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How to Do Great Work

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Do Great Work

#371

Post by nadam »

inimino wrote: post #366
nadam wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that great work is achieved by 1 in one million people. Good work can be achieved by one in 1000 people, or one in 100 depending on your definition. You can adjust your definition of good work to your circumstances. The difference is that even if you are much smarter than average you have miniscule chance to achieve the kind of great work pg tells you about. You can have a high chance to achieve goo…

Your definition of good work is so above and beyond that well under one percent can approach the rarified air of your high standards? I don't believe you.

The main problem is that pg does not even try to define what level of success he speaks about. I think he should be more clear and honest about it: Is it the one in a million great work he writes about, or is it the one in 100? These are entirely different stories. Anyway I am afraid he writes about the one in a million kind. And my point is that don't try to optimize for that kind of success, it is better to adjust your approach to your circumstances to have a greater chance of success.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#372

Post by JohnCurran »

matwood wrote: post #370
JohnCurran wrote: post #355

I respect Paul and everything that he writes, even if I don’t agree with it. It takes some serious stones to publish your thoughts on the internet - whether people agree or not. In any case. This seems like a continuation of the never ending quest for people to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a corporate profit they will never see. I’m not interested in eliminating the ceiling - I want to raise the floor.…

> I am frustrated that the USA’s money advice largely comes from billionaires. One of my big issues with the 'follow your passion' advice is it almost always comes from people who are already rich. And, those people are often trying to leverage worker passion to staff their companies. As a young person, don't follow your passion. Instead, figure out the fastest way to economic security and once there, then figure out…

> Instead, figure out the fastest way to economic security and once there, then figure out a passion

This is good advice and I agree with it. I just wish it wasn’t the advice we had to give

Re: How to Do Great Work

#373

Post by cushychicken »

rr808 wrote: post #302
cushychicken wrote: post #11

Another thing you need: patience. I'm 34, and just in the last year reached the point where I have: - enough experience and context to do great work, and - the right people to leverage that context and experience on meaningful applications It took a lot of waiting for that ideal blend of circumstances to come around. I wish I'd have been able to tell my 26 year old self that as he slogged through an entry level EE jo…

Sounds about the right time for you to have babies and ruin all that readiness for great work.

If anything, my kid being born helped increase my output.

Limited time makes it a lot easier to decide what to focus on.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#374

Post by nullcipher »

rikroots wrote: post #367
artisanspam wrote: post #255

As I've gotten older, I believe more and more that having a desire for great work has more negatives than it does positives. This post really demonstrates why I believe this – mainly because PG doesn't touch at all on why someone would want to do great work while romanticizing how great it is to have that desire. I don't think the question that ambitious people should be asking themselves is "what is work that I can…

> The work that you do will be great work if you have a reason for doing it other than "I want to do something great." I've always had an issue with the word "great". Who defines greatness? How will I know that I've achieved greatness in whatever work I'm doing at any particular time. For work, I know when my work is great because co-workers and managers praise it: "nice fix", "some really good insights here", etc. B…

> For work, I know when my work is great because co-workers and managers praise it: "nice fix", "some really good insights here", etc.

They only said nice and good though not great. I would say if your CEO came down and said that's awesome, then it's great work. (for you)

As for me, I don't think too much about word semantics. No advice can be given or taken if you take each word apart. We will just keep arguing about details and miss the point.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#376

Post by anonyme-honteux »

ftxbro wrote: post #233
anonyme-honteux wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so true, why bother doing great work, which is a lot of work, when you can get the credit of many people doing it? That's what Elon Musk has done since the start of his career and it has worked pretty well for him. For that you need to be a really good hype man because it's objectively true that great work that nobody knows about is pure waste. You need to be rich because in the US it's assumed that this means…

I think some of the fan phenomenon is just how much money he has, although of course that's not the only thing. Like if he plans to spend all his money over the next decade (probably he doesn't) and he doesn't make any more money or interest, then if you can get one single second of his financial attention, then that is worth like a thousand dollars, so of course anyone like that will be swarmed by so many people.

It's not obvious that this must happen actually. Bernard Arnault is as rich and sometimes richer than Elon Musk. But there is no big Bernard Arnault cult in France. He is recognized as a very efficient business shark but not worshipped. It's all about cultural relationship to money, and France and the US have a quite different relationship to money, although they have in common that it's a werid relationship to money.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#377

Post by rr808 »

cushychicken wrote: post #373
rr808 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds about the right time for you to have babies and ruin all that readiness for great work.

If anything, my kid being born helped increase my output. Limited time makes it a lot easier to decide what to focus on.

Limited time? Congrats, Lol with a full time job I didn't have time to do anything.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#378

Post by samuellevy »

matwood wrote: post #370
JohnCurran wrote: post #355

I respect Paul and everything that he writes, even if I don’t agree with it. It takes some serious stones to publish your thoughts on the internet - whether people agree or not. In any case. This seems like a continuation of the never ending quest for people to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a corporate profit they will never see. I’m not interested in eliminating the ceiling - I want to raise the floor.…

> I am frustrated that the USA’s money advice largely comes from billionaires. One of my big issues with the 'follow your passion' advice is it almost always comes from people who are already rich. And, those people are often trying to leverage worker passion to staff their companies. As a young person, don't follow your passion. Instead, figure out the fastest way to economic security and once there, then figure out…

There's an interview with Bo Burnham where he puts it clearly...

> Don't listen to people who just got very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to "follow your dreams" is like a lottery winner saying "liquidise your assets, buy Powerball tickets. It works!"

And that's the thing. Skill and talent are important, but there's a certain amount of success that's only achievable through luck, or through starting from _so far ahead_ that it's just genuinely out of reach for us mere mortals.

Is the experience of those people irrelevant? No, but it's also not actually applicable to most other people.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#379

Post by austin-cheney »

JohnCurran wrote: post #355

I respect Paul and everything that he writes, even if I don’t agree with it. It takes some serious stones to publish your thoughts on the internet - whether people agree or not. In any case. This seems like a continuation of the never ending quest for people to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a corporate profit they will never see. I’m not interested in eliminating the ceiling - I want to raise the floor.…

I have noticed a divergence between product quality and incentive. The more distant the incentives are the less product quality matters. I have observed this at every place of employment, personal project, and entertainment software I have ever touched. It comes down to this:

1) What is the purpose of the product/platform/work? Typically when speaking of software generally there is only one correct answer: automation. If the stakeholder cannot answer this question in 2 words or less nothing else matters, because this the foundation from everything else derives.

2) How does the stakeholder define product quality? Do they measure any of that? If there are not written goals AND measures its probably all bullshit.

3) How directly are incentives tied to the defined product quality goals? If I have to count the hops using two hands there are no product quality goals.

4) What is the target audience of the product quality goals? In theory the primary audience should that which is the primary driver of revenue, but in reality it is typically that which is of greatest comfort to people analyzing requirements. This is where things get toxic. This is what makes me want to abandon software as a profession.

5) Incentives are not necessarily compensation.

With this list in mind the typical goal of a corporate software developer is to complete some tasks, get paid, and retain employment. Product quality is completely irrelevant up to and including some tolerance for terminal failure.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#380

Post by Aeolun »

austin-cheney wrote: post #379
JohnCurran wrote: post #355

I respect Paul and everything that he writes, even if I don’t agree with it. It takes some serious stones to publish your thoughts on the internet - whether people agree or not. In any case. This seems like a continuation of the never ending quest for people to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a corporate profit they will never see. I’m not interested in eliminating the ceiling - I want to raise the floor.…

I have noticed a divergence between product quality and incentive. The more distant the incentives are the less product quality matters. I have observed this at every place of employment, personal project, and entertainment software I have ever touched. It comes down to this: 1) What is the purpose of the product/platform/work? Typically when speaking of software generally there is only one correct answer: automation…

> including some tolerance for terminal failure.

On the other hand, you cannot survive as a corporate software dev without this ability because 80% of the failure will be completely unrelated to anything you do.

I keep thinking about these two massive projects we were working on with literally 50 people only to find out after completion that nobody had asked the client if they actually wanted anything like it. All that work down the drain...

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