Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Find Your People

foundersatwork.posthaven.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 297 posts

Re: Find Your People

#81

Post by lanfeust6 »

jimbokun wrote: post #44
game_the0ry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a south asian person, I could not agree more. The irony is that my parents were immigrant entrepreneurs and my grandparents were also entrepreneurs on both sides. Yet my parents pushed me towards medical school or a stable job at the least. I think this was for a couple reasons: 1. Asian parents express their insecurities through their children. They wanted a stable and high income (which maps to "doctor") so they…

Not Asian or South Asian. I'm sure what you're saying is true. But having parents that are not involved enough to push their kids towards anything in particular is a much bigger challenge to over come. If you have a degree from a prestigious university and the network that comes along with it, pivoting towards start ups or something more creative or entrepreneurial is a lot easier than if you never went to college at…

> push their kids

I think complete apathy is uncommon. Parents mostly want their kids to succeed in what would loosely map to their own definitions, to be "content" and self-reliant. If they come from a blue collar background that will mean suggesting their kids pick up a trade. Educated parents will usually suggest college.

You can't will ambition in someone else that isn't there, and it comes at a price. Some parents relentlessly make their kids train hard at sports, or studying, and they're miserable and resentful for it.

Re: Find Your People

#82

Post by nathan_compton »

mjr00 wrote: post #64
nathan_compton wrote: post #56

"Which leads me to my final point about getting ambitious plans: you have to be immune to rejection. People are going to dismiss you at first. If that's enough to stop you, you're doomed. So you have to learn to ignore it. And that's harder than it sounds—social pressure is so powerful. But everyone who does ambitious things has to learn how to resist it." Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and d…

> Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and destruction in their wake. At the same time, lots of people who do this end up being extremely successful. The difficulty is knowing which rejection and criticism to ignore. Imagine losing out on a multi-billion dollar business because your initial pitch was dismissed by people saying your business is pointless and redundant because rsync already exists[0]…

"Each time you have to make a decision, make the right one" would be what I would say in a commencement speech. Truly sage advice.

Re: Find Your People

#83

Post by lanfeust6 »

rubitxxx15 wrote: post #17

It’s a great speech, but I’ve listened to this “chase your dream” thing for decades. I took career and personality tests but nothing in them fit. I don’t fit. I’ve gotten seriously jaded and live with crippling mental health problems and constant stress because I feel like I failed to find my people and now I just hide from my people. So, as an older adult, I think maybe we need to be teaching more responsibility to…

I generally agree but strictly speaking I don't think this was yet another canned "chase-your-dream" speech. She went out of her way to elucidate who this was for, and it's ambitious people that are aimlessly coasting.

When you're young, particularly in tech, taking some swings (like with a startup) and not succeeding isn't a long-term detriment. It's a good experience that can help you land other jobs in the worst case.

Which is to say, not all dream-chasing is created equal. If you want to play music, then you need to do a cost-benefit analysis: you will probably not sustain yourself very long, will probably want a dayjob and/or an out at some point, and this is an opportunity cost vs early career traction. If one's ambition only begins and ends with that, then it won't matter so much if what you end up with is "just a job" with lower income potential. All depends on what you're ok with.

The common anecdote is trying to make the big leagues. But consider another: some elite athletes train for years ahead of the Olympics, and then it's all over and they never do it again (most often). Are they screwed? Well it arguably demonstrates discipline and grit and might look impressive on a resume. The lives of ex-Olympians go on. By the same token, someone who never makes the NBA or whatever can get a scholarship ride anyway (which compared to the cost of lifelong training, might be a small victory).

Sometimes optimizing for the early career/education ladder-jumping isn't the "correct" move. But I think it's important that young people understand what's probably at stake

Re: Find Your People

#85

Post by AaronAPU »

mclau157 wrote: post #68

Tangential to this but why does there seem to be a correlation between rock climbing gyms and tech oriented people?

I don’t know, but I’ve made a specific effort not to rock climb because I felt it may cause long term hand related injuries which could impact my ability to work.

Not even sure how well founded that fear is, but I would otherwise love to do rock climbing.

Re: Find Your People

#86

Post by MicrosoftShill »

smeej wrote: post #34
rubitxxx15 wrote: post #17

It’s a great speech, but I’ve listened to this “chase your dream” thing for decades. I took career and personality tests but nothing in them fit. I don’t fit. I’ve gotten seriously jaded and live with crippling mental health problems and constant stress because I feel like I failed to find my people and now I just hide from my people. So, as an older adult, I think maybe we need to be teaching more responsibility to…

I came here to leave a comment related to this. This article has great advice, if you're normal enough that enough of "your people" exist to be able to find them and do something together. But if you've spent your whole life being told by the whole world--even people you thought were really interesting and wanted to get to know--that you're "just too fucking weird," it lands more like, "Oh. More advice for other peop…

It sounds like you need some friends in the maker space or something similar where tinkering in something temporary is normal. I'd say you're among friends in the HN space where tinkerers are more common!

Keep working on your trauma. Don't however think that your healing is a requirement to have friends, love, etc. We are all broken and hurt. We are broken together.

Re: Find Your People

#87

Post by lucasfcosta »

Thanks for writing this, Jessica.

This is a great paragraph:

> If you want to, you can just decide to shift gears at this point, and no one's going to tell you you can't. You can just decide to be more curious, or more responsible, or more energetic, and no one's going to go look up your college grades and say, "Hey, wait a minute, this person's supposed to be a slacker."

I've often seen people get too attached to an unproductive "identity" instead of looking at things as they are. It's way too common for people to fail once and think they're a failure, rather than thinking that they just failed at that particular time.

By the way, I remember meeting you during the S23 batch and how genuinely excited you were to meet us, young founders who were just getting started. It does seem like you found your people!

Re: Find Your People

#88

Post by codingdave »

egypturnash wrote: post #37
komali2 wrote: post #25

That was enjoyable, and I appreciated the overall message. A little bit trickier of a pitch to introverted people, maybe. One bit though I'm interested in chatting about: > The truth is there are thousands of different places you could go work, and you have to consider them all and figure out which is the best. But that sounds impossible, right? You only had to choose between 60 different majors, and now you have to…

You may die younger but is slaving away in an office to make money for someone else for most of your waking hours really living?

What if you happily work in a low-stress office, enjoying what you do and with whom you do it, and are satisfied with your compensation?

There are definitely healthy middle grounds available as life choices.

Re: Find Your People

#89

Post by lubujackson »

nathan_compton wrote: post #56

"Which leads me to my final point about getting ambitious plans: you have to be immune to rejection. People are going to dismiss you at first. If that's enough to stop you, you're doomed. So you have to learn to ignore it. And that's harder than it sounds—social pressure is so powerful. But everyone who does ambitious things has to learn how to resist it." Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and d…

"Immune to rejection" and "consider all criticism" are both useful but much, much harder than doing one or the other reliably. Lots of assholes are immune to rejection and a lot of doormats consider all criticism. Doing both means you keep your ears open but are resolute (and maybe delusional) about a few core ideals. And maybe even those change with criticism.

There is a reason you see lots of asshole business owners and not many doormats, though - you need to filter criticism or it will always screw you up in the end. Accepting criticism can help you course-correct and produce better/happier, but isn't a requirement for success.

Re: Find Your People

#90

Post by parpfish »

joshstrange wrote: post #54

> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…

i think its interesting that for so many college kids, the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad school. work at big3/faang, etc).

it's not because they are any more prestigious or important, but because they provide a clear sense of achievement/external validation and kids that make it to the end of college are kids that have had decades of achievement/external validation being their primary measure of success.

and because of that, those places do an amazing job recruiting. i remember toward the end of my undergrad days there was huge sense of competition to get a "teach for america" position, even among folks with no interest in education. it was appealing simply because it was selective and provided a clear framework for 'next steps'.

Post reply on HN