Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012)

"My career choices were amazing, it was hard to pick between all the fantastic options. I made a decision to pick the better option and am happy with what I chose. You should do all these things too"

I kind of got the same feeling, though I'm not discounting that there is a lesson in there someone. But this line in particular got me:

> ...then pursue only jobs that will reward you with these traits if and when you master rare and valuable skills.

In my experience, most folks don't really have this luxury.

You're almost right. But it's also a perfect story and excuse to write a self congratulatory story masquerading as entrepreneurial wisdom.

Being able to do that is kind of the definition of success. Revisionist founder narratives are like the Epics of Giglamesh; personal myths perpetuating egos and archetypes.

I like individualization; unique interesting people who don't just have 1 or 2 opportunities like this in their life but infinite and dimensonless opportunities.

Everyone's life is like this. Every moment is infinite as long as you don't define it solely by Establishment-confining paths like academia or high finance.

Hackers and painters.

On the other hand, in 2004, I was... not that much older than the author... and making not that much less than the author said microsoft was offering them (of course, instead of 4 years of school, I had ~6 years of post highschool work experience) I totally would have qualified for the next tier down from the author in industry... while in school? I'd have qualified for the very bottom tier.

The point may simply have been that while the microsoft job might have seemed special to someone without family/friends in the industry, it wasn't that much better than what was available to someone the educational establishment would see as bottom-of-sight, while a computer science PhD at MIT is certainly something very special, something I almost certainly will never have the opportunity to get.

(I am currently trying to get into a good school... and it's super interesting and different from anything I've ever tried before, in that the good schools? they judge you as much on your failures as on your successes. In industry? it seems to be the other way around; my failures, if anything, are bonuses. I failed at this that or the other and I learned these things and you should hire me because of it. In getting into college, though? as far as I can tell, they want someone who hasn't failed, because they are afraid of you failing at this, too, and ruining their stats. Of course... I guess that's part of why I want to get into an elite program, too; I figure that if you have a 90+% graduation rate, you are setup so that people don't fail. I mean, I know you pick good people on the frontend... but I know these people from work, and they aren't superhumans who don't fail in the real world when it comes to tasks that I personally consider quite a bit easier than academia.)

Don't Know What to Do with Your Life? Go to One of the World's Most Prestigious Universities, things will probably work out

I am glad you wrote this comment. I had a pretty bad feeling when I read the article but I thought maybe I am just too cynical. Most of us can be happy if they ever encounter one good option in life. They never have to deal with choosing between two very good options.

I wanted to cheer to this because I'm plainly jealous of the author. There is nurture, and there is nature. And there is privilege (of many kinds and hues) and luck. Some people get an unreasonable amount of it, some others make the best of what they got, but the majority of the world simply struggles against both externalities and self-imposed limitations.

But this is Cal Newport, and he's shared what made him successful by heaps of writing - both his blog and his books, esp. "Deep Work" and "So Good They Can't Ignore You". You can't get his genes or his upbringing, but he's generous enough to teach what makes him tick. And if he's ostentatious, it is of the intellectual variety, and not of power or wealth, which is a minor lapse that doesn't deserve attention.

This is the same fundamental flaw that dooms Paul Graham's startup essays to near irrelevance for 99% of people. He was seemingly oblivious to how much financially security and Ivy League pedigree assisted him at every turn of his startup founding and investing career.

The lesson to learn is that good advice applies to your situation and bad advice does not.

Cal Newport writes like this. His stories read like, "Joe Bloggs was a loner, a drifter. When he pulled up his beat-up truck, moving back to his parent's swamp ranch in the summer of 2006, he had no idea what to do with his life. Two years later, when he had completed his PhD in automated high-frequency trading at Caltech, he was still wondering what to do with his life."

With that said, it doesn't make him terrible. He's just a somewhat-elitist, academically-focused, motivational writer. He has literally written a book on how to be a straight-A student in college. It's not much help to someone who can't even break into those circles, but his ideas still have a place for those who can.

Yeah I was going to say he probably didn't have a big student loan and a kid to support.

I don't think he was focusing on the opportunities themselves but the choice between them and why he chose what he did.

It could apply to a broke high school dropout too. Choose the path that provides more opportunities to grow. Don't choose based only on the starting pay.

While I agree that it's sort of self congratulatory, I have a similar anecdote where I chose poorly. I'd been offered an internship with a CS prof when I was an undergrad, after doing what I thought was trivial extra credit on an assignment. I never took him up on job because he was offering was only paying minimum wage, and I was already making more than that. It was extremely short sighted of me at the time. It would have opened way more doors and even way more salary if that was actually all I cared about. It was a decision that probably set me back a decade in my career alone, never mind the chance to work with an amazing researcher. I just couldn't see it at the time, because I wasn't thinking in terms of future potential. Which is sort of just saying I was young and foolish.

This is similar to the "advice" you see in sports criticism that boils down to "Just recruit good players and have those players play consistently well! Easy!"

The part that's actually difficult is in the omitted details, privileges, and luck involved in getting the author to where they are now.

First, the whole blog is about trying to be the best you can be. To a small extent, it is targeting people who want to be high achievers.

Second, how do you think it would sound if an MIT PhD started giving examples using underprivileged folks? I think many would equally dismiss him for being way out of touch.

Third, I see nothing in the advice given that limits it to privileged folks.

A $28,000 MIT stipend and PHD does not seem that great..it's not that much money. The odds of producing ground-breaking research are slim even for someone brilliant, as the author evidently is. The $85k Microsoft offer would probably be just enough to cover rent and other expenses, although there is room for promotion. Its not like these are huge sums of money. Then again, I am assuming Seattle living expenses.

Survivorship Bias. Take existing successful people, ask them what they did and what traits they had, and then draw a conclusion that those actions/traits lead to success. Ignore the people who also did those things and had those traits who did not meet with success.

See also: any “how to succeed in business” book like Good To Great.

> I've never, ever heard anyone use the word "bargain" in the way that the author is doing. I can't deny that it technically fits the definition, but if you want to be understand, I think it's important to use language the way other people use it.

This surprises me as much as the author's usage did not. Are phrases like "bargaining chip" or "more than they bargained for" not common enough that this sense of "bargain" is widely understood?

What most people “do” with their lives is a Job. At face value they do this for pay, but Jobs aren’t free and you also have to make a payment: time and attention. Make sure you are getting a Bargain for what you’re paying.

The article discusses a way to define a Bargain.

I was expecting an article on how deal-seeking mommies achieve fulfillment in finding coupons and winning free stuff from online giveaways :(

I think the author is using the term in the more common sense of "good value" as he includes this:

> choose the available job option that offers the greatest variety of these traits in exchange for career capital

- wherein he defines both value and what you're paying for it.

I assume that by "career capital" he means the opportunity cost of working for one organisation over another.

Oh boy.

I sold out and took the money to be a program manager.

I use the money to pay for my pet projects that I hope one day will explode.

Goal is to be a leader, not a laborer.

CS PhDs are different than biology PhDs. They are still low-paid relative to industry, stressful, and competitive. However, multiple postdocs in CS are pretty uncommon, and it is not uncommon for a PhD candidate to get faculty offers with no postdoc (though many do a year of postdocing anyway, since it's less pressure than being junior faculty but at least twice the pay of being a grad student).

I think a reasonable rule of thumb is that the quality of life for grad school in area X is directly proportional to the employability of a BA/BS or MS in area X. In CS most anybody doing a PhD at a decent school could leave for a CS job paying at least twice as much. In biology this is less true, and in the humanities it's even less true. IMO this explains mych of the difference in grad student experiences across these areas.

The older I get, and as my family grows, I find it harder and harder to invest time in projects outside of work. If I can rig or find a job that fulfills my need for mastery, it ticks one of my most important needs. I can go home and focus on my family instead of having my attention wander to another task.

Andddd this is how I wait another year and another year to have children...

What are you currently doing?

I think that's one way, but not the only way. A single specific rare and valuable skill ("software engineering") can make you stand out, but a bundle of related or even unrelated skills can be even better (software engineering + design + business skill + good writer).

Scott Adams talks about combining skills like that in his book How to Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big [0]. He talks about his own combination of skills being "funnier than average" and "decent at drawing". I thought it was a good read. His talk of systems vs goals was also very worthwhile.

0: https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1...

I would says so. If it's a rare and valuable skill, but is relatively easy to acquire, then people will eventually do exactly that. Perhaps they haven't just yet because word has not gotten out, but it will.

The only way a skill remains rare and valuable, is if the skill is difficult to acquire and master at a high enough level to be useful. All the high paid professions fall under that category. Software engineering is definitely one of them.

I don't think the skill has to be inherently difficult (although difficulty might have a direct correlation with ease of access to documentation, which means rare skills will always be difficult because no one has an incentive to maintain public/low bar access to documentation). The difficulty might lie in understanding or predicting that a particular skill will be rare and valuable in the short/medium term. Being an early adopter is risky, but if you make a winning bet the world will be your oyster.

works for me