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How to Do Great Work (2023)
- wseqyrku 3mo agoYou can listen to this on youtube with pg's own voice which I find a pretty neat use of AI.
- iammjm 3mo agoWhy not just read it out loud himself and record it?
- stonecharioteer 3mo agoBecause uhm, he doesn't have time?
- utopiah 3mo agoThen share the result on https://librivox.org https://librivox.org and other platforms.
- conartist6 3mo agoWhy? What's neat? To hear his thoughts the way he would voice them? But you're only pretending to...
- wseqyrku 3mo agoBecause I enjoy his talks but he obviously didn't do a talk for every single essay.
- jagged-chisel 3mo agoMight be a voice that’s sampled of PG’s speech, but it won’t deliver it like PG himself.
- wseqyrku 3mo agoActually try it, it's pretty good. Especially when the alternative doesn't exist. And mind you, I am not pro-AI at all, it might not come off that way under this thread. Despite that I did appreciate whoever made it. File it under personal preference.
- staplar 3mo agoI mostly use Safari Listen feature, on my phone, to listen to it while walking. Pretty neat and doesn’t clutter my YouTube history.
- wseqyrku 3mo agoIt's not like I wanted to play it in the background. In this particular case, I rather watch the talk than reading the essay if it's available. It's just interesting to have this option now which wasn't possible before.
- user3939382 3mo agoThere’s something cringey about having a zillion dollars and then using your cash soapbox to bloviate to everyone about how to be great-like-me.
- condenser 3mo agoThere's nothing "cringey" about sharing your own ideas in your own blog. What's cringey is this kind of pointless ankle-biting.
- eager_learner 3mo agoexactly. if you don't like it, don't read it.
- dev_dan_2 3mo agoCommenting on the person that wrote this is not really interesting though - it is in the same category as "I appreciate the fact that 'Paul' has 4 letters and a 2/2 split of vowels and consonants", as far as I am concerned. Maybe you wanted to make a point about some aspects of the authors biography invalidated some claims they make? That would be interesting, then it would be good to be more specific regarding what you are refering to more concretely, though.
- user3939382 3mo agoAnyone could write a post about what they consider a method to do great work. 99.9% would be uninteresting including Paul’s and 99.9% wouldn’t be on HN’s front page including Paul’s if he didn’t have a bunch of 0s on his net worth. To the contrary I find why a particular post, especially on an axis like sociology separate from its content, is on the front page to be interesting in many cases. If you don’t that’s fine.
- dev_dan_2 3mo ago> To the contrary I find why a particular post, especially on an axis like sociology separate from its content, is on the front page to be interesting in many cases. If you don’t that’s fine. That makes sense, yes, I can understand that! Regarding the method to do great work, does it not interest you as much as what the sociology angle in general, or did you find this post in particular to be generic/not worth commenting on?
- gaigalas 3mo agoThe people qualified to do great work probably don't need the advice. They most likely lack resources (like money or free time), not guidance. The people who would benefit from the advice (resourceful people full of free time that are doing nothing meaningful) will likely ignore it anyway.
- subygan 3mo agothis is one of the common conundrums of life. but for someone living in the grey, this stuff might push them over the edge to be great. that is the point of this article
- screamingninja 3mo agoYou assume that people are rigid in their habits. Inspiration goes a long way. Habits can be shaped greatly with the right motivation and mentorship.
- gaigalas 3mo agoThat addresses only half of what I said. That's why you assume I'm assigning fixed roles, you're not seeing the big picture. Can you go to a poor area and change it with a speech about ambition? Likely not that much. The issue there are not habits, it's an environment that disables dreaming big. PG's text is for stragglers who were raised in environments that allow them to dream big, but they don't for some reason. That is such a low fraction of the world's potential, that seems like a waste of time. Changing those environments I mentioned earlier is very hard. Absolutely brutal endeavour. I know hundreds of kids whose biggest dream is getting a high status paying job, because the entire environment shapes them for that. Those who can occasionally notice they can dream bigger ("doing great work") often feel intimidated, not uninspired. They can't afford to risk anything. To me the greater change is possible on those environments who are intimidated, not the stragglers who feel uninspired.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dtj1123 3mo agoGenuine question, what work has Paul Graham done that can be classified as 'great'?
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- baconbkr 3mo agoCreating YCombinator
- durdn 3mo agoHe wrote a lot about this. For example he built an e-commerce meta platform in Lisp that would allow anyone to build and customise their own shops that was far ahead of anything that existed at the time.
- ignoramous 3mo agoPer Graham's own definition, the founding to Y Combinator. Setting aside critiques, some of his influential essays ("Ramen profitable", "Do things that don't scale", "Founder mode", "Beating the averages", "Schelp blindness", etc) also fit the bill.
- gus_massa 3mo agohttps://paulgraham.com/spam.html https://paulgraham.com/spam.html I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work. It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible. Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.
- api 3mo agoEvery invention is made of other inventions all the way back to big rock and sharp stick. So yes Bayesian spam filtering was impressive for its time. I remember it being done locally in mail clients. It’s also one of the early popular deployments of a form of “AI” but that was still during the hangover from the first AI bubble when you had to call it “machine learning.”
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- tosh 3mo agogood related read: You and Your Research (Hamming) https://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html https://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html
- rramadass 3mo agoThe above essay by OG Richard Hamming is the one to read (forget PG's essay). It is hosted in many places on the web and this is one of them. Follow up with Hamming's classic book; The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn available here (pdf) - https://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming_1997_-_The_Art_of_Doing_Science_and_Engineering.pdf https://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming_1997_-_The_Art_of_Doing_... It is a very unique one-of-a-kind book which is a must read cover-to-cover. The last chapter of the above book is You and Your Research ;-)
- bryanph_ 3mo agoWhen Paul Graham uses a phrase like "great work" I can't help but only consider it as being synonymous to "work that generates a big return for the investor" in his context of Y Combinator
- resonious 3mo agoThat probably is what it means and I think there's still value in the analysis.
- bryanph_ 3mo agoI agree. Though the article mentions work from people like Einstein, Copernicus, Darwin, etc. A far cry from the kind of work Y Combinator funds. It gives the post a comedic air to it. Perhaps if had given some more grounded examples that feel more relevant to the work he's done himself then the article would land more for me.
- leoh 3mo agoNo one was really willing to fund any of these folks’ work until they were notable
- roenxi 3mo agoWhat do you want it to be synonymous to? The people who've managed to do great work without generating large investment returns not that large. Compared to the number of ambitious people presently looking for advice it is small.
- shimman 3mo agoI disagree. There are millions of local activists that are improving the immediate lives of their communities in real impactful ways that never see the light of day. Starting after school programs or setting up mutual aid stations or community gardens or creating tenant unions, are all things any one of us can do to improve the lives of those around us. If you're great work only consists of work that generates money, then you're neglecting the entire spectrum of the human experience.
- Archer6621 3mo agoIt's a nice post, with a lot of valuable insights. There is one that I disagree with though: "Never abandon the root node". There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.
- ecto 3mo agoHe wouldn't know.
- inigyou 3mo agoFWIW existential crises can strike at any part of life, so naming them like that is outdated.
- Archer6621 3mo agoThanks, I indeed meant existential crises, but it didn't hit me while I was writing.
- inigyou 3mo agoI have one currently at (with slight optimism) about a third of my life...
- resonious 3mo ago> At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you're starting to explore unanswered questions in physics. Is this supposed to be relatable?
- sph 3mo agoWhy not? - William James Sidis
- rvba 3mo agoFor me it is
- 1123581321 3mo agoIt used to be relatable, for nerds (like me.) Now the second two are 45 minute chat sessions in the eyes of most, I suppose.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dev_dan_2 3mo agoEither A) he used a rhetorical device, or B) he tried to be relatable and failed (for you, assuming you represent the typical intended audience) or C) he tried to be relatable and succeeded, but you are not part of the intended audience he aimed the piece at. Which is 100%, absolutely, perfectly fine; there is nothing wrong in being in that "very ambitious" group of people Paul Graham is likely refering too. I am not even sure if doing great work is great life advice for the target group, depends on how measures "success at life" or however one would call it. In any case; I think you will get the most out of the article if you do not pay the relatility too much thought: Even if C) would be true and you (or me or others) are indeed not part of the intended audience, I am sure there are still interesting thoughts in the essay on can think about and potentially apply to ones own life.
- sph 3mo agothere is more to 'ambition' than being a maths nerd at a young age. and there is more to great work than being a child prodigy, except for those that have peaked at 21.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3mo agoIn work, once you remove all that is unnecessary, wrong, and bad. Then what you are left with must be greatness.
- vodou 3mo agoWhat an empty and depressing world it would be if that was true.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3mo agoIf you let a manager, accountant, or politician decide what 'unnecessary', 'wrong', and 'bad' are. Then I would agree. But if you let an artist decide those things, then I think it would be fine.
- rvba 3mo agoPG could really work on style to shorten those walls of text (yes he refers to it near the end) That's actually my own problem too - I often use AI to summarize / shorten my own texts. (Opposite of what most who seem to use it for generation?)
- pdimitar 3mo agoI generally dislike PG's articles as very tone-deaf and billionaire-having-all-the-time-in-the-world centric, but this one was okay. Figured I'll give it a chance and I don't regret it (this time; a pleasant exception, usually I feel like I wasted my time reading his essays). Things I do appreciate that are good-ish nuggets: - Don't try to work on something "prestigious". I agree with that; a lot of people became poor out of ego, myself included a few times in the past. - Working on something that interests you deeply is a great way to become a super specialist which is honestly a coin toss; it can make you a highly-sought-after expert commanding serious rates... or yet another burned out nerd who knows something very deeply that nobody wants to pay for. I mean OK, I love being satisfied and fulfilled but I can't be like that if I can't pay bills. So that passion is never the #1 priority and that's a fact of life for 99.9999%+ of humanity. - Investing in something on the side a few hours a week sounds great until you wake up 10 years later _still_ not having the side hustle doing you $2000 a month. As above: coin toss. But I agree that's the right and the pragmatic strategy for working people. Success is not guaranteed and that's of course not a reason NOT to try. Still: work-life balance! - Getting to the frontier and then filling the gaps is a solid strategy, yep. As per above: make sure you work on something people would pay for, though. - When to be earnest and when to be [faux] sophisticated is generally not clear and cut. There are events during which you have to be a bit posh or nobody would take you seriously, and sadly those are often the events that might be life or death sentence for your new business idea. I think us the tech nerds are earnest way too much and too often, and don't know when to be "sophisticated". Me putting a formal shirt and pants and pretending to know more about a field than I really did, did net me money that my impostor syndrome screamed that I didn't deserve (but years later, with the objectivity that a brutal hindsight can give you, I absolutely did). - Ownership of one's work is a great advice, probably the best one in the article... until you realize most startup CEOs understand this and will give you +30% more salary than everyone else because they love having somebody on a stable wage who does 80% of their work and does not ask for percentages of the Series A/B/C/D tranches. Nah, thanks. As we say on the Balkans (butchered translation): "The quality of the music depends on the quantity of the tip". I'm done taking your cause so seriously that I don't have time for my wife. Dangle $25k+ a month in front of my face and we'll talk. --- So my TL;DR is: yes, compound knowledge and work on what you like and try to make it a side hustle, absolutely. Put on some suit when you get to events. Don't always be super humble, that by itself can be a turn off and no you cannot afford to gamble your future on this so yes, sometimes be posh and sophisticated. It frakkin helps with some people! And I don't care if you don't want to be associated with them; many of them are gatekeepers of wealth so, deal with it. I'll agree: passion shines through and wins people over. It's not enough, though. "Making it" requires making good decisions on multiple lanes.
- simianwords 3mo agoPeople opposing this are secretly or subconsciously peddling a folk version of Labour Theory of Value. Great work doesn’t exist. All work is work and the only dimension is time. You should get paid according to your socially necessary hours and be valued according to it.