29 ms·

What to do with too much advice

118 points by akharris 8y ago

airstrike 8y ago
My rule of thumb is: Only take advice from people you're willing to switch places with.
- notduncansmith 8y ago
  Willing to switch places with them regarding the topic of advice, that is. You probably aren’t going to get the best technical advice and the best relationship advice from the same person (unless you have some extraordinarily wise people around you).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Alex3917 8y ago
Advice is sort of the first derivative of what you should be making decisions based off, i.e.: - How have people solved similar problems in the past? How have things gone wrong for people facing similar issues? - How is the world different now? How is the world going to look in five and ten years? IMHO advice is only useful to the extent that you can deconstruct the thought process behind it.
jacquesm 8y ago
Very relevant, edw519 evergreen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343030
- fermienrico 8y ago
  I’ve previously commented on what Sam Altman’s startup articles, presentations and talks sound like. Sam, if you’re reading this - you do such an excellent job of interviewing successful startup entrepreneurs. Please do that more as the advice you provide to others creates more confusion/harm than anything else.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  The comment aside, holy shit that article is super dark in retrospect.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
For a founder, this means picking a single adviser who can inform your thinking, rather than someone who makes decisions for you. I would call this a sounding board. A good sounding board is really valuable. It should be someone you trust, like talking with and communicate well with. They don't necessarily need to know your problem space all that well. I often serve as a sounding board for my 31 year old son. He talks a lot, I occasionally comment on something he said and he walks away with a valuable insight on where to go next. I'm not even in a position to give advice per se because I don't really know what he's talking about. But even in the course of trying to understand what he is saying, I can ask questions that help clarify something in his mind. I'm really not a big fan of either getting nor giving advice. I try to get people to engage me in discussion in a meaty way, but advice per se presumes one person knows what is best for another and I think that is generally not true. The person seeking advice typically has "local" information that simply never really gets shared and this means the person giving advice is frequently doing so without knowledge critical to the decision-making process. When I was raising my kids, I operated on the assumption that they knew a bajillion things about their little world that I would never know -- if they were hot, if their tummy hurt but they were too young to communicate it, etc -- but I knew a lot more about life, the universe and everything generally. I tried to bridge the gap between my larger knowledge base and their smaller one for the problem space in question while leaving as much decision-making in their hands as possible. So, for example, the summer my oldest turned two and we got a hand-me-down winter coat in the mail that perfectly matched his new shoes and he was enamored that they matched and wanted to wear them together, I didn't tell him "No, you can't wear a winter coat in summer." (It was Germany and it was fairly cool that summer anyway.) Instead, I told him "Don't put the hood on and don't zip it closed. Half your heat escapes from your head. If you leave the hood off, you should be okay." And he then put the hood on and off a dozen times to test what he had just been told. Because of this incident, years later in elementary school in Kansas -- which was colder than Germany -- he was better at keeping himself warm while playing outside in winter than his classmates. He was typically the last child still outside for recess. Everyone else went in before recess was over because they were too cold.
alexandernst 8y ago
Ask in HN about more advices about the advices
citilife 8y ago
I think the single most important thing I've learned in my career, for my startup, and for my life is that I'm the only one responsible. The fact is, everyone can give you advice, it's cheap. However, it's only based off their experience and their responsibility. You can never have too much advice, you just have to see how similar the situation is to see if it's useful. What exemplified this in my mind, was when I received advice to not go down a particular path with my technical architecture. Yet, 6 months down the line, the architecture works very well, and that same "advisor" has since changed their mind. Because it's only based off personal experience, and no one can experience things that haven't happened, it's worth weighting advice based on a situation-by-situation basis.
- rckclmbr 8y ago
  Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those that supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the last from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than its worth.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    You should at least credit Baz Luhrmann if you're going to quote that. At least put it in quotes so it doesn't look like you're trying to take credit for it.
    - rckclmbr 8y ago
      It was actually mary schmich, but i thought the song was universally known at this point.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
        Huh! TIL!
e40 8y ago
The truth about advice: advice is always flawed because the person giving it doesn't have to live with the consequences. That alone should make you take any advice with a grain of salt.
Kagerjay 8y ago
For a founder, this means picking a single adviser who can inform your thinking, rather than someone who makes decisions for you. I've been incredibly fortunate to have met someone locally who has the same level of tech and business expertise as I do. And appreciates the value and insight from multitude of industries. I really don't get along with many people at that deep of a level, so this was extremely rare. Truthfully I have never had anyone I would call mentor nearly my entire life. I've always figured everything out myself since that's just how I was raised. We're both mentors to each other, he has a difficult outlier upbringing like I have had, different but similar. I've never really realized what my true weaknesses were until the 5+ hour talks we have discussing everything from how youtube should learn UX from a pornsite, how to run a political campaign, psychology theories, neuroscience, chemistry, frontend development, leadership issues, project management, world education, dealing with nonprofit leaders, making money playing video games as kids. The talks vary with a really big open degree of openness, and changes every couple of minutes. I don't see eye to eye on his visions for the future, but I understand where he's coming from though. So I appreciate the value he has. I tend to think extremely short term and grab the "lowest hanging fruit" is what he tells me, but his visions are all about "planting seeds" which I don't really bother doing but should be All his skills complement mine in some weird backwards way and its nice to know that there's someone out there. I tend to think tech first before anything and he tends to think business first so its a nice mix of skills. I tend to be extremely assertive about my solutions since I've had to do hard sales pitches but his is more gradual and methodical. I don't know how well we work coding together though that might be a different story but we do see eye to eye on many management practice principles, I met him while doing nonprofit project management. Anyways, I just wanted to mention this because I find most if not all the advice I get is really not helpful. Unless you understand the logic behind why I am doing something before you say something "Seek to understand before commenting", then its hard for me to appreciate the value of input given. I appreciate the sentinment and thought process though.
- akharris 8y ago
  How did the two of you originally connect?
  - 8y ago
aaavl2821 8y ago
The idea that it's better to just do something quickly and learn from mistakes, rather than take your time, get a lot of good advice, and do it right, seems very accepted but I think it is not always generalizable. In particular, in biotech the cost of a failed experiment is much higher and one poorly designed experiment can kill a company. It's best to get an advisory board with relevant yet diverse experiences to really dig through the details of the experimental design and critically think about what you do and don't know about the biology I know a few biotech founders who have the tech startup mindset of just getting some money and rushing into an experiment, except they need $200k and 6 months for that experiment. If you realize three months in when it's too late to stop that one of your assumptions was wrong, or you used the wrong model, that's a terrible feeling
- akharris 8y ago
  There's certainly a significant amount of context dependence on the amount of advice that's "right" for any given situation. I think the important thing is to make sure you know that there is an "enough" rather than endlessly chase more.
  - everythingswan 8y ago
    Well put. There's probably a theory that better explains this, but I think of it as getting to 60%. How can I get to 60% certainty without wasting too much time? I'll never get to 100% (likely not even the 60% I think I am getting to) but how can I uncover just enough information to feel confidence in my decision? (edit: to add the "?") The rest is just assessing past decisions and asking the same questions until we get satisfied with the result.
staunch 8y ago
Paul Bucheit nailed the problem: "Limited life experience + over-generalization = advice". Most startup advice is horroscope-like in its applicability and utility. It's very easy for advice to seem entirely right but be entirely wrong. Having a single teacher is no answer to this problem. The solution is to have a single "anchor" or goal that all incoming advice is supposed to serve. For standup comedians there's a great anchor: make people laugh. If crowds laughs at a comedian's routine, they're succeeding. If crowds don't laugh, they're failing. Paul Graham described the founder's anchor: make something people want. If users are using a startup's product, it's succeeding. If people are not using it, it's failing. This eliminates most (but not all) room for self-delusion and misjudgment. All advice for comedians should serve them in "making people laugh" and all startup advice should serve founders in "making something people want". A comedian can ask: "How will this advice help me make more people laugh, or how will it make people laugh more?" A founder can ask: "How will this advice help me make more people want our product, or how will it make people want it more?" And then its their responsibility to judge which course of action will best further their goal.
lasermike026 8y ago
Richard Feynman, "DISREGARD!" http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/563/2/Goodstein.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/563/2/Goodstein.pdf (End of page 20 and beginning of page 21.)
adamzerner 8y ago
Is it possible to get the best of both worlds? 1) Advice from a variety of sources. 2) Not being slowed down by all of the advice. My impression from the article is that this usually doesn't happen in practice, but I can't help thinking that it is very doable in theory.
a_d 8y ago
There a lot of great points on this thread. We need more distinction between contextual and non-contextual advice. If one is ‘at the board’ working through a problem — then a hint or solution, moves the problem forward. On the other hand, if one is just ‘leisurely browsing advice listicles’ without being at the board, facing the problem, then most likely you are just ingesting dopamine-flavored noise. Advice without context from anyone — whether it is PG, pmarca or Richard Feynman or {_your_fav_successful_survivor_} - would be useless, unless you are working/thinking about the problem that they are giving solutions for. Help only works if you are looking for something. Also sometimes it is good to just enjoy problem-solving and figuring things out. We are too quick to look for advice — and I get why: because no one wants to “reinvent the wheel”; There are too many standardized administrative things with startups that can be just solved by looking up advice; no problem with that; but sometimes it is worth struggling through a problem even though geniuses like PG and pmarca can give a solution quickly. Abundant capital has led to too many VCs with too many blog posts looking to differentiate with their advice, under the guise of differentiation, content marketing, “proprietary deal flow” etc. If content is “bait” then you are at the bad end of the line. When faced with a problem, find someone who can help — All other times, just do the work and enjoy problems :-) (Did I just give advice? Can’t tell)
- akharris 8y ago
  I like that distinction. I find that the best "non-contextual" advice is best when delivered as a model for how to think about a given problem, where the answers are more evidence/examples than diktats of what to do.
- kornish 8y ago
  > Advice without context from anyone...would be useless, unless you are working/thinking about the problem that they are giving solutions for. Totally agree. In my opinion, this can be a real reason to give advisors equity: to incentivize them to keep the context of your company in their head. In many cases, you can get equally qualified (non-contextual) advice, for free, from tons of other folks (around SV, at least). But few will have the extended context that advisors who have been around for a while will.
- 8y ago
JunaidBhai 8y ago
We faced the same issue before pivoting our design services from a local shop to a productized service (http://draftss.com http://draftss.com). We had tons of advice about how design on subscription model won't work or that we should have pay per task model or we shouldn't productize our service at all. After A/B testing we narrowed down to the current model where we are catering to 10+ clients every month generating $3000+ in MRR.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  Your comment sounds like a plug. You provide no value in your comments as to why certain advice worked and other didn’t. It seems that the purpose was to link your business on HN and then find a way to make it relevant to the discussion. Audience loses at the expense of your company’s promotion.
ai_ia 8y ago
I thought of Naval Ravikant of the word 'Rav'.
andrewstuart 8y ago
When I was a young entrepreneur I started out believing all the advice I was given - big mistake. I learned eventually to listen to advice and consider it and form my own opinion about whether or not it is correct for me and my circumstances.
KineticLensman 8y ago
I've learned to discount advice that starts with "I'm not an expert, but..." or "All you have to do is ...".
dbelchamber 8y ago
I suppose the essence of being an entrepreneur is being the one to make decisions no one else has made. It seems to be helpful to be data informed with your decisions, but I suppose the moral of this article is that advice can only help with general rules of thumb. In order to solve specific problems that haven't been solved before, you have to carve your own path with your own decisions.

118 points by akharris 8y ago

airstrike 8y ago

My rule of thumb is: Only take advice from people you're willing to switch places with.

notduncansmith 8y ago
Willing to switch places with them regarding the topic of advice, that is. You probably aren’t going to get the best technical advice and the best relationship advice from the same person (unless you have some extraordinarily wise people around you).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Alex3917 8y ago

Advice is sort of the first derivative of what you should be making decisions based off, i.e.: - How have people solved similar problems in the past? How have things gone wrong for people facing similar issues? - How is the world different now? How is the world going to look in five and ten years? IMHO advice is only useful to the extent that you can deconstruct the thought process behind it.

jacquesm 8y ago

Very relevant, edw519 evergreen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343030

fermienrico 8y ago
I’ve previously commented on what Sam Altman’s startup articles, presentations and talks sound like. Sam, if you’re reading this - you do such an excellent job of interviewing successful startup entrepreneurs. Please do that more as the advice you provide to others creates more confusion/harm than anything else.
Alex3917 8y ago
The comment aside, holy shit that article is super dark in retrospect.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

For a founder, this means picking a single adviser who can inform your thinking, rather than someone who makes decisions for you. I would call this a sounding board. A good sounding board is really valuable. It should be someone you trust, like talking with and communicate well with. They don't necessarily need to know your problem space all that well. I often serve as a sounding board for my 31 year old son. He talks a lot, I occasionally comment on something he said and he walks away with a valuable insight on where to go next. I'm not even in a position to give advice per se because I don't really know what he's talking about. But even in the course of trying to understand what he is saying, I can ask questions that help clarify something in his mind. I'm really not a big fan of either getting nor giving advice. I try to get people to engage me in discussion in a meaty way, but advice per se presumes one person knows what is best for another and I think that is generally not true. The person seeking advice typically has "local" information that simply never really gets shared and this means the person giving advice is frequently doing so without knowledge critical to the decision-making process. When I was raising my kids, I operated on the assumption that they knew a bajillion things about their little world that I would never know -- if they were hot, if their tummy hurt but they were too young to communicate it, etc -- but I knew a lot more about life, the universe and everything generally. I tried to bridge the gap between my larger knowledge base and their smaller one for the problem space in question while leaving as much decision-making in their hands as possible. So, for example, the summer my oldest turned two and we got a hand-me-down winter coat in the mail that perfectly matched his new shoes and he was enamored that they matched and wanted to wear them together, I didn't tell him "No, you can't wear a winter coat in summer." (It was Germany and it was fairly cool that summer anyway.) Instead, I told him "Don't put the hood on and don't zip it closed. Half your heat escapes from your head. If you leave the hood off, you should be okay." And he then put the hood on and off a dozen times to test what he had just been told. Because of this incident, years later in elementary school in Kansas -- which was colder than Germany -- he was better at keeping himself warm while playing outside in winter than his classmates. He was typically the last child still outside for recess. Everyone else went in before recess was over because they were too cold.

alexandernst 8y ago

Ask in HN about more advices about the advices

citilife 8y ago

I think the single most important thing I've learned in my career, for my startup, and for my life is that I'm the only one responsible. The fact is, everyone can give you advice, it's cheap. However, it's only based off their experience and their responsibility. You can never have too much advice, you just have to see how similar the situation is to see if it's useful. What exemplified this in my mind, was when I received advice to not go down a particular path with my technical architecture. Yet, 6 months down the line, the architecture works very well, and that same "advisor" has since changed their mind. Because it's only based off personal experience, and no one can experience things that haven't happened, it's worth weighting advice based on a situation-by-situation basis.

rckclmbr 8y ago
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those that supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the last from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than its worth.
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  You should at least credit Baz Luhrmann if you're going to quote that. At least put it in quotes so it doesn't look like you're trying to take credit for it.
  - rckclmbr 8y ago
    It was actually mary schmich, but i thought the song was universally known at this point.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
      Huh! TIL!

e40 8y ago

The truth about advice: advice is always flawed because the person giving it doesn't have to live with the consequences. That alone should make you take any advice with a grain of salt.

Kagerjay 8y ago

For a founder, this means picking a single adviser who can inform your thinking, rather than someone who makes decisions for you. I've been incredibly fortunate to have met someone locally who has the same level of tech and business expertise as I do. And appreciates the value and insight from multitude of industries. I really don't get along with many people at that deep of a level, so this was extremely rare. Truthfully I have never had anyone I would call mentor nearly my entire life. I've always figured everything out myself since that's just how I was raised. We're both mentors to each other, he has a difficult outlier upbringing like I have had, different but similar. I've never really realized what my true weaknesses were until the 5+ hour talks we have discussing everything from how youtube should learn UX from a pornsite, how to run a political campaign, psychology theories, neuroscience, chemistry, frontend development, leadership issues, project management, world education, dealing with nonprofit leaders, making money playing video games as kids. The talks vary with a really big open degree of openness, and changes every couple of minutes. I don't see eye to eye on his visions for the future, but I understand where he's coming from though. So I appreciate the value he has. I tend to think extremely short term and grab the "lowest hanging fruit" is what he tells me, but his visions are all about "planting seeds" which I don't really bother doing but should be All his skills complement mine in some weird backwards way and its nice to know that there's someone out there. I tend to think tech first before anything and he tends to think business first so its a nice mix of skills. I tend to be extremely assertive about my solutions since I've had to do hard sales pitches but his is more gradual and methodical. I don't know how well we work coding together though that might be a different story but we do see eye to eye on many management practice principles, I met him while doing nonprofit project management. Anyways, I just wanted to mention this because I find most if not all the advice I get is really not helpful. Unless you understand the logic behind why I am doing something before you say something "Seek to understand before commenting", then its hard for me to appreciate the value of input given. I appreciate the sentinment and thought process though.

akharris 8y ago
How did the two of you originally connect?
- 8y ago

aaavl2821 8y ago

The idea that it's better to just do something quickly and learn from mistakes, rather than take your time, get a lot of good advice, and do it right, seems very accepted but I think it is not always generalizable. In particular, in biotech the cost of a failed experiment is much higher and one poorly designed experiment can kill a company. It's best to get an advisory board with relevant yet diverse experiences to really dig through the details of the experimental design and critically think about what you do and don't know about the biology I know a few biotech founders who have the tech startup mindset of just getting some money and rushing into an experiment, except they need $200k and 6 months for that experiment. If you realize three months in when it's too late to stop that one of your assumptions was wrong, or you used the wrong model, that's a terrible feeling

akharris 8y ago
There's certainly a significant amount of context dependence on the amount of advice that's "right" for any given situation. I think the important thing is to make sure you know that there is an "enough" rather than endlessly chase more.
- everythingswan 8y ago
  Well put. There's probably a theory that better explains this, but I think of it as getting to 60%. How can I get to 60% certainty without wasting too much time? I'll never get to 100% (likely not even the 60% I think I am getting to) but how can I uncover just enough information to feel confidence in my decision? (edit: to add the "?") The rest is just assessing past decisions and asking the same questions until we get satisfied with the result.

staunch 8y ago

Paul Bucheit nailed the problem: "Limited life experience + over-generalization = advice". Most startup advice is horroscope-like in its applicability and utility. It's very easy for advice to seem entirely right but be entirely wrong. Having a single teacher is no answer to this problem. The solution is to have a single "anchor" or goal that all incoming advice is supposed to serve. For standup comedians there's a great anchor: make people laugh. If crowds laughs at a comedian's routine, they're succeeding. If crowds don't laugh, they're failing. Paul Graham described the founder's anchor: make something people want. If users are using a startup's product, it's succeeding. If people are not using it, it's failing. This eliminates most (but not all) room for self-delusion and misjudgment. All advice for comedians should serve them in "making people laugh" and all startup advice should serve founders in "making something people want". A comedian can ask: "How will this advice help me make more people laugh, or how will it make people laugh more?" A founder can ask: "How will this advice help me make more people want our product, or how will it make people want it more?" And then its their responsibility to judge which course of action will best further their goal.

lasermike026 8y ago

Richard Feynman, "DISREGARD!" http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/563/2/Goodstein.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/563/2/Goodstein.pdf (End of page 20 and beginning of page 21.)

adamzerner 8y ago

Is it possible to get the best of both worlds? 1) Advice from a variety of sources. 2) Not being slowed down by all of the advice. My impression from the article is that this usually doesn't happen in practice, but I can't help thinking that it is very doable in theory.

a_d 8y ago

There a lot of great points on this thread. We need more distinction between contextual and non-contextual advice. If one is ‘at the board’ working through a problem — then a hint or solution, moves the problem forward. On the other hand, if one is just ‘leisurely browsing advice listicles’ without being at the board, facing the problem, then most likely you are just ingesting dopamine-flavored noise. Advice without context from anyone — whether it is PG, pmarca or Richard Feynman or {_your_fav_successful_survivor_} - would be useless, unless you are working/thinking about the problem that they are giving solutions for. Help only works if you are looking for something. Also sometimes it is good to just enjoy problem-solving and figuring things out. We are too quick to look for advice — and I get why: because no one wants to “reinvent the wheel”; There are too many standardized administrative things with startups that can be just solved by looking up advice; no problem with that; but sometimes it is worth struggling through a problem even though geniuses like PG and pmarca can give a solution quickly. Abundant capital has led to too many VCs with too many blog posts looking to differentiate with their advice, under the guise of differentiation, content marketing, “proprietary deal flow” etc. If content is “bait” then you are at the bad end of the line. When faced with a problem, find someone who can help — All other times, just do the work and enjoy problems :-) (Did I just give advice? Can’t tell)

akharris 8y ago
I like that distinction. I find that the best "non-contextual" advice is best when delivered as a model for how to think about a given problem, where the answers are more evidence/examples than diktats of what to do.
kornish 8y ago
> Advice without context from anyone...would be useless, unless you are working/thinking about the problem that they are giving solutions for. Totally agree. In my opinion, this can be a real reason to give advisors equity: to incentivize them to keep the context of your company in their head. In many cases, you can get equally qualified (non-contextual) advice, for free, from tons of other folks (around SV, at least). But few will have the extended context that advisors who have been around for a while will.
8y ago

JunaidBhai 8y ago

We faced the same issue before pivoting our design services from a local shop to a productized service (http://draftss.com http://draftss.com). We had tons of advice about how design on subscription model won't work or that we should have pay per task model or we shouldn't productize our service at all. After A/B testing we narrowed down to the current model where we are catering to 10+ clients every month generating $3000+ in MRR.

fermienrico 8y ago
Your comment sounds like a plug. You provide no value in your comments as to why certain advice worked and other didn’t. It seems that the purpose was to link your business on HN and then find a way to make it relevant to the discussion. Audience loses at the expense of your company’s promotion.

ai_ia 8y ago

I thought of Naval Ravikant of the word 'Rav'.

andrewstuart 8y ago

When I was a young entrepreneur I started out believing all the advice I was given - big mistake. I learned eventually to listen to advice and consider it and form my own opinion about whether or not it is correct for me and my circumstances.

KineticLensman 8y ago

I've learned to discount advice that starts with "I'm not an expert, but..." or "All you have to do is ...".

dbelchamber 8y ago

I suppose the essence of being an entrepreneur is being the one to make decisions no one else has made. It seems to be helpful to be data informed with your decisions, but I suppose the moral of this article is that advice can only help with general rules of thumb. In order to solve specific problems that haven't been solved before, you have to carve your own path with your own decisions.