6 ms·

I think you missed the point of the article. It explains why Bob is better than Sally in job A, but Sally is better than Bob in job B. Perhaps you figured that

I think you missed the point of the article. It explains why Bob is better than Sally in job A, but Sally is better than Bob in job B. Perhaps you figured that out, but I can't see that from your response, so I'll give you why this was so impactful for me. I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. After two degrees, three internships, three years of employment and several promotions, I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path. I genuinely believe I could have avoided that whole AE thing if I had been exposed to this article at the right time.

Judgmentality 6y ago
> I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding?
- fossuser 6y ago
  Maybe they founded boom?
  - aerosmile 6y ago
    I wish! I left AE before I realized that more recently opportunities started opening up for entrepreneurially-minded engineers. The whole quadcopter space was probably a pretty good opportunity for people with a background in AE.
- neckardt 6y ago
  > > I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. > What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding? The aerospace industry rewards making minor improvements to conventional airplanes rather than building something novel. Entrepreneurship rewards building something new and "radically different", which is what he was looking for in the first place.
  - mdorazio 6y ago
    Counterpoint: exceedingly few tech entrepreneurship companies are doing anything at all that is really new and "radically different". Most are doing rather small and unimaginative things that make money by doing some equivalent of selling more ads. If the GP commenter was working at, for example, SpaceX (a large aerospace company), I can 100% guarantee their work would be more meaningful and rewarding than at basically any startup I've ever encountered. It often seems like it's a unique conceit of the HN community to think that most of the tech startups floating around here are really doing much more than established companies.
    - Kiro 6y ago
      What's your definition of meaningful and rewarding? I'm an entrepreneur because I love waking up every day and do whatever I feel like. Nothing can be more rewarding for me. I'm not even that interested in what I'm building and it's certainly not something unique or special but it pays the bills and lets me be free.
      - mdorazio 6y ago
        For myself and most people in my circle of friends it's roughly: actively advancing the level of humanity. That means different things to different people - for some it's working on autonomous vehicles, for others it's space exploration, for others it's fighting climate change or poverty, etc. I think this is also related to age, though. When I was younger, most people I knew thought freedom and money were the best possible things in life.
        nevertoolate 6y ago
        Wow! Downvoted? Wake up people, we are not so far away from a kind of an endgame of our current society and you feel injured by being called immature - it may mean that you are...
    - aerosmile 6y ago
      I 100% get where you're coming from, but allow me to offer a counterpoint to your counterpoint. I don't know anyone who works at SpaceX, but a bunch of my classmates went to work for ULA (their competitor). I imagine that SpaceX is better managed, but the nature of work is the same - you're either calculating things using conventional wisdom, or you're writing simulations or coming up with other ways to achieve higher performance or save money. Either way, the work is slow and highly co-dependent on a million other moving parts. Once a project is complete, your ownership is unlikely to be higher than a tiny fraction of 1 percent. Also, at least at ULA, you better excel at selling your work internally. On the other hand, SV is littered with names of people who single-handedly turned unprofitable late-stage tech companies into major successes. There's less regulation, stakes are lower, capital requirements are lower, less of the available landscape has been claimed, and the industry lends itself well to the power of computation. It's a little bit like trying to get rich in 18th century England vs 18th century USA. Would it be fair for US farmers to claim that they are doing "radically different" work compared to their English counterparts? Perhaps the work looked similar ("put food on the table"), but the rules and opportunities were vastly different and created different outcomes for individuals (as in - the smartest/most fit/hardest working people got more out of their work).
- aerosmile 6y ago
  Right this moment I am asking myself how to shift more traffic from paid to organic. I created a list of about 10 ideas, the one at the top of that list being so out there that I had to immediately share it with the team. About half of the team members loved it and thought it will be the best thing ever, and the other half thought it's too expensive and we shouldn't risk so much money on an unproven concept that could fail completely. So the takeaway is quite clear - there might be something there, but I need to come up with an MVP that can be tested quickly (eg: 2 weeks) and cost-efficiently (eg: two weeks of one person's time). Let me contrast that with my career from 20 years ago. My Master's thesis was to calculate the flight performance of an aircraft that ended up having its maiden flight 5 years later. Essentially, an entirely mathematically-driven exercise where you apply a well-known methodology to calculate a deterministic problem. I got bored of that pretty quickly and went into flight testing, thinking that I could keep my mind active by being more hands-on in my work. I quickly learned that flight testing is all about reading regulations and checking the aircraft for compliance. Sure, there is some flying involved, but nowhere enough to keep you stimulated every day. If you're reading those two paragraphs above, one will appeal to you more than the other. It doesn't mean that one career path is fundamentally better or worse, it's more about what does YOUR mind need to be stimulated? Do you prefer nondeterministic challenges or would you rather apply existing processes and be super precise and accurate? Do you prefer quick turnaround times, or would you be happier knowing that there is 5 years' worth of budget for you and your team of hundreds of people to complete a project? Whatever your conclusion, you're not wrong - it just has to be right for you. I think PG's essay helped explain this.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    > I quickly learned that flight testing is all about reading regulations and checking the aircraft for compliance. Sure, there is some flying involved I recently watched some videos of people doing plane checklists; one had an error within two minutes, another had only one pilot doing the checklist while the other was away. I've also heard that humans skipping items or entire checklists is a general problem. Out of curiosity, would people with borderline or genuine OCD be a good fit for this? (Would it be practical to factor out the "checklist compliance" into a separate person? Seems like "remaining calm in an emergency, quick thinking, judgment and reflexes", and whatever else I might imagine are best for the pilot are at best orthogonal to "obsessive following of checklists".)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
RIDDLERTHIS 6y ago
What would have been the right time? When you were a student studying during your first degree or your second? In hindsight, I think it is almost dubious to assume that exposure to this article would have helped you at any given time in the past. It's quite possible you would not have come to the same realization about tech entrepreneurship had you not obtained your AE and had the experiences that you did.
- aerosmile 6y ago
  Fair enough - one article alone probably wouldn't have had the full impact. But I am envious of the generation of current high schoolers who can read HN all day. After a year or so, I imagine you can reprogram your mind quite a bit. Back in the late 90s, access to information like this was much more limited.
  - polote 6y ago
    What you are getting from HN at your current age with your experience, is not the same that what your young self would have gotten from the same content
    - newtwilly 6y ago
      I'm sure that's true. I would like to say that I am young and I remember getting turned on to podcasts and reddit and good books when I was 15 or so, and being exposed to rational thought and discussion did a lot for my development I think.
      - qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
        Same. Unfortunately the internet isn't what it once was. I can't say I'm optimistic this strategy would work out for today's youth.
    - Swenrekcah 6y ago
      Occasionally I stumble upon an old article posted here and start reading, lamenting the missed opportunities if I'd only seen this article x years ago. Then a bit further into it I start feeling like I have read it before, and I suspect I often have.

Judgmentality 6y ago

> I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding?

fossuser 6y ago
Maybe they founded boom?
- aerosmile 6y ago
  I wish! I left AE before I realized that more recently opportunities started opening up for entrepreneurially-minded engineers. The whole quadcopter space was probably a pretty good opportunity for people with a background in AE.
neckardt 6y ago
> > I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. > What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding? The aerospace industry rewards making minor improvements to conventional airplanes rather than building something novel. Entrepreneurship rewards building something new and "radically different", which is what he was looking for in the first place.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  Counterpoint: exceedingly few tech entrepreneurship companies are doing anything at all that is really new and "radically different". Most are doing rather small and unimaginative things that make money by doing some equivalent of selling more ads. If the GP commenter was working at, for example, SpaceX (a large aerospace company), I can 100% guarantee their work would be more meaningful and rewarding than at basically any startup I've ever encountered. It often seems like it's a unique conceit of the HN community to think that most of the tech startups floating around here are really doing much more than established companies.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    What's your definition of meaningful and rewarding? I'm an entrepreneur because I love waking up every day and do whatever I feel like. Nothing can be more rewarding for me. I'm not even that interested in what I'm building and it's certainly not something unique or special but it pays the bills and lets me be free.
    - mdorazio 6y ago
      For myself and most people in my circle of friends it's roughly: actively advancing the level of humanity. That means different things to different people - for some it's working on autonomous vehicles, for others it's space exploration, for others it's fighting climate change or poverty, etc. I think this is also related to age, though. When I was younger, most people I knew thought freedom and money were the best possible things in life.
      - nevertoolate 6y ago
        Wow! Downvoted? Wake up people, we are not so far away from a kind of an endgame of our current society and you feel injured by being called immature - it may mean that you are...
  - aerosmile 6y ago
    I 100% get where you're coming from, but allow me to offer a counterpoint to your counterpoint. I don't know anyone who works at SpaceX, but a bunch of my classmates went to work for ULA (their competitor). I imagine that SpaceX is better managed, but the nature of work is the same - you're either calculating things using conventional wisdom, or you're writing simulations or coming up with other ways to achieve higher performance or save money. Either way, the work is slow and highly co-dependent on a million other moving parts. Once a project is complete, your ownership is unlikely to be higher than a tiny fraction of 1 percent. Also, at least at ULA, you better excel at selling your work internally. On the other hand, SV is littered with names of people who single-handedly turned unprofitable late-stage tech companies into major successes. There's less regulation, stakes are lower, capital requirements are lower, less of the available landscape has been claimed, and the industry lends itself well to the power of computation. It's a little bit like trying to get rich in 18th century England vs 18th century USA. Would it be fair for US farmers to claim that they are doing "radically different" work compared to their English counterparts? Perhaps the work looked similar ("put food on the table"), but the rules and opportunities were vastly different and created different outcomes for individuals (as in - the smartest/most fit/hardest working people got more out of their work).
aerosmile 6y ago
Right this moment I am asking myself how to shift more traffic from paid to organic. I created a list of about 10 ideas, the one at the top of that list being so out there that I had to immediately share it with the team. About half of the team members loved it and thought it will be the best thing ever, and the other half thought it's too expensive and we shouldn't risk so much money on an unproven concept that could fail completely. So the takeaway is quite clear - there might be something there, but I need to come up with an MVP that can be tested quickly (eg: 2 weeks) and cost-efficiently (eg: two weeks of one person's time). Let me contrast that with my career from 20 years ago. My Master's thesis was to calculate the flight performance of an aircraft that ended up having its maiden flight 5 years later. Essentially, an entirely mathematically-driven exercise where you apply a well-known methodology to calculate a deterministic problem. I got bored of that pretty quickly and went into flight testing, thinking that I could keep my mind active by being more hands-on in my work. I quickly learned that flight testing is all about reading regulations and checking the aircraft for compliance. Sure, there is some flying involved, but nowhere enough to keep you stimulated every day. If you're reading those two paragraphs above, one will appeal to you more than the other. It doesn't mean that one career path is fundamentally better or worse, it's more about what does YOUR mind need to be stimulated? Do you prefer nondeterministic challenges or would you rather apply existing processes and be super precise and accurate? Do you prefer quick turnaround times, or would you be happier knowing that there is 5 years' worth of budget for you and your team of hundreds of people to complete a project? Whatever your conclusion, you're not wrong - it just has to be right for you. I think PG's essay helped explain this.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  > I quickly learned that flight testing is all about reading regulations and checking the aircraft for compliance. Sure, there is some flying involved I recently watched some videos of people doing plane checklists; one had an error within two minutes, another had only one pilot doing the checklist while the other was away. I've also heard that humans skipping items or entire checklists is a general problem. Out of curiosity, would people with borderline or genuine OCD be a good fit for this? (Would it be practical to factor out the "checklist compliance" into a separate person? Seems like "remaining calm in an emergency, quick thinking, judgment and reflexes", and whatever else I might imagine are best for the pilot are at best orthogonal to "obsessive following of checklists".)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

RIDDLERTHIS 6y ago

What would have been the right time? When you were a student studying during your first degree or your second? In hindsight, I think it is almost dubious to assume that exposure to this article would have helped you at any given time in the past. It's quite possible you would not have come to the same realization about tech entrepreneurship had you not obtained your AE and had the experiences that you did.

aerosmile 6y ago
Fair enough - one article alone probably wouldn't have had the full impact. But I am envious of the generation of current high schoolers who can read HN all day. After a year or so, I imagine you can reprogram your mind quite a bit. Back in the late 90s, access to information like this was much more limited.
- polote 6y ago
  What you are getting from HN at your current age with your experience, is not the same that what your young self would have gotten from the same content
  - newtwilly 6y ago
    I'm sure that's true. I would like to say that I am young and I remember getting turned on to podcasts and reddit and good books when I was 15 or so, and being exposed to rational thought and discussion did a lot for my development I think.
    - qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
      Same. Unfortunately the internet isn't what it once was. I can't say I'm optimistic this strategy would work out for today's youth.
  - Swenrekcah 6y ago
    Occasionally I stumble upon an old article posted here and start reading, lamenting the missed opportunities if I'd only seen this article x years ago. Then a bit further into it I start feeling like I have read it before, and I suspect I often have.