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>So say sleeping with people from HR is ok? Do you really equate sleeping with HR to getting noticed by delivering donuts to executives? I want to point you t

>So say sleeping with people from HR is ok? Do you really equate sleeping with HR to getting noticed by delivering donuts to executives? I want to point you to Paul Graham's essay about what they look for in Founders. Specifically, "They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter." http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html 4. Naughtiness Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination. Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications.

GuiA 10y ago
Yeah, so the thing about stuff like this is that it is inherently classist. There are 2 things at play here: - knowing what rules are permissible to break highly depends on your upbringing and social status. In other words, "the rules that don't matter" for Paul Graham are the rules that don't matter for a rich old white dude. - it's much easier to break the rules when you know that there will be no consequences because of your wealth/social status . Kids whose parents paid for a Stanford education will "delight in breaking rules" much more than the hard working kid from immigrant parents desperate to fit in in a world where no one looks like her. This is exactly the kind of privileged rhetoric that people who push for more diversity and sensitivity in Silicon Valley and tech are trying to highlight/stave off.
- davemel37 10y ago
  I think you are making some pretty broad assumptions about a whole bunch of things. First, this very article is about an immigrant, with no status, money or connections, creating opportunity for himself. Obviously, I am gonna be somewhat biased by my own upbringing, so I can't be truly objective (other than knowing that I grew up in a vastly different upbringing that the folks you describe, yet still feel there are some rules that should be broken and others that shouldn't be crossed. My only two points I would make are: 1. YC Funds a pretty diverse crowd from all over the world if I understand correctly (I have no direct knowledge.) 2. Founding a successful startup isn't for everyone, and maybe it favors some over others due to life circumstances, but that doesn't change the reality that to innovate and succeed, you might need that "naughty" mentality, regardless of whether it came from a place of privilege or not. Finally, In my experience, persistence is by far a more important trait for success than almost anything else, and the most driven, focused, persistent people are often the ones that fought against all odds to break free from their underprivileged circumstances, much like the immigrant you described. I am not sure they feel a need to play by arbitrary rules or not, but even if they do, they often rise above through sheer force of will...and often that persistence, and will power brings them to do things that open doors by ignoring propriety and breaking down barriers and limitations that live in their head more than anywhere else. I might be biased about all sorts of privilege and might be blind to the class bias you refer to, I do not know...but my gut and experience tell me that individuals and their personal decisions matter much more than their class and circumstances. (Not discounting those other factors, just discounting the role they actually play in reality relative their own choices and of course colored by my own bias.)
  - GuiA 10y ago
    I've worked with thousands of teenagers from underserved/underprivileged communities at this point, in 3 different countries, teaching them how to code, but also interview and fit in within larger tech companies. When they are exposed to an environment they have never been in before - for example the tech industry/startup world - many of them are overwhelmed, confused, and feel like they have to tread very carefully because they don't want to lose the opportunity to make $100k a year as an engineer when the other option is retail/service jobs. In those cases, they do their best to follow the rules and be on their best behavior, and are not going to take any risks of being naughty. This is not at odds with being driven, focused, persistent etc. It's about being from a completely different social environment and not wanting to fuck up because you're the first person in your family who might break out of the minimum wage chain. That's the stuff I care about optimizing for.
    - davemel37 10y ago
      Honestly, that boils down to how you frame and perceive (and teach)risk more than anything else. If they perceive stability in a $100k job and perceive startups as risking that opportunity, they will be afraid...it has nothing to do with where they came from. Edit: Also, if you really think about it...those kids are already breaking the rules by learning to code and not accepting their upbringing as determining their fate. They are breaking all sorts of cultural rules.
      - GuiA 10y ago
        When you're the first in your family to go to college, and that for your entire life your reality was mom and older brother working multiple jobs to feed 3 generations under the same roof and yet you still went hungry at the end of the month and regularly got the power cut, well yes you don't perceive taking risks the same way as Paul Graham does. If you want to come to our workshops and talk to these young adults about how to frame and perceive risk, please do get in touch.
        davemel37 10y ago
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  I don't think I want to live in your world, or at least not in your Valley.
- ap3 10y ago
  >hard working kid from immigrant parents Probably had to break a lot of rules to fit in/find their place in a new society
whybroke 10y ago
>Do you really equate sleeping with HR to getting noticed by delivering donuts to executives? No, there is a huge difference. But why does the line lay at donuts? Who decides which rules matter? How about cash instead of donuts? How about fake references? Is that brilliant or wrong? There are quite a few successful people who are far more than just naughty, I believe one is successful enough to be running for president. The slightly naughty have far less room to criticize outrageous behavior if their line is ever shifting and coincidentally always just beyond their own acts. Any human system requires good intent and fair play to function. Any such system can be gamed by a small number of players. Those players will usually come out ahead with little harm to that system. If the number gets large then then any system will begin to break down. So is the goal to keep the number of rule breakers small and make sure we are always in that group? And if the hiring process is broken, fix it. Encouraging ludicrous ad hoc random non-sense is the exact opposite of fixing anything. What is being suggested is that there are some unwritten ever changing rules know only to the initiated that are the real rules. The official published rules are for "the other" and frankly only exist exactly to keep out the uninitiated.
- davemel37 10y ago
  All i'll say is that in this case, where he was applying for a marketing position, he wasnt breaking rules, he was proving his qualifications for the job. The broader discussion is outside my realm of expertise.
- al_chemist 10y ago
  > How about cash instead of donuts? How about fake references? Paid advertising. Guerilla marketing. Fake reviews and scores. Cardboards bigger than contents. Yep, that's exactly what marketing section does. Why would you think that would disqualify a person to work there?
  - whybroke 10y ago
    The line you drew is utterly arbitrary and could just as easily include sleeping with staff and justify that as great salesmanship. What about hacking a company server to put his resume on the top of the queue? Offering the data in exchange for a "position"? Blackmailing with it? Because he just got into dozens of company offices using nothing but a tee shirt. He could easily have carried a flash drive alongside the resume in those donuts. Each person who cheats draws the line just beyond their own behavior. To prevent chaos the hard line lies were the authorities enforce it. And such blunt instruments damage the systems they protect almost as negatively as the violators they catch. But the argument about cheating has been going on since the Olduvai Gorge and this conversation is going to have exactly the same effect as every other one. The only difference at this time is that cheating has been bizarrely fetishized into being a good thing. And the biggest picture is merely chasing the latest web fad so zealously that a community has been transformed into one so obsessed with wealth that its member happily step over homeless on the way to lunch everyday. And so much as commenting on this situation is consider politically extreme even transgressive.

GuiA 10y ago

Yeah, so the thing about stuff like this is that it is inherently classist. There are 2 things at play here: - knowing what rules are permissible to break highly depends on your upbringing and social status. In other words, "the rules that don't matter" for Paul Graham are the rules that don't matter for a rich old white dude. - it's much easier to break the rules when you know that there will be no consequences because of your wealth/social status . Kids whose parents paid for a Stanford education will "delight in breaking rules" much more than the hard working kid from immigrant parents desperate to fit in in a world where no one looks like her. This is exactly the kind of privileged rhetoric that people who push for more diversity and sensitivity in Silicon Valley and tech are trying to highlight/stave off.

davemel37 10y ago
I think you are making some pretty broad assumptions about a whole bunch of things. First, this very article is about an immigrant, with no status, money or connections, creating opportunity for himself. Obviously, I am gonna be somewhat biased by my own upbringing, so I can't be truly objective (other than knowing that I grew up in a vastly different upbringing that the folks you describe, yet still feel there are some rules that should be broken and others that shouldn't be crossed. My only two points I would make are: 1. YC Funds a pretty diverse crowd from all over the world if I understand correctly (I have no direct knowledge.) 2. Founding a successful startup isn't for everyone, and maybe it favors some over others due to life circumstances, but that doesn't change the reality that to innovate and succeed, you might need that "naughty" mentality, regardless of whether it came from a place of privilege or not. Finally, In my experience, persistence is by far a more important trait for success than almost anything else, and the most driven, focused, persistent people are often the ones that fought against all odds to break free from their underprivileged circumstances, much like the immigrant you described. I am not sure they feel a need to play by arbitrary rules or not, but even if they do, they often rise above through sheer force of will...and often that persistence, and will power brings them to do things that open doors by ignoring propriety and breaking down barriers and limitations that live in their head more than anywhere else. I might be biased about all sorts of privilege and might be blind to the class bias you refer to, I do not know...but my gut and experience tell me that individuals and their personal decisions matter much more than their class and circumstances. (Not discounting those other factors, just discounting the role they actually play in reality relative their own choices and of course colored by my own bias.)
- GuiA 10y ago
  I've worked with thousands of teenagers from underserved/underprivileged communities at this point, in 3 different countries, teaching them how to code, but also interview and fit in within larger tech companies. When they are exposed to an environment they have never been in before - for example the tech industry/startup world - many of them are overwhelmed, confused, and feel like they have to tread very carefully because they don't want to lose the opportunity to make $100k a year as an engineer when the other option is retail/service jobs. In those cases, they do their best to follow the rules and be on their best behavior, and are not going to take any risks of being naughty. This is not at odds with being driven, focused, persistent etc. It's about being from a completely different social environment and not wanting to fuck up because you're the first person in your family who might break out of the minimum wage chain. That's the stuff I care about optimizing for.
  - davemel37 10y ago
    Honestly, that boils down to how you frame and perceive (and teach)risk more than anything else. If they perceive stability in a $100k job and perceive startups as risking that opportunity, they will be afraid...it has nothing to do with where they came from. Edit: Also, if you really think about it...those kids are already breaking the rules by learning to code and not accepting their upbringing as determining their fate. They are breaking all sorts of cultural rules.
    - GuiA 10y ago
      When you're the first in your family to go to college, and that for your entire life your reality was mom and older brother working multiple jobs to feed 3 generations under the same roof and yet you still went hungry at the end of the month and regularly got the power cut, well yes you don't perceive taking risks the same way as Paul Graham does. If you want to come to our workshops and talk to these young adults about how to frame and perceive risk, please do get in touch.
      - davemel37 10y ago
CamperBob2 10y ago
I don't think I want to live in your world, or at least not in your Valley.
ap3 10y ago
>hard working kid from immigrant parents Probably had to break a lot of rules to fit in/find their place in a new society

whybroke 10y ago

>Do you really equate sleeping with HR to getting noticed by delivering donuts to executives? No, there is a huge difference. But why does the line lay at donuts? Who decides which rules matter? How about cash instead of donuts? How about fake references? Is that brilliant or wrong? There are quite a few successful people who are far more than just naughty, I believe one is successful enough to be running for president. The slightly naughty have far less room to criticize outrageous behavior if their line is ever shifting and coincidentally always just beyond their own acts. Any human system requires good intent and fair play to function. Any such system can be gamed by a small number of players. Those players will usually come out ahead with little harm to that system. If the number gets large then then any system will begin to break down. So is the goal to keep the number of rule breakers small and make sure we are always in that group? And if the hiring process is broken, fix it. Encouraging ludicrous ad hoc random non-sense is the exact opposite of fixing anything. What is being suggested is that there are some unwritten ever changing rules know only to the initiated that are the real rules. The official published rules are for "the other" and frankly only exist exactly to keep out the uninitiated.

davemel37 10y ago
All i'll say is that in this case, where he was applying for a marketing position, he wasnt breaking rules, he was proving his qualifications for the job. The broader discussion is outside my realm of expertise.
al_chemist 10y ago
> How about cash instead of donuts? How about fake references? Paid advertising. Guerilla marketing. Fake reviews and scores. Cardboards bigger than contents. Yep, that's exactly what marketing section does. Why would you think that would disqualify a person to work there?
- whybroke 10y ago
  The line you drew is utterly arbitrary and could just as easily include sleeping with staff and justify that as great salesmanship. What about hacking a company server to put his resume on the top of the queue? Offering the data in exchange for a "position"? Blackmailing with it? Because he just got into dozens of company offices using nothing but a tee shirt. He could easily have carried a flash drive alongside the resume in those donuts. Each person who cheats draws the line just beyond their own behavior. To prevent chaos the hard line lies were the authorities enforce it. And such blunt instruments damage the systems they protect almost as negatively as the violators they catch. But the argument about cheating has been going on since the Olduvai Gorge and this conversation is going to have exactly the same effect as every other one. The only difference at this time is that cheating has been bizarrely fetishized into being a good thing. And the biggest picture is merely chasing the latest web fad so zealously that a community has been transformed into one so obsessed with wealth that its member happily step over homeless on the way to lunch everyday. And so much as commenting on this situation is consider politically extreme even transgressive.