Hacker News Reader

90% of my projects are failures, and the 10% which are successes would have never happened if I was too afraid to start them. The successes looked just as likely to be failures as the actual failures from the outset.

I disagree that "failure is bad and should be avoided". The degree to which failure is bad and should be avoided depends entirely on the gravity of the consequences. When taking on an ambitious programming project, "failure" is just an unfinished project and a loss of time. It's clearly a different world than something like quitting your job to try to become a professional actor.

Judgement shouldn't be based on whether somebody is failing at something or how many mistakes they are making, but the comparison of the positive vs the negative consequences. When learning something new, you will always make many more mistakes.

The problem with both the pithy quotes and your response (which is, I think, largely reasonable) is that neither one actually defines any criteria for success or failure, or what is an "unreasonable" number of mistakes. It just ends up being a semantic disagreement over what they meant by "failure" and what you understand by "failure", and I think you'd probably end up largely agreeing in the end if you broke down and actually explicitly defined the meanings of the words used.

> 90% of my projects are failures, and the 10% which are successes would have never happened if I was too afraid to start them.

You should definitely try things that might fail.

However, failure within those projects should be actively avoided.

These pithy quotes that try to remove any downside from failure are misleading. In business, failure has consequences. You need to understand what's at risk and make a best effort to steer the project toward success.

These over simplified quotes that try to strip all of the downsides away from failure are a cheap trick. Yeah, they convince some people to get past their fears, but they also mislead other people into thinking that there are no consequences.

You need to understand the risks and consequences, not just wave them away with pithy quotes from someone's blog.

Sayings are pithy to evoke a general idea, even emotion. Obviously each individual still needs to apply a risk-benefit analysis when pursuing something that could result in failure. But there are many types of failure and it's possible that those who are risk-adverse are overly afraid of the trivial kind. What you're saying is correct, but no more correct than those pithy quotes. I guess the meta-advice is to regard wisdom carefully, with nuance, and not just follow it blindly.

> You should definitely try things that might fail. > > However, failure within those projects should be actively avoided.

I agree with that. I agree with all of what you're saying. I don't think the pithy sayings are telling people to actively fail, though. The point is to not become overly avoidant of taking on ventures because of a fear of failure. And I think the avoidance of failure is a bigger thing than you're making it out to be. Most people who I know who don't achieve their goals and dreams fail to do so because they simply never start, or they start and see how hard it is going to be and then give up. I know very few people who jump headlong into things and fail often, and they are also the people I know with the most successes in their lives. Anecdotal, but the fear of failure preventing people from attempting anything that they want to achieve is a real and very common thing.

I agree with your comment, and feel that in a software engineering context, the quote

> To find the sweet spot between impostor syndrome and overconfidence, you first need to understand that you can make mistakes without it reflecting on your competence.

is incomplete without describing the environment and people you are around when you make these mistakes. The teams I have worked with until now have all been extremely kind in dealing with other engineers making mistakes and focused on how we could reduce such mistakes as part of a team. It helped me build a mental checklist on dealing with such a situation and when/how to take the risk and when to bring in additional help. I never really noticed the impact of this until I worked with a colleague who seemed to have trouble releasing their work to production and always kept delaying things out.

I wish I could upvote it many times.

Failure is not normal and it is speaks badly of you no matter what's the reason. Most people including me are not perfect and it will happen but that doesn't mean failure is alright, that means that we're an problem.

The only thing one has any right in their life to ever blame are themselves.

A musician fails to perform a piece hundreds or thousands of times while learning it. A programmer fails to apply a concept many times until they fully understand it. To imply that failure is not normal and not alright is to imply that everybody should be able to perfectly do anything in their life without any prior practice.

Clearly, the word "failure" in this context is insufficient, because we all would agree that some failures are unreasonable and some are an absolutely normal and necessary part of personal growth.

words have connotation and failure does not mean mistake.

Failing to perform a piece is not a mistake, it's a failure. The word simply means "an attempt that did not succeed". Failed attempts are a natural part of progress and learning.

I recommend you read the following.

https://thecontentauthority.com/blog/mistake-vs-failure

That article doesn't at all contradict my point.

oh yeah, the article that explains that mistake and failure aren't the same thing doesn't contradict your point that mistake and failure are the same thing.

man, I'm so glad you cleared that up for us...

To an extent, why not? When I was child, it was expected of me. I failed in that, but I realise that I'm the only person to blame for it and it means I wasn't intelligent enough.

If it will take me 50x tries to do something and someone else of that same background will do it in 25x, that means I was doing something utterly wrong.

Or they were more naturally inclined than you, or that they had more existing analogous experience than you.

Either way, if your 49 failures were unacceptable, then so we their 24 failures. This conversation was never about comparing ourselves to those who are better or worse, but about the meaning and acceptability of "failure".

importantly, not all risk is equal and part of the evaluation shouldn't be feel good quotes but rather an examination of the level of risk involved. To give a crude example.

- Your partner says they're ok with trying a threesome.

- Your partner says they're ok with trying that new restaurant.

to bring it more inline with tech.

software developers need to be able to safely break things, that's why they don't work directly in production. a hotfix bypasses the normal processes and goes straight to production. It's not that you don't do it, you don't do it without an acknowledgement that the reward outweighs the risk and because you respect the risk you take care to minimize mistakes.