Being "smart" is hard work | Hacker News Reader

Being "smart" is hard work

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Is being a founder similar?

Is founding a startup looked on by non-founders as something that takes a special type of person (a "smart" person, for example) when really it's just plain old work? Physics seemed like this huge daunting thing I'd never get my arms around, until I buckled down and got to work.

Sometimes it's looked on by founders as something that takes a special type of person. I've had 3 different entrepreneurs all tell me something to the effect of "It takes a certain kind of person to be their own boss." (Amusingly, one thought I was that type of person, one thought I wasn't, and one withheld judgment either way.)

I disagree with the premise, BTW. I think entrepreneurship - just like intelligence - is nothing more or less than a certain set of behaviors. Some people start with an advantage, because they naturally do those behaviors anyway. Some don't. But it can still be learned.

One sign independence can be learned is that it can be unlearned. It's remarkable how working for a big company turns hackers into tame animals.

Maybe you're not looking at/for the right people? Maybe, if the people you think are good but who join companies and give up startup dreams, or go back to school after doing YCombinator, then it means that you didn't choose the right people to run a startup for more than one year into the future? Maybe they thought it was a way to fill the summer and pad their resume?

It's also remarkable how founding people over and over again who may not have ever read or followed any startup advice you've given but who have the same educational background as you or read both of your Lisp books, turns founders into tame animals...

It's tough to say it, but it's tough not to say it...

Some people are just more determined than others. Believe me, I wish we were better at recognizing the determined ones. It's not for lack of trying. But determination, like courage, is hard to predict. Some quiet people turn out to be very determined, and some people who talk big give up easily.

I would have thought it would be just the opposite. Going to school drives me bonkers. By the end of the quarter, I can't wait to stop being taught all this garbage and get back to my own studies/projects. I presume you're talking about people who feel the same way. What's so different about employment?

When you're at school, you have a time limit. No matter how soulsucking it is, you know that if you wait a semester, you'll have vacation all to yourself. And if you wait 4 years, you'll have a degree and can do whatever you want.

Cognitive dissonance is bearable for short periods. It's excruciatingly mindwracking when it persists over an open-ended time period with no end in sight. If you're a technical employee at most software firms, you will eventually find yourself in a situation where you have to obey a technical decision that you know is wrong. Your options then are:

1. Don't, and get fired.

2. Convince yourself that the decision in question really is good. This explains many Java programmers, actually.

3. Accept that the decision sucks, but that you often have to go along with sucky decisions for the sake of the team. This is how good programmers un-learn independence.

Many people face this dilemma early on in their school career, probably back when the teacher first assigns busywork (which is now in what, 3rd grade?). I'd estimate that 90-95% un-learn independence before graduating high school. A few people make it through high school and college as rebels and underachievers - they never quite buy into "This is pointless, but I have to do it anyway." Most will change their mind after getting a job - after all, most jobs really aren't that bad if you're not in a perpetual power struggle with your boss.

Amen to this and the OP.

Speaking of the time limit, it's already blatantly obvious that putting everyone on the same, fixed time track learning a subject with a fixed curriculum is out of date and suboptimal. But who's going to challenge generations of tradition, and the lucrative business called university education?

That's why modern schools suck in so many ways.

School tends to make you tame too, but in different ways. What you get in big companies that's missing in schools is politics. You can generally do a class project on anything you want. But to get something launched within a big company takes a superhuman effort. After a while, hackers lose their desire to.

Reminds me of Gary Player's quip, in response to the suggestion that he was a particularly lucky golfer, "the harder you practice, the luckier you get."

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