Jeff Bezos' Guide to Life | Hacker News Reader

Jeff Bezos' Guide to Life

techcrunch.com

24 pointsblacksoil28 comments

Can we add (2017) to the title? This has been posted before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15681256

When reading interviews like this I often fall into the mental trap of thinking: "if I do everything like this guy, I'll be just as successful!" Of course, this is not true. To become hugely successful, one must in the right place at the right time and do the right thing. A large part of it is luck (or so I like telling myself), so "advice" from very successful people is just like a lottery winner's advice on how to choose the numbers.

Your analogy (quite common on HN) is bad because it totally disregards the weight of luck in these two situations.

Exactly. Lottery winners are multiple, week in, week out, in each country.

Multi-billion entrepreneurs remain 200 or so in 8 billion for years.

So it's hugely less probable. And I'm fairly sure IQ and DNA and work ethic is not that different between 8 billion people to account for such huge a skew in outcomes. In fact we know that IQ is a regular bell curve (and Bezos or Jobs) are nowhere near its upper right limits.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that people with higher IQ, better work ethic and better education than multi-billionaires that are not multi-billionaires.

So it's either some mystical "being good in entrepreneurship" skill (which is tautological way to say their good in business because they're good in business) that they possess, or luck plays a huge role in their ascend.

Like many HN readers I find biographies and founder's stories absolutely fascinating but treating them as anything other than success porn is setting yourself up for a major disappointment, IMO.

Or as Scott Adams observed:

"Beware the advice of successful people -- they do not seek company."

Isn't that somewhat paradox-inducing?

I disagree completely. While hitting it as big as Jeff Bezos did relies on luck, there's generally themes and qualities that lend themselves to being "lucky" as you call it. And even if you dont hit it as big as Bezos, those qualities can improve your life and other's opinion of you. For example, Jeff Bezos always gets the job done. Nearly every tech success story has some variation of that skill, the ability to complete the task, sometimes in a roundabout way, even if it seemed impossible.

This is not to say acquiring that trait gives you a billion dollar company. But it certainly doesn't hurt to have.

Actually, pretty much all of the advice Bezos gives here resonates a lot with me.

However, measurable factors like intergenerational income elasticity and social mobility appear to show that who you are (luck) is just as important in terms of financial success than what you do.

Not all people who work hard will be successful, but I guarantee all successful people worked hard.

by "successful" do you mean rich ? because there are plenty of counterexamples

And most people who work hard will never be rich

how can successful mean rich if one can be born rich? You can't be born successful. Generally speaking I'd argue that success is improving your standing in life, whether that's financial or otherwise.

Advice is a form of nostalgia. It's up to the recipient to digest it correctly.

It's only meaningful if you include the number of people that followed the same strategy and failed, but you don't hear about them because they've failed. Classic survivorship bias.

Whenever I read biographies of a successful I bring my feet back to the ground by watching this clip of Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti from Silicon Valley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKjNT6JpF7o

The case in point for luck being confused for skill.

> "Jeff and his wife let their kids use sharp knives since they were four (...) I’d much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid.”

Interesting. My thinking would be more along the lines of "you can still learn to be resourceful when you're 30, but the finger is gone for good". Of course I'm aware it's not easy to rewire your brain. Plus, you know, not everything is as disposable as a finger.

I read it as "I really want to look like a bad-ass"

the cynic in me says it's a well constructed narrative crafted by his PR because the last surveys showed that his enterprises are not getting as much interest from investors because they consider Bezos "boring" and too "safe".

which would also explain why I'm having to see this crap show up in several forms every two weeks on HN

You are most likely correct.

Reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote from The Hogfather:

“You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!' IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE. 'She's a child!' shouted Crumley. IT'S EDUCATIONAL. 'What if she cuts herself?' THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.”

I know that Pratchett had important things to say, but also this was written for comedic effect. In reality there is is clearly a continuum between "swaddle them in cotton wool" and "give them power tools and let them learn", and nether extreme is very desirable.

>you can still learn to be resourceful when you're 30

Not really, especially if you haven't had the encouragement when young.

>Plus, you know, not everything is as disposable as a finger.

The trick is not that it's disposable, but that only if you're willing to treat it as such you'll overcome fear. It's not like for astronauts, or sailors, or whoever does anything dangerous, that their lives are disposables.

Wasn't there a fire last week that was started by a 4 year old that killed 10 people or so?

I wonder what the motivations are behind public engagement like this?

I have no idea whether Mr Bezos is a nice bloke or not; but unfortunately for him being the most richest man in the world means most people have a somewhat negative disposition towards him.

for example this quote from the article "And finally, his most ridiculous quote of the talk" paints him as some sort of a disconnected member of high society (and perhap he is) but going from the previous quotes he seems quite well adjusted.

I swear this is becoming more and more common. ... and well, I am more than capable of forming opinions on my own.

"for him being the most richest man in the world means most people have a somewhat negative disposition towards him." or maybe Amazon's terrible and terrifying company culture and his behaviour adds to that a little bit too?

aye ok, perhaps it IS justified. But the interview didnt actually touch on anything of the sort, yet the author is attempting to ridicule him.

-remarkable man does unremarkable interview yet the outcome is "what is this elistist douchebro gonna do next?"

> “We have to go to space to save earth” Jeff says, noting “we kind of have to hurry.” Still, he believes Plan A and Plan B both need to be protecting the environment of Earth to keep it livable. “We’ve sent robotic probes to every planet in our solar system. This one is the best. It’s not even close.”

Anyone know more about his reasoning here. Is this asteroid/comet impact protection or something else?

Nice article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com