3 ms·

The title is just flame-bait. The message is: (a) being lazy will kill your startup, (b) smart people are lazy. But, well, all you really need to kill a start

by wheels 17y ago

The title is just flame-bait. The message is: (a) being lazy will kill your startup, (b) smart people are lazy. But, well, all you really need to kill a startup is (a), and we already knew that. The next possible conclusion is that maybe smart people underestimate the challenge of starting a startup, but I think everybody does. What's more critical is how people react when they realize they're in over their heads.

ochiba 17y ago
I agree with you to some extent, though I see the post in a different light given this (loosely) related discussion from a few days ago: ...parents that say to a successful child, "Wow, you're so smart" undermine that child's ability to muscle through tougher challenges later on in life. These kids believe they are intrinsically better than their peers, so they don't keep putting effort into themselves. Eventually they encounter a challenge that exceeds their initial abilities and they give up since they don't understand their performance is in their control, not baked into their God-given make-up. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139309 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139309
- arethuza 17y ago
  I think the mistake that some parents may make is failing to establish that simply being smart isn't good enough you actually have to do something useful with that intelligence to be rewarded in one way or another.
maxklein 17y ago
My original article was 6 pages long, this is an abridged version. So I was not able to convey all the concepts I would have liked to as clearly as possible. That said, let me throw myself into the fray. It's not about "being lazy". I know people who come in by 7:30 and leave by 9pm. They are not lazy. They work really hard. But they will never be CEO of the company. It's about challenging yourself. Becoming better. Training. When you can do stuff good, then you have to find stuff you can't do as well that is even harder. If I am a Django programmer, after 6 months the challenge in Django is minimal. I can work 10 hours a day on Django and it's not really a challenge anymore. So it's not about laziness really. It's about not being complacent in your current abilities.
- wheels 17y ago
  I see what you're getting at, but don't believe that it really has much to do with intelligence. It doesn't help that the analogy in this case is particularly bad. The guy who's a stand-in for someone pushing himself just went through the same training that everyone else from his country did. I believe ambitious people find their way to things that challenge their abilities. I also don't believe that there's a strong correlation between intelligence and ambition. It's that missing positive correlation that you seem to be getting at, and most people tend to assume exists, but by recasting it as a negative correlation it offends my sensibilities. ;-)
  - maxklein 17y ago
    I wouldn't say that Ofer was pushing himself. He was superior to the guy with the knife, by virtue of his past training. It's like a brilliant lisp coder vs a mediocre C++ programmer. The C++ programmer will be much faster than the lisp programmer in achieving some task using C++, simply because he has past training. So basically, the effort put in over time will keep you ahead of any competition, unless a person of superior inherent ability also decides to put in effort in the same area you are in. Will an ambitious person always find something to challenge their abilities? I know many people who are ambitious - they talk about money all the time. But if you observe their actions, they are basically doing nothing, or doing something unimportant and easy. I'm not convinced there is a correlation between ambition and an active search for things that are difficult to do. I'm sure there is such a subset of people, but the proportion compared to those who are content with not challenging themselves, I believe, is low. But I don't really know, that's just a guess.
    - infinite8s 17y ago
      Since when does talking about money all the time imply ambition? Usually the people who spend the most time talking about something are the least likely to go out and do something toward it.
- euroclydon 17y ago
  Wouldn't being really good at Django mean I could get a lot of stuff done in ten hours of Django development? If you hired an employee at your company, wouldn't you want them to get a bunch of work done, rather than learning a new technology? Doesn't a founder need to do a lot of work? I'm just asking. I'm the opposite. Once I learn how to do something well, I'm bored, so just when I'm becoming productive, I'm off to the next challenge. However, I've really benefited from knowledge of a whide range of technology. Sometimes, while co-workers spend weeks doing something the only way they know, I use different technology to get the same thing done in a couple of days.

by wheels 17y ago

ochiba 17y ago

I agree with you to some extent, though I see the post in a different light given this (loosely) related discussion from a few days ago: ...parents that say to a successful child, "Wow, you're so smart" undermine that child's ability to muscle through tougher challenges later on in life. These kids believe they are intrinsically better than their peers, so they don't keep putting effort into themselves. Eventually they encounter a challenge that exceeds their initial abilities and they give up since they don't understand their performance is in their control, not baked into their God-given make-up. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139309 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139309

arethuza 17y ago
I think the mistake that some parents may make is failing to establish that simply being smart isn't good enough you actually have to do something useful with that intelligence to be rewarded in one way or another.

maxklein 17y ago

My original article was 6 pages long, this is an abridged version. So I was not able to convey all the concepts I would have liked to as clearly as possible. That said, let me throw myself into the fray. It's not about "being lazy". I know people who come in by 7:30 and leave by 9pm. They are not lazy. They work really hard. But they will never be CEO of the company. It's about challenging yourself. Becoming better. Training. When you can do stuff good, then you have to find stuff you can't do as well that is even harder. If I am a Django programmer, after 6 months the challenge in Django is minimal. I can work 10 hours a day on Django and it's not really a challenge anymore. So it's not about laziness really. It's about not being complacent in your current abilities.

wheels 17y ago
I see what you're getting at, but don't believe that it really has much to do with intelligence. It doesn't help that the analogy in this case is particularly bad. The guy who's a stand-in for someone pushing himself just went through the same training that everyone else from his country did. I believe ambitious people find their way to things that challenge their abilities. I also don't believe that there's a strong correlation between intelligence and ambition. It's that missing positive correlation that you seem to be getting at, and most people tend to assume exists, but by recasting it as a negative correlation it offends my sensibilities. ;-)
- maxklein 17y ago
  I wouldn't say that Ofer was pushing himself. He was superior to the guy with the knife, by virtue of his past training. It's like a brilliant lisp coder vs a mediocre C++ programmer. The C++ programmer will be much faster than the lisp programmer in achieving some task using C++, simply because he has past training. So basically, the effort put in over time will keep you ahead of any competition, unless a person of superior inherent ability also decides to put in effort in the same area you are in. Will an ambitious person always find something to challenge their abilities? I know many people who are ambitious - they talk about money all the time. But if you observe their actions, they are basically doing nothing, or doing something unimportant and easy. I'm not convinced there is a correlation between ambition and an active search for things that are difficult to do. I'm sure there is such a subset of people, but the proportion compared to those who are content with not challenging themselves, I believe, is low. But I don't really know, that's just a guess.
  - infinite8s 17y ago
    Since when does talking about money all the time imply ambition? Usually the people who spend the most time talking about something are the least likely to go out and do something toward it.
euroclydon 17y ago
Wouldn't being really good at Django mean I could get a lot of stuff done in ten hours of Django development? If you hired an employee at your company, wouldn't you want them to get a bunch of work done, rather than learning a new technology? Doesn't a founder need to do a lot of work? I'm just asking. I'm the opposite. Once I learn how to do something well, I'm bored, so just when I'm becoming productive, I'm off to the next challenge. However, I've really benefited from knowledge of a whide range of technology. Sometimes, while co-workers spend weeks doing something the only way they know, I use different technology to get the same thing done in a couple of days.