
Paul Buchheit: Serendipity finds you - tzury
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/10/serendipity-finds-you.html
======
donaq
Eh, I just got approached by Google via LinkedIn and went for it even though I
was sure I wouldn't get it. Sure enough, I did not get it, but it was
nevertheless a valuable experience. I have learned two things:

1) An n^2 algorithm runs in polynomial time, but it is no longer good enough
when n ~= 100000000. Assuming 1000000 operations a second, that is still a few
hundred years. I have never thought of it because I've just never encountered
that sort of scale. I may never do, but it was still a revelation for me.

2) It confirmed that I am really rusty at algorithms due to one too many jobs
writing CRUD web apps. I need to do something about this. For a start,
practice in my free time and secondly, look for a job that allows me to
develop in that area.

I'm not saying that it wasn't disappointing even though I knew my chances
weren't good, but I gave it my best shot and I am choosing to use the
experience positively. Is that serendipity?

~~~
drgath
Interviewing for jobs you know you won't get is one of the best things you can
do in your career. The insight you gain on both their hiring process as well
as their expectation is priceless. I've interviewed with 5 big web companies,
failed many, but landed one (after a failed first attempt). I credit my
experiences learned from the failed attempts as the reason I was eventually
hired.

------
scorpion032
"You can only connect the dots, looking backwards" - Steve Jobs, at the
Stanford commencement address.

------
michael_nielsen
A closely related story, from HN user kenjackson
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1647146> ):

"How long will you need to find your truest, most productive niche? This I
cannot predict, for, sadly, access to a podium confers no gift of prophecy.
But I can say that however long it takes, it will be time well spent. I am
reminded of a friend from the early 1970s, Edward Witten. I liked Ed, but felt
sorry for him, too, because, for all his potential, he lacked focus. He had
been a history major in college, and a linguistics minor. On graduating,
though, he concluded that, as rewarding as these fields had been, he was not
really cut out to make a living at them. He decided that what he was really
meant to do was study economics. And so, he applied to graduate school, and
was accepted at the University of Wisconsin. And, after only a semester, he
dropped out of the program. Not for him. So, history was out; linguistics,
out; economics, out. What to do? This was a time of widespread political
activism, and Ed became an aide to Senator George McGovern, then running for
the presidency on an anti-war platform. He also wrote articles for political
journals like the Nation and the New Republic. After some months, Ed realized
that politics was not for him, because, in his words, it demanded qualities he
did not have, foremost among them common sense. All right, then: history,
linguistics, economics, politics, were all out as career choices. What to do?
Ed suddenly realized that he was really suited to study mathematics. So he
applied to graduate school, and was accepted at Princeton. I met him midway
through his first year there--just after he had dropped out of the mathematics
department. He realized, he said, that what he was really meant to do was
study physics; he applied to the physics department, and was accepted.

I was happy for him. But I lamented all the false starts he had made, and how
his career opportunities appeared to be passing him by. Many years later, in
1987, I was reading the New York Times magazine and saw a full-page picture
akin to a mug shot, of a thin man with a large head staring out of thick
glasses. It was Ed Witten! I was stunned. What was he doing in the Times
magazine? Well, he was being profiled as the Einstein of his age, a pioneer of
a revolution in physics called "String Theory." Colleagues at Harvard and
Princeton, who marvelled at his use of bizarre mathematics to solve physics
problems, claimed that his ideas, popularly called a "theory of everything,"
might at last explain the origins and nature of the cosmos. Ed said modestly
of his theories that it was really much easier to solve problems when you
analyzed them in at least ten dimensions. Perhaps. Much clearer to me was an
observation Ed made that appeared near the end of this article: every one of
us has talent; the great challenge in life is finding an outlet to express it.
I thought, he has truly earned the right to say that. And I realized that, for
all my earlier concerns that he had squandered his time, in fact his entire
career path--the ventures in history, linguistics, economics, politics, math,
as well as physics--had been rewarding: a time of hard work, self-discovery,
and new insight into his potential based on growing experience."

Source: <http://www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/84n3/ivory.html>

~~~
tocomment
How did he get accepted into all of those graduate programs? I'd love to try
my hand at a new field but i have no idea how to get into a phd program.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Step 0: _Be Ed Witten_.

More generally, if you can get into one Ph.D. program you can probably get
into most of them. Profs, like any employer, want the two key things: be
smart, and get enough done to justify their investment in you. Except that
students are really cheap, especially in the first year or two, and especially
in math or theoretical physics where their cost is mostly in office space,
ever-cheaper computer time, adviser hours and coffee.

------
raganwald
A little off-topic, but what little experience I have about successfully
shipping successful software is that it's all about Dwight's aphorism that
planning is essential but plans are inconsequential.

When you take the mindset that planning exists to help you observe and react
to future discoveries rather than to detail exactly what you're going to do
regardless of future discoveries, all sorts of serendipity is showered on a
development effort.

Thanks, Paul, and sorry about the alliteration.

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fragmede
This is interesting, especially in contrast to "Nah, who needs another search
engine?" from two days ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822750>)

The most important thing to take from the article is this:

> I was skeptical of their business (Google) and didn't expect it to last
> long, but it seemed like it could be fun and educational, so I accepted.

Live a little, and take chances!

------
dirtyaura
My philosophy on planning your own life:

You should think enough (and just enough, no more) about what you want in life
so that when unusual opportunities arrive, you notice them, and jump at them.

~~~
rick888
"You should think enough (and just enough, no more) about what you want in
life so that when unusual opportunities arrive, you notice them, and jump at
them."

This is more or less my take on it. There are opportunities all around us (IE:
the luck part of the equation). But, if you don't have the knowledge,
expertise, or ambition to act on them, you won't be able to take advantage of
it (the skill part of the equation).

~~~
GFischer
Lucky people notice more opportunities and take advantage of them, according
to this article by Richard Wiseman:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-
its-a...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-its-an-easy-
skill-to-learn.html)

Key points from the article

"unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on
looking for something else"

"lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are
skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by
listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive
expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into
good."

~~~
rick888
"lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are
skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by
listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive
expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into
good."

It sounds less like luck and more like skill when it's put this way.

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d4ft
Good content, but my favorite part of the article is the anecdote about how
Paul started at Google. Putting yourself in a place where you have the
opportunity to be lucky makes up some percentage of the total likelihood of
being extremely successful (yes, I consider Paul extremely successful along
many axes), but I think a much larger portion of this equation is actually
being lucky. I guess if you iterate over and over again, by say joining
startups repeatedly, eventually most people get lucky in some way. The
magnitude of that success however, is certainly highly variant.

~~~
raintrees
"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur

~~~
billswift
Repeating a comment I made a couple of weeks ago on another post on
serendipity - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786959> -

This is even stronger than Pasteur's famous, "Chance favors the prepared mind"
- if you are not actually working on a problem, there is no possible way to
benefit from serendipity.

------
caseyalbert
There is a game called rejection therapy that is all about capitalizing on
chances and getting out of your comfort zone:
<http://www.rejectiontherapy.com> . I've tried it and it works.

I've found most chances come only once, and never again. That job interview,
the cute girl right beside you in the produce section (etc) are opportunities
we need to instinctively take (instead of instinctively shy away from).

------
johnmick62
"The program for eliminating ego-fear and unblocking serendipity is very
simple: seek ego-fear. Hunt it down and soak in it. Steal its energy. This is,
by definition, scary. That's good."

Jason Shen is an excellent example of hunting down ego-fear:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1811868>

------
sagarun
Reminds me of my recent interview experience with a big internet company. I
was casually signing up for this Linux user group. To join that group you have
introduce yourself, i just gave the link explaining how i contribute to this
operating system project. One night i was pinged by a strange guy, he just
showed me a job posting on their website and asked me whether i would like to
join. The job description is exactly what i do in free time. It was really
amazing. Everything was just an accident, no plan at all. I sent them my
resume, after couple of phone interviews , they gave me a flight ticket (yay!
that was my first flight) . Did the interview OKAY. I am keeping my fingers
crossed for result of the interview. Even if i don't get the job, it was a
wonderful experience :-)

------
BBonifield
I couldn't agree more. I find myself somewhat dumbfounded when I think about
where I am these days and where I could be. My career path has been a series
of serendipitous events that I could not have possibly planned out. I've
mostly just responded to opportunities given to me, accepting the fear of
rejection if things don't work out. Anyway, great advice.

------
kyro
The problem I have with this is that you're extracting a formula (or non-
formula rather) after the fact. It seems as if you lived your life like any
other person, and things just eventually happened to you.

~~~
dmoney
It sounds like he has lived like any other person with the difference being
his attitude ("Opportunity is all around us, but we have beliefs and habits
that block it."). He might just be lucky. It also might be the case that that
attitude is a powerful tool.

------
krosaen
the part about ego based fear is really good. meditation helps with that

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rblion
Sage advice.

------
joshstrike
Meh. Lucky people always love to talk about how easy it is if you just do what
they did - though they usually have a hard time explaining exactly what it was
that they did.

How does he explain all the happy-go-lucky young fliberdygibbits who ended up
serendipitously taking their first job offer in 1998 from Pets.com? Or those
of us who labored under the impression that "as soon as DataPower takes off"
there'll be bonuses raining from the sky?

Right time, right place. Right age group. Right skill set. 25% of the above
are things you can plan for.

~~~
pg
I think PB is too consistent to dismiss him as merely lucky. He didn't just
happen to be an early employee at Google. He also wrote GMail (which entailed
not only a redesign of the email experience, but also was a pretty dramatic
evolutionary step in web apps because of its then extreme use of Javascript),
built the first version of AdSense, and was the one who came up with "Don't be
evil." It's unlikely to be a coincidence.

Nor does he have a hard time explaining what he did. He has spoken several
times at Startup School about his approach to solving problems. I've learned a
lot from him.

~~~
joshstrike
I'm not saying the guy isn't smart. Just throwing out a little "outliers" to
grease the wheel for the rest of us donkeys.

Sometimes reasons to hope are not best expressed by those who have nothing to
regret. This is one of those times.

~~~
dschobel
I'm with you on this one. After the initial 'serendipity' of google, PB's
reputation was sealed and he could pick his title and company.

While it's interesting to speculate if PB had chosen a pets.com instead of
google what would have happened to his career, it's not particularly
constructive.

The idea that our success is largely beyond our control is sufficiently
pernicious that we're all better off just pretending it is not the case and
keeping our heads down and trying our damnedest.

~~~
nl
If PB had been at Pets.com then I'm guessing FriendFeed would have involved
feeding dogs?

