bhoung

Jumping straight to the conclusion...

"The same individual has a 30% higher return to general ability when active as an entrepreneur than when working as an employee. Nevertheless, the resulting earnings are higher as an entrepreneur than as an employee only for the upper echelon of the general ability distribution. This suggests that, if the choice for entrepreneurship hinges on expected earnings, only the smartest people become entrepreneurs. However, as indicated by the results in Table A2 of the Appendix, general ability is not a factor that affects people’s occupational choice. In fact, there is some negative effect of general ability but it is not significant."

"These results suggest that, again if occupational choices are based on expected earnings differentials, people with high levels of math, technical and social abilities become entrepreneurs, whereas people with relatively high levels of clerical and language abilities become wage employees."

I know, I know. A gross over-generalisation which I conceded in the original comment. But clicking around on his blog, I found a quote from his interview by Tucker Max which shows that his inspiration was definitely Machiavelli.

"I pitched to him an idea about the timelessness of Machiavelli which ended up turning into the 48 Laws of Power."

http://www.powerseductionandwar.com/archives/the_robert_gree...

Can't remember where I read it but the good developers are hiding in good jobs and not actively searching...

Classic case of thinking that being right should be all that matters? With interviews and hiring it all comes down to the first impression...

Really enjoyed the article. I've skimmed Greene's book and thought it was just a modernisation of Machiavelli's "The Prince". This article really shows how passionate he is about understanding and accepting human nature. Because Greene's book is prescriptive in that it lists 48 laws, I had thought there wasn't that much depth to it. I'm pleasantly surprised by Greene's insight.

The strongest points are 1) and 2): monocultures have a negative impact, and living in a city is inherently a social experience. Let's say NY and Silicon Valley are equal in the extent they are monocultures, it's apparent Silicon Valley comes out on top as the monoculture there is technology oriented. Now, looking at population density and opportunity for forming diverse social connections, I'd expect a larger denser city to come out on top. Answers to the above seem to also be answers to Richard Florida's question of where do the creative types go.

Interesting. But mostly concerned at the amount of soft drink consumed.

This is a great example of what separates entrepreneurs from other people: the ambition and belief that precedes any action at all. Given the list of people identified as self-made men, I would hazard a guess that there is a long way to go.

Gladwell is an enjoyable read and is able to pull together seemingly unrelated threads. Telling plausible coherent stories is really the most effective medium of communication, which explains his popularity. He is clearly more an entertainer than practitioner. Warren Buffett is capable of prediction but he is probably boring (I'm probably wrong about this...)

Besides, the fact that Kitchin has moved on to bigger and better things does not really discredit Gladwell's critique. Could be another disaster unfolding as we speak. Just saying.

This was exactly the technique employed by a young drug effected person asking for money who was standing outside the local supermarket. "My mother is suddenly ill and I need $10 / $20 bucks to get to X." Except the guy doesn't tell you his startup idea.

After wanting to just create a simple online store and initially setting up Drupal and Magento, I've found Shopify to be surprisingly customisable and easy to use. Really impressed with their product. Love the start-up story also. I can see how Tobi came to the conclusion that the stuff out there for the non-corporate market wasn't that great (even now).

try http://www.sinatrarb.com/ as http://sinatrarb.com seems to be something else...

From the Social Network: If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.

Skim the article and jump to comments to find that everyone else has done the same. How delightful. Shame the article didn't match the title. Doesn't appear that there is any reason to suggest sci-fi is dying.

There are some great comments here.

I disagree with leaping into the abyss because it's likely to be overwhelming and counterproductive in this context.

Change one aspect of your life at a time and see what happens. Move houses, change jobs, change social circles. Sit back and observe. It ties in with trying something different but also makes it more manageable instead of attempting to do everything at once. I think people have different tolerances for the amount of change they can adapt to.

I second the comment on the corporate machine making you unproductive and making you feel lazy. Corporations are large machines with huge overhead because the rules are designed for average employees. On the whole, stuff gets done, but at the individual level it minimizes upside and downside. Unless you have a talent or discipline for office politics, it isn't an attractive option. I would guess that the majority of HN readers would not enjoy that environment.

The quarter-life crisis and the early 21st century syndrome is prevalent amongst 20-30 yr olds. Societies are undergoing major change and it is fascinating to see how we will respond to the choices presented to us. Now that companies can be built with 2-3 people, it doesn't just allow for ycombinator to succeed, it forces young programmers to assess whether a forty year career path is the obvious choice. Personally, I think the life and career goals of earlier generations is not applicable any more but are still being passed down and unintentionally causing cognitive dissonance.

http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/ pretty sure a similar story was on radiolab too.

Cheap shot... but I guess that means she's ruling out people that she would click with. Or she has already decided she doesn't want to work or click with anyone.

The paper refers to whether a monopolist should set different prices to the two types of customers (high value or low). They find that the answer is no. The part that is confusing you (I think), is in the next paragraph, where the paper then finds that if the monopolist however offers an enhanced service based on purchasing history, it does become optimal to set two different prices. Also by "never profitable", they don't mean that the monopolist won't make any profit, it's just that they won't be able to increase profit.

Awesome, glad you liked it. Don't think the serious money will come with this one. I view web startups as an exploratory creative process (curious to see how network effects works with this one). Success will follow passion and persistence. Thanks for the encouragement.

Here here. There's nothing as hard as achieving success in all aspects of your life.

That might just be the spray that we needed to gather another head of steam. Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions. We're definitely at risk of losing momentum and adding to the pile of unfinished projects on the internet.

Thanks for the encouragement and tips. Agree that's difficult to get something out there. We picked the project for its narrow scope, and even then it seems like there is a never ending list of things to do.

I was wondering what kind of response this article would get. It had seemed to me that opinions that tend towards pointing out the ugly truth (or approximate this) are not really appreciated here. I suspect it's because of the general level of optimism required to be productive rather than stuck in a negative stupor. My appraisal is that the comments here are mixed but generally not appreciative of the article. What is surprising is that the submission was upvoted, and the criticisms of the opinion in the article were also upvoted.

It's a fine line really, knowing when to fight back, retort or walk away. If you never teach/encourage your son how to hold their own, then you are doing them a disfavor. Probably the caveat I would throw in is that the older your child is, the higher the stakes are (in physical terms), and the more likely something very ugly will result.

It's great that the community is giving advice on what steps to take for getting a programming job, but I would like to add that finding a job is a short term fix. If one is only trying to work out how to get a job for the sake of getting a job, it will only be a matter of time before one is bored. But then again, you'll probably only realise this only having gone through the process. Try to find something that interests you, which may or may not be programming.

I'm a little surprised at the relatively negative responses on this. Is this story not consistent with hacker culture and working smarter, not harder? [Pointing out to a bunch of programmers they can be outsourced is unlikely to be well received though]. The execution and success of their apps was brilliant. Sure they lose marks for immaturity, which is even more of an achievement, and their contribution low-quality apps which now plague the internet.

The research is probably accurate but not surprising for an economist to discover this. Confirmation bias at work I suspect.

The appeal of Diaspora was its story (university students raising money to build a version of facebook which would not raise privacy concerns) not its technical superiority. It also explains the amount of media coverage Diaspora received. Having just watched the social network, I came to the conclusion that the only reason that movie was made was the law suits surrounding the creation of that company. There's no appeal making a movie about two or three guys working harmoniously together to build something useful.

Guess we'll just see how it goes. What time is the android thing finishing up?

I met nedwin and kiwidrew at the last one I think. There must have been at least 30 people. I'll look him up. Thanks again.