4 ms·
it's on topic for startup news It's a bad analogy, though. While basketball skills won't help you if you don't make the NBA (especially if you've sacrificed y
by dpapathanasiou 19y ago
it's on topic for startup news
It's a bad analogy, though.
While basketball skills won't help you if you don't make the NBA (especially if you've sacrificed your education in the process), skills you learn as a tech entrepreneur are transferable/useful if you fail and have to do something more "practical".
- Alex3917 19y agoActually collegiate athletes earn on average more money than their non-athlete counterparts.[1] It's possible that this is not because of any learned skills, which would technically make you correct. However, although collegiate athletes often have lower GPAs than non-athletes, they have been shown to be equally proficient using more robust measures of cognitive development.[2] I think Julian Robertson (famous for hiring only athletes) said it best shortly after he made his first billion shorting the copper market: "I once said, 'Let's hire one complete nerd and see how he operates,'" Robertson recalls. "We never did. It would have been fascinating." 1. C.f. http://www.row2k.com/features/print_feature.cfm?id=82&type=Story http://www.row2k.com/features/print_feature.cfm?id=82&ty... 2. Searching JSTOR for "cognitive development" + "athlete" should turn up the relevant studies. /Good thing this isn't Slashdot or I'd be modded into oblivion
- daniel-cussen 19y agoThis reminds me of the findings of that study which said that tall people were more successful. That's partly because height correlates with intelligence (largely because of nutrition; it's not causal), and partly because, the researchers theorized, taller people had a physical advantage over their peers and didn't get bullied as much. Add to that the tendency for victims to remain victims forever, and you have yourself some strange data. Am I saying that college athletes make more money because they get more respect? Kind of; it's late and I'm tired. What I really mean to say is that there are a lot of confounding factors.
- dpapathanasiou 19y agoYes, and some i-banks are well-known for hiring former fighter pilots. Still, we've drifted off topic: the original article was intended as a warning to kids who risk everything to make the NBA. My point is that same analogy does not apply to tech startups.
- davidw 19y agoYep, it's bad economics. NBA == tournament theory, which I think is a zero sum game, whereas startups are not. And while if you compare people on a "Nth percentile" basis, sure, there are bound to be "winners and losers", but that doesn't take into effect that everyone may be better off.
- gwenhwyfaer 19y agoAt least if you're starting a business, you're in the right game. It's extremely unlikely that anyone will ever get rich working for someone else. Comfortable enough that they don't mind, maybe...