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This is like Dale Carnegie's advice to remember friend's birthdays. Its a good advice, it may even work for you but there is something mundane about it that I d
by yanilkr 15y ago
This is like Dale Carnegie's advice to remember friend's birthdays. Its a good advice, it may even work for you but there is something mundane about it that I don't like it.
Moms always teach their kids to be a good boy/girl. That only makes you how to fit in with the crowd and be mediocre.
What I learned from Hacker news is completely different.
Have the balls to break the rules. Try new things, new approaches, new ideas and fail often. Take risks, whats the worst that can happen? live and adapt the world to your ideas, build something that people use even if you don't have anyone's approval.
Your career need not be this precious brittle thing that you want to be so careful and follow this many rules to be visible to your managers, not pissing off anyone so that you can become a middle manager yourself someday being a good corporate citizen and living inside a box.
outliers do not follow rules.
- rkarumanchi 15y agoI think it helps to figure out the system when you are trying to do one better.
- Helianthus 15y agoYou know, I completely agree with you in spirit because a lot of the advice was pretty good. But I rebel at the echo I hear of "You have to learn the rules before you can break them." If you're only doing something so that you can defy it at the proper time, you are still obeying the rules so precisely as to defeat the purpose. The whole point is that _we make the rules_, as a species, a company; as individuals. If a rule doesn't make sense to us, then fuck it. If we create a rule to fix a situation (fail early/often), and it starts failing, then fuck that rule, too. There's nothing sacred about the system or our understanding of it. Figure out what rules you like, and discard what you don't like even knowing you might come around to it later. Of course, I've just said what you said (in a sense) with far more words. But I never want to be held to respecting a dysfunctional system just because it currently exists; I want to have to respect an invalid rule because I understand the reasons it is still _valid_--but desire and _will_ move away from it at earliest opportunity.
- daniel-cussen 15y ago> outliers do not follow rules. True, in a way: the take large amounts of coherent risk. That is, a man who wants to be the next Bill Gates may risk his college career to do a startup or make bold promises to get a contract, but he won't avoid showing up to board meetings to practice with his band in the hopes of becoming a rock star. He won't piss people off for no good reason, or for any reason other than which he's focussed on.