7 ms·

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd gues

by pg 13y ago

Note to Sam: It's possible to anticipate ways HN readers will misunderstand you, and tweak what you write to pre-empt them. It takes some practice, but I'd guess I'm now able to do it maybe 3/4 of the time. In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size they don't have to rely on making something great to grow bigger, but that if you look back at the earliest history of those companies, you'll find most did. I usually put these pre-emptive replies to probable misunderstandings in footnotes, because I don't want to clutter the text with things that are obvious.

pdog 13y ago
Even Microsoft (presented as a possible counterexample) had a great relationship with developers in the early years that sustained its incredible growth.
- coldcode 13y ago
  Where would MS be today if not for the luck of Digital Research turning away IBM? Maybe wind up like Lotus or Ashton-Tate?
adwf 13y ago
Now put it in an algorithm that detects any mention of "only, always, never" or any other absolute. Then insert a boilerplate at the top of such discussions, saying there are always exceptions, but the gist of the argument is still valid ;)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I can't help but feel that if fuzzy logic was taught more widely in computer science courses, people would be more sanguine about "only, always, never" as linguistic qualifiers. ... not that I am without guilt on this ...
  - adwf 13y ago
    The funny thing is that I come from a physics degree background and hence have a tendency to stick with the more scientifically accurate "I think, maybe, probably, possibly, almost always", rather than going for absolutes. However, when you enter into the business world, you tend to find that this kind of language comes across as weak and uncertain. Even though you are merely trying to be correct and not give false impressions! So now I actually appreciate more confident, strong language, because when I read a blog post or article like this, I can take the caveats as being there, but unsaid. I sometimes think that if everyone took this assumption, Hacker News would decimate its comment count!
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      So, you got me to thinking. As a side-effect of his work on expert forecasting[1], Tetlock discovered that people put more stock in those who made confident predictions than those who qualified their predictions. To the point that he basically says: if a person is a famous pundit, they are more likely to be wrong, because the media prefers bold predictions to maybes and perhapses. In business you can be bold or not bold. If you're not bold, you are at a social disadvantage. Then you can be right or wrong. If you are right, everyone hails you as a visionary. If you are wrong, nobody remembers. So in fact, in business, the rational strategy for an individual is to speak confidently and let the dice fly high. [1] I reviewed his book a while back. http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judgement/ http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judg...
      - adwf 13y ago
        Yes it's actually quite an awkward point for me at the moment. I have a side-project that I've been developing for a while. My attachment to it means that I know every single bug and flaw within the product. But at the same time I know that if I add caveats to any marketing (it's a bit alpha/beta, etc.), then it will come across as unconfident. On the other hand, if I just say it's amazing and will change your life, I'll probably (can't resist the language even now...), do far, far better.
- apu 13y ago
  For an example of this, look at the sibling comment by pak (made after yours) =) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844169
  - pak 13y ago
    To which I say, what is the point of words like "only" and "all", if they do not mean what they are supposed to? I'm not trying to be a stickler. Granted, I work mostly in science research, where broad claims are discouraged and quantifying confidence in a hypothesis is expected. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. At best, I think this rule could apply to (maybe) 80% of "huge" tech companies. 80% is a disingenuously long distance from "all companies".
    - steveklabnik 13y ago
      Because humans are not logical inference engines; language is flexible, nuanced and complex. A blog post is not a industry research paper.
larrys 13y ago
I think one of the issues with short form writing where you don't take the time (or have the room) to qualify things is that you are going to open up what you write to multiple interpretations of (what you call) "misunderstanding". Take this statement at the opening: "All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people." The statement "all companies" and "only one way" is pretty complete and absolute by my reading. When obviously there are plenty of large companies that have not relied on word of mouth. For example Boeing. Or Asplundh a large privately help tree contractor. Or haliburton. Etc. Even "in the beginning". Or Fedex is another. Of course there is a subset of "all companies" for which this statement is true. So a footnote would have helped or a few words as qualifiers to the original thought.
pak 13y ago
> In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size they don't have to rely on making something great to grow bigger, but that if you look back at the earliest history of those companies, you'll find most did. (emphasis mine) It's hard to call it a misunderstanding when the title of the post starts boldly with "The Only" and the first paragraph starts with "All companies". The premise of there being some universal rule for growth is absurd and requires only a few counterexamples, of which there are certainly many to consider (this page now contains dozens), to be demonstrably false. By reinterpreting the author's argument with a requalification of most, you've already reached a much more sane argument. But you know as well as I do that this post would never frontpage if it had been called "The Best Way to Get Huge" or "The Way Most Companies Become Huge". Edit: Or maybe it would have anyway? Sam Altman is a partner at YC [1] and I can't help but wonder if such content gets a boost to frontpage no matter what. After all, people have shown that penalties are applied to a hidden list of phrases and domains which boots them off the frontpage [2], so the same principle might be applied in reverse to certain things. For example, the controversy penalty might be removed for certain domains. I'm sorry, but after reading [2] my faith in the scoring system here is at an all-time low. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman [2]: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
- larrys 13y ago
  With all due respect to Sam I have no idea what qualifies Sam to even be opining on this subject without a bit more of a circumspect attitude. If he was a professor of business or had a long standing knowledge of business that would be one thing. The word "most" would certainly be better but even that goes a bit to far with a subject as large as "business" and "companies".
  - ekanes 13y ago
    To be blunt, people who've done consistently well in the startup world run circles around "professors of business".
lnanek2 13y ago
Your footnote isn't even right. There are large companies that are large just because they were the only player, got a government contract, funded because someone wanted a visa or had family connections, etc.. Anyone who brings up the exception will usually have interesting anecdotes, if not data to bring it up, or experience making them say it. So your comment is kind of a waste of space whereas theirs will actually be useful. I consider your comment the same as adding sometimes to the end of every sentence. Maybe true, but useless.
codingdave 13y ago
For example, this comment would have made a lot more sense had it had a footnote reminding everyone that Sam is a partner at YC, and therefore does have reason to keep HN in mind as an audience when writing. I had to figure that out from other comments, because my first reaction was, "Why is pg taking the time to tell some random blogger how to tailor their writing to this audience?" (I'm a casual HN user, and don't keep up with YC, maybe the identity of the partners is more common knowledge in the larger population.)

by pg 13y ago

pdog 13y ago

Even Microsoft (presented as a possible counterexample) had a great relationship with developers in the early years that sustained its incredible growth.

coldcode 13y ago
Where would MS be today if not for the luck of Digital Research turning away IBM? Maybe wind up like Lotus or Ashton-Tate?

adwf 13y ago

Now put it in an algorithm that detects any mention of "only, always, never" or any other absolute. Then insert a boilerplate at the top of such discussions, saying there are always exceptions, but the gist of the argument is still valid ;)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jacques_chester 13y ago
I can't help but feel that if fuzzy logic was taught more widely in computer science courses, people would be more sanguine about "only, always, never" as linguistic qualifiers. ... not that I am without guilt on this ...
- adwf 13y ago
  The funny thing is that I come from a physics degree background and hence have a tendency to stick with the more scientifically accurate "I think, maybe, probably, possibly, almost always", rather than going for absolutes. However, when you enter into the business world, you tend to find that this kind of language comes across as weak and uncertain. Even though you are merely trying to be correct and not give false impressions! So now I actually appreciate more confident, strong language, because when I read a blog post or article like this, I can take the caveats as being there, but unsaid. I sometimes think that if everyone took this assumption, Hacker News would decimate its comment count!
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    So, you got me to thinking. As a side-effect of his work on expert forecasting[1], Tetlock discovered that people put more stock in those who made confident predictions than those who qualified their predictions. To the point that he basically says: if a person is a famous pundit, they are more likely to be wrong, because the media prefers bold predictions to maybes and perhapses. In business you can be bold or not bold. If you're not bold, you are at a social disadvantage. Then you can be right or wrong. If you are right, everyone hails you as a visionary. If you are wrong, nobody remembers. So in fact, in business, the rational strategy for an individual is to speak confidently and let the dice fly high. [1] I reviewed his book a while back. http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judgement/ http://chester.id.au/2012/07/29/review-expert-political-judg...
    - adwf 13y ago
      Yes it's actually quite an awkward point for me at the moment. I have a side-project that I've been developing for a while. My attachment to it means that I know every single bug and flaw within the product. But at the same time I know that if I add caveats to any marketing (it's a bit alpha/beta, etc.), then it will come across as unconfident. On the other hand, if I just say it's amazing and will change your life, I'll probably (can't resist the language even now...), do far, far better.
apu 13y ago
For an example of this, look at the sibling comment by pak (made after yours) =) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844169
- pak 13y ago
  To which I say, what is the point of words like "only" and "all", if they do not mean what they are supposed to? I'm not trying to be a stickler. Granted, I work mostly in science research, where broad claims are discouraged and quantifying confidence in a hypothesis is expected. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. At best, I think this rule could apply to (maybe) 80% of "huge" tech companies. 80% is a disingenuously long distance from "all companies".
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    Because humans are not logical inference engines; language is flexible, nuanced and complex. A blog post is not a industry research paper.

larrys 13y ago

I think one of the issues with short form writing where you don't take the time (or have the room) to qualify things is that you are going to open up what you write to multiple interpretations of (what you call) "misunderstanding". Take this statement at the opening: "All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people." The statement "all companies" and "only one way" is pretty complete and absolute by my reading. When obviously there are plenty of large companies that have not relied on word of mouth. For example Boeing. Or Asplundh a large privately help tree contractor. Or haliburton. Etc. Even "in the beginning". Or Fedex is another. Of course there is a subset of "all companies" for which this statement is true. So a footnote would have helped or a few words as qualifiers to the original thought.

pak 13y ago

> In this case the most common misunderstanding seems to be not to realize that present day big companies were once small. You could have pre-empted that by reminding readers that once companies reach a certain size they don't have to rely on making something great to grow bigger, but that if you look back at the earliest history of those companies, you'll find most did. (emphasis mine) It's hard to call it a misunderstanding when the title of the post starts boldly with "The Only" and the first paragraph starts with "All companies". The premise of there being some universal rule for growth is absurd and requires only a few counterexamples, of which there are certainly many to consider (this page now contains dozens), to be demonstrably false. By reinterpreting the author's argument with a requalification of most, you've already reached a much more sane argument. But you know as well as I do that this post would never frontpage if it had been called "The Best Way to Get Huge" or "The Way Most Companies Become Huge". Edit: Or maybe it would have anyway? Sam Altman is a partner at YC [1] and I can't help but wonder if such content gets a boost to frontpage no matter what. After all, people have shown that penalties are applied to a hidden list of phrases and domains which boots them off the frontpage [2], so the same principle might be applied in reverse to certain things. For example, the controversy penalty might be removed for certain domains. I'm sorry, but after reading [2] my faith in the scoring system here is at an all-time low. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman [2]: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

larrys 13y ago
With all due respect to Sam I have no idea what qualifies Sam to even be opining on this subject without a bit more of a circumspect attitude. If he was a professor of business or had a long standing knowledge of business that would be one thing. The word "most" would certainly be better but even that goes a bit to far with a subject as large as "business" and "companies".
- ekanes 13y ago
  To be blunt, people who've done consistently well in the startup world run circles around "professors of business".

lnanek2 13y ago

Your footnote isn't even right. There are large companies that are large just because they were the only player, got a government contract, funded because someone wanted a visa or had family connections, etc.. Anyone who brings up the exception will usually have interesting anecdotes, if not data to bring it up, or experience making them say it. So your comment is kind of a waste of space whereas theirs will actually be useful. I consider your comment the same as adding sometimes to the end of every sentence. Maybe true, but useless.

codingdave 13y ago

For example, this comment would have made a lot more sense had it had a footnote reminding everyone that Sam is a partner at YC, and therefore does have reason to keep HN in mind as an audience when writing. I had to figure that out from other comments, because my first reaction was, "Why is pg taking the time to tell some random blogger how to tailor their writing to this audience?" (I'm a casual HN user, and don't keep up with YC, maybe the identity of the partners is more common knowledge in the larger population.)