The credentials trap | Hacker News Reader

The credentials trap

cdixon.org

139 pointsmh_24 comments

The post from Sivers' blog[1] a few days talked optimistically about how, at least in some ways, we're beginning to see a fix for this.

You can break out of the credentials trap by making and doing stuff and by looking for people who make stuff. Public creations and contributions, even as simple as blogging, are becoming much more of an accepted credential (offering more external validation in Dixon's words) and that's great.

(Well, mostly great. Great that people might look at your github as a credential, perhaps going a tad too far when people proclaim that Github replaces resumes.)

I'm nothing but a wee programmer from New Hampshire, and while hating on Stack Overflow is cool around here[2], it allowed me to help thousands of people and create a (literal and S.O.) reputation. I wasn't thinking about career with all my days and nights contributing to StackOverflow, it was more of plain old poor time management mixed with some desire to be useful to someone. Yet SO and a tad of blogging landed me a book deal, which is a far more interesting outcome than anything my regular career-minded things (getting a degree and getting a job/experience) have done. By miles.

Unlike the external validation in the post (getting a degree), making stuff encompasses a much bigger pie. You aren't competing against the other people with law degrees. You're showing tangible reasons you might be useful. Really, if your field allows it, making stuff publicly is the best credential we've got.

[1] "It's all who you know?" - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5198956

[2] As of writing the first comment is bashing the SO system, which is a typical top-comment for these sort of stories: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5210648

Credentials are useful when done right.

My sister is about to graduate with a Art degree which most people think is fairly worthless and in some ways it is.

However, she also has her portfolio which is a good but not great indicator of quality. And even better she can point to her name in some movie credits and point out what parts of 'a major motion picture' she worked on.

Combine all three and it's a good resume. But, what credentials provide is the reason to spend more than 10 seconds on a candidate. Looking though a portfolio takes time as does understanding your job history, but credentials are FAST.

PS: Think about what the ideal credentials mean. O you won an award I recognize, well gee I don't know much about you but your probably worth that second glance.

I've been meaning to write about this but so far my thoughts aren't fleshed out very well, so bear with me. I've been observing a trend with people that is quite interesting but I'm not sure if there's any useful conclusions to it.

I grew up in Germany, went to an okay university first, then a "good" university, became a management consultant for a while, enrolled in a relatively high end business school, went to Cal to do research and finally ended up in the Bay area and went through YC a while ago.

There were very good (by some metric) people everywhere I went. I'm talking about the top of the class when I studied Math in Cologne, the 30 y/o tenured CS professor in Munich, the 22 y/o consultant who earns more than his parents etc.. Those people are often focused on achievement, grades, getting a good job, etc.

Recently, I've met a different kind of people. People that I'd consider great at what they do. The people that you can ask a stupid question and they'll give you a considerate answer, the ones that do things out of an intrinsic motivation. To find out if they want to work with you, they'll sit down with you and talk, or work a problem over. I've had to write resumes all my life and then suddenly, a few years ago I stopped maintaining one and never needed it either.

I think what I'm seeing is that at the very high end in whatever field you're in, people won't care about credentials. But unfortunately, there is a middle ground on the "slightly less high end", where it is very important. Perhaps what you can do is "keep up appearances" until you pass that stage. If there's an easy way to get credentials (i.e. I don't think I benefited a lot from any degree I have, but they were easy to get and I could do other things I liked more at the same time), go for it.

Edit: Sorry if this lacks clarity, I wrote it in a hurry. I'll come back later to edit

"But optimizing for external validation is a dangerous trap"

You dont think this is strongly present in the startup world as well? In a number of ways I think many in the current form of the startup world are even more hungry for external validation but perhaps in a different way and from a different crowd.

"You’re fighting over a fixed pie against well-credentialed peers."

This also present in startups but instead of fighting for the next rung on the latter you are battling others for a piece of a limited number of funds, eyeballs, reporter coverage, demand, etc. The point being is that there is always a bottleneck or constraint in any field entrepreneurial or not. I'd agree that for an engineer, while quite rare, startup success has the potential to enhance your career probably more than being a smashing success in corp but both are funnels in different forms.

Maybe there's always a bottleneck to the wealth you receive, but there's no such bottleneck to the wealth you create. You're not limited in in your creation just because some other startup is doing well.

That's also true of working at a larger company, except that larger companies usually have their wealth (product, service, whatever it may be) created and are trying to get more money out of it. Working at one is generally going to involve less raw wealth generation than working at a startup, which I think is part of what the author is trying to say.

I have to respectfully disagree although I hear your what you are saying. If you are a lone coder you have the potential to create something pretty valuable but small with not too many constraints. The game changes when you start to have to utilize "resources" whether that is hiring other people or raising money. Right now for example in the so-called series A crunch many startups are definitely dying because another startup fighting for the same funding is doing better. Same with hiring, if you need other engineers to increase the value of your business and you cant hire the right ones because they are taking other offers it can severely limit your potential.

The only validation that matters for the success of your startup is validation from your customers. And the list of things customers want is endless. Reporters, investors, bloggers, commenters on HN are second order at best, and most of the time don't really matter. There's no fixed pie you're competing for in startups.

If you don't believe me, try looking at which YC startups have the most "external validation" after demo day (a lot of blogs publish "top 10" lists, so that might be a good place to start). Then look at those same startups two years later. You'll find the correlation of "external validation" and real success is near zero.

There's VC-istan and then there's the ideal of the customer-focused, lifestyle-business. I think you're conflating the two, which is not unreasonable because almost everyone does.

VC-istan is a system in which most people can't really play. You don't just decide to be a Founder and get sit-down pitches with Peter Thiel. You can't even get a real reason for a rejection (much less a decent chance at a timely acceptance) until you know people. It's an introduction-based guild system. That's probably inevitable and not the primary evil. The primary evil is that most of these VC-istan companies use "be a real founder some day" as a carrot they dangle in front of clueless 22-year-olds, who fail to realize that as subordinate engineers, they're getting absolutely no progress toward what they were promised.

VC-istan is a postmodern corporation, but it's effectively one company. The VCs talk to each other in all kinds of inappropriate ways, and they decide as a group whether you're hot (or not). If you're hot, you get the resources to hire 10 engineers. Or 25. If you're either lucky or a really good judge and hire good ones, you have a shot at something big.

"Founder" is just a mid-level PM position in VC-istan. If you're playing the VC-istan career game, you end up caring more about investors and press than customers. Why? Because you're a selfish careerist (you have to be) and your investors will continue to have influence over your success or failure at your next venture. Your customers won't.

VC-istan, for businesses, is get-big-or-die. You're competing for scarce resources, whether they be "eyeballs" or investor attention, because if you aren't growing at 100% per year, you're "walking dead", which means yesterday's dogshit. The postmodern corporation of VC-istan treats companies themselves as disposable (which isn't right or wrong, just a different approach).

What you're describing, where customers are king, is a different world: slow-growing businesses that are often decried as "lifestyle businesses", but actually comprise the silent majority of new economic activity. These firms might define success as growth at 20% per year instead of 150%. These businesses don't turn into billion-dollar concerns quickly, and they're hard to sell, but if you don't mind being there for 10+ years, they're probably a better option. You're not going to have to sell your soul to remain "in" with the VCs and cool kids, and you can set up shop in a low-COL location like Madison or Portland.

The difficulty in starting lifestyle businesses is that you have to put personal savings on the line, and our generation (as a whole) neither has that nor is likely to get there-- ever. You put a lot more on the line when you start one of those than you do when you take a check from a VC.

Additionally, the danger, and it's what gives VCs power, is that your lifestyle business ends up having to compete with a VC-funded machine-gunner.

>Additionally, the danger, and it's what gives VCs power, is that your lifestyle business ends up having to compete with a VC-funded machine-gunner.

Really? You fear VC?

I fear my established competitors coming down on price faster. I fear the new entrants (who are cheaper than I am) developing a better reputation. Most of all, I fear screwing it up myself; really, that's the only thing that will kill me fast.

VC funded companies are not even on the radar. If you have offices on castro street, or university ave? as far as I am concerned? you may as well be on another planet entirely. It's like companies that sell to big corporations, you know? Yeah, they can marshal huge resources... but they also have the pricing power to take absolutely tremendous margins. The people I know how to sell to? they don't even want to look at. The markets that I want to dominate? they are so small, that nobody real cares about them. (I mean, I would like the wider market, too, but if I really earn the market I want most? even though it's tiny, it's absolutely huge compared to my needs.)

Generally speaking? VC and sole proprietors go after different markets. We want different things. And we are good at different things.

>The difficulty in starting lifestyle businesses is that you have to put personal savings on the line, and our generation (as a whole) neither has that nor is likely to get there-- ever. You put a lot more on the line when you start one of those than you do when you take a check from a VC.

Maybe? either way, you are going to be putting years of your life into something that is probably going to fail. I guess with VC, you have a better chance of getting paid something, and you have a better chance of not having the debt follow you after the thing does fail, but eh, the real cost in both situations is the years of your life you spend.

Really, maybe there is something to the VC "fail fast" attitude, rather than what I describe as "the slog" - long years of living on sustenance wages, pouring the difference into your company.

If I had the last 10 years of my own life back? My slog, the time I spent pouring all my excess effort into this sort of thing? I don't know if I would do it. I might just stick with a dayjob, and get a hobby or something.

Or, maybe I'd do a VC-style "fail fast" - try an idea for a few months, then write it off as a failure if it doesn't come up during that time.

I mean, I don't have those 10 years to do over; I have the result. A bunch of servers, a bunch of contracts, a bunch of customers. A living wage, (but still like 1/3rd what google would pay me) and a bunch of contacts.

I am in a state where the only option is forward; I can't quit now or I lose 10 years of work (and a company with north of a quarter million in revenue isn't nothing... I mean, if I sold it? yeah, it's nothing. but it's a point from which I can try other things.)

So yeah. I am moving forward, (and I have made dramatic changes; other people (not VC, technical people that I know and trust) now own parts of my company. This is /huge/ - a big part of why I went into business for myself was to be my own boss, and I'm still the majority shareholder? but for the first time in a long time, I answer to other people. It is.... very different.) But, you know what? after those ten years? I am not so sure I agree with your statement that starting a business with your own resources is better than taking some idiot's money. It's certainly not easier, and worst of all, there is nothing to say "You have failed, go home, get some sleep, and go get a real job." which is the real danger. With a reasonable lifestyle business, assuming you can create value with your labour, well, you can keep going at this half-success level, really, forever. There really is such thing as being too persistent.

>correlation of external validation and success is zero.

I think you mean minus one, not zero. If its zero we have learnt nothing interesting.

Many luminaries including Peter Thiel have been saying this but I see a little bit of a contradiction while comparing their statements to their backgrounds. Peter Thiel, for example, went to Stanford undergrad and law school. Chris Dixon has an MA from Columbia. PG has a PhD from Harvard etc...I'm also wondering if the reverse is happening in the startup world where investors see you unfavorably if you're not a 19 year old college dropout but instead have an advanced degree. In addition, like the previous poster pointed out, credentialism exists everywhere. People want to trust one source for vetting multiple candidates. This happens with YC for example. YC startups are more likely to raise money because investors trust the partners' judgement in vetting the founders.

These sorts of people have every incentive to target those more likely to be willing to serve as grist for their mill; young, idealistic, inexperienced individuals that will take the bait.

Never mind that most of them will fail, or that they're really not remotely qualified or experienced enough to produce good work in their field of interest. The amount invested is effectively pocket change, so much so that it doesn't matter if you have a 100 failures for every Dropbox.

It's a fools game to see the VC market as anything other than just another business industry, with different set or empty credentials. They use those credentials to convince 'entrepreneurs' to make themselves into a product to be sold, for pennies on the dollar.

Are we actually going to have data for iteration #5,678,922 of this debate, or will we just play Anecdote Poker again?

the post seems like a verbose attempt at "do what makes you happy". what precisely is being debated here?

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary." — Nassim Taleb

I am so using that. Thanks for sharing.

He said in a time of historic poverty, inequality, and income instability throughout much of the Western world.

What a dick!

> optimizing for external validation is a dangerous trap. You’re fighting over a fixed pie against well-credentialed peers. The most likely outcome is a middle management job where you’ll have little impact and never seriously attempt to realize your ambitions.

That should be in every college freshman's welcome packet.

I think one of the big draws of credentials is the ability to measure your success.

Getting into a great school or landing an important job is a lot easier to quantify than startup success.

A credentialed life might be much less exciting, but it removes a lot of doubt.

The external validation isn't just outside the tech field though - the desire to work for a well-known corp isn't just to impress mom and dad.

The tech industry, to put it bluntly, has no idea how to hire people. Credentialing is everywhere, even amongst startups. Do you know how many startups eyes light up when they hear about well-regarded-big-tech-corp on my resume?

I've since graduated out of big software companies, but my time spent there continues to pay dividends in the startup world today. It is the way it is, for better or for worse - but one thing is clear to me: there are perfectly rational reasons to pursue this kind of credentialing besides "so the proles who don't get it respect me".

Following the Peter Thiel point, I think that the education system is currently flawed in the way that it sets up the end goal as being college. From the beginning (elementary), kids are trained to get good grades to get into a great college, but there's very little active discussion with students about careers and life in general at the early phases. Everything done at an academic level is to get into a good college, rather than learning for curiosity's sake and building something of value. I know this because I fell for it when I was in HS, and it's something that needs to change.

like everything, apply a cost and reward analysis.

i was the first technical employee of a now well known, but still very much young and growing startup. i predict this credential will prove more beneficial than "software engineer, google" for a number of reasons.

incidentally, i was so young and isolated when i started working for startups that i didn't realize it was taboo or scary until it was too late. i wasn't optimizing for credentials; i just needed a job man.

I think I was at the startup school event where she said this, she had a bunch of cute monster pokemon type deals to describe problems you run into with a startup, this was one of them. Engaging lady.

Is it a trap, though?

We, in the HN-sphere, have this irritating tendency to take outlier successes and people as indicative. Since no social-proof system on earth (university education, or investor affirmation) can identify excellence beyond the 98th percentile or so, we assume (correctly) that those systems are functionally ineffectual, and (perhaps incorrectly) conclude that people can safely tell those systems to fuck off. Most people can't. Most people need to exploit those systems, no matter how painful the level-grinding may be, in order to get food on their tables.

I think it's ridiculous that most people spend 3 times as much time proving they're capable of doing work than actually doing it. (Most corporate work is evaluative, not functional or important. See: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/fourth-quadra...) However, very few people have the power to get out of that nonsense.

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