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And here we go again. The article's essence: "All you pesky, silly little humanities students, go do something useful like we CS people/engineers. No really. B

by rmk2 14y ago

And here we go again. The article's essence: "All you pesky, silly little humanities students, go do something useful like we CS people/engineers. No really. Build an app. Become an entrepeneur. Fail horribly, sleep on somebody's couch, oh wait. Have instant success. Become rich. Be the new Zuckerberg. Or work in a bar. Forever. Serving drinks to us. Silly, silly non-engineers." We've had dozens of these articles recently, and they all garner the exact same responses, lots of people here (rather unsurprisingly) agree (→ know your market), some disagree, both camps supply their position by dabbling in dazzling amounts of anecdotal evidence. Voilá, HN front page + discussion in a nut shell... Alternative reading: Y'all just need to learn to code, so you too can be instantly successful... Bonus points: Guess which camp I belong to, bash me for my post solely because of this, ignoring the HN critique

AznHisoka 14y ago
No, actually I don't think the article is excluding CS engineers. He just says you have to learn how to sell and be entrepreneurial. If anything, he's addressing those engineers that think making an app is enough to give you success.
- rmk2 14y ago
  Well, the comments here certainly do. Apart from that though, there aren't all that many "other" professions where you can "just" invent something new and go and become an entrepeneur just like that. They have a higher entry barrier, so I do think the article is very much about CS, dismissing everything else just outright from the onset.
  - anamax 14y ago
    > there aren't all that many "other" professions where you can "just" invent something new and go and become an entrepeneur just like that. The article didn't say to invent something. It said to produce value. You can see lots of opportunities where that's possible by just going through any reasonably sized town. You may not be able to just start a refinery, but you can sell gas and/or repair cars.
crusso 14y ago
I was cynical when I clicked on the link-bait title, but you're totally mischaracterizing what the article said. It's like you didn't read it. The article doesn't advise learning to program to build an app so you can be useful like CS people. His point is that you need to do something that others value. You need to adapt to the markets out there and learn how to sell rather than think you can go make a great living weaving baskets from bubblegum wrappers because that's "your passion". For a given set of goals, I think that his advice is spot on. If I were to quibble with the article it's in the assumption that everyone has his goals. Maybe I don't want to make a bunch of money. Maybe I'm happy barely getting by as long as I can play the pan flute to people wandering through the New Orleans French Quarter. Then again, this is an article up-voted on HN, a site dedicated to entrepreneurs.
- rmk2 14y ago
  My problem is that the article makes great sweeping points, pretending to talk about some sort of general truth while in fact catering to a very specific readership, HN possibly being exactly that. I am aware what HN is, what bothers me is the generalising tendency apparent here without actually being self-reflecting enough to also see that not everybody's world works like that. I find this to be observable in both the article and many comments.
  - crusso 14y ago
    catering to a very specific readership, HN possibly being exactly that So your point is that this article is way too entrepreneurial and HackerNewsy and you don't like that? I don't understand the need to participate in a community based upon a set of ideas and then rail against them as though everyone else here made a mistake in the URL line of their browsers. I love entrepreneurialism. I love startups and the startup culture. I love the idea that you can free yourself of the corporate world by adopting the right attitudes, honing the right skill sets, and working really hard. I feed off the energy of HN and enjoy reading articles about how people succeed, how they fail, and just what other entrepreneurs are up to. I grant you that the article assumes some wants and the way some people work. However, I believe that the author is reacting to a very present "you can do whatever you want, little snowflake" theme in society. In reality, I feel that there's a fine balance between finding something you love to do while adapting what you love to something that you can sell and market. But I don't criticize the author, his article, or HN for believing that the pendulum could use a big shift away from the snowflakes of the world.
md224 14y ago
I think the problem is that you focused far too much on the "You must be entrepreneurial" section. I didn't like that section either, and it falls prey to criticisms like your own (I also strongly dislike the "everyone should start their own business" attitude). The rest of the article was insightful and not too techno-centric... he even points to a non-engineering discipline like nursing as a field with plenty of demand. If anything, the broad takeaway is "try to find something that's enjoyable AND has market demand, and then provide value to that market." He never says the market has to be tech/engineering.
utopkara 14y ago
This is a canned article, and there is just too many of these lately. You can tell it was written with no real material behind it, the guy doesn't even stick around to respond to the controversy it will create. I bet it is possible to automate top HN articles like this one using the methods in http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
natural219 14y ago
I think you read a lot more into this than I did. Maybe it's because I've been indoctrinated into the silly value-providing member of society camp, but I don't really see how it's possible to disagree with this article. I mean, if you disagree with the premise that a job should provide value to your employer, then how do you think the job market is supposed to work? What's the opposite? Are you supposed to go find a Job Tree and wait for a Job to fall off so you can support a family?
mhartl 14y ago
The article's essence Your summary has virtually nothing to do with the article's essence. Among other things, the article doesn't state or imply that engineering is superior to other disciplines. Instead, it speaks of creating value, a concept independent of field. Indeed, the author isn't even a programmer—he's a product developer and strategist, and his degree is in marketing (http://www.sean-johnson.com/about/ http://www.sean-johnson.com/about/).

by rmk2 14y ago

AznHisoka 14y ago

No, actually I don't think the article is excluding CS engineers. He just says you have to learn how to sell and be entrepreneurial. If anything, he's addressing those engineers that think making an app is enough to give you success.

rmk2 14y ago
Well, the comments here certainly do. Apart from that though, there aren't all that many "other" professions where you can "just" invent something new and go and become an entrepeneur just like that. They have a higher entry barrier, so I do think the article is very much about CS, dismissing everything else just outright from the onset.
- anamax 14y ago
  > there aren't all that many "other" professions where you can "just" invent something new and go and become an entrepeneur just like that. The article didn't say to invent something. It said to produce value. You can see lots of opportunities where that's possible by just going through any reasonably sized town. You may not be able to just start a refinery, but you can sell gas and/or repair cars.

crusso 14y ago

I was cynical when I clicked on the link-bait title, but you're totally mischaracterizing what the article said. It's like you didn't read it. The article doesn't advise learning to program to build an app so you can be useful like CS people. His point is that you need to do something that others value. You need to adapt to the markets out there and learn how to sell rather than think you can go make a great living weaving baskets from bubblegum wrappers because that's "your passion". For a given set of goals, I think that his advice is spot on. If I were to quibble with the article it's in the assumption that everyone has his goals. Maybe I don't want to make a bunch of money. Maybe I'm happy barely getting by as long as I can play the pan flute to people wandering through the New Orleans French Quarter. Then again, this is an article up-voted on HN, a site dedicated to entrepreneurs.

rmk2 14y ago
My problem is that the article makes great sweeping points, pretending to talk about some sort of general truth while in fact catering to a very specific readership, HN possibly being exactly that. I am aware what HN is, what bothers me is the generalising tendency apparent here without actually being self-reflecting enough to also see that not everybody's world works like that. I find this to be observable in both the article and many comments.
- crusso 14y ago
  catering to a very specific readership, HN possibly being exactly that So your point is that this article is way too entrepreneurial and HackerNewsy and you don't like that? I don't understand the need to participate in a community based upon a set of ideas and then rail against them as though everyone else here made a mistake in the URL line of their browsers. I love entrepreneurialism. I love startups and the startup culture. I love the idea that you can free yourself of the corporate world by adopting the right attitudes, honing the right skill sets, and working really hard. I feed off the energy of HN and enjoy reading articles about how people succeed, how they fail, and just what other entrepreneurs are up to. I grant you that the article assumes some wants and the way some people work. However, I believe that the author is reacting to a very present "you can do whatever you want, little snowflake" theme in society. In reality, I feel that there's a fine balance between finding something you love to do while adapting what you love to something that you can sell and market. But I don't criticize the author, his article, or HN for believing that the pendulum could use a big shift away from the snowflakes of the world.

md224 14y ago

I think the problem is that you focused far too much on the "You must be entrepreneurial" section. I didn't like that section either, and it falls prey to criticisms like your own (I also strongly dislike the "everyone should start their own business" attitude). The rest of the article was insightful and not too techno-centric... he even points to a non-engineering discipline like nursing as a field with plenty of demand. If anything, the broad takeaway is "try to find something that's enjoyable AND has market demand, and then provide value to that market." He never says the market has to be tech/engineering.

utopkara 14y ago

This is a canned article, and there is just too many of these lately. You can tell it was written with no real material behind it, the guy doesn't even stick around to respond to the controversy it will create. I bet it is possible to automate top HN articles like this one using the methods in http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

natural219 14y ago

I think you read a lot more into this than I did. Maybe it's because I've been indoctrinated into the silly value-providing member of society camp, but I don't really see how it's possible to disagree with this article. I mean, if you disagree with the premise that a job should provide value to your employer, then how do you think the job market is supposed to work? What's the opposite? Are you supposed to go find a Job Tree and wait for a Job to fall off so you can support a family?

mhartl 14y ago

The article's essence Your summary has virtually nothing to do with the article's essence. Among other things, the article doesn't state or imply that engineering is superior to other disciplines. Instead, it speaks of creating value, a concept independent of field. Indeed, the author isn't even a programmer—he's a product developer and strategist, and his degree is in marketing (http://www.sean-johnson.com/about/ http://www.sean-johnson.com/about/).