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I'm worried about your impression that if you don't like someone, they can't do interesting things as Jobs did. Who is actually "unhireable"? And even if they
by pekk 14y ago
I'm worried about your impression that if you don't like someone, they can't do interesting things as Jobs did.
Who is actually "unhireable"? And even if they are, does that mean they cannot accomplish anything? Are you in charge of deciding who will never amount to anything?
- untog 14y agoThey could well do interesting things, as Jobs did- I'm not saying they can't. I'm more trying to say that there is no guaranteed connection between the two, in the same way that wearing black turtlenecks isn't going to make you any more enlightened either.
- pitchups 14y agoThis reminds me of PG's essay about startups - where he says that all great ideas look like really bad ideas in the beginning. Like black swans, the next big thing, and the person to create the next big thing seem to share the trait of not being easy to predict or spot.
- yen223 14y agoOf course, bad ideas also look like bad ideas in the beginning.
- raverbashing 14y agoHumm I disagree There's "obvious" bad ideas like trying to sell sand in the desert. There's the bad (underwhelming) ideas, maybe that's the most common of them, it's probably the 'trying to make a weird idea sellable'. Like 'french fries are amazing but unhealthy so let's try to sell potatoes cut as fries, but baked, with no salt' There's also quirky ideas as bad ideas, which is the way most people go and what PG probably meant. Not to mention sometimes your idea looks like the same as a failed one already but the devil is in the details.
- PakG1 14y agoAt the same time, I have difficulty thinking of any examples of anyone trying to do such an obviously bad idea. The closest analogy that comes to mind for me is trying to penetrate an overly saturated market. Why would anyone want to do that? But hey, you could say that fast food burgers is extremely saturated, and yet, new companies like Five Guys are coming out, surprising, and thriving. Sometimes you can't know until it either succeeds or fails.
- Someone 14y agoSelling sand in the desert isn't _that_ of an obviously bad idea. I bet some people are making good money selling sand for golf bunkers or white beaches in the likes of Abu Dhabi. Even the sand for artificial islands sometimes gets imported from elsewhere because the locally available one is too scarce or lacks some essential qualities.
- Swannie 14y agoYou got there first. Sand for artificial beaches gets imported all the time, from many far flung places. Desert sand != coral reef sand (the white sand from dead coral, generally excreted from Parrot fish). You probably do quite nicely selling white sands to the beach resorts of the middle east.
- dasil003 14y agoI'm skeptical of trying to segment ideas into categories in the first place. It's one thing to say something is a good or bad idea as a rhetorical point, but when we're talking about sets of ideas I think it borders on useless.
- mikecane 14y agoHow bad of an idea is it to sell a stupid rock to people? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_rock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_rock There are some days I must grudgingly agree with screenwriter William Goldman's "Nobody knows anything." If you're not more confused by life as you get older, you haven't been paying enough attention.
- tobylane 14y agoJobs was almost unhirable because he had a vegan diet, no showers and no shoes. He ended up working night shifts. I haven't heard how Woz coped with this.