11 ms·

Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

143 points by brianchu 11y ago

crimsonalucard 11y ago
Instead of living everyday as if it was your last or as if it was going to go forever, how about living everyday as if you're going to die at around 80-85?
- magnifyingglass 11y ago
  It really depends for people. You can keep track of all your thoughts and ideas meticulously, to ensure that none of them are a quantitative exaggeration or minimization of a linguistic translation of your present perceptions of the objective state of 'things'. But if you do that long enough, it is very hard to have an imagination, and you also can easily squash desire and fear this way as well. Dreams may also come out weird, and mathematical, logical, and computational terminology may seem to express multiple meanings about your conscious awareness (implicit metaphor - because logic + truth = ?, which gets very weird when you describe emotions or familial/friendly relations). You can live assuming everything everyone tells you is correct, and you can assume this collectively forms your information sphere and consequently, your image of the world, and even then project that image onto something you call 'reality'. But it's a bubble. People change those bubbles because even though everything in reality tells them that they can not change the bubble, they know that it's still a bubble that you have to be convinced into in the first place. The map is not the territory. -Alfred Korzybski
dsaw 11y ago
> "There are all these things that you never know whether they’re features or bugs—in a company or organization, or even in a personal trait." Very true, and one can defend either side of it as per the situation.
jasode 11y ago
>Peter Thiel is often described in techno-hyphenated words: ... Techno-utopian. I think the journalist got that characterization wrong. Based on PT's writings and interviews[1], he's not a techno-utopian. My cursory google searches doesn't show that others call him that either. Techno-utopians would be people like Ray Kurzweil, Kevin Kelly, and Marc Andreessen. And possibly Elon Musk as well. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yztBoNQRYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yztBoNQRYo
- jseliger 11y ago
  I wouldn't even call them tech-utopians. I would call them people who do know that a) the world can be made a better place but that b) for that to happen people must make it happen. I can't speak for any of the three but I don't think any of them are utopians; understanding that progress can be made isn't the same as utopianism. Journalists seem to like phrases like "techno-utopian" in order to make them sound more like the other and like a different species than their readers.
  - jasode 11y ago
    >I can't speak for any of the three but I don't think any of them are utopians; Well, in the context of media awareness and public perception, it's not if they truly __are__ utopians insomuch as other journalists and pundits call them that. Yes, RK, KK, MA, and others like Tim O'Reilly and Dean Kamen may prefer to call themselves the blander title of "techno-optimists" or "tech-progressives". If the outsiders like journalists choose to exaggerate "optimists" to "utopians" for dramatic effect, it sort of goes with the territory of being in the public eye. (Like Michael Jackson the "king of pop", or 1970s babies the "X Generation". The subjects of those labels didn't give journalists permission to call them that.) The other side of techno-utopians would be tech-cautious writers like Tom Standage (Economist editor) and Evgeny Morozov. In terms of how public figures are viewed, I still don't think Peter Thiel is in the same category as the other people I mentioned.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    People nowadays like to use the word "utopian" as a snarl-word for someone who hasn't gotten the memo that people are So Totally Over This Whole "Progress" Thing.
bsbechtel 11y ago
>>A lot of business books are these pseudo-scientific books that say, “These are the five steps to follow and you will make a lot of money.” But if you have no formulas, you will be open to some new possibilities, some new ideas. This is the beauty of capitalism...there is no formula for success, which means no one can monopolize or control that formula, and everyone has a shot :)
- ignoramous 11y ago
  This may be the prime reason that the next Google may not be born out of an incubator like Y Combinator which has a certain way of mentoring start-ups? I have watched all of their mostly awesome 'How to Start a Start-up' on YouTube and the string of advices they give come off as a sort of a rough formula. Although, there are multiple instances where PG and Sam are pretty clear that some of the best ideas are so absurd that most will dismiss it without a thought.
- matt4077 11y ago
  Some say "owning the means of production" is such a formula. There's certainly a lot of opportunity in technology right now, but capitalism doesn't guarantee such a state. The net neutrality debate is very explicitly about keeping the market open to newcomers.
  - bsbechtel 11y ago
    For software...not so much for ISPs. Aside from that though, I'm also referring to sports, arts and entertainment, healthcare, etc. Industries that are driven by cultural trends, such as fashion or music, what I said above is especially true.
  - ignoramous 11y ago
    The software field is very picky in what it thinks is right... for instance, iron grip of Apple over the entire iOS eco-system is fine with most developers who'd continue to build on their platform, whilst any such move by a company that isn't really in the tech scene as much (like the ISPs) is scrutinized to hell and back.
jeffreyrogers 11y ago
> They’ve done studies at Harvard Business School where they’ve found that the largest cohort always went into the wrong field. So in 1989, they all went to work for Michael Milken, a year or two before he went to jail. They were never interested in Silicon Valley except for 1999, 2000. They're interested in Silicon Valley now. Here's an actual conversation I had recently with a business school student (not verbatim obviously, but accurate as far as content): Me: What are you doing after you graduate from HBS this spring? MBA: I want to do startups. Me: Oh cool, do you know which one you're going to work for? MBA: Oh no, I want to start a startup. Me: Oh okay, what's it going to do? MBA: Don't know yet! Me: Oh...
- skrebbel 11y ago
  What's wrong with that? IMO wanting to be an entrepreneur is one of the best reasons to start a company :)
  - dataker 11y ago
    The problem comes when MBAs, generally without technical background, build companies without real value and expand an already existing bubble.
    - cinquemb 11y ago
      And plenty of devs go and work for such companies and individuals… One would think we'd come up with better ways by now to lessen the allocation of resources for things in the present that are of marginal utility for most people, but somehow, humans have a knack of creating/engaging red queens races relative to other things that are theoretically possible and feasible.
      - dataker 11y ago
        Becomes hard to turn down a compensation that could be 1.5-2x larger than others.
dataker 11y ago
>And I think it’s interesting to explore how unusual that is relative to many other areas of technology, because there are so many innovations that were good for society but the people who came up with them ended up with very little. Okay, co-founders sometimes end up with a fair amount money. However, early employees that actually built the company are often forgotten and given a relatively small sum of money. Not sure if SV really changed that.
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  Right. The discrepancy in reward, prestige, and chance of advancement between founders and employees is Silicon Valley's elephant in the room. Founders don't really take on more risk, because they have the social resources to get seed funding right away and because their backers will protect their careers no matter what happens, but they get orders of magnitude more equity and, if the business succeeds, recognition and credibility. It really is a new caste system, and it might be Silicon Valley's weak point right now. The illusion that most people have when they go there is that they'll be founders in 3 years, when the reality is that most will never be founders because they don't have the right social class background and pedigree. It can still be worth it to be a startup employee if you can get more responsibility and faster promotions than elsewhere. However, if the startup is one of those that always promotes externally, while the engineers who built the original work get shat on for mistakes made in chasing deadlines-- this is a common anti-pattern-- then you're wasting your time and should bounce as soon as possible.
- ryanSrich 11y ago
  If you're an employee hoping to make it rich by working on someone else's startup you're doing it wrong. Work for someone else because you need steady pay. Work for someone else because you appreciate what they're doing. If you want to make a lot of money you need to take risks. Start your own startup. Go 4+ years without a salary. The co founders might not be the ones actually building the product but they're the ones taking the risk. They're the ones not sleeping at night. Trust me. It's a far better gig to just get paid as an employee than spend years on a startup that eventually fails. If Silicon Valley has done anything it's give young people the false impression that starting a startup is a way to get rich. Well...it is. In the same way that playing the lottery is a way to get rich. One is much easier than the other.
dhbradshaw 11y ago
"Always prioritize the substance of what you're doing. Don't get caught up in the status, the prestige games. They're endlessly dazzling, and they're always endlessly disappointing."
ignoramous 11y ago
The interview is excellent, and has great nuggets of wisdom. The one that particularly stood out was-- "People always say you should live every day as though it's your last. I sort of have taken the opposite tack, where I think you should live every day as though it's going to go on forever. You should treat people like you're going to see them again in the future. You should start working on projects that may take a long time. And so I want to live every day as though it's going to go on forever." [0] The one I couldn't agree with (and one that features in his book Zero to One) was about 'Competition is for loosers' I find it ironic that he brings up example of Google and the monopoly it holds over the market... but wasn't Google entering the search market as a competition to multiple other internet firms before they leap-frogged them with all the talent they gobbled up from DEC? I like the hypothesis about how there is always more than one entity (or a person) that's trying to do invent something almost at the same time-- theory of Relativity [1], the airplane[2], the light blub [3]... and how each of them were competing against time as much as each others to be the first to achieve the breakthrough. [0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/218217-work-for-a-better-life-as-if-you-live-forever http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/218217-work-for-a-better-lif... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Histor...
- dantheman 11y ago
  The competition is for losers, in my understanding is saying don't enter a competitive market where you're not going to change it. For example, don't start a restaurant or a store -- unless you're going to be extremely different.
  - jeffdavis 11y ago
    "Competition is for losers" seems like pretty weak reasoning to me. As far as I can tell, it goes something like: Success is not random. Therefore, if you are successful, there is something different about you. Therefore, you are a monopolist. Therefore, competition can't make you successful. But that's not very helpful. Every business on the planet can claim some kind of differentiation -- maybe their supply chain is more efficient, or their company structure is superior, or their sales channels are smarter, or... More differentiation might be "better" in some sense, but differentiation is often decided after the fact. It wasn't obvious that Google was differentiated until they took over the market.
jroseattle 11y ago
Something I found very interesting was Peter's comment: "You try to hire people you could become friends with." I contrast this with Zuckerberg's approach to only hiring people that he would work for (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03/05/mark-zuckerbergs-hiring-secret/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03...). It's probably not fair to put these side-by-side due to context, but Peter's approach resonates with me now. Here's how I reconcile this: Peter's "friends" concept is about the long-term effect on yourself (and your team around you). Mark's "work-for" concept is about putting the very best people around you to build and operate a company. They could certainly co-exist, depending on your personality. Mark's approach (for me) makes great sense on paper, but Peter's approach comes with the value of been-there-done-that. Both have their place, but over the long haul, I can really appreciate what Peter is talking about.
- brador 11y ago
  I see it as Peter saying hire for culture, Mark saying hire for talent.
  - sergiosgc 11y ago
    The answer is, as always, somewhere in the middle. I reconcile both thinking of culture as an hygienic condition, and talent as an order winner. Explaining: if the culture is poor, talent will go unused (it is irrelevant); if culture is good, talent gets used and only then does it make sense to try and hire the best talent.
  - xasos 11y ago
    That's how I took it as well. I remember reading from Max Levchin (?) that a company should hire people exactly like them, culturally, early on. This helps reduce unnecessary conflict when the only thing you're focused on is growth. A prime example is why early startup employees come from the same school as the founders. I think later on, bigger companies focus on talent and culture equally (for the most part).
    - kybernetikos 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- s_q_b 11y ago
  Who in the seven hells do you hang out with? If this is really your observation on human sociology, perhaps I may suggest you need some new friends.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
blake_himself 11y ago
That point about employees not having friends at work being at risk is true in my case - if I don't have friends where I work I don't feel at home, and am indeed more likely to leave. Which is a force for anti-diversity, since I only rarely make friends with Asians (of either sort). And I'd bet that this is the rule, not the exception.
fogleman 11y ago
> Q. Some people outside Silicon Valley see it as a place that is not really in touch with the rest of the country. Does that ring true to you in any way? > A. There is a big disconnect, because you have this sense of stagnation and slow growth in many other places, and you have this incredible boom in Silicon Valley. This makes me think he doesn't get it...

143 points by brianchu 11y ago

Instead of living everyday as if it was your last or as if it was going to go forever, how about living everyday as if you're going to die at around 80-85?

magnifyingglass 11y ago
It really depends for people. You can keep track of all your thoughts and ideas meticulously, to ensure that none of them are a quantitative exaggeration or minimization of a linguistic translation of your present perceptions of the objective state of 'things'. But if you do that long enough, it is very hard to have an imagination, and you also can easily squash desire and fear this way as well. Dreams may also come out weird, and mathematical, logical, and computational terminology may seem to express multiple meanings about your conscious awareness (implicit metaphor - because logic + truth = ?, which gets very weird when you describe emotions or familial/friendly relations). You can live assuming everything everyone tells you is correct, and you can assume this collectively forms your information sphere and consequently, your image of the world, and even then project that image onto something you call 'reality'. But it's a bubble. People change those bubbles because even though everything in reality tells them that they can not change the bubble, they know that it's still a bubble that you have to be convinced into in the first place. The map is not the territory. -Alfred Korzybski

dsaw 11y ago

> "There are all these things that you never know whether they’re features or bugs—in a company or organization, or even in a personal trait." Very true, and one can defend either side of it as per the situation.

jasode 11y ago

>Peter Thiel is often described in techno-hyphenated words: ... Techno-utopian. I think the journalist got that characterization wrong. Based on PT's writings and interviews[1], he's not a techno-utopian. My cursory google searches doesn't show that others call him that either. Techno-utopians would be people like Ray Kurzweil, Kevin Kelly, and Marc Andreessen. And possibly Elon Musk as well. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yztBoNQRYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yztBoNQRYo

jseliger 11y ago
I wouldn't even call them tech-utopians. I would call them people who do know that a) the world can be made a better place but that b) for that to happen people must make it happen. I can't speak for any of the three but I don't think any of them are utopians; understanding that progress can be made isn't the same as utopianism. Journalists seem to like phrases like "techno-utopian" in order to make them sound more like the other and like a different species than their readers.
- jasode 11y ago
  >I can't speak for any of the three but I don't think any of them are utopians; Well, in the context of media awareness and public perception, it's not if they truly __are__ utopians insomuch as other journalists and pundits call them that. Yes, RK, KK, MA, and others like Tim O'Reilly and Dean Kamen may prefer to call themselves the blander title of "techno-optimists" or "tech-progressives". If the outsiders like journalists choose to exaggerate "optimists" to "utopians" for dramatic effect, it sort of goes with the territory of being in the public eye. (Like Michael Jackson the "king of pop", or 1970s babies the "X Generation". The subjects of those labels didn't give journalists permission to call them that.) The other side of techno-utopians would be tech-cautious writers like Tom Standage (Economist editor) and Evgeny Morozov. In terms of how public figures are viewed, I still don't think Peter Thiel is in the same category as the other people I mentioned.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  People nowadays like to use the word "utopian" as a snarl-word for someone who hasn't gotten the memo that people are So Totally Over This Whole "Progress" Thing.

bsbechtel 11y ago

>>A lot of business books are these pseudo-scientific books that say, “These are the five steps to follow and you will make a lot of money.” But if you have no formulas, you will be open to some new possibilities, some new ideas. This is the beauty of capitalism...there is no formula for success, which means no one can monopolize or control that formula, and everyone has a shot :)

ignoramous 11y ago
This may be the prime reason that the next Google may not be born out of an incubator like Y Combinator which has a certain way of mentoring start-ups? I have watched all of their mostly awesome 'How to Start a Start-up' on YouTube and the string of advices they give come off as a sort of a rough formula. Although, there are multiple instances where PG and Sam are pretty clear that some of the best ideas are so absurd that most will dismiss it without a thought.
matt4077 11y ago
Some say "owning the means of production" is such a formula. There's certainly a lot of opportunity in technology right now, but capitalism doesn't guarantee such a state. The net neutrality debate is very explicitly about keeping the market open to newcomers.
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  For software...not so much for ISPs. Aside from that though, I'm also referring to sports, arts and entertainment, healthcare, etc. Industries that are driven by cultural trends, such as fashion or music, what I said above is especially true.
- ignoramous 11y ago
  The software field is very picky in what it thinks is right... for instance, iron grip of Apple over the entire iOS eco-system is fine with most developers who'd continue to build on their platform, whilst any such move by a company that isn't really in the tech scene as much (like the ISPs) is scrutinized to hell and back.

jeffreyrogers 11y ago

> They’ve done studies at Harvard Business School where they’ve found that the largest cohort always went into the wrong field. So in 1989, they all went to work for Michael Milken, a year or two before he went to jail. They were never interested in Silicon Valley except for 1999, 2000. They're interested in Silicon Valley now. Here's an actual conversation I had recently with a business school student (not verbatim obviously, but accurate as far as content): Me: What are you doing after you graduate from HBS this spring? MBA: I want to do startups. Me: Oh cool, do you know which one you're going to work for? MBA: Oh no, I want to start a startup. Me: Oh okay, what's it going to do? MBA: Don't know yet! Me: Oh...

skrebbel 11y ago
What's wrong with that? IMO wanting to be an entrepreneur is one of the best reasons to start a company :)
- dataker 11y ago
  The problem comes when MBAs, generally without technical background, build companies without real value and expand an already existing bubble.
  - cinquemb 11y ago
    And plenty of devs go and work for such companies and individuals… One would think we'd come up with better ways by now to lessen the allocation of resources for things in the present that are of marginal utility for most people, but somehow, humans have a knack of creating/engaging red queens races relative to other things that are theoretically possible and feasible.
    - dataker 11y ago
      Becomes hard to turn down a compensation that could be 1.5-2x larger than others.

dataker 11y ago

>And I think it’s interesting to explore how unusual that is relative to many other areas of technology, because there are so many innovations that were good for society but the people who came up with them ended up with very little. Okay, co-founders sometimes end up with a fair amount money. However, early employees that actually built the company are often forgotten and given a relatively small sum of money. Not sure if SV really changed that.

michaelochurch 11y ago
Right. The discrepancy in reward, prestige, and chance of advancement between founders and employees is Silicon Valley's elephant in the room. Founders don't really take on more risk, because they have the social resources to get seed funding right away and because their backers will protect their careers no matter what happens, but they get orders of magnitude more equity and, if the business succeeds, recognition and credibility. It really is a new caste system, and it might be Silicon Valley's weak point right now. The illusion that most people have when they go there is that they'll be founders in 3 years, when the reality is that most will never be founders because they don't have the right social class background and pedigree. It can still be worth it to be a startup employee if you can get more responsibility and faster promotions than elsewhere. However, if the startup is one of those that always promotes externally, while the engineers who built the original work get shat on for mistakes made in chasing deadlines-- this is a common anti-pattern-- then you're wasting your time and should bounce as soon as possible.
ryanSrich 11y ago
If you're an employee hoping to make it rich by working on someone else's startup you're doing it wrong. Work for someone else because you need steady pay. Work for someone else because you appreciate what they're doing. If you want to make a lot of money you need to take risks. Start your own startup. Go 4+ years without a salary. The co founders might not be the ones actually building the product but they're the ones taking the risk. They're the ones not sleeping at night. Trust me. It's a far better gig to just get paid as an employee than spend years on a startup that eventually fails. If Silicon Valley has done anything it's give young people the false impression that starting a startup is a way to get rich. Well...it is. In the same way that playing the lottery is a way to get rich. One is much easier than the other.

dhbradshaw 11y ago

"Always prioritize the substance of what you're doing. Don't get caught up in the status, the prestige games. They're endlessly dazzling, and they're always endlessly disappointing."

ignoramous 11y ago

The interview is excellent, and has great nuggets of wisdom. The one that particularly stood out was-- "People always say you should live every day as though it's your last. I sort of have taken the opposite tack, where I think you should live every day as though it's going to go on forever. You should treat people like you're going to see them again in the future. You should start working on projects that may take a long time. And so I want to live every day as though it's going to go on forever." [0] The one I couldn't agree with (and one that features in his book Zero to One) was about 'Competition is for loosers' I find it ironic that he brings up example of Google and the monopoly it holds over the market... but wasn't Google entering the search market as a competition to multiple other internet firms before they leap-frogged them with all the talent they gobbled up from DEC? I like the hypothesis about how there is always more than one entity (or a person) that's trying to do invent something almost at the same time-- theory of Relativity [1], the airplane[2], the light blub [3]... and how each of them were competing against time as much as each others to be the first to achieve the breakthrough. [0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/218217-work-for-a-better-life-as-if-you-live-forever http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/218217-work-for-a-better-lif... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Histor...

dantheman 11y ago
The competition is for losers, in my understanding is saying don't enter a competitive market where you're not going to change it. For example, don't start a restaurant or a store -- unless you're going to be extremely different.
- jeffdavis 11y ago
  "Competition is for losers" seems like pretty weak reasoning to me. As far as I can tell, it goes something like: Success is not random. Therefore, if you are successful, there is something different about you. Therefore, you are a monopolist. Therefore, competition can't make you successful. But that's not very helpful. Every business on the planet can claim some kind of differentiation -- maybe their supply chain is more efficient, or their company structure is superior, or their sales channels are smarter, or... More differentiation might be "better" in some sense, but differentiation is often decided after the fact. It wasn't obvious that Google was differentiated until they took over the market.

jroseattle 11y ago

Something I found very interesting was Peter's comment: "You try to hire people you could become friends with." I contrast this with Zuckerberg's approach to only hiring people that he would work for (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03/05/mark-zuckerbergs-hiring-secret/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03...). It's probably not fair to put these side-by-side due to context, but Peter's approach resonates with me now. Here's how I reconcile this: Peter's "friends" concept is about the long-term effect on yourself (and your team around you). Mark's "work-for" concept is about putting the very best people around you to build and operate a company. They could certainly co-exist, depending on your personality. Mark's approach (for me) makes great sense on paper, but Peter's approach comes with the value of been-there-done-that. Both have their place, but over the long haul, I can really appreciate what Peter is talking about.

brador 11y ago
I see it as Peter saying hire for culture, Mark saying hire for talent.
- sergiosgc 11y ago
  The answer is, as always, somewhere in the middle. I reconcile both thinking of culture as an hygienic condition, and talent as an order winner. Explaining: if the culture is poor, talent will go unused (it is irrelevant); if culture is good, talent gets used and only then does it make sense to try and hire the best talent.
- xasos 11y ago
  That's how I took it as well. I remember reading from Max Levchin (?) that a company should hire people exactly like them, culturally, early on. This helps reduce unnecessary conflict when the only thing you're focused on is growth. A prime example is why early startup employees come from the same school as the founders. I think later on, bigger companies focus on talent and culture equally (for the most part).
  - kybernetikos 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

s_q_b 11y ago
Who in the seven hells do you hang out with? If this is really your observation on human sociology, perhaps I may suggest you need some new friends.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

blake_himself 11y ago

That point about employees not having friends at work being at risk is true in my case - if I don't have friends where I work I don't feel at home, and am indeed more likely to leave. Which is a force for anti-diversity, since I only rarely make friends with Asians (of either sort). And I'd bet that this is the rule, not the exception.

fogleman 11y ago

> Q. Some people outside Silicon Valley see it as a place that is not really in touch with the rest of the country. Does that ring true to you in any way? > A. There is a big disconnect, because you have this sense of stagnation and slow growth in many other places, and you have this incredible boom in Silicon Valley. This makes me think he doesn't get it...