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"For some reason Bangalore is crawling with people who first want to form a community and then start learning/working/whatever." Seattle is the same. Probably

"For some reason Bangalore is crawling with people who first want to form a community and then start learning/working/whatever." Seattle is the same. Probably the same everywhere. It's easier to talk and drink coffee than to challenge yourself way outside your comfort zone for hours at a time, day after day.

soneca 7y ago
I don't think the foundation of this phenomenon is laziness or lack of diligence. I believe people are craving to be part of a community. Humans have always had. But these days your family and your neighbors are not that community anymore (edit: not necessarily, not so much at least), so we look elsewhere. The internet allowed us to look everywhere actually. Then you find a community that, from the outside, you feel attracted to. Often these communities are built around a certain topic or skill. Then you want to be part of the community and say to yourself that you will learn that skill. I agree with the author though that this path rarely works. A better way is to first you dive into something that interest you and then you go find other people with the same interest.
TrackerFF 7y ago
To be fair, that's probably 80% of the entrepreneurship scene everywhere. When I was a fresh MBA, I was looking all over for things to do. I looked into the local startup scene, especially those in the extremely early stages - and discovered that the _actual_ startups are a very small part of any local startup scene. The majority of people seemed to just sit around and talk about their ideas with like-minded people, but with close to zero experience or critical skills. You could go this weekday entrepreneurship workshop, and not a single person in the room had started a venture, or worked for any - not even the speakers.
shiitake 7y ago
I hosted a software dev meetup in Texas for several years and also saw this. Especially when we co-hosted with another meetup that was devoted to beginners. I observed a few common threads: 1. A lot of beginners don't know exactly WHY they want to do XYZ. Why do you want to learn to code? Or play guitar? Or be an entrepreneur? Or make video games? It is perfectly okay to want to do something because it is potentially lucrative. But there really needs to be more to it. If you are passionate about XYZ - which parts specifically? Do you like building things to solve problems? Or writing songs? Or telling stories? 2. Most beginners have done very little basic research about what is involved in actually doing XYZ. I always asked beginner devs if they thought they could be happy spending 6+ hours a day thinking/writing/debugging code. Nobody else had ever mentioned that to them - they'd just been told "learn to code". If you can get through those beginner questions the advice is always a variation on the same theme: do XYZ to whatever degree you can. Don't get distracted by meetings or tools or blog posts.

soneca 7y ago

I don't think the foundation of this phenomenon is laziness or lack of diligence. I believe people are craving to be part of a community. Humans have always had. But these days your family and your neighbors are not that community anymore (edit: not necessarily, not so much at least), so we look elsewhere. The internet allowed us to look everywhere actually. Then you find a community that, from the outside, you feel attracted to. Often these communities are built around a certain topic or skill. Then you want to be part of the community and say to yourself that you will learn that skill. I agree with the author though that this path rarely works. A better way is to first you dive into something that interest you and then you go find other people with the same interest.

TrackerFF 7y ago

To be fair, that's probably 80% of the entrepreneurship scene everywhere. When I was a fresh MBA, I was looking all over for things to do. I looked into the local startup scene, especially those in the extremely early stages - and discovered that the _actual_ startups are a very small part of any local startup scene. The majority of people seemed to just sit around and talk about their ideas with like-minded people, but with close to zero experience or critical skills. You could go this weekday entrepreneurship workshop, and not a single person in the room had started a venture, or worked for any - not even the speakers.

shiitake 7y ago

I hosted a software dev meetup in Texas for several years and also saw this. Especially when we co-hosted with another meetup that was devoted to beginners. I observed a few common threads: 1. A lot of beginners don't know exactly WHY they want to do XYZ. Why do you want to learn to code? Or play guitar? Or be an entrepreneur? Or make video games? It is perfectly okay to want to do something because it is potentially lucrative. But there really needs to be more to it. If you are passionate about XYZ - which parts specifically? Do you like building things to solve problems? Or writing songs? Or telling stories? 2. Most beginners have done very little basic research about what is involved in actually doing XYZ. I always asked beginner devs if they thought they could be happy spending 6+ hours a day thinking/writing/debugging code. Nobody else had ever mentioned that to them - they'd just been told "learn to code". If you can get through those beginner questions the advice is always a variation on the same theme: do XYZ to whatever degree you can. Don't get distracted by meetings or tools or blog posts.