back
28 comments
I have to wonder if a lot of the people criticizing this blog post actually read the whole thing.

Note the title: Things I learned. She's posting about her internship experience and the lessons she learned. She's not trying to give nuanced, universally applicable advice for how to become famous in every circumstance and industry.

She's talking about "fame" from a specific perspective -- that of a student who might be intimidated by the success of someone like Zuckerberg. She relates the example of Paul Butler and his "fame". It's clear he's not "famous" in the conventional sense, but that he simply created something that people in the industry liked enough to tweet and email around. She realizes that there may not be anything intrinsically different about the people who attract "fame", and that her having cut Zuckerberg in the lunch line makes him just another regular person who lines up for lunch and gets cut in line. The reason Zuck's famous is that he did something that people liked (and now he's arguably conventionally "famous" because peopled liked it at scale).

I found this to be a simple and useful reminder that our heroes are human too, and all of them got where they are by doing stuff.

There's an almost pathological compulsion here to analyze every word and sentence, hoping for some incisive way to show one's cleverness. I think that's missing the point.

I debated whether to add the comment criticizing it. I gave a compliment first of what I liked about the essay. Then, I realize some might take the essay another way, so I said it wouldn't hurt to put in my 2 cent of this. No conspiracy.
What is fundamental to most peoples' lack of accomplishment?

Is it a lack of understanding of the meta behind fame and accomplishment, or is the fact that they have done anything yet?

Priorities man. :) Lets try to promulgate what will get people productive and moving and then we can start nitpicking over the peculiars of how people come to fame in their field.

>There's an almost pathological compulsion here to analyze every word and sentence, hoping for some incisive way to show one's cleverness. I think that's missing the point.

It's a pathology of the community, yes. People here just aren't all that nice, and the popularity contest centers around demonstrated intellect and rhetoric.

Too bad it doesn't center around productivity, such as she mentions in her post.

> "Famous people are famous because they do things. There's nothing more to it, and nothing less."

I agree with the "they do things" part but wholeheartedly disagree with "There's nothing more to it." There's a LOT more to it. I have a really good friend who ran a social network between 2003-2006 and had millions of users. He is a brilliant coder and worked really really hard to grow the site. He "did things".

He had a vision, built the foundations himself, assembled a capable team, delegated appropriately, and oversaw the operations as needed. But he's not famous today. Why not? Because his social network didn't make it big. It was successful enough to give him a good middle-class lifestyle (better than ramen profitable) but it didn't make him millions. And today nobody knows of his brilliance or leadership skills. You could say he's not famous because he didn't push through harder but then you better hold that criteria for everyone else who is famous too.

Your definition of fame is different from hers. I'm sure that to his team and all those who know him, he is "famous". When people think of him, they think of him with respect and generally think better of him than they do of their other friends/acquaintances. She's not talking about world-famous - Zuck may be world-famous, but Knuth is not; he's only famous amongst the programmer/computer science community.
Just because "famous people are famous because they do things" doesn't mean that doing things will lead one to become famous.
IIRC the american dream doesn't come with any warranty. There's no entitlement to success. He did his best but failed. Kudos to him, but he'll have to try again.
Since when does "comfortable middle-class lifestyle" equal failure? I think most people would love to make a decent income off their own project as opposed to getting a paycheck to be subservient to a boss.
Would love to see a Mixergy interview with your friend.
Donald Knuth's Christmas Tree Lecture 2010: http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/seminars/knuth/101206-kn...
Thanks for that!

mplayer -dumpstream "mms://proedvid.stanford.edu/knuth/musings/101206/101206-knuth-500.wmv"

The money quote for me:

"I did some things I'm proud of and a few that I'm not. I failed a lot, but learned a lot too. Hopefully, in 2011, I won't let trivial fears set me back: I'll do more, try more, and say "yes" more. There's just too much to lose otherwise."

Fortis cadere, cedere non potest(The brave may fall, but never yield.)

For a well-reasoned counter argument, may I recommend the excellent Fooled by Randomness? "Doing things" is necessary but not sufficient condition to becoming great.

     1) Famous people are famous because they do things. There's nothing more to it, 
     and nothing less.
     3) When you decide to do things, opportunities come.
These two always bear some reitaration.
Money quote:

" I realized that their ticket to fame is actually really simple: when they had an idea, they followed through.

Simply put, they did things. They executed."

Now we just need to make that stick.

I'm very much against this type of thinking. My garbage man does stuff, but I don't see him famous. A lot of people do stuff. Doing stuff is maybe a prerequisite of being famous but it is not sufficient(or maybe it is not, you can be born into it :D). What I see central to all these guys is a capacity for taking risks with the potential for high payoff.
When she says "does stuff", she means, when you have an idea that you want to see realized, and then you follow through and take it to its logical conclusion to have an impact on others. Then repeat.

Many, many smart people have ideas, but can never finish anything. Or for that matter, never start anything.

You hear "does stuff", and take it out of context into its broad definition, which includes your garbage man. Then of course it doesn't make sense.

I think this could be broken down further to mean:

People that create, rather than perform.

Zuckerberg made something brand new. The garbage man just does what he's told. There is a big difference.

There are many factors to success. And many ways to measure success.
So stuff means only startups and hacking here right? My dad took an exam in which people well above his age fail, but he passed and got selected in a prestigious government position. He then went on to work in a lot of departments of Indian government. In short he has done a lot of "stuff" stuff. But I don't see him being famous.
No. It's not a hard and fast rule of the world and the way it works. It's a good first-order approximation, and a necessary, but not sufficient condition.

Your dad may be famous amongst his peers.

she is talking about executing your idea. your garbage man is not executing his idea, he is performing a task anyone else can do and does not require any knowledge, risk or strategy. sticking to your idea, doing it is actually taking risk for high payoff.
Another way to look at this would be 'doing stuff that matters' or 'doing what only I can do' or maybe 'doing stuff no one told me to do'

I think the biggest difference is that the garbage man is doing what he is told to do whereas the famous people are doing the stuff no one told them to do. They broke out of the mold and got famous.

I accidentally down voted you on my iPad because the little buttons are too close, but I agree entirely with what you said and Lisa sounds extremely naive. Fame is a function of much more than just doing stuff. The media, for example, play an important and often highly selective role. Some have become famous by sleeping with the right producers, some have cured polio. Some have very obscure fame, Knuth, for example, is known pretty much to, and only to, every CS major. Youthful enthusiasm often neglects how critical luck is in life. Even if you achieve something highly beneficial to mankind doesn't guarantee fame, think of all the obscure inventors whose names we don't remember. It is also easy to loose a sense of perspective, while I'm sure facebook is fun for a lot of people but I think 'Zuck' is more famous for being the subject of a movie than for running an ad business.
What she says is a good first approximation. When you're learning about anything, you don't dive into the nitty gritty and all its nuances first.
+1 to this. It's a case of necessary and sufficient conditions. You have to "do stuff" to be famous, but that's not enough, not by a long shot. Most famous people are famous because they work hard at being famous.

Here's the formula for getting famous:

1) Do stuff

2) Relentlessly promote what you did in step 1

3) Repeat step 2

A more coherent response: http://peachshake.com/2010/12/26/acquiring-fame/

I liked that part the most