This essay feels a little trite. There's a place for expertise and a place to be a noob. You have to keep learning. But I find this constant degradation of wo

This essay feels a little trite. There's a place for expertise and a place to be a noob. You have to keep learning. But I find this constant degradation of work and effort, something I see a lot in Silicon Valley, pretty tiresome. I feel like the culture is pushing us to be dilettantes in everything, to be more clever, and to "work smarter", rather than putting in the hours -- striving for Olympic-level athletic performance, pushing the state of the art forward in hard science, or bootstrapping an industry cluster from scratch -- any of these could be 10-20 year undertakings. This is pg, in 2012: "If you're not at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, you can get to one. For example, anyone reasonably smart can probably get to an edge of programming (e.g. building mobile apps) in a year." http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html So yes, I don't think we should be provincial, but there is value in doing the same thing every day, and getting really, really good at it. Some things aren't so easily "disrupted". If you don't put in the time, you can waste your entire life chasing the new and shiny in 2-year increments, and accomplish absolutely nothing of value.