Hacker News Reader

For the type of competitive folks you talk about (of which I am definitely one), I think the Internet has really changed things - your 'scope' of competition is now 7 billion people, rather than the roughly 400-500 folks you could reasonably know in your 'home town'.

Now, even in New Hampshire (to steal your example), you can subconsciously see yourself competing against folks in NYC or San Francisco or Beijing, who have entirely different sets of circumstances, etc.

It's almost cliche that the 'hometown hero' will have a hard time in the 'real world' (subject of many movies, etc.), but the Internet makes this play out on a daily basis.

Like you say, it's all a matter of perspective. Can you really settle for 'winning' locally, knowing that you're barely competitive globally? I think that's a question many folks struggle with.

I think the message he's communicating is that he knows he hasn't fully committed himself ever. He's shied away from it, danced along the edges of it. But never done it.

I'm of a similar age, and a similar childhood. I get where he's coming from, even though he's far more successful than me. He's comparing himself to what he knows his potential to be. Or what he believes it to be, anyway, which might as well be the same thing in its effect.

That gets to be a complicated thing. It's delusional in part, of course. But it's also not, in part. He likely really could have achieved a lot more if he'd put more of himself into it.

Maybe not all he imagines, but he's clearly saying he knows there was more to do than he's done.

I don't think that's a bad standard to hold yourself to. I think a lot of progress depends on that kind of standard.

My senior year of high school I had this long running fight with one of my teachers. I'd cruised through school to that point, putting in just enough effort to pass everyone else, but no more than that. This teacher started grading me lower, writing "You can do better than this" on my papers. I was furious with him. Furious. I'd stay after school and we'd literally yell at each other about it for hours. I said he had no right to expect more from me, I was giving him more than anyone else was as things were. He had to grade me on the same scale. He completely refused to do it. Being a very stubborn boy, I refused to do more.

I "won" that argument by just not giving him what he wanted from me. But he was right to demand it, and I was wrong not to work harder. I paid for that attitude in college and for many years after.

I think in the end it's about not cheating yourself. I think that's that McClure is on about, and I think he's right.

I had a similar experience in school - though no yelling. I often achieved A4s; A for academic grade, 4 for effort (1 being putting in all you've got, 4 being the opposite end of the scale). I took pride in this saying it showed I could deliver effortlessly. In some subjects which weren't in my skillsets (e.g. French & English) where I was getting Bs my parents said they wouldn't mind if they didn't think I could do better, but I was bright enough to get As were I to put in the effort; I decided that if I were less bright I wouldn't be expected to put in the effort, so aimed at making myself thicker (I still don't know how I'd hoped to achieve that, I just left it to lazyness and hoped that was enough). I also argued when it came to revising for exams, saying that revising was cheating as it doesn't show what you've learnt / retained, so anything you crammed in leading up to the exam was just temporary knowledge which you'd lose the moment the exam was over, so would give you false exam results grading you on a momentary peak rather than a general state for that phase of your life.

I blame myself for this, but feel education could be delivered differently to cater for people like us. I had a great education, attending the same school as Terry Pratchett and Heston Blumenthal had, with a lot of teachers who knew their subjects well and cared about their pupils' development, beyond just league table ratings. However, the reason I got A4s is because I never failed - I kept getting what I needed to without putting in effort; I needed a challenge to force me to push myself. In those days this may not have been possible; the internet was still in its infancy so you only competed with those in your year group. Streaming helps here, but with the numbers involved the top set may be the top 30 / 120 or so, so still a very mixed bag.

There are now a number of projects to provide education on-line. As this grows and the school/education models adapt to take advantage of this, I suspect we'll see competition between larger groups of people, encouraging those of a certain attitude to push themselves further to meet their full potential. That said, for those towards the bottom will this force them to up their game, or leave them feeling failures with no motivation? Hopefully the systems will evolve to aid those at both ends by selecting appropriate methods for the various personalities involved, allowing everyone to meet their potential.

Yep. This resonates. AEs (the Australian A4) all the way through school.

I cruised through University getting a weighted mean of 75.1 because that was enough to receive first class honours, and the next step up the reward scale was the university medal, with a pre-req of 85.0 and competition from other people. If you missed out on being #1, you just got the same first class honours as everyone else. It didn't add up to me, so I took the lazy approach.

I have a few regrets about this, because now working for myself, I realize exactly how lazy I've made myself. I like working hard, but not on things I find difficult. Hacking and making stuff is fun; being the boss is hard. Taking a lean startup/Steve Blank approach is hard; giving up, making the product I want to make, and probably failing because I didn't put in the effort to make sure someone wanted it ahead of time seems easier. I'm beating myself up about this because ranting on the internet is easier than knuckling down and doing the hard work.

I need a wise and grumpy mentor to slap me around the head a few times. :-P

ps. for anyone interested there's some useful info on streaming in education here: http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/grouping-pupils-ab...

One option not mentioned there is getting the top pupils to assist in teaching the others; thus providing mutual benefit (since you learn where the gaps in your knowledge are when teaching, leading to you getting a much better understanding by plugging those gaps)

I agree. I've felt the same way for a long time, and still do occasionally. I guess I realized that I was only not committing myself fully because if I sabotaged myself (did work at the last minute etc) I provided myself with an excuse for failure. Because I'm moderately intelligent, I could get away with that all through high school and university, but eventually I had to radically change my outlook to actively embrace failure.

Putting everything into something and failing is better than succeeding without putting anything into it. Don't hold your passions at arm's length.

Absolutely true.

I find the same effect on HN to be even worse. HN now has over 100k uniques/day[1] .

That means that on any topic you'd ever like to comment on, odds are good there are many HN visitors who are better at that you are.

[1] traffic from last year: http://ycombinator.com/images/hntraffic-9feb11.png)

That's true, but there's also an advantage to that. It's possible to learn a lot simply by osmosis of reading this site. This does lead to some bizarre groupthink though.

I've also seen many people who learn things incorrectly and do harm to themselves from reading this site and others as well. It goes both ways and totally up to interpretation. As I once crossed a book in a bookstore which a cover which read "It's not what you say, its what they hear". Everyone interpret everything differently and sometimes this could be good and sometimes it could be bad. I think its all in perception.

I still have somehow trouble with these high numbers. By looking at the front page, the points for top stories are still staying relatively at the same level. These relatively low numbers of votes makes it still seem to be a relatively close community but maybe just many of the new visitors can't be bothered to participate.

I assure you these numbers are real. I have no inside knowledge, but I have submitted a few StackOverflow posts (with my username attached to them) that made it to the front page, and I watched how many of them were from my link on HN.

"Stuck due to “knowing too much”" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4037794), 68 votes, about 15,000 visitors

"What's The Best Language For Safety Critical Software?" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3943556), 108 votes, about 25,000 visitors

(there was another one with about 200 votes, but I didn't find it!)

Compare these to submissions like this one, that has 350+ upvotes already, and I think it's realistic to assume at least 60 or 70 thousand unique users (I mean users in the sense that they know HN and visit it consciously) visit HN every day.

Very interesting, thanks a lot for sharing! But this makes it only even more mysterious, why so few people vote or take part in the discussions.

"why so few people vote or take part in the discussions."

To vote or participate you have to be logged in.

Would be interesting if PG released some data on logged in visitors.

Also, isn't the amount of votes the amount of net votes? So you could have 100 upvotes and 60 downvotes to net 40? (Of course that still doesn't jive with his numbers which I agree were very interesting and unexpected I would have never guessed that.)

Not participating could be also a) a confidence issue or b) lack of ability to type or use of a particular keyboard (I never comment from mobile for example).

Still, it doesn't explain the discrepancy in the numbers.

I don't know about the reason behind low number of votes, but the relatively low number of comments could be because the general attitude on HN (for the most part) is to be silent unless you have something constructive to say :)

For example, I don't know anything about python for example, so anything I can possibly say would be completely un-constructive (except if it's a question), so I shut my mouth and don't say anything; even when I see a (provocative) comment saying Node.js, which I really like, is shit and we should all be using python.

I've done my share of posting useless things on this site, but in the paste few months I've tried to not waste other people's times with useless comments and have removed maybe 40 comments (I would write a comment, read it and see it's not important and don't press "reply").

"to be silent unless you have something constructive to say"

Interesting. I tend to read much more stuff that I find interesting and have something to say rather than stuff I know nothing about.

"removed maybe 40 comments "

I don't think I've ever done that. If I get moved enough to comment I feel what I've said is important enough and the only thing I don't like is a downvote w/o explanation which is inevitable.. Actually it's the thing that I find fun and addictive about HN. I can usually predict downvotes as well on things that I say.

Would be nice if there was a way to post (w/o logging out) anonymously from time to time. Say once someone gets to a certain karma level they have the ability to say what they really think w/o fear of downvotes which I believe does supress what people think.

And in general, there is a reply that say what you think better than you could express yourself ;)

My hypothesis is that the majority visit HN to learn from those that do participate. Of course, their learning would be most effective if they participated themselves.

It's the nature of web forums. I run a subreddit, we get 100 uniques a day, roughly. Generally they make about one submission per day, collectively.

I'm told that's a pretty normal rate on reddit, given our size. It's easier to consume than to produce. (nb. People may be producing more elsewhere while not participating here)

I found it difficult to relate to his position. By all accounts, he is already very successful and, more importantly, financially independent so he has the freedom to do anything he likes. Labeling that kind of lifestyle as either "late blooming" or "being a loser" is a gross insult to the majority of people who are still trying very hard to achieve his level.

By his standards, I'm worth less than a handful of dirt. While I have achieved some modest level of financial freedom, I didn't do anything as cool as that guy yet. And if I do some day, I'll remember to be thankful for it instead of whining publicly about not being Bill Gates.

For some people the realization that you're never done, that there is always something cooler to do, is apparently very depressing. Personally though, I'm glad it's that way. As long as you're healthy and capable the future is wide open. I find this much more inspiring than the idea that somewhere there is a big cosmic finish line waiting just for you to fall short of.

He doesn't feel successful because he doesn't identify with any of the stuff he's doing. He always feels like what he's doing is a product of his environment, or someone else's idea. If he had set out to become a lecturer at Stanford and definitively achieved it, then he would feel successful. But his experience is that he stumbled into it, he doesn't feel like that's who he is or even really what he wants to do. So it doesn't feel like a success, it feels like a passing accident.

Yeah,what I mainly got from his post is that the author suffers from low self-esteem.

And you shouldn't compare yourself to him. People are not born equal, he had his own unique upbringing and environment. He was surrounded by genius, the cool kids, thus his view are such. And you have your own unique situation, probably was far less lucky than his so what's the problem?

The author is already extremely successful, and not only in his career: " and at 40 hadn’t accomplished much other than finding a good woman who was foolish enough to marry me, and somehow managed to have two wonderful children that I was vastly unqualified to have fathered"

So all he needs to enjoy the spoils of his success is to change his point of view. It can be done. But if it is not done, then it may be impossible to truly enjoy life.

Finding a good woman is a very difficult task, NP Complete I would say, depending on how you optimise. If you've solved that problem in your life, everything else is just noise. Starting a startup is trivial by comparison.

I concur. It is a difficult task, and sometimes you just get very lucky as well. Either way you find Mr/Mrs Right, and when you recognize and appreciate the fact, you are well on your way.

Finding a good woman is certainly difficult enough. Vastly harder, however, is knowing that you found the right one and building a solid relationship with her.

apropos,

http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Why_I_Will_Never_Have_a_Gir...

and

http://mat.tepper.cmu.edu/blog/?p=1392

I read through "Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend". It's a self-defeating load of bollocks. His odds are VASTLY better, and he's not giving himself any credit.

So he's saying out of all of the women in developed countries aged 18-25: 65 399 083

And let's assume his claim that only 50% are single: 32 699 541 (rounded down)

According to his numbers, only this many of these women would be beautiful and available: 73 919

Only 2% of ALL single women aged 18 to 25 are beautiful enough for him? So if he walked into a room full of 100 single women (not too difficult at a typical bar or social gathering) only 2 of them would qualify? This is ludicrous. Unless this particular gathering was a Buttered Pork Rind Aficionado's Convention, it's safe to say that the most discerning man would find at the VERY least 8 of those 100 women desirable.

And the "also might like me" bit. He's saying just one measly percent of these women he's attracted to will desire him. Come on. Unless you are an absolute creep or raging puppy-kicking bastard, you are not going to only attract 1 out of 100 women that you ever talk to. Do you realize how many people that is? Go about your day and count how many people you talk to, ALL of them. Coworkers, cashiers, friends, family, everyone. The average person won't reach anywhere near 100. It would have to be a stunning amount of rejection.

The whole statistical assumption is flawed, regardless. Finding a mate is not Brownian motion. You are not two particles hoping to collide in the cold vacuum of space. Go to large gatherings of people and put the odds in your favor. More people in less time means greater opportunities. And if you have personality preferences, go to places that attract the personality type you want. Do you like artistic women? Go to art shows. The author is seeking smart women... that's fairly broad. Perhaps classical concerts, wine tastings? Those kinds of events tends to attract women with academic credentials.

Either way, he is vastly improving his odds. At a gathering like that, 30 of those 100 single women could easily catch his interest.

Then again, he lives in London...

The guy also obviously think of himself as intelligent but can't think of a better mate finding strategy than blind dating once a week.

No-one is qualified to have children. If the OP thinks of himself as "unqualified" probably it really means that he doesn't give them as much attention as he thinks he should.

The modesty, anyway, is false, because clearly the OP is proud of his children. However he is wrong not to consider it an accomplishment - it's easy to have children, but difficult to bring them up well. I have met so many people who put their career before their children, who are not prepared to give something up (e.g. money or career prospects) for their children.

Didn't the parents of Gandhi, for example, accomplish something for having brought up Gandhi?

"it would have been easy at any point in this journey to rationalize my limited success, and accept being a small cog in a bigger wheel, at likely much better pay and much less stress. but I was still hoping I had a little fire in the belly, and maybe a little gas left in the tank to make something more of myself, before I ended up with just a broken spirit and a comfortable life. and so here I am: still standing in the arena, in hand-to-hand combat with demons mostly of my own making, aiming to make a small dent in the universe."

I agree with you that it could have something to do with being born in a hyper-competitive world. But I agree with the authors standpoint and feel the same way. The above paragraph for me echoes my sentiments perfectly. It's about making something of your life.

Of course, as some of the others have pointed out. There is a certain amount of delusion in it. But that might as well just be passion.

I agree with @PeteThom on creating your own space. Competing with the world is never the right way to go. Everyday there is someone doing what you want to do, better than you. So, it is only distracting to worry about what others achieve, and leads to achieving even lesser.

Finally, I'm still in my mid twenties, with my only achievements being one of the best developers in any place I work. Did a brief stint as a freelancer, so I could have the financial means to support development of my own ideas, but found out Qt/C++ wasn't so hot in the freelance market. So, now i'm working a permanent position at a small and flexible company, leading a team, creating an enterprise solution on iOS, for some of the biggest companies in the world.

Interesting challenges help keep me occupied, but, ideally what I want is to work on my ideas on my terms and produce something amazing! And live my life having time to think about it, instead of having it mapped out to some mundane comfortable existence.

It's really hard to explain the viewpoint, so excuse me if it seems like i'm rambling.

@moses1400: I'm like you, twenty years ago and have always worried about being in your place and feeling that way. But, I think there is always hope. I hope too, that I find my way to the right path. Wish you luck. Keep fighting the good fight.

What struck me about that quote is that maybe he's approaching things from the wrong direction. Why make a dent in the universe? What explicitly do you hope to accomplish with that?

Not attacking personal philosophies here, but this seems to run along the same vein as the desire to be "famous for being famous". Focus on building something, on creation and life. All the dents you make will be relative anyway, because as many have said - there's always someone doing something better. First, know what you want to do, second, do it to the best of your abilities. The dent that makes on the world is dependent on a plethora of influences most of which will be beyond your control.

I have always found that it's much more interesting to try and create your own space than to compete with others.

This does not guarantee you success or that you ever find that space. But it does keep you on your toes on your own terms.

I emphatically agree — for me at least, "competitiveness" is more about elevating one's aim than about "winning" against anyone, let alone everyone.

Completely agree.

Besides it is so much more fun.

And you get to see more stuff you make come to life.

I don't see a lot of the child prodigies really keeping up the pace. How many of the companies started by 16-year-olds actually last? Maybe in the 80s when guys were genuinely making blockbuster video games by themselves in college (e.g. Jordan Mechner, Eric Chahi)... but they really only had one or two hits in them.