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How to Be Successful

blog.samaltman.com

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251–260 of 326 posts

Re: How to Be Successful

#251

Post by sidcool »

maxwin wrote: post #231

An incredibly great post. Thank you for sharing. I have always wanted to take risk to found a startup, but since I am in Myanmar, I will need to claw my way up for a while to build up safety nets before I can take big risks. It is a great reminder that I cannot lose myself in a comfortable & stable career/lifestyle. Focusing too much on short term gains will blind me for long term achievement. But the risk is real es…

Wish you luck.

I totally understand that not all places on the Earth are conducive to entrepreneurial ambitions. Some places are downright hostile. I wish we had some mechanism to help those from such places.

Re: How to Be Successful

#252

Post by dmh2000 »

sidcool wrote: post #248

My biggest takeaway from the article: "Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones. First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from do…

I'd phrase this a little differently.

I'd say "they do what they do because they are motivated by other peoples expectations".

Re: How to Be Successful

#253

Post by sidcool »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #60

I can't speak for the author, but in my opinion if you treat this as a checklist to follow instead of a set of observations, you will probably be intolerable to most people and will probably fail at your goal of being successful.

I think this is like a checklist for people to follow on their on volition. There cannot be a single recipe for success that applies to everyone. Hence the "Independent Thought" point in the post.

Re: How to Be Successful

#255

Post by cypherpunks01 »

ruang wrote: post #254

Why don't more employees from Google and Facebook start successful companies? They seem to exhibit all of these traits.

Did you read the full article, including the para "At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook."?

Re: How to Be Successful

#256

Post by twakefield »

“Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.)”

Finding and accentuating strengths was a big focus of my previous employer, Rackspace. They used a program based on Strengths Finder [1] to determine your “strengths” and even had them displayed on your corporate ID badge. Their management philosophy was based on putting people in positions based on their strengths.

It seemed a bit hokey at first and it had its problems but it was pretty refreshing compared to the typical corporate environment that espouses working harder to overcome your weaknesses.

[1] https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/

Re: How to Be Successful

#257

Post by throwawayjava »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #255
ruang wrote: post #254

Why don't more employees from Google and Facebook start successful companies? They seem to exhibit all of these traits.

Did you read the full article, including the para "At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook."?

The prognosis from the article is:

When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind

I think that there's a sampling bias here; in fact, that bias is even pointed out in the paragraph: > At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders.... I.e., this is an observation about FAANG employees who become YC founders.

But the fact is, very few of those drive/motivated Google/Facebook employees leave and become YC founders. So this observation is an observation about a very small subset of the people who choose to stay at GoogleFacebook.

I know a lot of people at the FAANGs who are there because they are primarily motivated by technical and scientific problems. The FAANGs -- and esp their research divisions -- are exceptionally good places to work for people who get meaning and fulfillment from technical excellence.

Re: How to Be Successful

#258

Post by yesenadam »

acqq wrote: post #207
qquark wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest it just seems a bit like playing with words. Of course you can use "success" in sentences where it loses the meaning intended in the current context, but it seems clear to me that when someone writes "to be successful" there are implications that it means being successful on some measure that the author finds valuable or intends the reader to think valuable (in order to sell a book or something). And of…

You really should read the whole article. I definitely recognize what he talks about. "It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways (in any special sense) of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating." (...) "You may want to jump or to play cards; but you do not want to read wandering statements to the effect that jumpi…

As I was reading point 1 of Sam's article, Compound yourself, I was thinking, ah ok, teachers are in the wrong field evidently, for Success. They can never be exponentially increasing their force and effect in the way suggested.

Although there are people like Gilbert Strang, making his excellent courses (e.g. Linear Algebra) available online, which over a million people around the world have watched and benefited from, and helping to create a world with an amazing variety of free online course videos available in all subjects. That is success for a teacher, I suppose. And we're asked to believe (in this culture) that making a lot of money is or could be in any worthy sense a greater success..

Re: How to Be Successful

#260

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

core-questions wrote: post #62
avip wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also very successful if you were a stay home parent and your kids were able to succeed thanks to your efforts.

Absolutely. There are a range of definitions for successful, but I think in many ways it's best left as "in the eye of the beholder", in the sense that it's about achieving your own personal threshold. If you build a way of life that is sustainable for yourself and provides you with personal and psychological stability for you and your dependents, and if you feel at least reasonably fulfilled in this, you can call yo…

I have a great many friends that do not have the kind of money and opportunities I have simply due to my choice in a software career path.

Even a boring thankless job for me is where many of my peers dream they could be.

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