771–780 of 1001 posts
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Poker can be considered work. If you actually truly learn to play it, it teaches you a lot about people, emotions, thinking ahead several steps, probability, and risk and reward.
In that case my weekend of climbing can be considered work too
Exercise maintains physical health, which IMO is more important than any amount of career success.
I worked my way through college as a mover (and came out the other side with high 5-figure debt). Many of the older guys I worked with had drug habits. I worked 16-hour days with those guys. They'd get on me for not running up stairs, for packing with too little paper around glass, for setting things down more than once. None wrote articles entitled "How to Work Hard." None knew Warren Buffet as a child (see Gates).…
> Take a look at the top 10 highest valued YC startups. All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates. This is not true. AirBnB is the top valued company that went through YC [1]. AirBnB was founded by Brian Chesky among others. Brian Chesky went to the Rhode Island School of Design [2]. The RISD had an acceptance rate of 20% in 2020. [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ [2] https:…
When I was an undergrad at CMU, I learned how to work hard. Really hard. After having coasted through too-easy high school, I spent all day every day at CMU either programming, doing mathematics, or thinking about one of those things (to great effect: often the trick to prove a theorem would pop into my head while showering or while taking a walk). I would fall asleep while programming in the middle of the night, dre…
Exactly, it's like we are celebrating a mania.
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Some are, others are not. Some build communities, others do not. Some games are played with friends and family, and some are not. Some fiction has artistic merit, other fiction does not. Your views are about as up to date as “games are for kids”
Sure, some gaming could be a healthy bit of fun in a social context, but it tends not to be, doesn’t it? It tends to become a massive time sink, the accumulation of which over many years, usually of your youth (notice that older people just lose interest in games, like they suddenly don’t see value in them anymore), will not leave you well-read or physically fit or able to entertain others or even good memories - jus…
I don't really play them anymore because I played competitive games (As opposed to very casual or story driven games), and being good at games is no longer a priority to me. It takes a lot of time and effort to maintain your skill level, let alone increase it.
I definitely still see value in playing competitive games, but I think I've already extracted most of that value.
No PG you are presenting speculative opinion as fact. Conscientiousness is a measured and well documented personality trait, it is also formed around age six. It also happens to be social in its construction. Software engineers typically report lower than average Conscientiousness, because the more complex the task, the less it has an impact. It's also negatively correlated with IQ. Suggesting it is a choice is demon…
Even if true, do you think that you are trapped by that? Personally, I think that you can choose to cultivate more conscientiousness, whether or not you have that as a personality trait. (This is true of other traits, too. You can also choose to cultivate, say, honesty. Or kindness.)
No PG you are presenting speculative opinion as fact. Conscientiousness is a measured and well documented personality trait, it is also formed around age six. It also happens to be social in its construction. Software engineers typically report lower than average Conscientiousness, because the more complex the task, the less it has an impact. It's also negatively correlated with IQ. Suggesting it is a choice is demon…
Why do I have such low conscientiousness?
I worked my way through college as a mover (and came out the other side with high 5-figure debt). Many of the older guys I worked with had drug habits. I worked 16-hour days with those guys. They'd get on me for not running up stairs, for packing with too little paper around glass, for setting things down more than once. None wrote articles entitled "How to Work Hard." None knew Warren Buffet as a child (see Gates).…
I realize yours is a common reality, but it's not been my experience. I always felt surrounded by underdogs, and our privilege mostly came from former underdogs choosing to bet on me.
My parents are middle class New Yorkers. I went to a public high school, ran track, skateboarded and played with computers and programming for fun.
I went to Wash U in St Louis on financial scholarship. A great school but not the ones that tech companies recruit aggressively from. My freshman year I bootstrapped a moving company and a custom apparel company, and I worked constantly at both on top of a full course load for a double major and social obligations. I probably couldn't do that today, but it didn't feel like work then. It was fun. Both of those companies did well enough that I got introduced to Joe Lonsdale as he was starting Addepar, and I made enough money from them to pay off all debts and enter adult life with over 150k in savings.
I joined Addepar my sophomore summer. It was me, Joe, a CMU dropout, a Berkeley grad who was working at Yahoo, a snowboard apparel designer, and a santa clara grad. We hacked it out, and now that company is worth over a billion dollars. Joe was a Stanford graduate, the rest of us made it with equity.
While at Addepar in SF I met Keith Rabois, who tried to recruit me to Square. I turned him down because I wanted to graduate school, but we became close friends and eventually started Opendoor together with Eric Wu, the child of immigrants who went to University of Arizona. We recruited a great team, and now Opendoor is a 10 billion dollar public company.
There are a million and one privileges I've enjoyed, but they were mostly people being willing to bet on me. And most of the money I made was in equity. I never had a six figure salary until my last 6 months at Opendoor, and I didn't take any money off the table until year 5.
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Without luck, you will not get to the level of Messi. Without knowledge, you will not get to the level of Messi. Without living in the right environment, you will not get to the level of Messi. The "natural ability" thing is just a spin on the same idea. Work hard to recognize your natural ability. Be realistic about it. In that view, natural ability is not a matter of luck. It is still a story about doing the right…
> Without luck, you will not get to the level of Messi. I would add that as a fourth requirement to compete at the very top level along with the other three. A degree of luck is also necessary. > Without living in the right environment, you will not get to the level of Messi. A fifth requirement. None of that means hard work is NOT a requirement too - and one of the most important. Without hard work Messi gets nowher…