
Fail - siddg
https://www.facebook.com/notes/tanmay-shankar/fail/10156284481025342/
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guard0g
Brings to mind the quote: "He failed in business in '31\. He was defeated for
state legislator in '32\. He tried another business in '33\. It failed. His
fiancee died in '35\. He had a nervous breakdown in '36\. In '43 he ran for
congress and was defeated. He tried again in '48 and was defeated again. He
tried running for the Senate in '55\. He lost. The next year he ran for Vice
President and lost. In '59 he ran for the Senate again and was defeated. In
1860, the man who signed his name A. Lincoln, was elected the 16th President
of the United States."

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natch
While it's important for everyone to learn that thriving past failure is an
essential life skill, this post somehow came off more as a humblebrag as I
read it. These are "failures" in some sense, but very high status ones. Not
looking forward to the raft of copycat humblebrag posts this might inspire.

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dufferzafar
Um, yeah part of me felt so too, but I was thinking, how else could the guy
have phrased it? I mean he's at CMU in a masters program, so to us all his
failures feel big, but I don't think that's how he thinks about them. To him,
they're all just failures. Nothing more, really.

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natch
Sure, but rest assured if he’s human, he has other, less impressive, failures
that aren’t shown. This list is carefully curated. And deliberately published.
Some other options available to him, since you were wondering, would be a)
refrain from posting it; b) use non-humblebrag items to make the supposed
point just as effectively; c) make the point without a list; d) use known
examples from history. These are all perfectly valid. If you think option a is
bad, there are still options b, c, and d. And others I haven’t thought of.

However, the author gets to decide how to write their post. That’s their
right, even if it annoys me. But I’m kind of surprised you think there were no
other options.

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treyfitty
On the topic of failure, I’ve failed to pass facebook’s Data Science
interviews 4 times in 5 years. I’ve been rejected at every level now (phone
screen to the “more signal” round).

At what point do I give up? Each time I interview, it ends up with me
dedicating roughly a week to prepare, and a week recovering from the
rejection.

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cityzen
Honest question, what's the appeal of working at a place like Facebook these
days? It seems like a pretty well known fact that they're a horrible company
in terms of their "product" (advertising and data mining). Is it money and
experience? Being in my 40's with 2 young kids I don't think I could ever
bring myself to contribute to a company like that.

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jazzyjackson
I've thought about this a lot vis a vis "What kind of company do I want to
work for."

Despite not being proud of the product, I think I would still be excited to
work with/learn from other programmers that are at the top of their field.

For a few years at least :)

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iforgotpassword
Working at a company that makes software for hacking and spying on people that
sells to oppressive governments sounds pretty exciting and challenging too.
Where do you draw the line?

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golemotron
I don’t think we think very much about how culture-specific self-improvement
and striving for success are. They are ok but they are not universals in the
human condition. From some vantage points they just look comical or odd.

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell
you different.” - Kurt Vonnegut

It doesn’t take seeing the firebombing of Dresden to cultivate some of
Vonnegut’s perspective.

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qrbLPHiKpiux
Let me explain how happy I am to read this. This is beyond motivating. In my
profession, failure is part of the job. In fact, I'm not in a "job" per se,
but a profession, the "practice" of a healing art. Doctor's do not "work."
They "practice." They make mistakes, learn from them, and continue on.

I have a child in middle school now. At the parent orientation, the principal
addressed everyone. He said he welcomes mistakes, actually encourages them to
try and fail, because that's the only way you learn.

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simonhamp
This is so important. We’re generally wired to portray only the positive and
successful things about our lives, putting on the facade of success despite a
much greater rate of failure.

Failing is how we learn - if we choose to learn from our failures.

I wrote a brief thought about this a few years ago[1], I hope you’ll read it
:)

[1]: [https://medium.com/@simonhamp/don-t-fail-at-
failing-9633aed0...](https://medium.com/@simonhamp/don-t-fail-at-
failing-9633aed02a55?source=linkShare-d33a8c32c05d-1535799631)

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harshgupta
I am pretty sold on the idea that failure of ambition = good, failure of sloth
= bad. This post seems to be in line with that.

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drc0
what is this?

