Cat litter is a commodity product, and there are huge brands that know how to manufacture, distribute, advertise, and market it at massive scale. There are already other color-changing cat litter products. Your team has zero expertise, IP, or competitive advantages in manufacturing, chemistry, consumer products, animal health, diagnostics, or distribution. Cat litter is not an industry that needs disruption.”
Hope you forwarded him a newspaper clipping about the sale
Would you mind indicating what advice you think the PhD person should have written to you based on what they knew of you at the time?
Genuinely curious, and thank you for the anecdote.
While there is some truth to this depending on the context, for the most part, especially in software engineering world, you don't know everything. Don't be afraid to say if you need to research something or do POC or investigation. No one will be mad at you and if they are, you don't need to be working with that person. I spent many nights frantically trying to figure out things, to make it seemed like I was up to par, when I should have been more chill about it.
- Do what you love, and the money will follow.
My parents, my high school guidance, society, everyone told me this thing in 2002. Many of my friends went into music education and I can say only one or two got a job in this field. Then 2008 hit. This view, it is the survivors bias, what you should do instead is what will make you money, then figure out how to use that skill to do or add to what you love.
My personal approach with "fake it until you make it" has been to decide I am a $thing (one example: an "ultramarathon runner"). OK, now what do I do as a $thing? I do x, y and z. Then, I do those things, because I am a $thing. Ultimately, I trick myself into becoming the $thing.
This all occurs inside my head. I've never discussed or mentioned it to anyone. I've done it time and time again for career decisions and for personal hobbies. I don't believe it's very ego-driven. In my head, I crucify myself for hypocrisy and not admitting faults.
With "Do what you love, and the money will follow", well, like many of you here, that was computers. And like with many of you, the money followed.
- you are naturally good at - takes years to master - the job market values - you like doing or don't mind doing all day
Tragically, many of the jobs that people dream of and grind for have secret underbellies that young dreamers don’t understand. For example, Hollywood is a vipers nest where films get made. The music industry had its own Weinstein/Epstein combo recently with Diddy. Politics is the same. The most direct path to success in these fields is being willing to sell your soul and body to powerful evil people. So to be successful in those fields with your dignity intact requires a very rare constitution.
- you don’t need to go to a good university, this one (low tier uni in my country) is fine.
- don’t fight bullies back.
But the worst is not receiving bad advice, but receiving no advice at all, and staying in a dead-end job and city for too many years. Having no emotional support early in life leaves yourself “damaged” and gives you a cynical view of the world.
quit that dead end job | end that toxic relationship | start the business you've been dreaming of | write that book you're planning
and your friends suddenly start telling you how glad they are that you finally figured out the bad thing was hurting you.
Could have used that info while I was in the middle of it, my dude. Tell the people you care about when they are doing it wrong. If they can't see it, they will appreciate the outside viewpoint. If they can't take it, they're not good friends.
It’s rarely that simple. People are really bad at being told what to do, and will often double down. Especially in bad relationships. Usually the best you can do is be there for them when they do decide to fix things on their own.
Since that's, after all, how everyone starts, obviously the cohort who thereafter asks for advice has found that not enough.
I did that myself by improving my diet, doing kick boxing, get educated, interact more with woman etc. It worked.
If you don’t, you will end up with a partner who loves your fake persona and not you. Forcing you to continue living a fake life. That is not a healthy way to live.
or
"reach into the future and pull the best possible rendition of yourself backwards to now forthwith such that you can become thatself once thineself agrees that it is indeed thou that thou wishes to become"
Anecdotally, a friend is trying to date in her early 30s and basically has no dating pool. Not many single men in their 30s have a stable job, crime free background, and avoid hard drugs.
Most people can’t afford a single income household here in the US.
So I became a plumber instead. Don't have to worry about someone from India flying here to crawl under a house to snake out a line.
I didn't give my kids any such prescriptive advice, and he got into game dev which has always been his passion and outsourcing hasn't come for his job yet.
The modern day equivalent would be "don't get your kid into programming, it will all be done by AI soon".
But I 100% agree with your advice overall though. I tell people don’t be a coder unless you are the type of person who codes for fun.
I got such GOOD advise from my mother 40 years ago, she took me even to place where she worked to show how boring it is. It was pure amber magic in mysterious world of murmuring machines. If I had listened to her, I would have time just for the music, for sure.
I share this not to garner sympathy. I am more than 30 years over it, but it did impact more than I understood at the time. If you are still hung up on historic lies I would recommend you find a way through or you they will dent you, even if part of you knows they aren't true.
My view of myself was later shaped by christian faith. The Bible tells me I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I have an attractive wife and good looking children but even that was not even enough to fix the dent. As humans we do not have all truth inside our own heads. We need a second opinion on much of our internal thoughts and processes.
"The Bank of Canada won't raise rates, they can't, it'll tank the market."
I knew even then that was unhinged financial advice. This was a man who had a radio show about finances in Montreal.
He also tried to saddle me with a real estate broker who only showed properties to me that she was selling (and outside my price range/location).
If I followed his advice, I'd have had to sell the house the same year I bought it.
The story ends happily, I bought a great place that was affordable and a mortgage that I've never struggled to pay.
Keep a wide birth of Terry Kilakos if you are in Montreal folks.
We had to threaten to fire our last agent because he was continually working against our best interests. Not just professional opinion type or stuff, but recommendations exactly the opposite what we said we wanted to do.
The whole field seems to be filled with people who only survive on hope.
She consistently maintained realistic expectations and over delivered, ultimately negotiating a way lower price than asking, and never pushing us in any direction.
Most real estate agents are snakes, but ours was golden.
That should've been a red flag.
You can follow a good advice and end up with a bad outcome. Similarly, you can follow a bad advice and end up with a good outcome. This is more obvious in poker (Annie Duke wrote a few books on the topic), but I think the same principle also applies to life in general.
Sure, "I went against this sensible advice and look at what I accomplished!!" makes for good storytelling. But that does not help us decide which advice to follow now and in the future.
I'm not saying that one should work exclusively for seed-stage crypto startups that sell blockchain-verified probiotic dog food or anything, but at some point you should critically examine whether it makes sense to be someplace that's 10 years and tens of thousands of dollars behind the curve just because it's "stable" when it so obviously isn't.
You work for a private organization that provides services to the government.
Big difference.
> When I worked in defense contracting people loved trotting out stuff like "the work is stable", "you can't get fired from a government job"
It's truly a shame that the employees who keep the government glued together -- be it via direct government employment or contracting -- are subject to unnecessarily turmulous conditions because of one political party's antics.
In an ideal world the government would operate a little more sanely but I'm not holding my breath.
If the layoffs never happen, you’re in a massively better position. If they do, the extra income still puts you ahead of staying at a stable, but poorly paying job.
That's what happened to me in the last set of layoffs, along with many other people.
May as well try and get as rich as possible as quickly as possible instead.
"Don't go into programming, you're not in Silicon Valley and life isn't like what you see on the internet, you have a good thing with your grandpa, just become a Mechanic like him"
My biggest passion in life have always been with computers, and I know (Now even with empirical experience) that I'm a horrible fit for a mechanic
But lets say I wasn't, and take it that it wasn't said in bad faith; It still enraged me that he didn't thought I'd be capable, I managed to learn and earn enough, escape my birthplace and (Sadly) The good thing my grandpa had going on went down in flames (Due to external circumstances)
It's been years and it still pisses me off, but I'm confident that he doesn't even remember that we ever talked about it
We don't need to treat every situation as an adversarial/machiavellian game, however "being nice," is in fact often bad advice.
Maybe be calm, collected, respectful, but strong and self-advocating (because generally no one else is going to advocate for you out of good will.)
Or something like that. I do think that working on your own thing (like a company you start or a project you created) is a precious thing. Working for others is not; it’s a simple exchange of time for money.
I had no idea what that meant, for decades.
i think this advice is a bit too vague and it's just something people say to sound smart to trick people into thinking there's a shortcut to mastery
i genuinely believe that if you work hard to hone your skill on something, it will do you good. if you want to get good at something, you gotta put in the hours, the grind. e.g. to learn how to play a tennis, you gotta, you know, actually get down to the court and play tennis instead of watching tutorial on how to play tennis. Same goes with programming, music, etc.
now pair working hard with the ability to retrospect -- you'll master a lot of skills in life