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Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

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Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#91

Post by Brian_K_White »

sanderjd wrote: post #62
simpletone wrote: post #36

> Greatness comes from character and character isn’t formed out of smart people—it’s formed out of people who suffered. Or 'Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them' -- Shakespeare There are many paths to greatness. The article mentions a lot of hurdles and racism that he had to overcome. But those are specific to him. I'm sure there are plenty 'great' people who haven't s…

> I don't think people with low expectations start companies. Certainly those with low expectations don't rise and achieve greatness. I think this is a common misinterpretation of "expectations", to the point that it honestly just isn't a very clear way to make the point he's making. Here's a restatement of your quote that I would agree with: > I don't think people with limited aspirations start companies. Certainly…

expecting to see what happens

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#92

Post by ajross »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #86
ajross wrote: post #49

Not really relevant to Huang's speech per se, but the article engages in IMHO one of the most infuriatingly wrong misconceptions in education journalism: > [Stanford] is one of the most selective in the United States [...] and the few students who get picked to study there are charged $62,484 in tuition fees for the premium, compared to the average $26,027 per annum cost. But, unfortunately for those saddled with stu…

A lot of "top-10/elite/whatever schools" can reduce or cover the tuition for the vast majority of their students mostly because their endowments are enormous . It's dirt cheap for them and is good PR. All Ivy-league schools can effectively offer free education to their students for generations off of the interest they earn on their endowments alone. It's partly what leads to the crazy inequality in offerings, quality…

Most research university revenue, be it tuition-, donation- or grant-based, isn't really involved in the education of undergraduates anyway. All that extra money Stanford brings in that CSU Chico does not goes to building labs and hiring graduate students. Freshman Computer Science costs the same no matter where you are.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#93

Post by sanderjd »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #88
sanderjd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read is that he's just making the same point as the stoics (and I'm sure many others, I'm just most familiar with it from stoicism), to not expect or fall into the trap of feeling entitled to good things. In stoicism, this is the point beneath the oft-caricatured practice of contemplating that death could come at any moment. If you don't expect or feel entitled to even just living from moment to moment, then it's…

It really depends who's saying it to you at the time. It's true that being able to cope instead of fall apart is a useful power for you. It's also true that anyone with any form of authority over you would love nothing better than for you to never demand anything.

Yes, but (and I may be saying something different than Huang here) demanding things is different than expecting them. The difference is in your response if the outcome is "no". Anger or serenity?

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#94

Post by Ancapistani »

JohnMakin wrote: post #51
homefree wrote: post #6

It's more about resilience and what sets the stage for it. He argues resilience is created through suffering (which plays into the idea that if you want to know who will be a good founder, ask about their childhood). It makes me curious though about the direction of the causality - how much is resilience actually about temperament and genetics vs. the environmental experience of suffering. Why do some people become r…

Traumatic early childhood experiences (suffering) can cause profoundly negative, irreversible effects on a child's brain development that will have issues persist well into adulthood and beyond - I don't think his take is scientific. edit: not sure why downvoted, here's a source if you don't believe me: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3968319/

> Traumatic early childhood experiences

While it sounds like this would describe Huang's experience, I don't think that's what he intended to convey.

As others have said, it seems to be about resiliency. You don't develop that unless you have a reason to do so - "pain and suffering", to me, sounds like a synonym for "struggle".

My childhood was pretty much uniformly excellent. I saw my parents struggle a bit, but I was too young for it to really mean much to me at the time, and it didn't directly impact me. My personal struggle didn't really begin until after high school; I ran head-first into undiagnosed ADHD and chronic depression.

Recognizing those issues and overcoming them was the process that defined who I am as an adult. I fully believe it has made me a better and more resilient person. It wasn't until then that I was able to look back and really understand what my parents went through.

It has also informed the way I parent my children. I make it a point to be transparent about what I'm thinking, the struggles I'm facing now, and the ways I'm dealing with them. That's tempered by constantly reinforcing that those things are my stresses, not my kids'... because my kids aren't my therapist :P.

My hope is that by being transparent, my kids don't enter the adult world expecting everything to go according to plan. I'm trying to model not only "correct" behaviors, but how to emotionally deal with and overcome hardship.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#95

Post by tpmoney »

sanderjd wrote: post #66
JohnMakin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traumatic early childhood experiences (suffering) can cause profoundly negative, irreversible effects on a child's brain development that will have issues persist well into adulthood and beyond - I don't think his take is scientific. edit: not sure why downvoted, here's a source if you don't believe me: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3968319/

Yep, I'm with you. I think this "suffering is necessary" point Huang is making is his weakest point. Maybe a more nuanced version of it that I think would be a stronger point is that there is a "sweet spot" of life challenges - not too much, but also not too little - that increase the odds of positive outcomes for people. But as you say, people who experience extreme suffering are much more likely to experience a lif…

The only universal truth is that no thruths are universal. And I think “suffering builds character” in this and its other forms is a perfect example. Yes, extreme suffering will cause long term problems. And yet at the same time, we’re all probably familiar with or know someone who experienced “the gifted student wall” where their natural talent was good enough to carry them to success, right up until the point it wasn’t and they suffered a major setback because they’d never built up the skills or resiliency to overcome that obstacle.

Like you said there is probably some sweet spot that we should try to hit. I suppose the hard part is there’s no good way to know how much suffering society should allow or encourage, and probably more importantly no good mechanism by which we can turn off suffering once you’ve “had enough”

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#97

Post by sahila »

sanderjd wrote: post #58
donflamenco wrote: post #14

I would recommend the full video on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEg8cOx7UZk Another fascinating bit is when he describes the flat management structure NVDA has. He, as CEO, has 58 direct reports and no scheduled one on ones. Feedback is given constantly (up and down.).

No 1:1s sounds miserable. I don't want to give or receive feedback "constantly", I have other things to do constantly. I want to have a set periodic time where I know I will not be interrupted by my manager "sharing feedback", and will not be interrupting them with my feedback. I suspect that in practice, relatively little feedback is being shared either up or down within such a structure, as people are busy working…

1:1s are okay when you're an IC and have it with your manager. The problem is the flipside is when your manager has many ICs, then it doesn't scale properly. Imagine Jensen having 58 reoccurring 1-1s!

In fact I see this with my coworkers, especially PMs, who have their schedules full of 1-1s daily. No doubt there's useful work that gets done in them _sometimes_, but I have doubts its efficiency over the long term with cross functionals. But even just focusing on 1-1s between managers/reports, I'd prefer nixing them in favor of a flatter structure, and using office hours/one-offs when needed.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#98

Post by sahila »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #73
donflamenco wrote: post #14

I would recommend the full video on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEg8cOx7UZk Another fascinating bit is when he describes the flat management structure NVDA has. He, as CEO, has 58 direct reports and no scheduled one on ones. Feedback is given constantly (up and down.).

> Feedback is given constantly (up and down.). If you don't make time for things they rarely happen unless the people are particularly fired up about them. I don't even know who my current manager is to even reach out to. My coworkers don't unit test until reminded on the PR. I honestly forget to smoke-test until called out on it. So unless your culture is about feedback and everyone truly embodies that and is on boa…

Some of these seem a bit far-fetched and out of the norm. Not knowing your manager - do you even know what team you're on?

Engineering culture dictates much more strongly regarding unit and other tests than constant human feedback. It's also easy to add automated lint coverage tests to your PRs, and creating a documented process to check whether smoke-tests, etc.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#99

Post by sanderjd »

tpmoney wrote: post #95
sanderjd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I'm with you. I think this "suffering is necessary" point Huang is making is his weakest point. Maybe a more nuanced version of it that I think would be a stronger point is that there is a "sweet spot" of life challenges - not too much, but also not too little - that increase the odds of positive outcomes for people. But as you say, people who experience extreme suffering are much more likely to experience a lif…

The only universal truth is that no thruths are universal. And I think “suffering builds character” in this and its other forms is a perfect example. Yes, extreme suffering will cause long term problems. And yet at the same time, we’re all probably familiar with or know someone who experienced “the gifted student wall” where their natural talent was good enough to carry them to success, right up until the point it wa…

Well put. Also, just to make it even harder, the "sweet spot" is probably very individual-specific.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#100

Post by OldGuyInTheClub »

cowboyscott wrote: post #11

This reminds me of the speech Bill Murray’s character gives at the start of Rushmore [0]: > You guys have it real easy. I never had it like this where I grew up. But I send my kids here because the fact is you go to one of the best schools in the country: Rushmore. Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and you're going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the ri…

The current crop of ultrabillionaires may lack many things but I don't think backbone is on the list. They are as ruthless as any robber baron or industrialist of old. They can buy, sell, and eliminate people and governments as they see fit. Good luck getting close enough to take actual or metaphorical aim.
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