Duh. This is just a “hard work propaganda” piece. Some parts just read like “Believe in Jesus or your limbs will start melting away!”. Just like that.
Is this how venture capitalists have always functioned, or is it a new kind of initiative? Is there some kind of threat they perceive seeing many people, organisations, and even some nations talk about work-life balance (et cetera)?
Besides, is this what pg essays are all about? So much brouhaha for this? I have read one more of these 1-2 years ago or so and it was the same feeling. No wonder I’ve never encountered these writings or talk about them anywhere out of the HN.
It all boils down to motivation and what you want out of life. Compound interest is great but health and youth never return, and the opportunities of today are not always here tomorrow.
(That said, I have been at it since 4:30AM today and working on a single venture for six years in extreme adversity. Anything else would be boring!)
Having good health, proper nutrition, and extracurriculars in an affluent society, i.e. having two parents who don’t suck, is a regular American baseline that public school kids experience. Gates’s particular advantages were being smart and having access to computers in high school in his day, which countered the bad luck of not being born a few years earlier such that he’d encounter computing in college with the sam…
> Gates’s particular advantages were being smart and having access to computers in high school in his day That's a rather inaccurate description of his advantages.
If that’s inaccurate, tell us what gives us more bits of information distinguishing him from the general population born in the same year he is. The smart part puts him in the 0.1%, 10 bits right there, and early access to computers adds another rare multiplier to that.
It isn’t, obviously, because look at the example of Bill Gates: starting a business as a 20-year-old college dropout puts you at a big disadvantage compared to people with more life experience.
The Bill Gates Mythology in this essay is a bit odd though. No doubt a hard worker, but the claim >"Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business in his era, but he was also among the hardest working. "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one." doesn't align with the facts that have recently emerged about him. [1] Maybe PG should examine selection bias and self-reporting bias a b…
From the linked article:
Another ex, Jill Bennett — described as his “first serious girlfriend” — said they split because of Gates’ fixation with working long hours.
“In the end, it was difficult to sustain a relationship with someone who could boast a ‘seven-hour turnaround’ — meaning that from the time he left Microsoft to the time he returned in the morning was a mere seven hours,” she told Wallace.
I don't see that being a "womanizer" is in any way incompatible with being a workaholic.
Why sitting through a movie is a bad thing? Have you tried watching some “harder” movies? Maybe you’re just bored with the specific movies you are watching. I for example know that I have a very specific love for sci-fi genre; but unfortunately a lot of sci-fi is basically trash with good CGI and I can’t help myself but think that I am wasting my time when I watch stuff in that comfort zone. However there’s a lot to…
It's a moving target. At first I wouldn't sit through genuinely asinine popular media, like 'Friends'. This is not unhealthy: most of it is shit. But over time, I've found that I can't sit through anything that isn't utterly engaging. My SO used to joke that I 'hated everything' until that started to make me feel bad. Paying attention to anything that isn't doesn't at least appear to be addressing existential dread h…
One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…
Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.
Since you have a contrarian view I'd be curious to hear your take on some reasons I like to travel:
- Get a feel for life in a place. How do people live? Where do people eat? How do people move around? Where do people congregate? How does life ebb and flow throughout the day and week? Obviously each one can be expanded to more questions, but I like to experience these things and then compare and contrast. What do I like? Is this better or worse or just different?
- Try new cuisines. It can be really hard to get an "authentic" experience outside of a country for a variety of reasons
- Activities. Skiing can't be done everywhere
- Natural wonders. I find viewing certain nature scenes in person very satisfying
> There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard. I'd like to add that it is more than fine to not do great work. If you like to spend a lot of time with your kids and tend to your vegetable patch, by all means only t…
"Society" at large already tells us to be average, to not work hard, etc. I don't think PG needs to restate that.
>Are there people in their 40s who've kept their skills up and still aren't getting hired? Those are my people and the answer, at least for my cohort, is an emphatic no. They are extremely mobile and move from job to job with relative ease.
Ok but how common is this? Can the average old developer expect to have "kept their skills up" to some arbitrary standard even though we know humans tend to calcify in their thinking, have lower risk appetite and worse memory as they get older? If my cohort consisted of John Carmack and Jeff Dean type outliers, I could also claim that they have no trouble getting jobs in their older age but it wouldn't be a particula…
In my experience, it's the norm. I'm pushing 50, and I'm more in demand every year than I was before. I have dozens of friends my age in tech, and it's the same for all of them. I don't keep my skills up to an "arbitrary standard;" I've learned continuously throughout my career. I haven't tried to keep up with modern technology, I've just done it. I'm always learning, I change jobs every few years to follow my interests, I look for challenging things because I'm motivated by the same quest for knowledge and enjoyment that got me started in my career in the first place. I think you have to go out of your way to stagnate, or at least be so passive that you probably picked the wrong career in the first place. This isn't just an issue with IT jobs; you can be a skilled laborer in any trade, and if you don't learn along the way, you'll become obsolete. But if you're not learning along the way, what are you doing it for?
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…
Speaking for myself, I haven't lost interest in games as I grew older. What happened, rather, is that I lost the drive to go through the initial learning pains to get to the point where the game is truly fun and enjoyable - and so I end up mostly playing older games where I already know the ropes, and, occasionally, new games that rehash the old formulas and thus don't require much learning.