Learning how to think

Dustin seems like a smart guy, and the article makes sense and everything, but then my mouse casually tracks across that dot and it starts-a-throbbing, and I'm like "oh crap oh crap, what is this? do i want it?, omigod, I don't know, oh no, move fast before something happens!" and then I don't remember what the number was before and I'm not sure if I kudo'd or not, and my heart is racing, and I've lost a few hours off my lifespan...

And this is all before I realize it's a fucking counter on a webpage, and it doesn't matter whether I increment it or not.

I hate you auto-kudo, I hate you so much.

Like, for example, when I buy something, pull the sticker off, and it leaves a thick residue that won't come off. Or, when I'm in a car without any indication of which side the gas tank is on.

My significant other makes fun of me for this. "Who thought doing THIS was a good idea? Do they buy their own f*ing products?" I'll say. Meanwhile, he has a non-founder view of life, "Meh, it's like that because it's like that."

He's clearly more zen than I am.

What happens to the failures? Can they go back to work and fall back in line? Or are we going to have "Professional Founders" or "Business Engineers" down the line that have a decade or two of experience starting and running companies, none of which survived past infancy.

It's hard to imagine in the very positive atmosphere that most young entrepreneurs live in. What are you supposed to do when you want to keep building companies, but they just keep failing? Are you prepared to say "I can't do this very well" and move on? Where will you go?

I personally don't think startups are the tech equivalent of starting a band or going Hollywood, but I can understand why some would employ the analogy.

The startups that win do so only very rarely because a visionary founder innovatively guessed the future trajectory of culture. In my opinion being good at running a company mostly requires the usual mix of soft skills plus a strong, unconflicted motive to succeed.

For me I did my "startup" at a pretty early age (I didn't call it a startup then - it was just me building software and selling it online) and it has forever changed my perception of the workplace. I've tried slotting back in to some regular jobs since then and it hasn't really worked out all that well - I get anxious, frustrated with the slow pace, second guess too many decisions, wonder why everyone around me doesn't have that same passion/enthusiasm, etc.

Short of doing another startup, I've found contracting to be a good middle ground for me (for the time being).

I think this article is true in the sense that startups cause you to lose any sense of being satisfied as a mindless "worker bee", but I'm not willing to rule out the idea that in some larger companies non-"worker bee" types who are driven individuals who want to make a dent can actually get a lot done with the resources of a large organization at their disposal. If you're in a good position mentally and financially, you have the luxury to just walk if the place is a dysfunctional mess or isn't letting you accomplish your larger goals quickly enough.

I think there's a certain point where you do need to step into the pool of ideas again: startup culture is pretty insular and at the end of the day if you are always working with a small team of like-minded people you are likely to not make the connections necessary to produce real innovation. Startups are certainly challenging in many ways. But there's a certain type of challenge you get when given a specific task by a mentor in a large company that seems impossible at first that really levels-up your skills. I've found that a lot of the type of learning in startups I've had has been rising to challenges that materialize out of the need to ensure the survivability of the product and business. These challenges are of a completely different flavor than those crafted by older and wiser mentors who have an interest in passing on their skills and throw you curve balls intentionally to make progress towards a larger goal while pushing the limits of your technical skill.

I learned how to think critically in college. I had a few exceptional professors I gravitated towards and they really pushed me to learn this on my own. Through a few very involved research papers, I learned some of the key tenets of doing this.

I kept waiting for that grain of knowledge he was about to bestow on his readers on what exactly critical thinking is - but it never came.

Just in case you needed it. . .

http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1120.asp...

Of those who do survive 18 years of public education and still mentally check-in on a daily basis, many they aren't capable of creating something outside of what they are given. That's the most troubling aspect of what he (and PG) are discussing.

These people can understand and execute complex instructions, but can't come up with their own instruction manual that actually fits their situation. Lots of successful people could be 100x more successful if they would stop trying to figure our how to make 200-page management fads work in their situation. Instead, if they would look at that situation, and engage their own brain and gut instinct to come up with solutions, they would be so much more efficient and effective.

If "so-so said to do it," or "I read it in a book," is your TOP reason for doing something--to me that's a 99% accurate sign that's its not the most effective thing you could be doing right now. Engage your brain.

> There is an insanely huge difference between, “We’re making a site for connecting to your friends” and, “Privacy is a relic of the past, so we’re going to push people to open up their lives and share, connecting them together.”

This is "learning how to think"? If so, then I'm afraid the NSA, Google, and Facebook are far ahead of those of us who just want to connect privately with friends. I would say that Facebook has learned how to think about ways to exploit the human impulse to connect. Hopefully there is a business opportunity in platforms for private connections as well. It may take years for public awareness of privacy issues to reach that level, but I hope someday people will look back at Facebook as a relic of the past when personal privacy was exploited for corporate gain.

The exception is California. And that's why Silicon Valley is in Silicon Valley.

Not many people can handle this sudden shift which is why a PhD is not something for everyone.

• http://lesswrong.com/lw/id2/to_what_degree_do_you_model_peop...

• http://lesswrong.com/lw/5i8/the_power_of_agency/

People here are not just willing to learn but enthusiastic. But they are like Paul Graham's baby birds, they don't even know what to learn or how to begin.

The Chinese education model is based on the idea that a student is an open vessel that the teacher pours their wisdom into. More often than not, that pouring consists of little more than route memorization of lists and facts. Computer education is little more than teaching how to operate GUI applications without any understanding of what they are doing.

Save a document? I asked my staff last year why you save documents and what happened when you clicked on "save" (no one had heard of C-c). No one had a clue. Digging deeper I found that half of them didn't have a clear idea what a file or file system was. And these were people who had graduated from technical schools! This wasn't the case even five years ago before Android and the iPhone became ubiquitous.

And that is part of the problem, mobile devices are little more than consumer electronics rather than general purpose computers. Everything is abstracted away from the user so there is less chance for people to learn how things work.

Last night my partner who is on a business trip in Tokyo, asked me to check his girlfriend's android phone because he hadn't been able to get through to her on Viber for a couple of days. When I checked her phone, it turned out that she had tried to install a new game, did a factory reset to free up memory, installed the game and then wondered why she had no email, facebook or viber on the phone...

When I get new staff, the most difficult thing to teach them is that if they have completed a task that had been given to them, that they have to hand in the work and ask for a new task. But it gets even worse. Many times, if they run into a problem in the task they just give up and don't tell anyone. When you ask them what happened, they give you a blank look and say something like, I couldn't open the file. So instead of asking someone for help they spent the next three hours on facebook until a manager noticed. Very frustrating.

The problem is that they have never been allowed to take responsibility for trying to solve a problem on their own. Traditional management and education systems here reward blind, literal obedience which is coupled with an abject fear of failure.

It's not enough to teach people how to think for themselves. They must have the freedom to fail, and be given the responsibility that goes along with it. We have our work cut out for us....

When an engineer (of any type) can consider the how and why they are building, they learn to question some of the tasks they have been assigned, potentially resulting in a more efficient execution.

If a programmer is told to build a search function into a website, and he builds that, great.

If a programmer is told to build this, and he considers why, and realizes that certain things on the website aren't as clear as they could be, and decides to not only build a search function but also suggests certain usability and discoverability improvements to the website, then much better results will be had.

It may be a selection bias: Probably a founder wants to participate in the YC program partly because they want advices, feedback and maybe just psychological 'confirmation' (social confirmation) more than people with the same talent/knowledge who do not apply to YC.

I do not say that it is bad. Overconfidence in one's capabilities can be also dangerous. And needing social confirmation is a very natural thing. I just say that there is probably a small selection bias in play here.

Furthermore, attributing the rise to one cause (Facebook is about sharing) is simplistic and naive. Early Facebook wasn't too different from MySpace. Could have just been luck.

And then:

> You should follow me on twitter

Isn't the whole point, to not follow but rather, lead?

The title should be "Startups ruins you" because it can be rewritten as "it ruins you", or I'm missing something here?

Thanks!

Privacy is not a relic of the past, but a lot more that you intend to be private is and/or could be made public.

Information is like an infectious agent. Even if you want to keep it to yourself, if you are around others, it will likely spread, though you can control it to some extent. Even when you think it is eradicated, it may still be lurking, like smallpox and polio, to come back with force later. If you live in a cave in a large forest alone, the chance of it spreading is much lower. If you live close to others in a village, there is still a chance of infection. Few really want to live totally alone, so infection is almost impossible to avoid. But, no one can stop you from moving to the forest, or at least wearing a surgical mask.