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When Paul Graham uses a phrase like "great work" I can't help but only consider it as being synonymous to "work that generates a big return for the investor" in his context of Y Combinator
Maybe but i consider other things in that as well.
One thing is art. I was in new orleans once and heard a kid play jazz saxaphone out on a street corner in the middle of the night. It was legitimately the most beautiful music ive ever heard in my life. I think that man put all his life into that solo and hit the frontier of how music can affect a listener's soul. I think he was doing great by paul grahams definition
I didn’t read the whole essay, but it seems to be more like: find something you are interested in, interested enough to work very hard at it, and don’t worry about what others think too much. It seems basically true (and legitimately good advice), if a bit generic. It doesn’t seem particularly tied to start-ups or whatever.
I didn’t get much from it, but I’ve gotten that sort of advice my whole life, so it was a little boring. As a result of being bored, I skimmed it. As I skimmed it, it started to feel repetitive. It is possible that a deeper reading would reveal some non-repetitive aspect to the parts I found repetitive. It seems like a good blog post to give to a smart teenager.
Edit: I think we’ll get some dismissive responses here because most of the posters here are at least somewhat mid-career, so they’ve already gotten and acted on this kind of advice. Imagine reading it before college, though. I’d have enjoyed it.
What do you want it to be synonymous to? The people who've managed to do great work without generating large investment returns not that large. Compared to the number of ambitious people presently looking for advice it is small.
I disagree. There are millions of local activists that are improving the immediate lives of their communities in real impactful ways that never see the light of day. Starting after school programs or setting up mutual aid stations or community gardens or creating tenant unions, are all things any one of us can do to improve the lives of those around us.
If you're great work only consists of work that generates money, then you're neglecting the entire spectrum of the human experience.
That probably is what it means and I think there's still value in the analysis.
I think it's a dishonest essay:
>The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.
>In practice you don't have to worry much about the third criterion. Ambitious people are if anything already too conservative about it. So all you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.
Bull-shit. The set of all things you enjoy and have aptitude for is much larger than the set of things you can make money on. There's a reason why Paul Graham chased coding and making an e-store in the 90s and not becoming a great philosopher, which he seems to have natural interest in (and he probably thinks he has quite a bit of aptitude for it).
That reason is $$$. I've found in my time that the number one rule of making $$$ is that you must chase $$$. It doesn't knock at your door, it doesn't come when you least expect it. $$$ is degrading in that you must submit yourself to it. If the $$$ is in code then you code and there's no room for individuality beyond that. It's genuflect or be poor. That's why all these rich people narrowly chase code or similar cash cows. The number two and three rules is chase it a lot and chase it efficiently. If you chase something else a lot and efficiently you will still be poor.
Charitably maybe the concept of chasing $$$ is so ingrained in these people that it's not a conscious decision to them. That seems to be what he says anyway. You could call that greed and I think a lot of brilliant people don't have it to the same degree that most billionaires do so failing to acknowledge it even by accident leads to gatekeeping money.
Genuine question, what work has Paul Graham done that can be classified as 'great'?
https://paulgraham.com/spam.html
I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work.
It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible.
Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.
He wrote a lot about this. For example he built an e-commerce meta platform in Lisp that would allow anyone to build and customise their own shops that was far ahead of anything that existed at the time.
Creating YCombinator
Per Graham's own definition, the founding to Y Combinator. Setting aside critiques, some of his influential essays ("Ramen profitable", "Do things that don't scale", "Founder mode", "Beating the averages", "Schelp blindness", etc) also fit the bill.
'Great' is subjective. If you care about the same things as he does, a lot of his work is great. If you care about totally different things, none of his work is great.
Whatever you feel about it, it would be inaccurate to say that he has not found success. Clearly he has. So it is up to each person to decide whether or not any products of that success, including his writings, matches their own definition for 'great'.
For me keeping Hacker News in the way it is. One of the last "inspiring" places, now that reddit is dead.
I think it's the kind of work that (for beautiful moment in time) creates a lot of value for shareholders.
This is the problem with the modern "everything superlative" verbiage. The Press, Social Media, The Public all are to blame for encouraging this. Everything is hyped up and hence the words lose their true meaning.
You are somewhat smart in one specific domain; you are a "Genius".
You are successful in something; you are the "Greatest".
You fail in something; you are a "Loser".
You make one single mistake; you are "Dumb".
It is almost as if we have forgotten how we got here viz. lots of trial-and-error, sheer persistence, extreme specialization, building theories, sharing knowledge, building teams, focusing on goals, good dose of luck, etc.
Hacker News.
> At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you're starting to explore unanswered questions in physics.
Is this supposed to be relatable?
I don't think PG posts are aimed at us normies. I do read his blogposts when they are published, and for all these years I've always thought that they were aimed at ambitious students and professionals alike, but with a certain pedigree/background.
When Ivy League educated VC billionaires tell people that they can do great things and change the world if they want, one assumption is that you already have to be pretty close to the in-group.
It used to be relatable, for nerds (like me.) Now the second two are 45 minute chat sessions in the eyes of most, I suppose.
For me it is
Why not?
- William James Sidis
Either A) he used a rhetorical device, or B) he tried to be relatable and failed (for you, assuming you represent the typical intended audience) or C) he tried to be relatable and succeeded, but you are not part of the intended audience he aimed the piece at. Which is 100%, absolutely, perfectly fine; there is nothing wrong in being in that "very ambitious" group of people Paul Graham is likely refering too. I am not even sure if doing great work is great life advice for the target group, depends on how measures "success at life" or however one would call it.
In any case; I think you will get the most out of the article if you do not pay the relatility too much thought: Even if C) would be true and you (or me or others) are indeed not part of the intended audience, I am sure there are still interesting thoughts in the essay on can think about and potentially apply to ones own life.
The people qualified to do great work probably don't need the advice. They most likely lack resources (like money or free time), not guidance.
The people who would benefit from the advice (resourceful people full of free time that are doing nothing meaningful) will likely ignore it anyway.
You assume that people are rigid in their habits. Inspiration goes a long way. Habits can be shaped greatly with the right motivation and mentorship.
this is one of the common conundrums of life. but for someone living in the grey, this stuff might push them over the edge to be great. that is the point of this article
It's a nice post, with a lot of valuable insights. There is one that I disagree with though: "Never abandon the root node".
There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.
FWIW existential crises can strike at any part of life, so naming them like that is outdated.
He wouldn't know.
good related read: You and Your Research (Hamming)
The above essay by OG Richard Hamming is the one to read (forget PG's essay). It is hosted in many places on the web and this is one of them.
Follow up with Hamming's classic book; The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn available here (pdf) - https://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming_1997_-_The_Art_of_Doing_... It is a very unique one-of-a-kind book which is a must read cover-to-cover.
The last chapter of the above book is You and Your Research ;-)
There’s something cringey about having a zillion dollars and then using your cash soapbox to bloviate to everyone about how to be great-like-me.
There's nothing "cringey" about sharing your own ideas in your own blog. What's cringey is this kind of pointless ankle-biting.
Commenting on the person that wrote this is not really interesting though - it is in the same category as "I appreciate the fact that 'Paul' has 4 letters and a 2/2 split of vowels and consonants", as far as I am concerned.
Maybe you wanted to make a point about some aspects of the authors biography invalidated some claims they make? That would be interesting, then it would be good to be more specific regarding what you are refering to more concretely, though.
People opposing this are secretly or subconsciously peddling a folk version of Labour Theory of Value. Great work doesn’t exist. All work is work and the only dimension is time. You should get paid according to your socially necessary hours and be valued according to it.
PG could really work on style to shorten those walls of text (yes he refers to it near the end)
That's actually my own problem too - I often use AI to summarize / shorten my own texts. (Opposite of what most who seem to use it for generation?)
In work, once you remove all that is unnecessary, wrong, and bad. Then what you are left with must be greatness.
What an empty and depressing world it would be if that was true.
I generally dislike PG's articles as very tone-deaf and billionaire-having-all-the-time-in-the-world centric, but this one was okay. Figured I'll give it a chance and I don't regret it (this time; a pleasant exception, usually I feel like I wasted my time reading his essays).
Things I do appreciate that are good-ish nuggets:
- Don't try to work on something "prestigious". I agree with that; a lot of people became poor out of ego, myself included a few times in the past.
- Working on something that interests you deeply is a great way to become a super specialist which is honestly a coin toss; it can make you a highly-sought-after expert commanding serious rates... or yet another burned out nerd who knows something very deeply that nobody wants to pay for. I mean OK, I love being satisfied and fulfilled but I can't be like that if I can't pay bills. So that passion is never the #1 priority and that's a fact of life for 99.9999%+ of humanity.
- Investing in something on the side a few hours a week sounds great until you wake up 10 years later _still_ not having the side hustle doing you $2000 a month. As above: coin toss. But I agree that's the right and the pragmatic strategy for working people. Success is not guaranteed and that's of course not a reason NOT to try. Still: work-life balance!
- Getting to the frontier and then filling the gaps is a solid strategy, yep. As per above: make sure you work on something people would pay for, though.
- When to be earnest and when to be [faux] sophisticated is generally not clear and cut. There are events during which you have to be a bit posh or nobody would take you seriously, and sadly those are often the events that might be life or death sentence for your new business idea. I think us the tech nerds are earnest way too much and too often, and don't know when to be "sophisticated". Me putting a formal shirt and pants and pretending to know more about a field than I really did, did net me money that my impostor syndrome screamed that I didn't deserve (but years later, with the objectivity that a brutal hindsight can give you, I absolutely did).
- Ownership of one's work is a great advice, probably the best one in the article... until you realize most startup CEOs understand this and will give you +30% more salary than everyone else because they love having somebody on a stable wage who does 80% of their work and does not ask for percentages of the Series A/B/C/D tranches. Nah, thanks. As we say on the Balkans (butchered translation): "The quality of the music depends on the quantity of the tip". I'm done taking your cause so seriously that I don't have time for my wife. Dangle $25k+ a month in front of my face and we'll talk.
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So my TL;DR is: yes, compound knowledge and work on what you like and try to make it a side hustle, absolutely. Put on some suit when you get to events. Don't always be super humble, that by itself can be a turn off and no you cannot afford to gamble your future on this so yes, sometimes be posh and sophisticated. It frakkin helps with some people! And I don't care if you don't want to be associated with them; many of them are gatekeepers of wealth so, deal with it.
I'll agree: passion shines through and wins people over. It's not enough, though. "Making it" requires making good decisions on multiple lanes.
You can listen to this on youtube with pg's own voice which I find a pretty neat use of AI.
I mostly use Safari Listen feature, on my phone, to listen to it while walking. Pretty neat and doesn’t clutter my YouTube history.
Why? What's neat? To hear his thoughts the way he would voice them? But you're only pretending to...
Why not just read it out loud himself and record it?