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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

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edw519

Let's see now...

You took bad advice from the wrong person.

You dumbed yourself down.

You played the role of some other person, not yourself.

You played someone else's game without expressing what you were really thinking.

You settled for an inappropriate job.

You're bored to death and wasting time in a dead end job for 6 months now.

And you call that "Damn Smart"?

[EDIT: The only smart thing you did (following up with a nice Thank You note) is the only thing that got you the job. Please don't attribute your "success" to anything else.]

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I think the title was supposed to be the train of thoughts for everyone who got his original application. They thought he was too smart to apply for that given job, so they did not even invite him for the interview, since he would have to be rich, if he was as smart as his application implied, in THEIR opinion.

All I took out of reading this article is that he should have been looking for higher level positions based on his qualifications. If he was so smart, he should've set his sights a little higher for a more rewarding and/or challenging position.

intelligent people tend to undervalue themselves while unintelligent people tend to overvalue themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

All of the above are not a recipe for success, and may set you on the slow road to ruin. There's a tradeoff between holding out and trying to get a job which is really appropriate, and just taking any dumb job which comes along. It might be true that there are still many more dumb jobs than ones requiring high intelligence, and ultimately everyone has to pay the bills somehow.

If at all possible you should avoid wasting your time in a job you don't care about with people you can't relate to pretending to be someone other than your real self. Your time is limited, and it's a good idea to try to figure out what you want to do with your life, then act accordingly.

It got him a job and time to look for a better one.

In the comments he says he worked there for 3 years, until going back to school for a PhD:

http://activevoice.charlesbivona.com/?p=165#comment-13

I think he was doing a bit of exploration in terms of strategy for how he would proceed with his life.

One of the questions that he was trying to answer, I would estimate, is whether it is advantageous to "dump oneself down"

Jay-z talks about it in his song moment of clarity. "I dumb down for my audience And double my dollars"

So, I don't think it's about being smart rather than trying something new and seeing first hand the result. And of course, writing about the experience so we can all learn from it[that's if it is in fact true].

Exactly. That's what it means to do what you have to do when all things are not equal. When you can pay your bills you can afford to get choosy about work, but not everyone has that privilege. He played the game he needed to play to avoid a desperate situation.

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