
Learning how to think - nedwin
http://dcurt.is/startups-ruin-you
======
aboodman
Why does the fucking kudos dot auto-kudo on mouseover!?

Dustin seems like a smart guy, and the article makes sense and everything, but
then my mouse casually tracks across that dot and it starts-a-throbbing, and
I'm like "oh crap oh crap, what is this? do i want it?, omigod, I don't know,
oh no, move fast before something happens!" and then I don't remember what the
number was before and I'm not sure if I kudo'd or not, and my heart is racing,
and I've lost a few hours off my lifespan...

And this is all before I realize it's a fucking counter on a webpage, and it
doesn't matter whether I increment it or not.

I hate you auto-kudo, I hate you so much.

~~~
aroman
So it's clever and quirky. Yeah, it's not a scientific poll. I used to get
pretty annoyed with that because your gut reaction is, "hey! I didn't know
that would happen! I didn't give your consent to count my vote!". But really,
when you take a step back, you realize that internet karma means absolutely,
positively, _nothing_.

It's really all meaningless Internet points. The auto-voting karma button
reminds me of that, and I now appreciate the digital "up yours!" every once in
a while ;)

~~~
wahnfrieden
I think we're trained to feel anxious about it because of services like
Facebook where clicking an upvote button not only delivers a point but puts
your name behind it and potentially broadcasts that to your friends and
followers.

~~~
sliverstorm
Nah. Humans have been susceptible to meaningless points since the dawn of
time.

~~~
wahnfrieden
I'm not addressing proclivity, only the anxiety expressed by the OP.

------
nostromo
This reminds me of "the designer's curse." I often find myself getting pissed
when something is designed poorly. It used to be poorly designed software and
websites, but now it's anything.

Like, for example, when I buy something, pull the sticker off, and it leaves a
thick residue that won't come off. Or, when I'm in a car without any
indication of which side the gas tank is on.

My significant other makes fun of me for this. "Who thought doing THIS was a
good idea? Do they buy their own f*ing products?" I'll say. Meanwhile, he has
a non-founder view of life, "Meh, it's like that because it's like that."

He's clearly more zen than I am.

~~~
ipince
I don't recall being in a car w no indication of which side the gas tank was
on. Usually a little arrow indicates it next to the gauge.

~~~
nostromo
Yes, that's what I'm referring to.

I use a service called Car2Go quite often which rents Smart cars exclusively.
For some reason they decided not to include the little arrow.

[http://0.tqn.com/d/cars/1/0/6/9/1/ag_08fortwo_speedo.jpg](http://0.tqn.com/d/cars/1/0/6/9/1/ag_08fortwo_speedo.jpg)

~~~
CamperBob2
Not that it's your fault they didn't include the arrow, but when you rent a
car, you want to walk completely around it anyway before driving away.
Otherwise they may try to stick you with pre-existing damage that wasn't
noticed the last time the car was turned in.

(I've heard it's a good idea to shoot a video of the walkaround with your
phone, but that seems OTT.)

~~~
aestra
I have never rented a car where the rental person didn't do this with me.
Nobody is going to remember what side the gas tank is on though a week later
when you fill it up.

~~~
count
I've never rented a car where the rental person was even near the car when I
walked it. And I rent cars every few days...maybe the lack of personal
attention is an airport thing.

------
redschell
The implications of this have always fascinated me. It's hard to go back to
being a worker when you've spent time as a boss, but we also know that 75% of
venture-backed startups fail.

What happens to the failures? Can they go back to work and fall back in line?
Or are we going to have "Professional Founders" or "Business Engineers" down
the line that have a decade or two of experience starting and running
companies, none of which survived past infancy.

It's hard to imagine in the very positive atmosphere that most young
entrepreneurs live in. What are you supposed to do when you want to keep
building companies, but they just keep failing? Are you prepared to say "I
can't do this very well" and move on? Where will you go?

I personally don't think startups are the tech equivalent of starting a band
or going Hollywood, but I can understand why some would employ the analogy.

------
ForrestN
I'm sorry but this vision of a "thinker" who is always imagining the future so
he can "out-innovate" his competition is a little ridiculous. PG's point is a
psychological one: many of the founders he encounters are lack the self esteem
to thrive when they have control.

The startups that win do so only very rarely because a visionary founder
innovatively guessed the future trajectory of culture. In my opinion being
good at running a company mostly requires the usual mix of soft skills plus a
strong, unconflicted motive to succeed.

~~~
groundCode
Agreed. It's all too easy, in hindsight, to claim that a happenstance was
because of some great vision of "Privacy is a relic of the past" but more
often than not, serendipity wins.

------
zainny
I can personally relate to the part about no going back to just being a worker
bee once you've tasted blood.

For me I did my "startup" at a pretty early age (I didn't call it a startup
then - it was just me building software and selling it online) and it has
forever changed my perception of the workplace. I've tried slotting back in to
some regular jobs since then and it hasn't really worked out all that well - I
get anxious, frustrated with the slow pace, second guess too many decisions,
wonder why everyone around me doesn't have that same passion/enthusiasm, etc.

Short of doing another startup, I've found contracting to be a good middle
ground for me (for the time being).

~~~
mgkimsal
> I get anxious, frustrated with the slow pace, second guess too many
> decisions, wonder why everyone around me doesn't have that same
> passion/enthusiasm, etc.

Same here, and the frustration is compounded when you get slogans like "take
ownership" thrown at you, but then find out you're not allowed to own the
project, just the problems.

~~~
solistice
I think a lot of things like "take ownership" are working ideas lost in
translation, applied by people that don't properly understand how to apply
them.

For example, it works well where employees are given the responsibility to
take ownership of things. Some guy who runs a business that runs well on that
premise writes a blog post about, or an article that's printed on page 23 of
Inc. Magazine. Some middle manager reads that article and thinks "yeah, that
could help me get to this quarters target" and tries to implement it in a
company that isn't structured that way. Since he doesn't want to restructure,
he simply tells his employees "yeah, you should take ownership now, that's an
order", and the inevitable happens.

------
gfodor
As someone who worked at startups, started my own, and had a great time and
good outcome, I'm considering going back into a large company for some time
just to see what it's like.

I think this article is true in the sense that startups cause you to lose any
sense of being satisfied as a mindless "worker bee", but I'm not willing to
rule out the idea that in some larger companies non-"worker bee" types who are
driven individuals who want to make a dent can actually get a lot done with
the resources of a large organization at their disposal. If you're in a good
position mentally and financially, you have the luxury to just walk if the
place is a dysfunctional mess or isn't letting you accomplish your larger
goals quickly enough.

I think there's a certain point where you do need to step into the pool of
ideas again: startup culture is pretty insular and at the end of the day if
you are always working with a small team of like-minded people you are likely
to not make the connections necessary to produce real innovation. Startups are
certainly challenging in many ways. But there's a certain type of challenge
you get when given a specific task by a mentor in a large company that seems
impossible at first that really levels-up your skills. I've found that a lot
of the type of learning in startups I've had has been rising to challenges
that materialize out of the need to ensure the survivability of the product
and business. These challenges are of a completely different flavor than those
crafted by older and wiser mentors who have an interest in passing on their
skills and throw you curve balls intentionally to make progress towards a
larger goal while pushing the limits of your technical skill.

~~~
eudemo
> mindless worker bee

A little bit respect could be nice

~~~
gfodor
I was using the words used by the article, not my own. i'll put quotes around
it (since I generally disagree with this analogy anyway)

------
at-fates-hands
>>> it’s knowing how to think. Most people don’t know how to strategize. Most
people don’t know how to take what they see in the world and use it to invent
something new.

I learned how to think critically in college. I had a few exceptional
professors I gravitated towards and they really pushed me to learn this on my
own. Through a few very involved research papers, I learned some of the key
tenets of doing this.

I kept waiting for that grain of knowledge he was about to bestow on his
readers on what exactly critical thinking is - but it never came.

Just in case you needed it. . .

[http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1120.asp...](http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1120.aspx)

------
alightergreen
"...for yourself.' would be a great subtitle to this article.

Of those who do survive 18 years of public education and still mentally check-
in on a daily basis, many they aren't capable of creating something outside of
what they are given. That's the most troubling aspect of what he (and PG) are
discussing.

These people can understand and execute complex instructions, but can't come
up with their own instruction manual that actually fits their situation. Lots
of successful people could be 100x more successful if they would stop trying
to figure our how to make 200-page management fads work in their situation.
Instead, if they would look at that situation, and engage their own brain and
gut instinct to come up with solutions, they would be so much more efficient
and effective.

If "so-so said to do it," or "I read it in a book," is your TOP reason for
doing something--to me that's a 99% accurate sign that's its not the most
effective thing you could be doing right now. Engage your brain.

------
reedlaw
I find the part about Facebook ominous:

> There is an insanely huge difference between, “We’re making a site for
> connecting to your friends” and, “Privacy is a relic of the past, so we’re
> going to push people to open up their lives and share, connecting them
> together.”

This is "learning how to think"? If so, then I'm afraid the NSA, Google, and
Facebook are far ahead of those of us who just want to connect privately with
friends. I would say that Facebook has learned how to think about ways to
exploit the human impulse to connect. Hopefully there is a business
opportunity in platforms for private connections as well. It may take years
for public awareness of privacy issues to reach that level, but I hope someday
people will look back at Facebook as a relic of the past when personal privacy
was exploited for corporate gain.

------
ojbyrne
In most of the world, and in most of the United States, your thoughts are
owned by your employer. If you want to eat, have a roof over your head, raise
a family, you almost always sign away the rights to your thoughts.

The exception is California. And that's why Silicon Valley is in Silicon
Valley.

~~~
anonymousDan
Amen! For the last few years I've bleated about this to any one who will
listen. A few years ago I moved from academia to industry and I was shocked by
how restrictive the employment contracts are (I'm in the UK). I reckon it's
also a major contributor to wages being so much lower over here. How can we
change it though? I'd love it if we could get legislation introduced similar
to that in California. What practical steps could we take?

------
rgsteele
I wonder whether this article by Dustin is the same one referenced in this
tweet:
[https://twitter.com/dcurtis/status/373243436331069440](https://twitter.com/dcurtis/status/373243436331069440)

~~~
wahnfrieden
I find it ironic that he feels he's subverting HN when HN has become
absolutely fixated on divisive opinions and exploring all subtrees of
viewpoints to completion. Polarizing articles give everyone an outlet here.

~~~
ballard
LOL, true. Pedantic haters gonna hate pedantically.

Also:

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2205-there-is-an-inverse-
rela...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2205-there-is-an-inverse-relationship-
between-level-of-anonymity-and-quality-of-conversation)

------
a_bonobo
Reminds me a lot of the PhD-student experience; for years you sit in courses
in a relatively strict environment to finally get your BSc (or your MSc or
whatever), and you start your PhD - and suddenly you're on your own, you have
to plan your own time, outline your own research, you have to make sure that
your program stays on track, deliver results on time etc.

Not many people can handle this sudden shift which is why a PhD is not
something for everyone.

~~~
jrkelly
Yes, exactly. I think PhDs are actually an undertapped pool for startup
founders. There are major overlaps in the skill set, IMO.

------
derefr
Related is the concept of "agency":

•
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/id2/to_what_degree_do_you_model_peop...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/id2/to_what_degree_do_you_model_people_as_agents/)

•
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/5i8/the_power_of_agency/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/5i8/the_power_of_agency/)

------
deerpig
This post articulates a problem that is an order of magnitude worse in East
Asia. We are working in Cambodia and Laos (we gave up on Thailand, they're a
basket case) to encourage tech startups and develop talent that can think on
their own in the workplace.

People here are not just willing to learn but enthusiastic. But they are like
Paul Graham's baby birds, they don't even know what to learn or how to begin.

The Chinese education model is based on the idea that a student is an open
vessel that the teacher pours their wisdom into. More often than not, that
pouring consists of little more than route memorization of lists and facts.
Computer education is little more than teaching how to operate GUI
applications without any understanding of what they are doing.

Save a document? I asked my staff last year why you save documents and what
happened when you clicked on "save" (no one had heard of C-c). No one had a
clue. Digging deeper I found that half of them didn't have a clear idea what a
file or file system was. And these were people who had graduated from
technical schools! This wasn't the case even five years ago before Android and
the iPhone became ubiquitous.

And that is part of the problem, mobile devices are little more than consumer
electronics rather than general purpose computers. Everything is abstracted
away from the user so there is less chance for people to learn how things
work.

Last night my partner who is on a business trip in Tokyo, asked me to check
his girlfriend's android phone because he hadn't been able to get through to
her on Viber for a couple of days. When I checked her phone, it turned out
that she had tried to install a new game, did a factory reset to free up
memory, installed the game and then wondered why she had no email, facebook or
viber on the phone...

When I get new staff, the most difficult thing to teach them is that if they
have completed a task that had been given to them, that they have to hand in
the work and ask for a new task. But it gets even worse. Many times, if they
run into a problem in the task they just give up and don't tell anyone. When
you ask them what happened, they give you a blank look and say something like,
I couldn't open the file. So instead of asking someone for help they spent the
next three hours on facebook until a manager noticed. Very frustrating.

The problem is that they have never been allowed to take responsibility for
trying to solve a problem on their own. Traditional management and education
systems here reward blind, literal obedience which is coupled with an abject
fear of failure.

It's not enough to teach people how to think for themselves. They must have
the freedom to fail, and be given the responsibility that goes along with it.
We have our work cut out for us....

~~~
pieterhg
I'm currently living in Chiang Mai and curious what made you give up Thailand?

~~~
deerpig
I lived in Thailand for 16 years. We had a successful 3D animation studio in
Osaka that had lot's of business but our expenses were so high that we weren't
making a profit. We thought that moving to Thailand would save us money, and
we wouldn't have to live in a damp shoebox smelling of stale cigarettes
(actually I loved Japan, but it's just too damn expensive).

At that time (in the 90's) it was still a pain in the ass to get a work visa
and run your own business, but it could be done with a bit of money paid in
the right places.

But as the years passed by, the government kept changing immigration rules
almost every other month. The amount of paperwork needed to renew visas
increased dramatically. You have to have a map showing where you live. You
have to show photos of you working in your office, photos of you and all of
your staff outside your office. We had an application turned down one time
because I wasn't wearing the same color shirt as the staff in the photo.

Then they came down hard and changed ownership laws so that foreigners can't
own 51% of a Thai company and closed the common loophole of using proxy
shareholders.

Meanwhile we had been having a terrible time with Thai staff. Cambodian and
Laos workers don't know how to learn but they try very hard to learn, and put
real effort into learning english (which we need in order to deal with our
customers around Asia). We are primarily a Unix and Linux shop (back then we
were using SGI workstations for animation, modeling and rendering). But we had
a difficult time finding staff who could even be bothered to learn different
systems.

So it finally got to the point where we closed up shop, and I continued to
live in Thailand, but ran my business out of Hong Kong (where I lived for 10
years before Osaka).

But in the end, the cost of living in Thailand had grown so high, and
immigration had become such a pain in the ass that I finally gave up even
living there.

We've now consolidated all of our business and are headquartered in Phnom Penh
and it's been, all in all a very good experience. In thailand, expats spend
15-20% of all conversations talking about visas (even if you have a
work/marriage/retirement visa). In the past year in Cambodia I don't think the
subject has come up more than a couple of times).

I love Thailand in many ways, but the governments xenophobia, and the tendency
for girls there to treat you as an ATM card with no pin number just wore me
down.

~~~
dualogy
Since you don't have any contact details in your profile.. I play a lot in
Unity3D these days and am Phnom Penh-based (well returning from a break on
Wednesday). If you wanna grab coffee one fine day and chat about "digital biz
in SEA", then just holler!

~~~
deerpig
Email sent. If anyone is interested in what we're doing in Cambodia, (which is
relevant to helping people to think on their own) please check out our web
site [http://chenla.la/studyhall.html](http://chenla.la/studyhall.html) and
our longer term vision
[http://chenla.la/plancddr.html](http://chenla.la/plancddr.html)

------
cjbarber
I think this is an important point, however it can be applied to many more
roles than just founding a startup.

When an engineer (of any type) can consider the how and why they are building,
they learn to question some of the tasks they have been assigned, potentially
resulting in a more efficient execution.

If a programmer is told to build a search function into a website, and he
builds that, great.

If a programmer is told to build this, and he considers why, and realizes that
certain things on the website aren't as clear as they could be, and decides to
not only build a search function but also suggests certain usability and
discoverability improvements to the website, then much better results will be
had.

------
nadam
About pg's observation that founders don’t realize how independent they can
be:

It may be a selection bias: Probably a founder wants to participate in the YC
program partly because they want advices, feedback and maybe just
psychological 'confirmation' (social confirmation) more than people with the
same talent/knowledge who do not apply to YC.

I do not say that it is bad. Overconfidence in one's capabilities can be also
dangerous. And needing social confirmation is a very natural thing. I just say
that there is probably a small selection bias in play here.

------
capex
This post has an interesting url: [http://dcurt.is/startups-ruin-
you](http://dcurt.is/startups-ruin-you)

------
eshvk
I wonder if the distinction between working for a startup and founding one
should be emphasized more clearly when such an article pops up?

------
normloman
This guy acts like he knows exactly why Facebook succeeded and MySpace failed.
And sure, it all seems so predictable in retrospect. But nobody could have
predicted the rise of Facebook.

Furthermore, attributing the rise to one cause (Facebook is about sharing) is
simplistic and naive. Early Facebook wasn't too different from MySpace. Could
have just been luck.

------
bambax
> _discovering (...) that you have wings and can fly. And once you discover
> it, there is no going back. It’s addictive and powerful. It ruins your
> ability to be a worker bee, because you’ve tasted blood... (etc.)_

And then:

> _You should follow me on twitter_

Isn't the whole point, to not _follow_ but rather, lead?

------
Vecrios
I have a questions that is irrelevant to the article per se, but rather the
design of the web page. Is blog organized by a CMS or the design is entirely
of Dustin's creation (I'm pretty sure I've seen it before?) I'm specially
interested in the blog design, I like it.

------
slig
(English student here)

The title should be "Startups ruins you" because it can be rewritten as "it
ruins you", or I'm missing something here?

Thanks!

~~~
anaphor
Do you know what my name means? Also, as others have pointed out, the
particular anaphor you'd use here is "they" which is (generally) plural.

Edit: sidenote, this is why linguists dislike many people in the humanities
who blindly follow "rules" and end up writing badly as a result because they
make hypercorrections all over the place.

~~~
coldtea
> _Do you know what my name means?_

Well, I do. In simple terms, a word refering to another one in the same
sentense/text (e.g. "My Xbox arrived and it was great" \-- it being an anaphor
for the Xbox).

It's a shortened version of the greek word "anaphora", which means "reference"
/ relation etc. It comes from the words ana (which roughly means "again" or
"anew") and phora (pherein) which means "carries" (connotes, etc).

In the example case, "it" "carries again" the banana (in the sense that it
refers to it again from another place).

------
jusben1369
I think the most profound thought I had from reading that article was "Animal
Farm"

~~~
dmoney
Care to elaborate?

------
indubitably
this evening's hagiography

------
jarek
lol

~~~
jarek
tldr: we are special snowflakes

------
ww3
> Privacy is a relic of the past, so we’re going to push people to open up
> their lives and share, connecting them together.

Privacy is not a relic of the past, but a lot more that you intend to be
private is and/or could be made public.

Information is like an infectious agent. Even if you want to keep it to
yourself, if you are around others, it will likely spread, though you can
control it to some extent. Even when you think it is eradicated, it may still
be lurking, like smallpox and polio, to come back with force later. If you
live in a cave in a large forest alone, the chance of it spreading is much
lower. If you live close to others in a village, there is still a chance of
infection. Few really want to live totally alone, so infection is almost
impossible to avoid. But, no one can stop you from moving to the forest, or at
least wearing a surgical mask.

~~~
001sky
_Information is like an infectious agent. Even if you want to keep it to
yourself, if you are around others, it will likely spread_

digital gossip.

