Aaron Swartz: How to Get a Job Like Mine

You know, it is possible to do important things, even important things with computers, and not be cut out for a life in business.

Once upon a time, for hackers, it was considered a step down to work in industry. However, it's since been shown there's a lot of money to be made, and lately PG's been spreading the gospel about how entrepreneurship is the true calling of a geek. But it's just not always the case.

Anyway, even if your premise about Aaron is true, the man's already done more with his short life than almost anybody on this site. Even on the business side.

For some reason Aaron feels compelled to talk out almost every personal failing he has in public. I don't know, if the famously mercurial Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison actually recounted all of their meltdowns candidly, they might sound something like Aaron's blog.

It's easy to see why Graham would ask him to apply to YC, especially for the first series.

He was "famous" in some hacker circles for winning the ArsDigita prize and for his work on RSS, he was willing to move to Cambridge for a summer and work out of an apartment with little compensation.

The really interesting part of this, though, is the personal connection Graham had with applicants before they applied to the YC program (other founders accepted by YC tell similar stories).

So maybe the lesson here is: get to know Graham personally first, then apply to YC.

When I was his age, I was playing in a hard core industrial metal band (and then only when it was convenient), working part time in the video room at a television station, and sometimes taking classes at community college. He's done all right.

I don't get why people care so much if someone thinks highly of themselves. As long as they aren't hurting me, or really screwing up the world or society, I say more power to them. I'm glad someone's thinks they're up to taking charge of things, so I don't have to and can do the cool stuff instead.

No, he's smart.

Seems a top bloke to me.

I'm amazed they only had 3000 at the time of the Python rewrite. It seemed much bigger than that if I remember correctly.

>Always saying yes separates you from the other 99%.

Yes, but only if you can carry through with the things you promised to do. If not, they'll hate you for saying yes all the time.

I'll echo that. First two years in the Air Force I volunteered all over the place and got all kinds of recognition and such.

But now I'm in school again, thankfully no more of that crap:P

The best thing about this advice is that it is so easy to follow ;-)

No, what he is saying is excellent advice. You have to meet and socialize with other people to a certain degree no matter which path to success you take.

Very rarely does someone become wildly successful 100% on his own.

EDIT: I'll say one thing for him: I'm glad he compiled all the "Tom the dancing bug" 'toons:

http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/tddbArchive

Agreed. And with his cocky and conceited personality, who would want to even associate themselves with him?

3k visitors after 3 months is not half bad

yeah, this is an annoying bug, it is worth making the <code> blocks wrap to get rid of it

That may be true for the likes of news.YC readers, but we're a self-selecting sample.

Based on the office experiences I've had the misfortune to endure, people like us might be at 50% productivity instead of 90% at home, but the majority of cubicle dwellers are are 10% instead of 0% at home.

Maybe I'm inappropriately pessimistic, but even if that's not the case, I'd imagine that's the thing that has kept, and will keep, telecommuting and the like from becoming more than the occasional fringe benefit for the occasional employee.

The only way most companies can measure people is by the amount of time that they put in. So if one is not at the office it can be very hard for the manager to work out how much people are worth. This is because most managers can't work out what programmers do anyway.

So though people who work from home might get twice as much done. They still won't very far up in the organisation. Which demoralises them. Plus if they work as part of a team which works face-2-face, they still spend a lot of time working out what's happened at work.

Sitting around, counting his money. Occasionally does some emailing.

Successful startup founder (i.e. rich guy). IIRC, he's been involved in a bunch of projects, usually as the author of some sort of web application. His latest project, Jottit seems to be a reincarnation (in spirit if not code) of Infogami, which merged with reddit.