Totally -- not to mention surviving long enough to let compound interest naturally magnify that difference.
As for the tactics or "logistics" -- if that means clicking 500 times/minute, then i really don't see the appeal :)
277 karma · joined September 24, 2009
I do software & maths at Skyline Innovations, building tools to support distributed generation & energy efficiency. I.e., measuring atoms with bits.
As for the tactics or "logistics" -- if that means clicking 500 times/minute, then i really don't see the appeal :)
It's always seemed like more of an economic strategy game than an actual "fronts of battle" kind of strategy.
Also, if any go players in CA are interested, next years US Go Congress will be in Santa Barbara, 1st week in August!
That's certainly not how everyone looks at the game, but for me, go is easily the most enriching subject of study.
Just my 2c!
(from the doc, [I: Display all lines that contain the keyword under the cursor. Filenames and line numbers are displayed for the found lines. The search starts at the beginning of the file.)
sweet!)
"We might not be the best analyst, the best client
negotiator, or the best excel wrangler,"
So i guess, compared what some of the other posters here are saying, if you didn't go to a top-flight school, then you actually don't have a chance to get into these places, right?
If that's the case, as per your last paragraph, what's the incremental improvement that "flash and pedigree" provides?
I.e., a successive series of observations of white swans, written with a strong narrative, to strongly imply that all swans are white.
As I went on to say, where they're not disjoint, they're probably correlated, not causal, and i cite some examples where people i know exhibited Relentless Resourcefulness WITHOUT demonstrating the OP's definition of toughness. (Although, perhaps they meet your definition of tough, which is why you're quickly judging my claim as false, and we're having a miscommunication on terminology).
I can't use your definition of tough, so i responded to his. Look at his third sentence:
"These guys (and gals) were not the young, sheepish,
technical founders you’d expect. These guys are
operators – savvy, confident, operators."
Is that definitive? Is it always true? No, of course not -- we're talking about human properties that vary as much as humans. But I wouldn't want to look for relentless resourcefulness by looking for toughness.
He's looking at confidence & poise as indicators of toughness. He saw the demo day, and he's dividing people into operators and sheepish 'technical founders'.
You may say tough as a shorthand for relentless resourcefulness. He's saying tough to mean the opposite of geek.
So the question, i suppose, is how do you, pg, evaluate people for toughness? The OP seems to be using a mix of posture & anthropology combined with business benchmarks.
"Wimps don’t really get anything done – they don’t release
a product, they don’t make sales, they don’t raise money,
hey balk at big problems, they quit before they should."
Finally, his definition of wimp/tough might be "true" -- whatever the hell that means -- but i find it useless, and maybe worse than useless if it leads you disqualify many people who are RR. True/False is easy, but useful/useless is much harder to evaluate.
A useful statement about the mental traits of founders would be nice to have. A useful test would be even better. That's what i'm trying to get at.
For example: "I don’t think there is anything particularly new here. PG says that the definitive description of good founders is “relentlessly resourceful.” I’m pretty sure that “toughness” is a big part of that. Can you take care of yourself and get (sh)it done, or are you a wimp?"
I'm pretty sure that "relentlessly resourceful" and "tough" are largely disjoint. Likewise, taking care of yourself & getting shit done, and folding in the face of adversity, are not as related. Why did he choose those things as either/or? It's a strange choice. So it's not wrong, really, but it's not really right, either.
Being "tough" can help founders be successful, but i don't think it's causal, just highly correlated with what are actually the good predictors. So the author banging his chest and talking about how he can just hear you describing his company as so damn tough is -- while not false -- not very useful.
or how about this: "Tough people choose decisiveness over diligence." That's just terrifying that he would present this as a choice, and i would run away from having him as an operator. First, it's a false dichotomy, but more problematic is that it doesn't matter how decisively tough you are -- if you're shooting from the hip, you'll miss. Is he trying to address analysis paralysis? Because if so, that's a very strange choice in language he's used.
Put another way: In the post above by jiu-jitsu practitioner where he is describing grit, i think he's absolutely right to say that grit is something incredibly useful in non-physical arenas. As a boxer, i've watched a lot of people get through some really brutal places. However, that 'grit' emerges from some very different internal motivations, such as a) raw ambition to be the best, b) a deep fear of the shame of failure, c) for the sheer hell of it, d) because a girl is watching, and even it looked like e) from a sublime appreciation of the present moment. (Zen boxer, totally weird) -- but they all were able to push through places where I watch a lot of people quit, stop working, stop pushing themselves, etc.
When Mr. Godin is talking about the importance of actually shipping software, and the difference between people who ship, and people who don't -- he's not framing that in terms of tough vs. wimp. Those words are pretty loaded with anthropological baggage.
Actually, i'm finding myself repeating what api is saying upthread, so i'll join in up there :) My real contribution is that if 'grit' is the observed behavior, i think 'toughness' is the wrong trait to look for that produces it.
Or, to put another way, he's taking "tough" and using that word to mean a whole bunch of other traits: resourcefulness, perseverance, endurance, motivation & ambition -- and smashing them all into the word "toughness". Echoing swombat & enjo in this thread, yes, toughness can help you get things done, but it isn't what lets you get things done. Nice but not sufficient.
"A compiler takes in a stream of symbols and translates it to another stream of symbols. Common compiler techniques include intermediate tree representations, parsing of symbols, various recursion-based optimization passes on the intermediate representation and phases, and various serialization techniques."
The second sentence is a good definition. The first sentence is probably the cause of the disagreement -- it's so vague as to possibly describe a C compiler, as well as a Chinese Room, a signal detection algorithm, a kid doing his math homework, etc. I'm not quite sure what you call something that transmutes a stream of symbols into other symbols that is precise, but i feel "things that transmute symbols" covers a very broad class of things that are not compilers as well. Someone doing their chemistry homework, for instance.
I mean, yes, a compiler will transmute symbols, but it's the second sentence is how we distinguish that from, say, a DSP. When you start asserting things like "builds an intermediate structure representing the parse tree", then the definition starts going somewhere useful.
"Necessary but not sufficient," and all that.
Sorry for the snark, but that last line may be pretty unintentionally revealing. employer/employee relations are a complex relationship which requires a delicate balance of power. Having the employee be entirely dependent on the employer is just as damaging (to both parties!) as having a keystone employee who knows he can't be replaced. I'd replace your last line with "Hire equals who you can treat as equals."
"Authority is solvent to humanity."
The only thing i could add would be to learn the olympic lifts as well: the snatch, the clean, & the jerk. But maybe only after you've got the lifts in #2, though :)
Also, i second the recommendation of Starting Strength.
One year at 300K and i'd never need to be on a treadmill again -- 30k to build a house, 50k for land, probably still 70-100k left over after taxes to start my next business.
So I'm gonna assume that was a joke... I'm equally lost on how to read the comment by the next clause, which seems to imply that the only way to make an impact on the world is through your job. Maybe hanging out on HN skews your perspective about living-the-dream, but i'd wager it's only one in a hundred who ever are lucky enough to work for a job that isn't life-sucking or anonymous -- if that many! As near as i can tell, for the rest of the world "compensation" is exactly what it sounds like, and satisfaction & contentment about your purpose & work in life have to come from other things.
So anyway, sorry if this reads like a flame, but the last sentence really threw me for a loop and made me re-evaluate the rest of the comment. From where i stand 300k/year would completely change every aspect of my life -- but then again, i took a huge cut to work at a green energy startup, living the dream atm & working for peanuts :)
I guess i'm saying "it'll only ruin you for startups if you let it!"
re: [4] 1) I'm glad you've had personal experience with this! Cool! 2) Having a name for a phenomena does not mean that the phenomena actually exists. and 3) It's hard to see that this is "more rigorous". I was trying to point out that your (highly upvoted) comment didn't actually include any references, citations, or facts, although it appeared to. It also seemed to be a (very well written) variation on the "some people say..." mode of rhetoric, which was further enhanced with a very authoritative tone.
I don't think it becomes an ontological or epistemological discussion to query for additional sources/evidence/data. I was trying to courteously say "hey, that statement had no sources", especially because i don't believe that this is a very common phenomenon. I will do so more bluntly next time.
That said, your state legislators are some of the lowest paid public servants there are (http://www.empirecenter.org/html/legislative_salaries.cfm). Unglamorous, unappreciated, and generally unknown to all but the most attentive citizens, it really pains me to hear some really smart people assume the worst of them.
In fact, to show the lack of rigor in the argument, the point he makes could apply equally well to a business: "It's not unusual" for a shafted department head to try to cripple his unit (on paper or in practice) to demonstrate the vital need to have his budget restored in the next year. Sounds just as plausible!
or, to use the same rhetorical technique to make the opposite point:
I would argue that "it's not unusual" for the city officials to make their cuts to cause the _minimum_ pain possible, on the grounds that they want to be re-elected.
I would ask the next question; which is the more important problem we are trying to "cure" -- the lack of competence or the lack of courage? One can lead to the other, but not vice-versa.
I would say that being able to visualize lots of different game sequences is crucial in go to learning tactics. You'll do great! Give it another shot :D
Relatedly: So i've heard of two different ways to teach go -- the Eastern way and the Western way.
The western way is to be told the Rules, the Object, and the Strategy and Tactics that will get you there.
The eastern way (this is hearsay) is that a teacher shows you the rules -- and then leaves you to memorize 50 games in their entirety, on your own.
For someone who's done all his learning the western way, my first reaction to the eastern way was "that's stupid."
What's not said in the eastern way is that you learn in reverse. First you have to puzzle out the Tactics -- why did they do this and not this? Why did they take 10 seconds for these 5 moves and 5 minutes for this one? Then you can start to figure out the strategies and feel the flow of the game. Then, maybe -- only maybe -- can you then guess at the actual object of the game.
After memorizing 50 games, then a teacher might actually help you. How dumb! how silly! And yet, this way, the teacher already knows that the student is willing to work.
Anyway, that kind of rambled. I'm sorry you had bad teachers. There's lots of them, probably myself included. Go is really, really hard to teach. I still don't know what the object is, just how to count the score at the end...
Go is really hard to teach. I try to avoid it whenever possible. This isn't trying to be a wiseass; i find this actually has some great effects. I've found teaching go has to be a student-driven process to be successful; the onus is on the student to generate questions, and, to go another step, the student must seek & have the experiences that will generate the questions. This almost always means playing go for yourself.
This implies that the student has already conquered a lot of (very real) internal fears; the fear of performing incompetently, the fear of being thought dumb. The fear of failure, basically. An interesting thing to run across on a blog for entrepreneurs.
The saddest part about that article was that so many of those sentences are "I" sentences; you write "I feel" this, "i think" that, "I am [x], i won't be [y], i will never be [z]". Even the comments about your friend are defined in terms of yourself. The problem is that probably no one else is as concerned about your performance as you are.
This is something that could be incredibly liberating from the right perspective. Who is judging you here? Not your friend, certainly! It's not a reflection on your character unless you make it one -- and you don't have to make it one.
Your conclusions at the end are so close! "The courage to play incompetently is a cure for fear of incompetence" this is true, but it's almost a tautology. Perhaps a more useful formulation is this: "The courage to play incompetently is a cure for incompetence." Maybe it is the only cure.
Relax, enjoy, & Dare To Suck -- your performance at something you've never done is not and will not be used as a measurement of your worth as a person. That gift of "curiousity & fearlessness" is not a personality trait; people get nervous when they feel like they're being judged. You're not -- at least, not by anyone but yourself.
See also: http://senseis.xmp.net/?FearOfLosing and the go proverb "lose your first 100 games as quickly as you can"
relax & good luck
-seigenblues
P.S. I will happily answer any go questions. Send me a link to your game & questions, (perhaps on eidogo.com), and i will try to answer to the best of my ability (4d kgs).
Or to put it another way, why should someone who is (arguably) producing most of the value have to stand for getting rich slowly, when the clueless middle managers fail upwards into nicer cars & long vacations, and sociopaths -- who seem to spend most of their "workday" jockeying for position, power, & prestige rather than doing useful things -- get 6, 7, 8 figure salaries & giant stock options?
The real crime is that the productive, competent people are encouraged & incentivized to coast because of the ludicrousness of the system.
Sounds objectively like a bad bargain to me.
So much so that those productive losers should start a company & try to keep the sociopaths out. in fact, if you buy that web -> lower barriers to entry -> less need for predatory sociopathic apes. They'll always try to get in, but that's another story...
squaring up this ("The Kind of Employees You Want To Hire"): http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/sep2009/ca20090... with this: ("Unskilled and Unaware of it") http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://www.damninteresting.com/unskilled-and-unaware-of-it
seems to suggest that the natural explanation is a) overconfidence helps us in a lot of intangible ways -- impressing bosses, convincing people to give us jobs/money, whatever. b) as long as it doesn't kill us in the tangible ways. (whoops, turns out i can't catch a bullet with my teeth!)