Biz Stone: How I Faked My Way into Google (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Biz Stone: How I Faked My Way into Google (2013)

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62 pointsorky5617 comments

Great story, but that's a diamond in the rough of start-up stories.

For me I'm living like a pauper - broke, in debt, family-less (g/f of many years wants stability before we have a kid) and well right now I'm not sure why I chose this path the past 7 years (2 start-ups).

I do have a nifty/interesting resume, a lot of cool stories/experiences of my own that a day job would never provide and an idea of mine has been copied/worked on by dozens including one that now has 1.5 million users/raised $3 million (not me though).

IS it all worth it?

EDIT: I find myself asking this question when the rollercoaster slows down (slow times/nothing exciting happening .. heads down development). Currently, the coaster is going 10MPH, though two/three weeks ago it was going 100MPH.

No. Nothing is worth it and we are all dead in the end. If you had fun though? Fun is something else and isn't really to do with worth. You could have been born in a cave and chased rabbits all day. Would that have been worth it?

Fun is definitely not the reason that I do startups.

It's similar to when I did cross-country running for a few years. That wasn't fun at all, not even once. It was painful. I'd say that I did it just because of competitive instincts.

Who knows. I'm right there with you, though I have 1 child and 1 more on the way I am supporting with a below-median salary in my area (not SV, but not a cheap place to live either).

But here's what I do know: When I was working as a data scientist, making $150k+ with 3 days WFH and six hour days, my life looked "great" from the outside. I made a ton of money, got to work from home, and worked on a respectable product predicting tax rates.

Inside, I hated everything I did and my family suffered. I strongly considered quitting and going back to waiting tables and walking away from the (often) parasitic industry that is software development, full of "bullshit jobs" as one analyst has so eloquently put it.

I now work as a sports scientist and I've sold 40% of my company to hire a partner who really completes the business. We did six figures of revenue last year and we'll do seven in 2-3 years. But it's not about the money, is it? It's about the fact we get to decide our own path. And for me, that's all that I needed to become a happier person, better husband, and good father. The money can wait, I've found.

Would you be as happy if your revenue wasn't increasing like it is? Imagine 10 to 15 years of stagnant growth. Would the fact that you've decided that path be enough to make you happy?

Already went through that time. Had 7 years of stagnant growth while I worked full-time as a software developer / data scientist. This is year 9.

I knew this would be my full-time job eventually. My field is very research-based and very niche. It took over 10,000 hours (I guess I'm a Gladwell expert now) of unpaid research and experimentation to get to where I am at.

Was I happy doing it? Tough to say. I know that I wasn't sad when I worked on it, compared to working my "bullshit" data science job.

It sounds cliche but sometimes the startup world chooses you rather than the other way around. What I found most interesting about Biz Stone's story was that it felt like I was rooting for him rather than feeling like he was hustling me. As entrepreneurs, we all have the "pauper" backstory and lifestyle but sometimes we have to project where we want to be. It comes off in our passion, drive, confidence, optimism, and sometimes bravado.

As they say, history is written by the winners. Biz Stone wrote it before he got started though.

This is not an uncommon SV story archetype, but as many people have pointed out before me, it's one that highlights the concept of privilege with particular clarity. In the US, both men and white people are more aggressive at this sort of bluff than non-men and non-white people, and there are strong implications that this is because it's a much easier bluff for them.

Read the book instead. It is really, really good:

http://www.amazon.com/Things-Little-Bird-Told-Me-ebook/dp/B0...

Anybody else just have the take-away of, "Man, what a colossal douche"? Really discouraging to me re: acting like a totally overconfident tool and liar more so than encouraging re: success.

Does Google still refuse to hire people unless they have computer science degrees? In this day and age that doesn't make sense.

Google hasn't ever done that.

The story says "Google had a reputation of hiring only people with computer science degrees." Dunno if it's true or not, I'm just curious.

Keep in mind this was 2003, Google had less than 2000 employees then.

It's never been an absolute policy, but they certainly used to prefer people with degrees; it's an easy filter when you've got a million CVs a year to parse through.

HR found it was useless as a predictor of success, though, and the policy was officially dropped last year:

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/google-hiring-non-graduate...

For technical positions, this was never a requirement afaik.

For at least some non-technical positions, a college degree was required, although not for any reason I ever understood.

"Does Google still refuse to hire people unless they have computer science degrees?"

No.

"In this day and age that doesn't make sense."

It didn't make sense when they semi-officially had that policy either, particularly if you consider how relatively young of a company Google is (granted, "young" is subjective, I'm 40 years old). But when you're incubated in academia and turn out to be very successful, it is easy to think that your best bet is to keep one and a half feet firmly planted in that world.

Of course, Google isn't/wasn't alone, lots of companies have lots of policies that don't really make any sense outside of whatever echo chamber they've created for themselves.

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