
The Power of the Marginal (2006) - dirtyaura
http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
======
nooron
I like the bit about climate differences and workspaces. But to say that
slavery is the "cartoon version" of what the Civil War was "about" is
absolutely wrong. The Civil War was unambiguously about, above or preceding
other causes, slavery. Esquire isn't my go to for history, but this author
does a great job piling on primary source evidence contradicting PG's claim:
[http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/civil-war-was-about-
sl...](http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/civil-war-was-about-
slavery-022814)

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pshin45
> _By conventional standards, Jobs and Wozniak were marginal people too.
> Obviously they were smart, but they can 't have looked good on paper. They
> were at the time a pair of college dropouts with about three years of school
> between them, and hippies to boot. [...] Now a startup operating out of a
> garage in Silicon Valley would feel part of an exalted tradition, like the
> poet in his garret, or the painter who can't afford to heat his studio and
> thus has to wear a beret indoors. But in 1976 it didn't seem so cool. The
> world hadn't yet realized that starting a computer company was in the same
> category as being a writer or a painter. It hadn't been for long. Only in
> the preceding couple years had the dramatic fall in the cost of hardware
> allowed outsiders to compete._

Clearly the people who make up the "insiders" and "outsiders/marginal" has
changed and evolved over time - In the 70s and 80s Jobs & Woz were considered
marginal, but eventually became the archetype of successful startup founders
(the "brilliant marketer" and "genius hacker" tag team). More recently,
Zuckerberg has also become a popular archetype as the "technical-founder-and-
CEO-in-one".

That being said, I wonder who the outsiders living and working on the margins
are today, as it pertains to successful startup founders. Based on the current
zeitgeist, my first guesses would probably be (1) women, (2) (EDIT:
underrepresented) ethnic minorities, and (3) people age 40 and above.

However, I'd love to hear what you all think...

~~~
nostrademons
Big company employees, particularly those not employed by AmaGooFaceApp. Right
now, everybody writes them off as boring or untalented because the products
those companies put out are boring and unremarkable. But I've met a number of
folks at Cisco, Yahoo, Lockheed, Motorola, IBM, etc. and there's a lot of
hidden talent locked up in big companies that's completely squandered because
the organizations are dysfunctional. WhatsApp proved that not all long-time
Yahoo employees were idiots.

Students, particularly high-school students. When I've gotten on IRC in
#haskell or GitHub for major open-source projects, I've always been amazed to
find that some star hacker who understands the whole system is under 20. Heck,
I remember being that gifted teenager, but the Internet was brand new then and
it was hard to find programming communities or places I could exercise my
talents until I was in my 20s in college.

Public-sector employees. I've learned, since joining Google, that the media is
always about 2 years behind in reporting what the hot startup is that all the
Xooglers are leaving for. When I joined in 2009 that was Facebook, but when I
checked myself most of the high-profile departures were for startups; Facebook
had been the popular destination in 2007. In 2011 the media reported on
Xoogler startups, but most people leaving then were actually going to the new
generation of fast-growers, like DropBox and Square and Pinterest. In 2013
they started making a big deal about all the departures for DropBox. Now what
I'm seeing is that most of the folks I actually care about who leave are going
to non-profits or public sector work. Things like Code For America, Khan
Academy, or academia. Social impact investing. Just bumming around and
advising startups.

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001sky
_Imagine, for example, what would happen if the government decided to
commission someone to write an official Great American Novel. First there 'd
be a huge ideological squabble over who to choose. Most of the best writers
would be excluded for having offended one side or the other. Of the remainder,
the smart ones would refuse such a job, leaving only a few with the wrong sort
of ambition. The committee would choose one at the height of his career—that
is, someone whose best work was behind him—and hand over the project with
copious free advice about how the book should show in positive terms the
strength and diversity of the American people, etc, etc._

