Comment by moooo99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by moooo99 | Hacker News Reader

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> There's a long list of construction startups who thought the industry was low-tech simply because everyone in it was dumb, and that they would be the smartest guys in the room who'd revolutionize everything. Those startups are pretty much all roadkill.

Slightly OT, but I feel like this is a general trend and definitely not limited to construction. There are many companies and founders aiming to 'disrupt' an industry, and a starting out with what only can be defined as arrogance. Seeing some of the startup companies in the sector i'm familiar with trying to explain how the world works to some of the most experienced and established players has been hilarious and infuriating at the same time. At this point, I finally understood where the derogatory meaning of 'techbro' comes from.

The main thing that concerns me is that people still believe technology (primarily software) is the solution to any problem we encounter. Yes, technology solved many problems in the past, but it also created a lot and failed in spectacular ways. If you need a solution to an acute problem, waiting for a technology to hopefully be developed isn't the right call. However, more and more people, governments and companies are buying into that idea. I can't fail to notice many people who where technology skeptic years ago now turned towards a "I don't want to change my behavior, technology will find a problem that solves the issues I cause with it". Autonomous cars are my prime topic that comes to mind, but many other things also come to mind.

I used to feel this way.

But then I realized this is the natural push/pull of conservatism against progress. Incumbents get old and conservative. New companies crop up and try to do things differently. Sometimes the new ideas are stupid, and incumbents are right--the tried and true really is best.

Other times, the incumbents have become so bureaucratic, slow, and out of touch with what matters (customers), that a new company can come in, do things dramatically better, and burn an old competitor down.

Macro-wise, I think we should be glad for this. It's very hard to tell what will and won't work at the beginning. VCs get paid a lot of money for trying to guess this and even they can't get it right. I myself have been surprised many, many times when an idea I thought was incredibly stupid, turned out to have legs.

One way to change your mind on this, write down your predictions about what companies/approaches/techniques will/won't work 10 years from now. If you do this say, once/year, and you're honest, you'll see how hilariously bad you, and more or less everyone else actually is, at predicting the future and knowing what will and won't work. Sometimes you really do just have to try it, and see what happens.

I feel like this is so common. It happens for comments here too (but the comment I’m about to make is not about the top level comment which is a valid question).

I work in aerospace and whenever a post is related to aerospace here I expect to see several “why don’t they just <do x which they already do or do y which is easy to discredit>..” comments as if nobody else was smart enough to think of it. I favorite these comments for some reason. Not surprised to see the same thing happens in other fields.

> There are many companies and founders aiming to 'disrupt' an industry, and a starting out with what only can be defined as arrogance

Humble people don't say to themselves "I think I can do this better, so I'm going to disrupt the industry."

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