practice. They didn't get a summer job at a shitty fast food joint, they were doing summer school or learning piano. Everything they've done from start to fin…

Delayed adulthood is a real thing. Even 25 years ago many/most high school kids have after school and/or summer jobs. Now it is almost unheard of. Their entire young lives are structured, parentally planned and resume padding. Then theres stuff like college admission consultants which have become very normalized, with allegedly 26% of parents hiring them per some study. I worked from 14, had a crappy retail job throu…

Eh there are certainly some parents like that. Most of the ones I know aren’t, though - they’re still mostly of the local league variety. We never brought a car seat into an airplane, laughable security theater.

There’s also a big push to not provide kids with smartphones until high school.

Our parent groups might just be weird, though.

Re: Find Your People

#244

Post by [deleted] »

bumby wrote: post #242
steveBK123 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing for me is the number of times the word "prestige" turned up in this thread. I don't remember once hearing this word used 25 years ago in high school / college / job pipeline in my friends circle. And some did go onto Ivies, FAANG, HF partners in 20s & retired by 30s, etc. But it's unmissable how much it is drilled into kids heads now. On some of the job forums I frequent, every other week some kid is…

I don’t know if it’s more pronounced now, but I do think it was prevalent before. It may just be a cultural artifact of certain terminology being in the zeitgeist. Decades ago I remember talking to a classmate about what college we’d go to. They couldn’t fathom why I decided on a “lesser” school when I was accepted into a more prestigious one. When I asked why they thought the prestigious school was a better choice,…

[deleted]

Re: Find Your People

#245

Post by steveBK123 »

bumby wrote: post #242
steveBK123 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing for me is the number of times the word "prestige" turned up in this thread. I don't remember once hearing this word used 25 years ago in high school / college / job pipeline in my friends circle. And some did go onto Ivies, FAANG, HF partners in 20s & retired by 30s, etc. But it's unmissable how much it is drilled into kids heads now. On some of the job forums I frequent, every other week some kid is…

I don’t know if it’s more pronounced now, but I do think it was prevalent before. It may just be a cultural artifact of certain terminology being in the zeitgeist. Decades ago I remember talking to a classmate about what college we’d go to. They couldn’t fathom why I decided on a “lesser” school when I was accepted into a more prestigious one. When I asked why they thought the prestigious school was a better choice,…

I wouldn’t blame only western culture given the demographics of ivies now

Re: Find Your People

#246

Post by mizzao »

Is it true that every field that originally started with no rails, eventually leads to rails being constructed there? Every trailblazer can create a well-trodden path

For example, startups were one of the most canonical examples of going off the rails. Yet now, many people equate doing a startup with (1) apply to YC, (2) raise a round from a prestigious VC, and other rail-like things. Some even go down these tracks with no firm idea of what they want their company to be, hoping that the train tracks will reveal it to them.

Re: Find Your People

#247

Post by mizzao »

mjr00 wrote: post #64
nathan_compton wrote: post #56

"Which leads me to my final point about getting ambitious plans: you have to be immune to rejection. People are going to dismiss you at first. If that's enough to stop you, you're doomed. So you have to learn to ignore it. And that's harder than it sounds—social pressure is so powerful. But everyone who does ambitious things has to learn how to resist it." Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and d…

> Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and destruction in their wake. At the same time, lots of people who do this end up being extremely successful. The difficulty is knowing which rejection and criticism to ignore. Imagine losing out on a multi-billion dollar business because your initial pitch was dismissed by people saying your business is pointless and redundant because rsync already exists[0]…

It's truly a challenge to know which is which — the foolish and the prescient both look like people with similarly bad ideas when they first start out.

Re: Find Your People

#248

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

FlamingMoe wrote: post #170

“I would have liked to work hard on something I cared about. But I didn't have anything I cared about” This is one of those sentences that make me jealous I didn’t write it. Just such a perfect description of early adulthood for many.

Very relatable, unfortunately. Wish there was an obvious way to find something you do really care about, that also happens to be financially viable. Jessica's advice to find interesting people, and caring will follow, might just work. Curious if others have found another "fix" here.

Re: Find Your People

#249

Post by dasil003 »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #77
jll29 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Kermit the Frog in his Maryland commencement speech said, Jim Henson took people for "what they are": https://www.youtube.com/live/hLFa8zGeotI?feature=shared&t=74... Do NOT "fake it until you make it". Be yourself. And find people who accept you as you are.

This is semantic baggage to me. Identity is best loosely held, and it's mostly determined by our actions. There's no real faking, just acting in accordance to, or against, one's preferences. Colloquially when people use the term "fake it till you make it" they don't really mean "pretend to be a different person". They just mean act in the face of uncertainty. You can do it with or without undeserved confidence, it's…

I tend to agree with you, but there’s another saying: “play to your strengths”, because people don’t all have the same potentials. I think it’s healthy to always strive for self improvement, but going with the grain of one’s personality is easier and likely to land in a better place. That’s the message I take from “be yourself”, but I have to admit that it does ring a bit hollow when one is young and hungry.

Re: Find Your People

#250

Post by angrydev »

nntwozz wrote: post #176
FlamingMoe wrote: post #170

“I would have liked to work hard on something I cared about. But I didn't have anything I cared about” This is one of those sentences that make me jealous I didn’t write it. Just such a perfect description of early adulthood for many.

I channeled most of my energy into playing MMOs in the early 2000s, I have some wonderful memories but it fried my dopamine reward system and it took me more than a decade to wean myself off of the bad habit. Not having something real and tangible to care about can be devastating.

I'm between jobs (burnout) and have found MMOs (Classic WoW) to be the only thing that makes sense anymore. What did you do to replace this and move on?
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