Why it’s better to be the anti-status quo | Hacker News Reader

Why it’s better to be the anti-status quo

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30 pointsenigmatic020224 comments

The article opens with thoughts on the harmful misconceptions instilled in us by schools regarding competition.

It seems, however, that the author acquired another related misconception along the way:

>To do anything meaningful, we need to ultimately step out of the shadows of others and into our own.

Some of the greatest accomplishments of humanity have come from people simply working as a group. Sometimes those successes are utterly contingent on a lot of people deliberately not "stepping out of the shadows of others", but instead simply quietly and efficiently getting on with what needs to be done.

That’s a great point. History is rarely made by singular heroes even though those make for catchier headlines.

You are right. But the initial spark often comes from one person, think of Westinghouse and Tesla. Tesla was the technical genius yet he needed Westingshouse economical/financial power-networks to get parts of his ideas through.

Therefore AC power is undoublty a Westinghouse/Tesla/ many others accomplishment yet without the relentless pushing and originality of one person (Tesla) to step out of the giant Edison AC would not have come a reality at its time.

So I think we see two things here: Ingenuity and true novel approaches are (according to my observation) very often the think of one passionate person, the societal breakthrough requires hands and ties working together.

As the second requires the first yet we as a society overemphasize on teamwork already in step one, we are actively hampering innovation. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24374363

Very cool example. Agree with your point. What I meant by history isn’t actually made by singular heroes is that simultaneous innovation tends to be the norm. Not sure if that applies to the Tesla example, but for most other iconic moments like the lightbulb, there were dozens of people who independently arrived at the same invention.

The article is basically just rehashing some ideas of Peter Thiel without quoting his work. His book “0 to 1” starts with exactly the same thoughts.

Good point, I read it a while ago. Will go back and cite.

The start of this article talks about how competition is supposedly bad, but the rest of the article talks about how to out-compete other companies by being better at finding a niche.

Oh interesting. I was trying to express that the mentality of competition constrains us to what’s already been done. That’s why it’s harmful. Carving out a piece of the future requires a different perspective, ideally one that’s hard for the incumbent to replicate.

> I was trying to express that the mentality of competition constrains us to what’s already been done. That’s why it’s harmful.

That doesn't seem to me like a mentality of competition. It seems to me like a mentality of just going with the status quo. Competition in no way requires going with the status quo. If you can out-compete others by changing the rules, competition tells you to change the rules. David was competing with Goliath; David won the competition by changing the rules.

To the extent competition is harmful, it's harmful because, as noted at the start of the article, it tends to foster a zero-sum mentality: the only way I can win is for you to lose. But creating wealth, which is what "competition" is ultimately supposed to be about in the economic sense, requires positive sum exchanges. Positive sum means everybody wins. That's what I was expecting the rest of the article to be about; but it isn't. It's just about a different kind of zero sum, where you make the competitors lose by changing the rules instead of by playing better than them within the existing rules.

Competition is often interpreted as going toe-to-toe rather than rethinking the game.

As for positive-sum, Shopify has provided that. By making it easier for entrepreneurs to start a online store, they’ve created another distribution channel for them beyond the Amazon status quo. They chose the opposite of aggregation.

> As for positive-sum, Shopify has provided that. By making it easier for entrepreneurs to start a online store, they’ve created another distribution channel for them beyond the Amazon status quo.

Is the expectation that this will end up creating more online business overall, or that Shopify will just end up taking some portion of Amazon's existing business?

The former is positive sum. The latter is not--whatever Shopify gains, Amazon loses.

The former. Good feedback! I’ll work on making this more clear.

That is a category mistake, we need a better word for creating a niche, and it should definitely not be called competition. If we start looking at it that way then literally everything can be framed as competition. I mean you can reframe the intention to not compete with others as a competition for being least competitive. We need to separate esoteric and eccentric attempts at innovation and invention(which would include entering the niche market and offering something different) from the mainstream fish market.

Given the section at the top about unlearning lessons, it seemed (to me) to be more about unlearning the way we learn to compete in school rather than unlearning how to compete in general.

> In the age of COVID, they [local retail] are also emerging as the most convenient option with delivery and pickup turnarounds in under an hour.

What?!? Local retail is being absolutely decimated right now. If anything, big box stores have had a resurgence as being “essential” with a wide product catalog gave them a temporary advantage. Most mom & pop retail are being crushed (obviously there are some exceptions).

That’s what I would’ve expected too. But having spoken to many local retailers and seen sales trends, it’s the opposite. COVID has been a challenge for all, but local retailers have been uniquely resilient, using online channels like IG and Shopify to meet customers where they are.

Wariness of crowds is also not going away. A local retailer is likely to draw a smaller crowd at a given point in time than big box counterpart.

The most ideal position is one in which:

1. You are uniquely positioned to execute

2. That’s very difficult, ideally possible for a competitor to respond to

3. And solves a painful, but overlooked problem

And then your bigger competitor steals your solution and runs with it.

That's the price of weak patents. Now you need a lot more money to promote and scale fast.

Point 2 is about figuring out a position that the competitor is unlikely to want to steal. Maybe it’s not attractive to steal today, maybe it’s diametrically opposed to their core business, maybe it’s not something they can execute on, etc.

If you're an IC at a large firm (like I am), then going against status quo is a terrible idea...

Not at a large firm. :) The article’s not meant to be a blanket policy, just arguing that doing more of the same results in... more of the same. Some company cultures are more open to this than others

I know. I'm just jaded by the things I've experienced.

Ya I’ve been in a similar position in the past. Leaving a big firm is less risky than you’d think if you’re really over it.

I need to stick around for at least a year. The tech I became an expert in is obscure, so there aren't any opportunities for me (FileNet, Neoxam). If I can get better at this new stack (AWS, Python, relearn Java) then I'll have the option to leave.

Good luck!

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