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How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

simonwillison.net

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Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#321

Post by windowshopping »

GlacierFox wrote: post #273
shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

Is it just me or is the way you construct sentences jarring and hard to read? Not sure if it's my dyslexia but I had trouble deciphering the first couple of paragraphs/word jumbles.

No you're not alone but I didn't realize it until you said it. And I am not dyslexic.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#322

Post by Timber-6539 »

bwy wrote: post #284
shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

I wonder how many of those "sour grapes" commenters have actually read the thing–my guess, not many. Then on the first page of the "silly little book," where I already have the question: "why should I read this? Why would an employee spend time reading this?" Immediately he addresses that: "if you read this book and pass a quiz I’ll give you $1,000." And if you've seen MrBeast videos, it's not inconceivable that ever…

Basically treats his own employees like his subscribers. "Stay tuned for the $1000 giveaway!". Have you never watched any of Mr Beast's videos?

The fact that you made it to his company is enough incentive for you to go through the onboarding document.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#325

Post by kentbrokeman »

shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

[dead]

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#326

Post by grogenaut »

naming_the_user wrote: post #290
tpmoney wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find interesting in reading this is that it's not particularly surprising in content. And I don't mean that I expected some hugely toxic culture from a youtube company and found it. I mean that the whole document is largely pretty standard "how to make it in a competitive industry" advice. The tone might be a little unprofessional for folks who are used to big corporate talk, but if you'd leaked internal Micro…

Yeah, it reads as being pretty standard to me. To be honest I think there's just a bit of a bifurcation between people who do business, like really do business as a competition like an Olympic sport, and people who just sort of like turn up and do their thing for a bit and then go home. To the former camp all of this is intuitively obvious and doesn't need spelling out although the insights are generally useful.

Reading this post at the same time as a blind post where someone is asking what people do for the resto of the week once they finish their 2 hours of sprint work.

The dichotomy sometimes

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#327

Post by kumarvvr »

Imagine the countless millions of hours people, especially young ones, have wasted on this content.

Sure, the argument may go, its entertainment and those would have gotten the same from alternative sources, but in this particular case, viral ready addictive video content is ultimately a bane for society.

This guy has studied 20000 to 30000 of videos, done data analysis on them, and then finetuned his videos to make them popular and earn a lot of money on it. As a business, this is genius, he is talented, he is profitable, his investors are circling around banks. But society has suffered for it.

My kid watches similar pointless videos, and he is on the verge of addiction (any and all free time he has, he jumps to the videos of colorful activity videos on you tube, from chinese or russian channels. He is 10 years old)

I am weaning him off youtube altogether, and involving him in books and other activities, but it is damn hard.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#328

Post by MrVandemar »

danpalmer wrote: post #305
shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

I really enjoyed the book "The Smartest Guys in the Room" about the Enron scandal for two reasons. The first and more obvious was that it was a deeper look into the systemic issues that led to the failures, which meant it was less "they did a fraud" and more about the way culture evolves at a company to the point that they did it. Perhaps more importantly though, was my takeaway that it mostly wasn't fraud, it was tr…

> mostly wasn't fraud, it was truly innovative accounting that with hindsight was the wrong idea

When your "innovative accounting" makes you feel, at some point, that you should be shredding important documents, I think it mostly was actual fraud. You know, criminal behavior.

Let's call it like it is: a bunch of rich, extremely entitled people who decided they should, you know, be more rich by abusing their privilage and positions, and who helped nobody except themselves.

There's nothing admirable there, just another of those lessons that we ignore continually: cockroaches wear suits, and often expensive ones too.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#329

Post by troad »

shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

> One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors.

In as far as this is a document that says 'do your best, give 110% 25/8, sacrifice everything for the company', most of what I'm seeing here is the same general approval that latter-day HN gives all impractical advice that a very young person might come up with. ('Just do gooderer, all the time!')

I don't think the change is that people now are now closed-minded, I think it's more that something like Mr Beast's PDF of peppy twenty-something bromides simply wouldn't have made the front page at all in 2014. This would be over on Digg with the other pop-Internet stories.

More broadly, given that the comment section appears around 60-70% positive for Mr Beast, I'm unsure what it is you're actually after. Would you prefer it be 100% positive? Wouldn't that be a huge loss for the intellectual diversity that this site has to offer? Aren't there other, better places for hive takes (e.g. Reddit)?

Respectfully, I think the takes you're taking issue with are precisely the remnants of the old, diverse HN, and the takes you're tacitly encouraging are the monoculture that's taken over the rest of the Internet.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#330

Post by gonzo41 »

dcchambers wrote: post #166

The poor grammar drives me crazy. I get that I am not the target employee, but if I walked in to a job and was handed that on my first day I'd walk right out based on presentation alone.

And you're exactly who they are looking to move elsewhere. They are looking for people who want to make youtube videos. No faff about over font and comma placement.
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