Coding Horror: Paul Graham's Participatory Narcissism
codinghorror.com
codinghorror.com
"The problem with this particular essay is the way Mr. Graham
implies the only path to true happiness as a young programmer
lies in founding a startup."
"Working for yourself doesn't have to mean starting a startup,
of course.
As for this point about "participatory narcissism," you can make the same attack on practically every nonfiction writer. Every (good) essayist writes from experience. Most people who have the freedom to work on what they want, work on things they admire. Every book on robotics or carpentry or surfing has woven through it the sinister subtext that robotics or carpentry or surfing is an admirable activity. But to accuse the writer of "participatory narcissism" is to confuse cause and effect: the writer of the robotics book isn't claiming robotics is admirable to make himself look good; it was because he thought it was admirable that he chose to work on it.
A claim you could make with equal justification about any essayist isn't much of a claim. But people will still believe it means something if they disagree with him.
The advantage of metaphors is that they help explain things by isomorphism. The disadvantage is that people often take them too literally. Or pretend to if they want to attack the writer.
Strange as it sounds, I expected to be criticized for telling readers what they wanted to hear, not for insulting them. If you actually read the essay, the thesis is that the famous founders who are made to seem like such gods in the press are actually not that different from ordinary programmers-- that the difference, as it says in the last paragraph, is "due mostly to environment." In other words the exact opposite of the summary Atwood quotes: "Oh... you haven't founded a company? You suck."
How can so many people read an essay saying X and come away believing it said not-X? I think what happened in this case was that a lot of people who were already feeling self-conscious about working for big companies read the first section as some kind of criticism of them, and then either read that into the rest of the essay or (this is the Internet) didn't read any more before writing blog posts about it.
If something's unclear, I often go back and fix it. But I'm reluctant to start trying to placate people determined to misread what I'm saying; that seems a slippery slope.
* Even as a startup junkie, with full-time founder role and a 13 year track record, I found your analogy belittling and myopic. You will lose the argument that the best work in software is being done in startups.
* Your essay contributed little else but the lightning rod; you've said substantially the same thing in other essays. We get it. You've also watched tens of $6k startups die; you should write more about the downside of being a software startup founder. You've been there, right? Why don't you start with the "vomiting blood from the stress" part?
It's fascinating that people are so jealous and insecure, apparently about the success and the moxie of startup folks, that they misread the referenced article. It's like an ink blot. Absolutely amazing..
You really need both. Startups are an essential part of the economy, but they're not the only part of the economy, and many brilliant inventions have been discovered by researchers working 9-5 at a big company.
No, Doug Engelbart gave us the mouse. You may wish to go through the rest of your list and fact-check it. There's a nice on-line encyclopedia you can use at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ ; I forget what large corporation invented wikis and later funded the application of them to encyclopedias.
Speaking of Rorshach Tests. Your example of a CS advance isn't. Wikipedia is an application of a PHP script designed 5 years before the site launched. But you probably wrote that comment using a CPU that is the product of N generations of CPU research at Intel corporation.
Ward Cunningham invented wikis. Apple didn't. The c2 wiki was inspired by an app he had written in Hypercard, which was itself inspired by Hypercard. But inspiration is not invention.
As successful and widespread as wikis have become, Ward is rarely mentioned in connection with them. That's a shame, because this is one case where there's a clear and unambiguous inventor.
The first entrepreneurs to significantly influence the evolution of the internet were probably the founders of SUN, most of whom came from Cal Berkeley and worked on those government contracts to add a TCP/IP stack to Unix. (The main contribution of SUN to the internet that I know of was to accelerate the number of internet users: every SUN workstation came bundled with internet software -- probably the first time that a marketing department helped drive internet adoption.) After the founding of SUN, not much entrepreneurial influence on the internet that I know of till the internet gold rush starting 1993 or 1994, which was 33 or 34 years after (planning and research) work started on the internet/Arpanet. I know UUNET was an entrepreneurial venture of the 1980s: I am unfamiliar with whether or how UUNET influenced the internet though. In 1992, entrepreneurs/lawyers Canter and Siegal invented spam, but spam is hardly a distinguished contribution.
Also, Engelbart worked for TRW or some other defense contractor (a large organization) and then SRI (medium-sized but funded almost entirely by the government) so pointing out that he was never an employee of Xerox does not exactly score a point for the uncaged-lions side of the ledger.
No wonder the baby-boomers think our society is perfect and if you complain there must be something wrong with you.
That aside, I agree with your second para.
Now, defend your argument. Maybe we should start with processor cores? I hear there's some open source HDL you can download for that. Or how about routing algorithms?
If a fat lady had an honest blog about healthy food and exercise, then that is great advice to be aware of. Some may think the information is tainted because of the source, but if you can logically deduce it is accurate, then the source doesn't matter. In fact, some may think a fat person should talk about cupcakes. However, the truth is that doing, and talking about, such things an athlete might, is exactly what the fat person should be doing. And no, that's not because they're already fat and need to lose weight--it's because that's the truth and everybody should be thinking about it, regardless of what shape they're in.
Same thing here. Paul is not 22 years old, but he focuses on writing what he believes is truth logically derived from his experiences and those of others around him. Therefore it doesn't matter if a reader is happy working corporate, a janitor, young, old, or lives outside the US. If it's truth, smart people will want to be aware of it, even if they never plan on starting a startup, exercising, or eating healthy.
I could write a blog with the same exact content, and it wouldn't get such publicity. But it wouldn't make what I say less true.
I worked at startups for several years in the late-90's and early-00's, and then set off to run my own company, and discovered one unfortunate and unavoidable side-effect of self-employment that pretty much killed the idea for me: I hate dealing with all of the business BS that comes with working for yourself.
Incorporation, accounting, taxes, contract negotiations, etc., etc., all distract from the interesting work of building things, which as the original essay so rightly suggested is the #1 priority of most good hackers.
I think that there's a smaller intersection of folks who enjoy both the engineering and business sides of building software. Not everyone who like to hack on code likes the idea of picking out their own corporate structure and office carpets, just as not everyone who eats a healthier, more "primitive" diet enjoys gardening and hunting for their own wild game.
I'd have compared them to caged gophers.
Since we're talking about animals so much, it's Interesting how some really prefer weasel words. Obviously there are some tender sensibilities here.
There are many perfectly legitimate reasons for working at a large company; family responsibilities (yes, there are mid-twenties and early-thirties programmers with a spouse and children), a chronic medical condition (if I were living in the US, my medical bills would be upwards of $20k/year, and I know I'm not alone), or being dedicated to a non-economically-profitable pursuit (if you want to spend 2 months a year volunteering in sub-Saharan Africa, many employers will let you have the time off -- a startup won't) are a few possibilities. Comparing people who decide to work for a large company to caged animals, and suggesting that they are "ten times [less] alive" is condescending, and ignores the fact that they might seem far more lively when they are with their families or pursuing whatever activities they enjoy -- or that if they worked for a startup, they might not be able to afford the medicine which keeps them alive.
I consider myself fortunate that I can do something I enjoy and have a reasonable chance of making money doing it; but not everybody is so lucky, and we should not insult such unfortunates by suggesting that they made poor choices or are somehow behaving unnaturally.
It most certainly does. PG is commenting on what, to him, is the revolting sight of a bunch of apparently smart people wasting time in a pointless "team-building" exercise. He didn't think those people looked happy, and he didn't think they looked like people who were wasting their time by choice. They looked like people who... lacked agency!
He obviously didn't mean to imply that they'd been forced into their cage.. the entire essay is about how you have a choice about whether or not to be treated like an employee.
And what a revolting sight it is. I recall my job fresh out of school in an R&D department. I was stunned at how the technical people stood at attention and jumped as high as the managment told them. This management was clearly, at least from a techical standpoint, far less intelligent. The engineers there actually marvelled and respected people who could barely figure out which buttons to push on a product they designed.
One of the most bizarre observations of my life.
1. Inspired by PG's rhetoric, go into partnership with semi-famous TV talk show host to build site.
2. Work ass off for 9 months. Site grows like gangbusters, VCs banging on the doors.
3. VCs/Partner bring in new CEO. Partner/CEO fill every position above entry level with new hires.
4. My job is now 9-5, cubicle, no chance of advancement.
5. CEO and partner now described as "founders" in the press.
So I mostly followed PG's advice, only to end up in the exact same mind-numbing job he's saying to avoid.
IMHO, if you do a startup, do it as a founder, or join after Series B, from a pure risk-rewards perspective.
You should seriously consider writing a "Don't Let This Happen to You" piece (a la Philip Greenspun) and posting it here to save others from the same fate. Change the names (including your own) if you like. A post like that could be the single most important thing some hackers ever take away from here.
Although on a cautionary note, I'd be careful what I post here, because it does tend to get picked up. Comments I've made got picked up by ValleyWag, and that's almost never a good thing.
To be fair if you were an employee, i.e. you got paid well I assume? there was less risk on your part relative to the founders. So your equity should be a fraction of what the founders took in. Why would it be otherwise?
I was responding to ojbyrne's comments that being a founder is not all hunky-dory since (s)he ended up in the same spot. I suggested at least (s)he got better equity being a founder and that is a big deal.
And I still think for a risk/reward outlook, either being a founder or playing it safe until after Series B are the two extremes and are both high in the value / risk ratio.
What would really matter for my ego is what piece of the pie I get in the end, although, in your position, it sounds like that's a hard area to negotiate, too, since said "semi-famous person" is adding all the value in the very beginning (before any code is written). This is probably faulty logic to base your equity on, since your piece should be proportional to the value you add at acquisition.
And I don't think that Kevin added all the value in the beginning. He was significantly less famous at that point, and in fact was about to become unemployed. Many of his coworkers tried to launch sites around the same time, with nearly as much fame, and they all failed.
There was a lot of luck.
I haven't heard about "management" and "non-management" equity, sounds like a cheap way for sleezy MBA types to hoodwink hackers out of money. Could you explain in two sentences how liquidity works? I assumed everyone just cashes in their stock when an acquisition (or IPO) happens.
another thing pg says about startups is that they're very risky. while you might not be getting the respect you deserve in your first startup, perhaps you'll do better in your second, or third.
I am just in a mode right now where I see victimhood for what it is. Glad you're not letting yourself be a victim.
<< example #1 >>
My first business mentor was literally a con artist. I was starting my first business and he, ostensibly a retired lawyer, took me under his wing... while we worked together he helped me a lot, but one day he skipped town and left me (and a few other people) screwed.
It was some of the best money I ever spent on education -- it's not every day you get exposed to deception at that level of sophistication.
Since then I've interacted with some very ethical businesspeople who understand things in a remarkably similar way to that con artist -- they are acutely aware of the mechanics of perception manipulation, which can be applied to good or bad ends in almost any conceivable field of endeavor.
<< example #2 >>
One big reason I burnt out last year is because I didn't pay attention to what I'd learned in example #1 because I started a company with ethical people I knew extremely well (read: even if you're with great people, you still need to know exactly what you're committing to).
I had equity, but I was the youngest & least-experienced founder, and left behind the other founder & founder-investor in N. America to go and manage everything myself on the other side of the world, in China.
A few things that contributed to a living hell:
* I had zero salary (ALL my money came from expense claims) so I couldn't buy as much as a chocolate bar without running a stressful "is-this-worth-the-cost-to-investors" calculation in my head -- I couldn't internalize even a single dollar of "cost" to my own personal budget, and I let this stress me out because my co-founders were people I cared about. I felt like a child who had to ask his parents before buying anything.
* I lived in my office. And let me say that living alone out of an office in a foreign country with a nearly impenetrable culture and language is not the same as sharing an apartment in a hip city with your co-founder/friends.
* Decision-making was terribly slow -- it would take days to go back and forth b/w China and N. America on even the simplest issues. We totally underestimated the cost of this.
* My vesting period was undefined, and we had no official corporate paperwork, despite already having spent $100k+ on startup costs. I didn't realize this was a problem until I burnt out, and found that a simple conversation over dinner was all it took for me to be entirely out of the picture equity-wise.
* My other founder insisted on being the sole interface to the founder-investor. Which meant that information flow, despite being an extremely small startup, was already horribly distorted. There was already a chain of communication this long: Staff (6 people) > Project Manager > Me > Founder #2 > Founder-Investor. And the Founder-Investor was the only person who had any real experience in manufacturing, which was what we got ourselves into.
By the end, I had not even a hint of feeling like a responsible, independent person, let alone leader of a company. Every single aspect of my existence was, technically even if not practically, under the control of "the company" -- the food I ate, the office I lived in, the staff I hired... and I'd agreed to it all, in a trusting sort of way, because I didn't see that "good people" still require "good structure" in order to function properly. It was the least entrepreneurial position I've ever felt myself to be in, despite being the most entrepreneurial from a cursory glance.
Things would've been a lot smoother if I'd let my "shrewd businessperson" self take over initial discussions instead of my more natural "trusting friend" self, which left all the details to some nonexistent universal positive force of social goodness.
If a man in his 20's and 30's comes in to triage looking haunted and complaining of chest pain, problems sleeping, or weird psycho-somatic complaints, one of the first questions we ask is, "Are you a software engineer?" The answer is invariably, "Yes." And, around the nurses station, we all share a chuckle and a "tsk, tsk" at this poor, overworked, overstressed man.
There is a stereotype, and like all generalizations, it has it's exceptions. But, it's enough of a stereotype that the nurses I work with have been very concerned about my going back to school for Computer Science. Most of the nurses that haven worked in the Valley for years thought that being a software engineer was a crap job compared to being an ER nurse. And, that's saying something since a substantial portion of our job involves actual crap. It's wasn't until I explained that I want to start a company that my coworkers became a bit more supportive of the idea. I even had doctors talk to me in concerned tones about the unhealthy levels of stress that engineers work with in the Valley, to try and talk me out of my second career. In the ER, we see the same haunted, caged look that Paul refers to in this article.
I think that what PG was referring to was the idea of a powerful animal who's behavior and demeanor changes markedly in different environments. I don't really think that he was trying to put people down who work at a 9-5 for whatever reason. Paul didn't refer to the 9 to 5'ers as caged monkeys, or caged rats, he called them caged lions for a reason.
I don't think that it just applies to Software engineers, either. I saw the same change in my father when he left his job at 60 to pursue managing his investments 10 years ago. There was a very marked change in the man. A great metaphor for that would be describing as the difference as that of a caged lion vs lion roaming free on the savanna.
I normally like Jeff's writing. I have to disagree with him this time. Perhaps the problem is that maybe Jeff hasn't been on safari. Perhaps he hasn't seen enough men change like lions set free once they don't have to work a 9-5 that they hate. Paul says that he's seen similar changes in a number of founder's they've funded over the past couple of years. As someone who feels rather caged in their day job, I hope I get to see those same changes in myself this fall as I start my first business.
The problem with Atwoods reply is that it has a high level of slashdot-esque "it's not true because it hasn't happened to me".
I think that being an engineer in a large company does get a lot better once you become a manager, in that you gain a bit more control, but obviously it can still suck depending on the overall goals, how smart your superiors are, and how capable your team is.
Obviously, there are people who are very happy to have most responsibility taken from them, and who in return for a regular paycheck, just have to come and sit in a fabric box for 9 hours a day.
Sadly, the box warmers are not something you can put up with if you want to move quickly, and it seems like growth from a few 10's of employees to a few 100's seems to add disproportionately to the wrong category, unless you are very disciplined in hiring.
My "hack" to achieve this:
* quit the job to pursue part-time freelancing
* the idea is to work on a startup / projects the other part of the time
* moved to Bucharest where I can live for $2k / month (I only have to "work" 4 days a month)
* while experiencing a foreign culture, it helps give you perspective, because you see many of their customs/etc. to be silly, which also makes you realize your own are silly as well
* european chicks have sexy accents (if the carrot is big enough...) =)
How much due diligence did you do before you took the leap? I assume you did consulting before you left the States.
My half-baked plan is to move to a Latin American country, learn Spanish in the mornings, code in the afternoons, party in the evening
Honestly, it really is a weird feeling. I always hated working for other companies, but felt that I "had to" because I was afraid of taking the leap. (and yes, of course, it is more secure/stable/etc)
But yes -- I definitely did not go into this blind. Freelanced in the states for 2-3 months to make sure I could get enough work.
It helps that I had a buddy who lives here. Otherwise I honestly would not have had the balls to do it. (foreign language + trying to score an apartment? ouch)
I was so stressed last year that my stomach lining gave out, lost my entire sense of self & found I'd lost all desire to do anything (doesn't help when you actually do live out of your middle-of-nowhere-in-Beijing office -- what a great place to bring home a date!).
Now I'm moving around South East Asia and spend <$30/day to live as I do a few hours of contract work per week (for the company I left) and am teaching myself programming (Earlier I'd sort of hacked my way through web dev w/ html, css, php, and various open-source db tools -- design & sales/marketing/networking were my strong points, not code. Now I'm going through Learning Python, Programming with Python, & Software Engineering for Internet Applications).
Basically I look for quiet, beautiful places with creative, interesting people. When I find such a place or such people, I stay there and work until such qualities evaporate. I find it's not a bad way to spend my time. It won't last forever (I'm hoping some day I find a place I actually want to live), but this sure beats having to get some shit job or take shit contracts to support an expensive, boring (to me) typical lifestyle back in N.America. I may go back when I feel ready or the right sort of opportunity arises (mainly meaning working with the right people), but I'm in no rush. I wouldn't mind living on an island close to Hong Kong -- secluded paradise a 24h/30min ferry to one of the best cities I've ever seen.
If you plan ahead, you can do Vancouver => Hong Kong for $380 with oasis air, and Shenzhen => Bangkok for $80 with Air Asia. Then get by on $1000/mo living expenses as you move around and find a spot that suits you. Not much risk...
Oh yeah? It does when they're the type of people who want to start startups.
The main thing we look for in founders is spirit and determination. We have to, because that's what makes startups succeed. And dealing with the group of people this produces is not like being a professor, believe me.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41257
which perhaps paint an incorrect picture.
Point being, though, is that the group you're dealing with sounds like a great deal of fun, and doubtless provides a lot of intellectual stimulation - no question about that. What they probably don't have, though, is a very dissimilar view of certain things to your own - you hand pick them after all (and vice versa). Also, in the end, to be blunt, you're the guy giving them money, and even if you try to get around it, that conditions relationships between people.
It's sort of like this site - most of us found it and got into it because we like your writing and attitude, so it's not likely to be a source of wildly different opinions either. That's not entirely a bad thing - keeping points of contention to a minimum is probably a good way of keeping the community from imploding.
Anyway, this isn't meant to be a critique of YC in any way, just my hope that you find ways to look at the world from a completely different point of view from time to time. Thinking about my own sources of information, it's probably something that everyone needs to try and do more often.
There've been plenty of times (mostly in my volunteer projects, but occasionally in my startup too) where I implemented something I didn't agree with just to see what it'd look like when it's done. And in a majority of those cases, it turned out the other person was right, and their suggestion was better than what I had in mind.
I certainly don't know PG well enough to know what he does and what he thinks... but while I did like the recent jobs essay, I agree that there's a hint of getting a bit wrapped up in the startup world.
But then again, it would be pretty boring to read about "different kinds of jobs are good, and so you should choose the job best for you", wouldn't it.
Observe Something (mostly objective)
Generalize (subjective leap)
Expand (more subjective)
Conclude & Recommend (very subjective)
Let It Go (expose bullseye)
</EssayFormula>
Observe corporate programmers --> zoo animals = small leap
Writing about what you know ---> "Participatory Narcissism" = large leap
Funny, Jeff Atwood does EXACTLY what he accuses pg of doing, albeit with less style.
pg is at a unique intersection to observe that which most never see. We don't have to agree with the leap - that's what makes this a forum instead of a circle jerk.
I, for one, look forward to pg writing about what he knows. If only others did it as well.
Never have so many syllables been used to incite so many about so little.
However, I think it's only fair that Paul's motivation for some of his essays is, at least in part, PR work for YC, and hence the fibs (that being the harshest word I'd use) are understandable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
It seems funny that I trust wikipedia+random guy on the internet over my economics professors.
The essay avoids that fallacy by making the case that humans, having evolved under certain social conditions, might be much better equipped at present to cope with similar conditions. This itself may be true or false, but it is not fallacious reasoning.
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss has a very specific "you" in mind: the kind of people who are aching to become founders (well, obviously). That's in no way a bad thing, but it is worth noting that earlier essays by pg had a wider audience.
It's not narcissism, it's focus. It's a symptom of "nearly all the programmers I know are startup founders".
"What gets PG's goat, it seems, is that relatively privileged, smart, hard-working kids should want to participate in this awful existence known as 'the 9 to 5', rather than strike out on their own and attempt to do something great -- possibly something even world-changing. And watching these clones root around some cookie-cutter downtown Palo Alto cafe performing some absurd exercise is more than he can stand. These kids could _be_ something -- they could _do_ something, but instead, some nutjob decided it'd be cool to send them on some wacky easter egg hunt. They could be busy trying to save the world, but instead, they're busying conditioning their brains to be subservient to the dictatorship that is modern corporations."
I think we're both looking at it the same way. PG is in a fantastic position where he gets to spend most of his time around some of the smartest, most driven, and most interesting people all the time. He loves it, and with good reason.
His essays are targeted toward those people who could become the kind of person he respects, and they have not a little bit of force behind them because he believes in what he says a whole lot.
However, I found the article to assume too much about what is natural and fulfilling for programmers. I realize that there are reasons for being biased towards creating startups, but the essay really does come across as being very skewed and not very well rounded because of it. Jumping into a startup can come with huge risks and sacrifices that can be anything but natural and fulfilling for some people. Startup companies can vary widely in the actual benefit they have to their customers as well, which is an important criteria for some people's fulfillment. Is the startup just about satisfying the customers' desires for entertainment and socializing, or is it helping people in a much deeper way? Is it just about pandering to the flawed values of the audience, or is it about pushing the state of the art? For many people it can't just be about financial freedom and being bought out. There are so many different aspects of "natural" and "fulfilling" and Paul seems to ignore a lot of them, possibly even misrepresenting some.
But you have a point... startups probably aren't for everyone, or even most people, but PG has to keep inspiring people to try for YC's sake.
(As an aside, sorry for the snarkiness of my last comment. I was at my Ballmer Peak right then, and reading it now makes me wish I still had the edit link O_o)
Quite often I will look at comments I have made and reflect at how skillful I had been (before being methodically torn to shreds by smart people), so I hope narcissism is a common phenomenon. And I also hope (for my own sake) that for most people the matter at hand is trying to suppress self-gratuity in their writing, rather than not having it in the first place.
> I work with young startup founders in their twenties. They're geniuses, and play by their own rules. Oh... you haven't founded a company? You suck.
The guy that wrote this is saying more about himself than the essay.
To an extent, there was always an element of start-up founders taking the money and walking, but by making things so explicit ahead of time, isn't pg unwittingly devaluing the very companies he has nurtured?
Second, what should an employee number 18 in a Loopt or a Scribd think? Should they start thinking "I am not a founder, so I am missing something". Apply this recursively ... is pg in effecting talking away the very talent that his companies need to grow?
paul's essays sometimes follow a formula. explain three or four alternatives, present arguments for why all but one of them suck. assume the reader will go with the one remaining option. from there, you've got another choice to make. paul presents another three or four options, and explains why all but one of them suck. and so on.
a lot of times, while reading, i think: hey, he's just eliminated the option i would have taken for reasons that don't apply to me so much.
now, that doesn't mean paul is wrong. but from over here, it seems like he IS somewhat adamant about choosing the One True Way through the sea of the problem he's talking about. whereas other writers might emphasize things like "you could go this way if you want this type of result," or "you could go that way if you've got this type of constraint," etc etc. paul does that sometimes, but his consideration of those constraints almost always leads to dead ends. for example: so you've got a wife and kids to support, therefore you need a steady income. okay then, startups are probably not for you, and you fall off the edge of paul's decision tree. that's got to be maddening for people who buy into paul's philosophy about 80 or 90 percent, except for a few details here and there.
it seems to me like a mistake many readers tend to make. paul's not wrong, he's just describing a path that does not fit their situation exactly.
Jeff Atwood is just ranting on Graham, but he's not telling much about Graham's article. He just picks on things that can be seen as polemic or too extreme and trolls away. When you read someone's opinion you have to realise that he's talking about their experience. If Graham had said the only path to true happiness is through a startup -- and he didn't say it like that -- you must acknowledge that he's just saying it's the only path he knows. It's just an opinion, it's not absolut truth. People mix those sometimes.
If Jeff wanted to be more helpful he could have told us what paths one has to follow in order to be free. Does he think working for a big company sets you free? Why is he just ranting instead of giving his say on all this?
I understood this post about Joel: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000679.html
And this one about DHH: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001065.html
Now it's PG. I need to start writing blog posts attacking people so I can get some more ad revenue.
http://30sleeps.com/blog/?s=criticism&x=0&y=0&pa...
Does anyone other than pg even attempt to write essays?
I've got a little theory. It seems to me that the provocative thing about the essays is their aesthetic. They're governed by a particular style. One principle in it is minimalism: compress the writing until everything extraneous is gone. Another is vividness: whatever is being said, seek the phrase or image that throws the point into the sharpest relief.
The dominant quality of the essays is that they pursue this aesthetic ruthlessly. Anything that would use a few extra words to reassure the reader is thrown out. Anything that would tone down an idea a little bit to make it more palatable is thrown out. There isn't any room for these things because the author is optimizing for something else - say, meaning per word count. In fact, an entire dimension of language, the phatic dimension, is thrown out.
So, Paul Graham's writing is radically aphatic. That's disorienting. People are used to writing that includes, among its threads, one whose purpose is to reassure you that the author is a nice guy, that he might be wrong, you can still get along even if you disagree, and so on. This is not only absent from the essays, it's deliberately excised. On top of that, what is there has been distilled for maximum impact and often touches subjects that people have strong emotions about, such as programming languages and what we're doing with our lives :). Not surprisingly, some readers feel punched in the gut. For them, an obvious explanation is ready at hand: Paul Graham's writing is like this because he is like this. He must be someone who doesn't care how others feel and wants only to magnify his own grandiose ideas.
I think this explains why people project so much emotion into what they read in those essays. "Oh... you haven't founded a company? You suck." But the essays never say anything like that. People don't read them this way because they say such things. They read them this way because they lack the kinds of things writers are expected to put in to stave off provocation. They lack these things not because the author is an asshole but because he cares about a certain style of writing. Enough, in fact, to pursue it ruthlessly... in his writing. To naively map that back to the personality of the writer is an obvious error, a reverse ad hominem. But it's an understandable one. There aren't many people who care that much about an aesthetic. (I mean "aesthetic" in a broad sense, by the way. As much a way of thinking as a cosmetic thing.)
No doubt there is a connection between an author's personality and his style, but it's hardly an isomorphism. I don't know Paul Graham, but I know he doesn't talk the way he writes. For one thing, one can point to examples (like the interview in Founders At Work). For another, nobody talks like that.
I'm always surprised by how offended people get by things I write. It seems totally unpredictable. I didn't expect people to be so offended by this one. In fact, I thought I was saying something rather smarmily ingratiating, if anything: that the famous startup founders you keep reading about in the press are not that different from you, but that they just have, in effect, a healthier work environment. See the last paragraph.
And yet somehow that message has gotten completely twisted around. It's as if people wanted to misunderstand this essay.
I've been mulling over why this happens, and one reason is certainly the one you suggest. I try to cut every unnecessary word, and I don't say things unless I'm pretty sure of them. The result sounds arrogant, because it doesn't have any of the hedging people usually surround ideas with to make them palatable.
But there's no alternative. People won't read essays if they're too long. If you want to get a lot of ideas into an essay short enough to read, you have to be so curt you sound arrogant.
On another note, I also get the impression that you write to a certain type of person. Possibly a type that is similar to you. People like Jeff who take issue with your essays are simply not the target audience (whatever that means). As someone who is currently caged in a 9-5 job with a big company, I have to say that your essay resonated deeply with me...and I loved it. I appreciate the way your essays frequently force me to take a good hard look at what I'm doing, where I want to go, and what I need to do to get there.
Keep in mind that different situations demand different writing styles. For instance, if you are trying to resolve a bitter conflict, "writing things that cannot be disputed" is just the way to go. In that situation, your #1 objective would be to find things that both parties agree on, and build up from that. (This also might be a good way to win an argument.)
There's a really dense book called "Difficult Conversations" (Stone, Patton, Heen, Fisher) that covers, among other things, how people frame discussions in terms of their identity. I think if I had adsorbed that book better I would have predicted that this essay would deeply offend some people.
One other reason is that you have a touchy subject. Tell anyone they're doing the wrong thing (implicitly or unintentionally) and you'll get the same response. People are very sensitive about their own choices (stubborn), especially ones that are hard to defend rationally (religion, major, job, etc).
I picked up this habit in the Harry Potter fandom, which aside from being a community of writers also happens to be 99% female. Women's writing tends to include many more phatic expressions, because (particularly in something as socially-constructed as fandom) its purpose is often relationship-building. I adapted to fit in; before then, my writing style often tended to be brusque, mechanical, and to-the-point.
I still use my old style in technical posts, where I figure the reader can deal with any unintentional rudeness. For example, compare the last paragraph of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144001 to this comment: http://arclanguage.org/item?id=3103
I agree, but I don't think it's because they're hard to defend rationally. Instead, I think it's because they're an essential part of their identity. If I criticize you're choice of colors, that's not something that you can defend rationally, but you won't be too concerned if you're not much of a design person. On the other hand, if you're an academic who built a career on some theory, criticism to your theory will be very personal. The issue here is one of cognitive dissonance. It's very difficult to differentiate between critcism for someone's choice and general mean-spirited feeling for that person.
When you read, say, Mencken, you know it's an op-ed and to take everything with a grain of salt. He would even contradict himself from one piece to the next. You just chew on the points and smirk to yourself when you see the flaws. No, Mencken definitely didn't write like he was trying to be your likable friend.
Graham writes like he's building a legal case or trying to get published in a scientific journal, even though the pieces are really casual observational op-eds. The style invites you to poke holes and take each point too literally.
People are used to writing styles adapted to the format for good reason. The reactions like this to Graham's pieces make a good case for learning and using rhetoric.
If what you mean by casual is that I haven't thought much about what I'm saying, I disagree. In a typical essay I probably go over every sentence 20-50 times. When I'm unsure of something I'm saying, I try to be precise about the uncertainty. So while I may often be wrong, it's not out of carelessness.
I believed you because I know what you're talking about. However, for a skeptic, it leaves the door wide open for them to say that you're just seeing what you want to see. Also, you come across as someone who thinks his five-minute subjective impression gives him the right to dismiss other people's life choices. They feel justified in writing you off as arrogant.
So, a couple of suggestions:
1) If you're going to present an argument from subjective observation, the example has to be very vivid, almost like a novel. The reader has to be compelled to your conclusion by feeling like they are observing things right along with you. Specific details are important. These corporate programmers -- did they wait glumly and patiently in line, or were they eager with anticipation to get back to what they were doing? Did they mumble to the barista while looking away, or speak forthrightly, making eye contact?
2) Rhetoric becomes great when you point out the invisible monsters in the room, and tame them. When you talk about startups to people who are not in startups but could be, these monsters are envy and self-doubt. You have to deal with the fact that your audience sees other people growing rich or at least having fun, and is plagued with self-doubt about whether they are chickenshits. Given a chance they'll project their self-doubt onto you, the person who raises the question. There are various strategies to prevent this from happening, but i-could-be-wrong is not one of them. The main one is to get people to identify with you before you move into more challenging territory. It does require more space to accomplish this, but it's far from filler, it's essential.
No. It's hard to dig out somebody's argument when it's surrounded by self-deprecating rhetorical armor. Presumably pg wants the argument front-and-center. That way if he convinces you, it's definitely the argument and not the rhetoric that's doing it. If you disagree then you know exactly what you're disagreeing with. Ignore the ad-hominem people; they'd just find something else that's wrong with you.
One of my peeves is the use of "in my opinion ..." since pretty much anything anyone says is, by definition, their opinion.
Yet your mention of the phatic (thanks, too, from teaching me a new term) is interesting. Those little qualifiers, even when not strictly needed, do seem to keep the wolves at bay.
But that doesn't at all mean that it should play the same role in writing.
You say phatic language is about maintaining the connection. If I understand this correctly then there's a role for it also with people one does know well. If you prefer referential conversation and meet someone who's completely restricted to that part of language, you may initially enjoy the conversations a lot. But, after some time (this could be months or years), despite their referential content they may appear increasingly "empty": you realise you're still completely replaceable as a conversation partner by a random new person.
The bit about using phatic language mostly with people one doesn't know well is not from Jakobson. I made it up, and it's probably wrong. I didn't go over that sentence 20-50 times :).
But as there are four other components according to Jakobson, I should be careful. Added Jakobson to my reading list.
What does that mean? No online dictionary I regularly use lists "aphatic". Google turns up a geology term here[1] with a different spelling.
As with much criticism, it never quite attempts to prove him wrong. Proving that he's offensive is a very different thing.
heh lol
You have a decently sized essay and the entire internet goes berserk over one line. Did Jeff actually read the whole thing or did he get to the lion part, have some overly-emotional gut reaction, and turn on the flame machine?
Talk about blowing something out of proportion.
I guess you can consider the article a huge success by the criteria of 'the more people that you piss off, the closer you are to truth' ... http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
Lions roaming free and now caged lions as well. Okay maybe a little richer than other caged lions ;).