

Seth's Blog: If you could change your life - twampss
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/if-you-could-ch.html

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lbrandy
Do you see the way this guy is selling you an unpaid internship and honestly
making you consider going for it?

He's a genius marketer. And he also fooled me for a second. But... you cannot
turn an unpaid internship into an MBA through the sheer force of your own
awesomeness.

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run4yourlives
You can turn it into one hell of a learning opportunity though, and given the
clone warriors that business school tends to produce, I'd imagine this is much
more valuable to the right people.

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electromagnetic
No, I'm sure it's much more valuable to the people _he_ knows and who he'll
likely refer you too if he thinks you're good enough.

People who come to Seth will be more than happy to hire someone who has been
taught to see things like he does. They're going to him because he's an
unconventional thinker and they'll go to his apprentices because they hope
they'll be unconventional too.

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aaronblohowiak
He is appropriately askew to convention, he is not radically unconventional.
The difference is paramount.

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electromagnetic
That's true; it's like walking a marathon instead of running so you guarantee
that you'll make it to the finish line without passing out, however being
unconventional would be running the entire thing facing backwards.

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peregrine
It seems to me the type of person he is looking for wouldn't be applying for
his apprenticeship but already starting their own business.

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jncraton
Perhaps, but I am starting to realize that creating a business isn't the most
sure way to get into changing the world. Seth says that it isn't so much about
connections, which is true, but at some point it seems like you have to be
lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to get noticed by the
right people. This seems like an excellent opportunity to increase the
likelihood of those situations.

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petercooper
This is on the front page at the same time as the WSJ article "Any College
Will Do" - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=381582> \- which highlights
how it doesn't really matter where you go or who you study with, it's all down
to your personal drive and attitude.

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swombat
That's a pretty interesting (and probably very effective) way to do your
hiring! Most likely will be very demanding on Seth, but he'll get some second-
to-none colleagues out of it at the very least.

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bd
Joel Spolsky was doing something similar:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBA.html>

I wonder how this went.

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whatusername
From todays HN front page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=382039> (On page 2 of the article)

"Not everybody gets it. Not long ago, we had a management trainee who sat
around waiting for us to give him a formal title and promotion so he could
"get stuff done." Problem was, he had never managed to win enough respect or
influence from the development team to actually do things. He didn't work out
so well; despite being smart and competent, he didn't earn the leadership
position he thought he deserved. He would have been better off thinking about
new features we should develop, writing specs to outline the benefits of these
features, and winning the developers' trust through action instead of waiting
for the title.

Another management trainee didn't care what his title was: He came up with a
new idea for a program and persuaded the team that it was a good idea. I think
he'll go far."

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justindz
It would be particularly sweet if there were some way to more or less
objectively compare the results of a rock star apprenticeship of this sort to
a traditional graduate education. That would be hard to fashion, given some
response bias and Seth's influence over who gets in (if anyone does).

I would bet, though, that studying under a ninja by doing some ninja-tasks
with guidance from the master in a small group setting would at least nurture
a _certain type_ of brilliance more effectively.

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electromagnetic
I thought this was a whole time travel question.

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dotcoma
care to explain? thanks :)

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hs
bush is the most famous hbs mba lol

i hope putting pic of bush won't scare the applicants

