
"Nah, who needs another search engine?" - yurisagalov
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dv0hk/oops_whats_the_most_expensive_mistake_youve_made/c134ycr
======
cstross
Different field, but ...

I'm a novelist. For some reason, folks in the graphic novel biz seem to think
that novelists have a usefully transferable skill set. About six years ago I
got an email from a guy at Marvel comics. "We're looking for a novelist to
take over writing this superhero property we just rebooted, and Warren Ellis,
who did the reboot, suggested you. Wanna Talk?"

We talked, I did some recon on the superhero in question, decided I _really_
hated him and life was too short (even if it _was_ an opportunity to make a
big break into comic writing) ... and turned down "Iron Man".

~~~
krainboltgreene
How does a HackerNews user not like Tony Starks? ;)

~~~
cstross
Tony Stark is Donald Rumsfeld's Mary-Sue.

I am a British center-left -- liberal democrat voting -- Volvo-driving
organic-eating media luvvie. (I'm also a self-employed businessman and a
sometime dot-com veteran; let's not get _too_ carried away with the socialism
here.) Muscular two-fisted violent imperialism lacks appeal. I _could_ have
written Tony Stark as an anti-hero, but the risk for pushback from the fans
would have been significant.

When you're looking for a project to work on for possibly several years, you
should pick something you love. As I was simultaneously looking at two multi-
book contracts from major publishers for books that I would have complete
creative control over (and retain copyright on -- don't forget, Marvel and DC
insist on work-for-hire!) I went with the "do what you love" option.

(The books in question, for what it's worth, were "Accelerando", "Glasshouse",
and the last three Merchant Princes books.)

~~~
Lewisham
I think a lot of the HN crowd identify less with Tony Stark as an ass-kicker,
but more because he's one of the few superheroes that you can truly say is a
"self-made man" (pun unintended, but apt). He's amazing not because of some
genetic accident, but because of his own intelligence.

I don't remember the character being as much of a jerk as RDJ plays him, but
admittedly I only ever watched the cartoons as a kid, not read the comic
books.

~~~
ronnoch
The difference between "genetic accident" and "intelligence" is not big.

~~~
kiba
On the contrary, the _environment_ play a strong role in intelligence.

Few, if any, poor families taught their children to be an _autodidact_. Once
people are autodidact, I would expect a rise in socioeconomic status.

Let face it, it's going to be hard to rise up when you're stuck in a poor
neighborhood with gangsters and bad influences.

------
hristov
That is pretty sad/funny. But to tell you the truth I actually thought that we
did need another search engine towards the end of the 90s. It was around that
time that search got totally broken.

I remember usually if I would search for X, I was sure to get a lot of "hot
sluts taking X up their asses" links no matter what X was. Right before Google
became popular search was totally and completely useless. I remember I
actually went back to using the old Yahoo subject matter directory trees to
find stuff. It was not very helpful, their links were mostly outdated. And for
a while I was trying very hard to bookmark or remember any URL I found
interesting because I thought I would never be able to find them again if i
closed my browser.

And once I learned about Google it was like my eyes were opened once again. So
yeah, if they offered me a job in 1998 and I had tried their website, I would
be all over it. But alas they did not.

It was funny, they actually were looking hard for someone in my field (patent
attorney). They needed a patent lawyer so much that they actually listed the
position in the main Google page, and this was the only time ever that I know
of that they have listed a job position on the main google.com page.
Unfortunately, I was still in law school then :(.

~~~
zxer
"search was totally and completely useless"

Often I feel that in recent years the quality of the results are declining
again. Now if you search for X, you get a lot of webshops, which tell you the
price, but not any other useful information. Or if X is not a product, more
and more of the results are pointing to all kind of aggregator sites which are
again linking to each other instead of useful content or links. Or the similar
case is when all the results on the first page are the same content on
different pages.

So perhaps there is a market opportunity again. Anyone? :)

~~~
ericb
True. I have subconsciously raised my google game over the years to cope.

I use more terms "in quotes" now, include more negative terms, use more site-
specific searches, and use inurl as well. I still get what I want, but I
wouldn't if I wasn't tech savvy.

------
auxbuss
I turned down a meeting with Bill Gates in 1982. It was a personal connection,
and we were going to meet at his house; maybe his dad's house, maybe he was
still living there, I don't recall. MS was ~150 employees at the time and
hiring like crazy. Bill had my cv.

I was visiting from the UK with my girlfriend who was raised in Bellevue. I
think I instead opted to jam with a band called Myth in a barn in Redmond.
Myth morphed into Queensrÿche soon after, so I guess I missed two chances!

~~~
MikeCapone
Do you often think about those "what if"?

~~~
auxbuss
No, never, honestly.

Life is a sequence of half chances. You make your choices, and you make them
for good reasons at the time.

Looking at the past doesn't mean that the present would be as it is if you'd
made different choices. That's a theme used in almost every time-travel movie.

------
thought_alarm
The first time I tried Google I did a search for "foo bar" and it returned web
pages that _only_ contained the phrase "foo bar", and I promptly deleted my
Alta Vista bookmark. What's funny is that I remember it so vividly, like how
someone would remember where they were the day Kennedy was shot.

It would be really great if Alta Vista kept their old search engine and search
index circa 1999 on-line, so we could periodically remind ourselves what the
web used to be like.

~~~
michael_dorfman
But in Altavista, you could have searched on _foo bar_ , _"foo bar"_ , or _foo
NEAR bar_ ; I still wish Google had the latter option.

~~~
sp332
This feature is similar:
[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22google+****+barc...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22google+****+barcode%22)
One star will fill in any number of words. If you use two or more stars, the
number of stars is the number of words Google will fill in.

------
sown
Similar thing happened to me in 1999.

I realized Google was way cooler than alta vista and better at finding unknown
things rather than Yahoo's directory. Truly the future, I thought. I sent in a
resume to do some kind of work not development related; data center & sys
admin stuff. They called me twice but I convinced myself that they would not
have hired me anyways so I never called back.

I was probably right, though, given how their interviewing process is (or
was).

~~~
coryl
Come on now, at least let THEM reject you.

~~~
sown
My whole life is pock-marked with failure and rejection. I can't imagine they
would have been any different.

~~~
lrm242
Whose life isn't?

------
btilly
I met someone who says, _Every time people ask me for career advice, I tell
them they shouldn't ask me. I had the opportunity to be in the first 5
employees at both Yahoo and Google, and finished my PhD instead of doing
either._

------
Zakuzaa
Hindsight is 20/20.

------
lionhearted
Ouch.

I think you've got to judge opportunities largely by the people executing
them. Lots of pedestrian opportunities with great execution do well. Lots of
great opportunities with pedestrian execution go poorly.

------
joshu
Ha, I know that guy. He is completely awesome.

------
dholowiski
Nah, who needs another search engine? Nah, who needs another groupon clone?
Nah, who needs another social networking site? Nah, who needs another virtual
currency based game?

Seems like there's always room for innovation, if you're willing to ignore the
nay-sayers.

~~~
uxp
At least for Google, Facebook (and MySpace) and Groupon, their products became
popular because of how they implemented it, not because of what they built.

Making a better product, successfully, is what sets apart clones from
revolutionaries.

------
muon
Whether we like it or not, chance plays big role in major decision making in
life.

------
mortenjorck
Perceptiveness and luck are all you have in a situation such as this. You
would need an extremely rare caliber of at least one.

------
sagarun
Reminds me of how i screwed up my recent interview with a big internet
company. Every morning i wake up and regret it! #FML

