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The author was far too generous with that guy. I actually think that this SV mentality of helping others (to that extent) is morally wrong. When you help someo

The author was far too generous with that guy. I actually think that this SV mentality of helping others (to that extent) is morally wrong. When you help someone like this get a position/salary that they don't deserve, you're actually making it harder for people who actually deserve that position to get it. It's the same thing when it comes to investors helping a specific founder to raise funding just because they happen to frequent the same cafe and happen to have the same first name. Whenever you're helping someone with anything, just keep in mind that you're also hurting someone else behind the scenes... Why should simply meeting a person make them any more deserving of your help? You're just rewarding luck over hard work. This is really evil.

unreal37 10y ago
TL;DR "Helping people is evil." I get the point you're making of the people who didn't get the job that were hurt. And the employer was hurt too. But you can't put the blame on "helping people". Who you make friends with is 50% of success in life. Yes, you need to be social with other humans to get ahead in life. It's not all based on the quality of your github checkins. And it's not unfair. We're human. This is how we operate. It's reality.
MaulingMonkey 10y ago
> I actually think that this SV mentality of helping others (to that extent) is morally wrong. I think it was an accident - clearly the goal wasn't to enable fraud. I tend to avoid writing full solutions to anything to help avoid making the same mistake. > Whenever you're helping someone with anything, just keep in mind that you're also hurting someone else behind the scenes... Only in zero-sum games - learning and teaching generally aren't. Mistakes like this aren't great, but collaboration in general averages out to helping us all out, in the end. Helping people out got me my first tech job, where I proceeded to help them finish their projects. Other people helping me out got me to the point where I could help other people out in the first place. > Why should simply meeting a person make them any more deserving of your help? You're just rewarding luck over hard work. This is really evil. Everyone gets lucky sometimes, and doing your part to spread the luck around isn't evil. If anything, it's attempting to balance the playing field. If everyone is just as lucky, then hard work becomes the differentiating factor once more. After all, it's not like luck is exclusive to the undeserving.
- jondubois 10y ago
  Well I guess I must be very unlucky then because my experience of the system is that nobody will give me anything unless they are legally obliged to do so. I never got anywhere near the kind of help that the author described in the article - If anything, I had people trying to drag me down at every step. Based on the income/wealth inequality statistics, I think that my experience may actually a lot more normal than the one you're describing.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
    nobody will give me anything unless they are legally obliged to do so I can't think of a more polite way to say this, but going by the attitude you've shown in the two posts I read, I can't say I'm surprised. Perhaps you're the problem. Consider this life advice.... or not.

unreal37 10y ago

TL;DR "Helping people is evil." I get the point you're making of the people who didn't get the job that were hurt. And the employer was hurt too. But you can't put the blame on "helping people". Who you make friends with is 50% of success in life. Yes, you need to be social with other humans to get ahead in life. It's not all based on the quality of your github checkins. And it's not unfair. We're human. This is how we operate. It's reality.

MaulingMonkey 10y ago

> I actually think that this SV mentality of helping others (to that extent) is morally wrong. I think it was an accident - clearly the goal wasn't to enable fraud. I tend to avoid writing full solutions to anything to help avoid making the same mistake. > Whenever you're helping someone with anything, just keep in mind that you're also hurting someone else behind the scenes... Only in zero-sum games - learning and teaching generally aren't. Mistakes like this aren't great, but collaboration in general averages out to helping us all out, in the end. Helping people out got me my first tech job, where I proceeded to help them finish their projects. Other people helping me out got me to the point where I could help other people out in the first place. > Why should simply meeting a person make them any more deserving of your help? You're just rewarding luck over hard work. This is really evil. Everyone gets lucky sometimes, and doing your part to spread the luck around isn't evil. If anything, it's attempting to balance the playing field. If everyone is just as lucky, then hard work becomes the differentiating factor once more. After all, it's not like luck is exclusive to the undeserving.

jondubois 10y ago
Well I guess I must be very unlucky then because my experience of the system is that nobody will give me anything unless they are legally obliged to do so. I never got anywhere near the kind of help that the author described in the article - If anything, I had people trying to drag me down at every step. Based on the income/wealth inequality statistics, I think that my experience may actually a lot more normal than the one you're describing.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  nobody will give me anything unless they are legally obliged to do so I can't think of a more polite way to say this, but going by the attitude you've shown in the two posts I read, I can't say I'm surprised. Perhaps you're the problem. Consider this life advice.... or not.