5 ms·

Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)

169 points by mooreds 7mo ago

joshoink 7mo ago
I like the old parts of this piece. Seems like the new additions are all about money as the goal. Oh well.
- DANmode 7mo ago
  No. Half of the new section is his lament for times and experiences he can’t get back, even by having money. He’s warning against overvaluing money at any one given time, that there will be time to earn more next week or next month - especially if you’re cognitively or technically inclined. The new additions feel more about the author maturing to money’s place in the goal.
mat0 7mo ago
Just in case some people missed it, the author is 32yo.
gnabgib 7mo ago
Popular twice in 2024 (148 points, 72 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38902596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38902596 (155 points, 62 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39926081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39926081
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
szundi 7mo ago
[dead]
jongjong 7mo ago
My interpretation of the newspaper image-counting experiment is quite different from that of the author. My view is that unlucky people don't trust the system (for a good reason) so they don't trust the text; given the nature of the experiment, it is reasonable that they would think the text is a trap to mislead them. It actually mirrors reality perfectly because most people are constantly misled about everything... But a few lucky 'chosen' people are not. In terms of the experiment it would be like showing unlucky people text which shows an incorrect number and the lucky people would see text showing the correct number. That's what's actually happening in real life. What lucky people don't understand is that merely surviving, without receiving special treatment, is actually very difficult and it requires constantly jumping over all sorts of hurdles and deceptions and you can't afford trust third-party information because every time you did, you ended up losing everything or wasting years of your life. Lucky people are wrong to trust third-party information. They only learn how wrong they were when they stop receiving special treatment; then reality comes as a shock! What is shown to the majority is what the media wants to show them. The media's purpose is to mislead people. Only a small handful of people are actually lucky enough to have mentors who will tell them "The media is misleading, I know because I influence the media; here is reality: ..."
- SecretDreams 7mo ago
  Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic? If yes, the question is why? What came first? Their luck or their perspective? Maybe a couple instances of things working out tips the scales early in life!
  - jongjong 7mo ago
    I'm pretty sure the luck came first because optimism/pessimism is a learned trait. I say this as someone who considers themselves "Optimistic by nature, pessimistic by experience." I was born in lucky circumstances but that luck turned in my teens due to factors outside of my control. I have seen firsthand how it works. Even now, I constantly have to catch myself and force myself to think pessimistically... And my pessimistic projections are usually right or sometimes not pessimistic enough. But I know I'm a natural optimist by the fact that I don't give up. I've built so much software and startups over the years; most of them I'm still running on the side and keeping up to date even though I know consciously that there is zero chance they will succeed. Deep down I have a deep optimism that something will change and all the opportunities will come at once. Consciously, I know it is delusional but I'm fundamentally motivated by emotions, not thoughts. It's a weird feeling having built products that work very similarly to (or better than) other products which rake in millions of dollars but not being able to find a single customer due to all sorts of weird contrived socio-political reasons.
vector_spaces 7mo ago
I'm sorry to hate but it's extremely rich to write > Do not send me anything longer than you would send to a crush. Some people email me six-paragraph essays about the time they saved a cat from a tree ...in a rambling piece that is not written with much consideration for the reader. I know this is just a blog post, ostensibly written for the author's younger sister, but if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from, he should make some effort to make his ideas digestible. I would suggest he include some transitions between ideas, bother to do some research to back up his claims instead of e.g. referring vaguely to an experiment he heard of supposedly involving "lucky" and "unlucky" people (truly sounds like science). And for the love of God don't tell me right off the bat that you assume I'm going to keep reading, let alone read closely enough to "notice" anything about your writing. Yuck Finally, while I know it's popular in Silicon Valley/coastal tech types to use the language of agency to justify being an uncharitable dick to people around you, the spirit of this particular stanza is helpful to deploy only in a small number of settings, generally low complexity environments where the stakes are low and there's a lack of psychological safety, and you desperately need the paycheck. In any event the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing his experience working in coastal tech. Do yourself a favor and find other role models
- jjulius 7mo ago
  >... if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from... >... the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing... The author clearly doesn't want to be someone most people take advice from, and admitted that the piece wouldn't be well written, lack nuance, and largely were just things that worked for them, not anybody else. I don't know how one could possibly take this so seriously when they make it very clear up front: >I'm not really qualified to give advice. >Don't read this if you are seeking a nuanced perspective. >These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal.
- DANmode 7mo ago
Hasz 7mo ago
> How to Get a Job Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college. Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them. Most of the people you will interact with in the (corporate) world have no understanding of their own understanding, and are operating in unknown unknown territory. Being confident, demonstrating competence in something jointly known/unknown or known/known helps a ton.
- rvrs 7mo ago
  And I am exactly the opposite - aside from my first job out of university 10 years ago I have gotten every job since through connections
  - Hasz 7mo ago
    That's where the author is, and it's fine. IMO, these people tend to be better represented online, because getting a job through connections/influence/visibility is necessarily going to be louder than clicking submit on a form.
  - tombert 7mo ago
    My current job was done via a connection, but every previous job has been through spamming my resume to every job I'm even remotely qualified for and/or I find interesting. I have a degree now, but I dropped out of college the first time around, and so I didn't have any connections in the software industry, or anywhere really. When I dropped out, I assumed any desk job career was out the window. I applied to Aldi, Lowes, Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Taco Bell in one day (driving and applying in person). On a lark, and almost as a joke to myself, I applied to exactly one software job from an ad on Craigslist, and they were the only ones who actually got back to me, thus jumpstarting my software career. I've had a lot of jobs in a lot of different places, and despite knowing lots of interesting people I've only managed to convert that to a job one time. I have no idea how people use friendly connections to get jobs.
- 7mo ago
ElProlactin 7mo ago
> These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal. It's interesting the author chose to wrote this as "advice" given his awareness of this. There are a number of ways he could have shared this information without presenting it as "advice."
- kennyu 7mo ago
  How would it be framed? He's sharing what actions that he's taken, that has led to certain life outcomes.
  - ElProlactin 7mo ago
    He could just tell his story, explain his approach to life/guiding principles and leave it at that.
EternalFury 7mo ago
My advice is: Don’t let someone else control your life. Switch occupation every 2 years, even if you find a great environment. Don’t chase, for what you need must come to you. Understand no one can give you the answers you seek; you have to live it.
- mettamage 7mo ago
  2 years of job hopping is almost a death sentence in some countries.
  - prerok 7mo ago
    In my country, it would certainly be odd, so it would raise questions. Would not be a showstopper, though we would definitely carefully consider hiring.
  - nunez 7mo ago
    You can also "job hop" internally if you want to stay at the same company but want a new experience. The thing about huge companies is that they're huge! You can switch to a team that functions completely differently from the team or org that you were in before.
    - roncesvalles 7mo ago
      Exactly and this is why I say there isn't much difference between a resume where they switched jobs every 2 years and a resume where they stayed at Google or Amazon or 10 years, because the Google guy was probably also "switching jobs" every 2 years, just internally.
- em-bee 7mo ago
  if you change jobs despite being in a great environment, aren't you chasing something? if you follow this advice, don't you let the advice control you? in particular for jobs, if you think that jobs are controlling you (which is not unreasonable) then switching jobs is not helping you to escape that control. if you don't want to let someone else control your life you need give up your traditional career and become a freelancer. i did that. i had jobs too in between, but only when they helped me advance my own goals.
kwar13 7mo ago
> I've never gotten a job by applying to it. It's always been referrals or someone reaching out to me. So honestly, my resume is shit compared to my peers. alright, checks out.
zahradeenie 7mo ago
Choosing is a big one. Something I learned later in life about emotional maturity and controlling your emotions is that it's just choosing to feel an emotion. Like, feeling angry for longer than I needed because I didn't know how to make the choice to feel happy or calm. Of course there's more nuance to it but I agree with choosing
- phyzix5761 7mo ago
  Emotions are not controllable or choosable but our reactions to them are trainable. One good technique for this is mindfully observing and labelling the emotion until it goes away; not trying to change it but also not acting on it. With practice one can observe the emotion subsiding within a minute or so. This, eventually, leads to less emotional reaction overall because we're taking away the habitual pattern of the mind to constantly react to everything it likes or dislikes.
  - praash 7mo ago
    You are controlling your emotions with that technique, accepting and waiting emotions out is just not the only option. Getting indoors from a cold rain is an obvious choice. I can't really decide to stop shivering, but changing my clothes and grabbing a hot chocolate helps. It still takes a while to warm back up, meanwhile I can actively choose not to open windows or go right back in the rain.
    - phyzix5761 7mo ago
      Yes, you can try to set up the right conditions for the emotions to subside which is non reaction but you can't choose when they subside or when they arise. I read OP as saying that you can directly choose which emotion you experience and when you experience it.
    - zahradeenie 7mo ago
      Yeah, this is what I meant. I used to let anger sit with me for hours and derail most of my day. But now I'm better at deciding to let negative emotions go and feel happy or calm. Making choices to change your situation will change your feelings so I do believe feelings are a choice to be made in most situations.
yu3zhou4 7mo ago
Overall I think it’s a good perspective and worth reading to learn your perspective and experience. Just for anyone who doesn’t come from a good place, please be kind to yourself. You probably really need to work exceptionally hard and need to have top 1% resume. And articles like this can be quite depressing. Don’t let it you down The author tries to be mindful about it and I appreciate it, but from a perspective of someone from a shithole it still might feel bad Referring to: > I've never gotten a job by applying to it. It's always been referrals or someone reaching out to me. So honestly, my resume is shit compared to my peers. I'm terrible at interviewing, and I've never done LeetCode. This is not a brag; it's just not my style. Am I a nepo baby? I don't know. Was I a morale hire? I'm pretty disagreeable. Was it merit? Also not sure > I recognize that not everyone has access to the same networking opportunities, and the traditional job application process can be a valid and necessary path for many. But social media, when used correctly, is a great way to get an opportunity
jeffrallen 7mo ago
When I watch how little influence I have on my children from my spoken advice, and recall how many lessons people tried to teach me which I had to learn myself, I laugh at the eternal pointlessness of writing like this. Carry on, world, carry on.

169 points by mooreds 7mo ago

joshoink 7mo ago

I like the old parts of this piece. Seems like the new additions are all about money as the goal. Oh well.

DANmode 7mo ago
No. Half of the new section is his lament for times and experiences he can’t get back, even by having money. He’s warning against overvaluing money at any one given time, that there will be time to earn more next week or next month - especially if you’re cognitively or technically inclined. The new additions feel more about the author maturing to money’s place in the goal.

mat0 7mo ago

Just in case some people missed it, the author is 32yo.

gnabgib 7mo ago

Popular twice in 2024 (148 points, 72 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38902596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38902596 (155 points, 62 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39926081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39926081

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

szundi 7mo ago

[dead]

jongjong 7mo ago

My interpretation of the newspaper image-counting experiment is quite different from that of the author. My view is that unlucky people don't trust the system (for a good reason) so they don't trust the text; given the nature of the experiment, it is reasonable that they would think the text is a trap to mislead them. It actually mirrors reality perfectly because most people are constantly misled about everything... But a few lucky 'chosen' people are not. In terms of the experiment it would be like showing unlucky people text which shows an incorrect number and the lucky people would see text showing the correct number. That's what's actually happening in real life. What lucky people don't understand is that merely surviving, without receiving special treatment, is actually very difficult and it requires constantly jumping over all sorts of hurdles and deceptions and you can't afford trust third-party information because every time you did, you ended up losing everything or wasting years of your life. Lucky people are wrong to trust third-party information. They only learn how wrong they were when they stop receiving special treatment; then reality comes as a shock! What is shown to the majority is what the media wants to show them. The media's purpose is to mislead people. Only a small handful of people are actually lucky enough to have mentors who will tell them "The media is misleading, I know because I influence the media; here is reality: ..."

SecretDreams 7mo ago
Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic? If yes, the question is why? What came first? Their luck or their perspective? Maybe a couple instances of things working out tips the scales early in life!
- jongjong 7mo ago
  I'm pretty sure the luck came first because optimism/pessimism is a learned trait. I say this as someone who considers themselves "Optimistic by nature, pessimistic by experience." I was born in lucky circumstances but that luck turned in my teens due to factors outside of my control. I have seen firsthand how it works. Even now, I constantly have to catch myself and force myself to think pessimistically... And my pessimistic projections are usually right or sometimes not pessimistic enough. But I know I'm a natural optimist by the fact that I don't give up. I've built so much software and startups over the years; most of them I'm still running on the side and keeping up to date even though I know consciously that there is zero chance they will succeed. Deep down I have a deep optimism that something will change and all the opportunities will come at once. Consciously, I know it is delusional but I'm fundamentally motivated by emotions, not thoughts. It's a weird feeling having built products that work very similarly to (or better than) other products which rake in millions of dollars but not being able to find a single customer due to all sorts of weird contrived socio-political reasons.

vector_spaces 7mo ago

I'm sorry to hate but it's extremely rich to write > Do not send me anything longer than you would send to a crush. Some people email me six-paragraph essays about the time they saved a cat from a tree ...in a rambling piece that is not written with much consideration for the reader. I know this is just a blog post, ostensibly written for the author's younger sister, but if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from, he should make some effort to make his ideas digestible. I would suggest he include some transitions between ideas, bother to do some research to back up his claims instead of e.g. referring vaguely to an experiment he heard of supposedly involving "lucky" and "unlucky" people (truly sounds like science). And for the love of God don't tell me right off the bat that you assume I'm going to keep reading, let alone read closely enough to "notice" anything about your writing. Yuck Finally, while I know it's popular in Silicon Valley/coastal tech types to use the language of agency to justify being an uncharitable dick to people around you, the spirit of this particular stanza is helpful to deploy only in a small number of settings, generally low complexity environments where the stakes are low and there's a lack of psychological safety, and you desperately need the paycheck. In any event the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing his experience working in coastal tech. Do yourself a favor and find other role models

jjulius 7mo ago
>... if the author really wishes to position himself as someone to take advice from... >... the good ideas here are largely betrayed by the author's bad writing and overgeneralizing... The author clearly doesn't want to be someone most people take advice from, and admitted that the piece wouldn't be well written, lack nuance, and largely were just things that worked for them, not anybody else. I don't know how one could possibly take this so seriously when they make it very clear up front: >I'm not really qualified to give advice. >Don't read this if you are seeking a nuanced perspective. >These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal.
DANmode 7mo ago

Hasz 7mo ago

> How to Get a Job Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college. Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them. Most of the people you will interact with in the (corporate) world have no understanding of their own understanding, and are operating in unknown unknown territory. Being confident, demonstrating competence in something jointly known/unknown or known/known helps a ton.

rvrs 7mo ago
And I am exactly the opposite - aside from my first job out of university 10 years ago I have gotten every job since through connections
- Hasz 7mo ago
  That's where the author is, and it's fine. IMO, these people tend to be better represented online, because getting a job through connections/influence/visibility is necessarily going to be louder than clicking submit on a form.
- tombert 7mo ago
  My current job was done via a connection, but every previous job has been through spamming my resume to every job I'm even remotely qualified for and/or I find interesting. I have a degree now, but I dropped out of college the first time around, and so I didn't have any connections in the software industry, or anywhere really. When I dropped out, I assumed any desk job career was out the window. I applied to Aldi, Lowes, Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Taco Bell in one day (driving and applying in person). On a lark, and almost as a joke to myself, I applied to exactly one software job from an ad on Craigslist, and they were the only ones who actually got back to me, thus jumpstarting my software career. I've had a lot of jobs in a lot of different places, and despite knowing lots of interesting people I've only managed to convert that to a job one time. I have no idea how people use friendly connections to get jobs.
7mo ago

ElProlactin 7mo ago

> These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal. It's interesting the author chose to wrote this as "advice" given his awareness of this. There are a number of ways he could have shared this information without presenting it as "advice."

kennyu 7mo ago
How would it be framed? He's sharing what actions that he's taken, that has led to certain life outcomes.
- ElProlactin 7mo ago
  He could just tell his story, explain his approach to life/guiding principles and leave it at that.

EternalFury 7mo ago

My advice is: Don’t let someone else control your life. Switch occupation every 2 years, even if you find a great environment. Don’t chase, for what you need must come to you. Understand no one can give you the answers you seek; you have to live it.

mettamage 7mo ago
2 years of job hopping is almost a death sentence in some countries.
- prerok 7mo ago
  In my country, it would certainly be odd, so it would raise questions. Would not be a showstopper, though we would definitely carefully consider hiring.
- nunez 7mo ago
  You can also "job hop" internally if you want to stay at the same company but want a new experience. The thing about huge companies is that they're huge! You can switch to a team that functions completely differently from the team or org that you were in before.
  - roncesvalles 7mo ago
    Exactly and this is why I say there isn't much difference between a resume where they switched jobs every 2 years and a resume where they stayed at Google or Amazon or 10 years, because the Google guy was probably also "switching jobs" every 2 years, just internally.
em-bee 7mo ago
if you change jobs despite being in a great environment, aren't you chasing something? if you follow this advice, don't you let the advice control you? in particular for jobs, if you think that jobs are controlling you (which is not unreasonable) then switching jobs is not helping you to escape that control. if you don't want to let someone else control your life you need give up your traditional career and become a freelancer. i did that. i had jobs too in between, but only when they helped me advance my own goals.

kwar13 7mo ago

> I've never gotten a job by applying to it. It's always been referrals or someone reaching out to me. So honestly, my resume is shit compared to my peers. alright, checks out.

zahradeenie 7mo ago

Choosing is a big one. Something I learned later in life about emotional maturity and controlling your emotions is that it's just choosing to feel an emotion. Like, feeling angry for longer than I needed because I didn't know how to make the choice to feel happy or calm. Of course there's more nuance to it but I agree with choosing

phyzix5761 7mo ago
Emotions are not controllable or choosable but our reactions to them are trainable. One good technique for this is mindfully observing and labelling the emotion until it goes away; not trying to change it but also not acting on it. With practice one can observe the emotion subsiding within a minute or so. This, eventually, leads to less emotional reaction overall because we're taking away the habitual pattern of the mind to constantly react to everything it likes or dislikes.
- praash 7mo ago
  You are controlling your emotions with that technique, accepting and waiting emotions out is just not the only option. Getting indoors from a cold rain is an obvious choice. I can't really decide to stop shivering, but changing my clothes and grabbing a hot chocolate helps. It still takes a while to warm back up, meanwhile I can actively choose not to open windows or go right back in the rain.
  - phyzix5761 7mo ago
    Yes, you can try to set up the right conditions for the emotions to subside which is non reaction but you can't choose when they subside or when they arise. I read OP as saying that you can directly choose which emotion you experience and when you experience it.
  - zahradeenie 7mo ago
    Yeah, this is what I meant. I used to let anger sit with me for hours and derail most of my day. But now I'm better at deciding to let negative emotions go and feel happy or calm. Making choices to change your situation will change your feelings so I do believe feelings are a choice to be made in most situations.

yu3zhou4 7mo ago

Overall I think it’s a good perspective and worth reading to learn your perspective and experience. Just for anyone who doesn’t come from a good place, please be kind to yourself. You probably really need to work exceptionally hard and need to have top 1% resume. And articles like this can be quite depressing. Don’t let it you down The author tries to be mindful about it and I appreciate it, but from a perspective of someone from a shithole it still might feel bad Referring to: > I've never gotten a job by applying to it. It's always been referrals or someone reaching out to me. So honestly, my resume is shit compared to my peers. I'm terrible at interviewing, and I've never done LeetCode. This is not a brag; it's just not my style. Am I a nepo baby? I don't know. Was I a morale hire? I'm pretty disagreeable. Was it merit? Also not sure > I recognize that not everyone has access to the same networking opportunities, and the traditional job application process can be a valid and necessary path for many. But social media, when used correctly, is a great way to get an opportunity

jeffrallen 7mo ago

When I watch how little influence I have on my children from my spoken advice, and recall how many lessons people tried to teach me which I had to learn myself, I laugh at the eternal pointlessness of writing like this. Carry on, world, carry on.