4 ms·

I got my start at Glendale Community College (number 4 on that list). From there, I went on to UCLA, NASA/JPL, and, now, Google. It has been quite the journey.

I got my start at Glendale Community College (number 4 on that list). From there, I went on to UCLA, NASA/JPL, and, now, Google. It has been quite the journey. I wasn’t born in the US, nor was I from a wealthy or educated family (at one point we were on foodstamps, but reached ‘middle’ class by the time I started high-school). Though, in comparison, my parent’s journey has been a much longer one, where they were born in a third world country as second class citizens—-into the life of subsistance farming in a remote village on land they did not own. The “inferiority complex” is real until you get to your new destination, and realize the people at UCLA or JPL or Google aren’t very different from you. Furthermore, projects/institutions that you have put on a pedestal since childhood are a lot less “magical” once you have seen how the sausage is made. I’ve met exceptional people from Cal State schools and people I wouldn’t hire from MIT. At this point, I find the school a person graduated from, for undergrad, to be a weak signal at best; and in many cases their grad school as well.

jxramos 9y ago
"...a lot less 'magical' once you have seen how the sausage is made." I remember discovering this phenomenon too coming up from a underprivileged background (to use a common term). I had great appreciation for recognizing this phenomenon reading a forward to some homeschooling book. You might appreciate this blurb too... "The Roman writer Tacitus said, "Omne ignotum, pro magnifico," which translates roughly, "Everything unknown is taken for wonderful." Think about it. Somehow we humans have this complex to assume great ideal things when ignorant of them. I've been pondering this for the past 10 months or so.
- vidarh 9y ago
  I use to apply that to get ideas: Avoid learning how something works at first. Study outside factors. E.g. look at screenshots of an application. Try to imagine how it works. Only learn how it actually works after that. I started doing that after realizing that I used to do this with software I saw in magazines as a child, and then get disappointed when I got the actual software: When you just look at the surface, it's easy to infer a lot of qualities that are not there, and be entirely unaware of the shortcomings.

jxramos 9y ago

"...a lot less 'magical' once you have seen how the sausage is made." I remember discovering this phenomenon too coming up from a underprivileged background (to use a common term). I had great appreciation for recognizing this phenomenon reading a forward to some homeschooling book. You might appreciate this blurb too... "The Roman writer Tacitus said, "Omne ignotum, pro magnifico," which translates roughly, "Everything unknown is taken for wonderful." Think about it. Somehow we humans have this complex to assume great ideal things when ignorant of them. I've been pondering this for the past 10 months or so.

vidarh 9y ago
I use to apply that to get ideas: Avoid learning how something works at first. Study outside factors. E.g. look at screenshots of an application. Try to imagine how it works. Only learn how it actually works after that. I started doing that after realizing that I used to do this with software I saw in magazines as a child, and then get disappointed when I got the actual software: When you just look at the surface, it's easy to infer a lot of qualities that are not there, and be entirely unaware of the shortcomings.