> But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness. So Leetcode is actually a good way to hire?
Sure, if your company is as prestigious as Stanford or MIT.
How to Start Google
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Re: How to Start Google
#32While I agree with a lot of the criticisms that have been posted here (first and foremost that it is exceedingly bad advice to take advice on being successful from someone who is like six sigmas to the right of the curve on how their efforts were rewarded - it's like reading from Taylor Swift or Simone Biles or Usain Bolt about "to succeed you just need hard work and to believe!". As it's taken many, many years of th…
> soaking up as much knowledge and relationships while you're in school
A family friend was recently admitted to a magnet school - it's not like an Ivy League level institution, but it's fairly prestigious in the area, and not easy to get to. I need to make sure to remind him that while it's good that he's feeling academically challenged, he should also focus on building friendships with people who are statistically likely (much as he is, tbh) to be successful in life - they can help pull him up when he's down, and he can do the same for them.
I didn't get that much out of college, academically - but the relationships I built there got me my first two jobs, and I still treasure the friends I made there.
Re: How to Start Google
#33This is entirely fair in its goal and perspective.
It's not about starting Koch Industries or Disney.
It's not about some ideal world where connections and funding don't matter.
It's about a kind of productive problem solving that creates value for other people by solving problems they just accept as friction in their lives.
It's insightful in focusing on how projects you love can end up helping others.
But it's a little misleading in that people are listening not because they are doing what they love, but because they want to be successful - ideally to take what they love and turn it into success - according to this plan.
Let's say each year 10,000 people would love to become professional football players, 500 make it to the NFL, and 5 become household names - success stories.
There's no real accounting for the time wasted by the 9,500 doing the extra required not out of enjoyment of the game but to become successful (leaving aside any actual costs like TBI). It's at least an exported cost. But it might have other downstream effects, making someone less confident in their judgement, less likely to engage in making a better world of whatever sort.
One of the Buddhist precepts is not to sell the wine of delusion (in some translations). But it's also soul-killing to tell someone how likely they are to fail; who says that at a wedding? What benefit is that?
Paul Graham made a success of helping others be successful. That's a really good model to consider: to do and teach and help. So I would take this as good teaching for teens.
Re: How to Start Google
#34> But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness. So Leetcode is actually a good way to hire?
Leetcode style interviews were always a reasonable option for a particular type of company. But they became a trend for companies that weren't a good fit.
Re: How to Start Google
#35It’s so deflating to see both YC & PG focus their content almost solely on the younger generations. As someone who came to tech later in their mid-30s, it’s not hard to feel like expired goods when the “thought leaders” of tech are unabashedly gunning for younger minds with little to no acknowledgement of those who may want to start ventures during later stages of life.
The more I try to plug myself in, the more it seems like starting a company at this age is borderline schizophrenic delusion.
Re: How to Start Google
#36I know people mention that this advice smacks of survivorship bias, and I think that's pretty obviously going to be a part of any advice given about economic outcomes whose odds of working out are perhaps a whole order of magnitude better than lottery tickets
I think it's more important to note how talks like this use "children" as an excuse to present a very sanitized version of the history being discussed. I think a massively underappreciated mechanism by which American culture distorts history is by its very lax and sometimes supportive norms about fudging the truth and sometimes even outright lying to children
Re: How to Start Google
#37Paul is fundamentally wrong with one thiing here: Larry knew google was going to be huge from the beginning. His brother Carl was already a multimillionare in tech and taught him everything required to set up a future successful company.
Larry made it clear to me that he always planned Google to be a large cash-generating cow to invest in long-term AGI and there were only a few times at the beginning when he truly feared that wouldn't happen.
Re: How to Start Google
#38This essay glosses over the fact that most startups die a horrible death and earn little to no money for the founders. Somewhere in this essay it needs to say “99% of you who try this will fail”.
if i had a 1 in 100 shot of becoming google I'd just do it 100 times. I'm pretty sure its more like 99.99999%
Re: How to Start Google
#39(tls) mirror: https://archive.is/zCEbG
Re: How to Start Google
#40While I agree with a lot of the criticisms that have been posted here (first and foremost that it is exceedingly bad advice to take advice on being successful from someone who is like six sigmas to the right of the curve on how their efforts were rewarded - it's like reading from Taylor Swift or Simone Biles or Usain Bolt about "to succeed you just need hard work and to believe!". As it's taken many, many years of th…
> I think it's also a good idea to keep in mind the general HN guideline of "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says."
"strongest" is highly subjective. I also don't think we should make things up and pretend the other person said them, which is much more commonly used to strawman, but steelmanning involves the same process.