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Comment by dllthomas | Hacker News Reader

> very grown up sport, more like running a country than building a house

We need to stop calling things "grown up" when what we mean is that they take a different set of skills. It's childish, and I think it's been causing harm in our industry.

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So it’s okay to refer to something as childish but not as grown up?

so much irony

It's okay to refer to capabilities that should be expected of everyone as "grown up", and falling short of those standards as "childish". It is harmful to extend that to specialized skills, because it leads people to forget that they are specialized skills that aren't going to be learned through mere maturation (and that their lack doesn't necessarily imply immaturity).

I agree with this and it’s how I felt when I read the parent.

A recent startup I was involved with hired a senior manager from the “grown up” end of town and he is in the process of comprehensively destroying the business because the rules and processes are more important to him than shipping product. He literally has no idea what he is doing, and it’s entirely because he doesn’t have the skill set necessary to bootstrap a company.

There is a stark difference between the mindset and skills required to start from zero versus those required to defend billions in revenue, and it has nothing to do with being “grown up”.

“Tell me you never bootstrapped a startup, without telling me”.

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