
Climbing the wrong hill (2009) - brianbaquiran
http://cdixon.org/2009/09/19/climbing-the-wrong-hill/
======
uiri
What people say that they want and what people actually want are frequently
two very different things. When it comes to finding product-market fit, this
is obvious. There is an old quote often attributed to Henry Ford: "If I had
asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." It is
better to look at people's actions and behaviour rather than their words when
judging what they actually want.

The people whom cdixon talks to that say they want to be '"working at or
founding a startup"' are lying. They are lying to themselves first and
foremost and only secondarily to cdixon. Their actions speak much louder than
those words. Those actions say that they want to safety and security of the
job that they don't enjoy rather than the risk and uncertainty of a startup.

~~~
ci5er
"Startup-founder" has become a fashion accessory. A bucket-list item. A cool
factor.

As much as I don't wish for another down-turn, I will admit that it washes out
the gold-diggers, the frauds and the wantapreneurs.

~~~
mirkules
> He has decided he hates Wall Street and wants to work at a tech startup
> (good!).

> How can smart, ambitious people stay working in an area where they have no
> long term ambitions? I think a good analogy for the mistake they are making
> can be found in computer science.

It's as if being an entrepreneur is the end-all, be-all of all careers. It's
hard work. It's riddled with failure. It's not for everybody.

In addition, the algorithm that the author attempts to describe is called
Simulated Annealing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing)

~~~
ci5er
For the system, it's like the particle swarm algorithm (PSO). Well, fine, the
system will do fine. But it's really hard on ants.

EDIT: Almost all multi-agent exploratory algorithms have these
characteristics: evolution, free-market capitalism.

And we all (as the species, as the beneficiaries of the system) benefit, even
if 10M sperm died to give us 1K eggs to give us 1 living turtle to get back to
the beach to re-spawn. The species will live. The ecosystem will adapt and
thrive -- but it is very wasteful in terms of point-probes on the multi-
dimensional problem space. 1K:1 or 1M:1 die, to have the one survive, because
it found the niche in the problem space. That's all fine and dandy until we
realize that each of us are the point-probes. We think that we are better than
that. Well, maybe we are. In 1000 years, they will look back and see.

EDIT2: > It's as if being an entrepreneur is the end-all, be-all of all
careers. It's hard work. It's riddled with failure. It's not for everybody.

Well, for the system, it's great. The system searches for it's maximum
potential. For the entrepreneur, he's just a point-sample (in one algorithm),
or a geodesic field in yours. These things are tried and tossed away as if
they are trash if they don't "fit".

Nothing wrong with that ... it's as if the universe is using the human geoplex
as a hive-mind to achieve something greater. But, we, as individuals, might
have opinions about how we want to be treated as agents of this algorithm.

~~~
mirkules
Looking up PSO, I came across Russell Eberhart's name as the co-author of the
algorithm. He is also the author of the excellent book called Swarm
Intelligence where I first encountered the Simulated Annealing algorithm (and
many other cool ones)

~~~
ci5er
I first came across it when I was hitting certain boundary conditions w/ GA/GP
in the early 90s. It's pretty great. Of course, as stochastic methods go, you
never know when they are going to get there. I am gratified to find recent
research in the DL community going back and saying, "you know what? some of
these GA/GP/PSO critiques of multi-layer NN were right, and they had something
to say!". But, I'm too old and grumpy to do anything with either gratitude, or
revenge or research dollars now. I just mostly tell the kids to get off my
lawn.

EDIT: I'm simply saying that saying: "I told you so!" 25+ years later doesn't
get me my life or my wife back. I was a misplaced, from my agent-centric-
point-of-view, sample. If I could only learn to lean back and give it up for
England. (just kidding)

------
sandworm101
>>“What do you want to be doing in 10 years?” The answer is invariably
“working at or founding a tech startup”

Funny. I deal with startups all the time. When I ask startup employees where
they want to be in 10 years they invariably say "Working for Google" or some
version of "Working for someone more stable than this bag of cats". When I
speak to startup founders, honestly and in private, the answer is some version
of "On the other side of either and IPO/buyout". The employees look for
stability, thier bosses cash.

The grass is always greener. I once worked in film/TV and everyone wants to
hear the stories. They all think it was so much fun. It was hell. That
glorious job is never what you think. Except fighter pilot. Every one of the
dozen or so I've met live and embrace the stereotypes.

~~~
TeMPOraL
This is the reason I avoid startup products as much as I can. Because like you
say, their primary goal is the exit. Which is usually the opposite of what the
copy says on their website ("we care about the product!"), and it's totally
the opposite of what I want as a customer. I'm not looking for companies who
try to cheat me into becoming their customer by promising great future, only
to bail out at earliest convenient moment.

------
morgante
It's important to realize that working for someone else can be the best way to
prepare yourself for a startup. Sometimes the best way to climb the higher
hill is first to climb the short one and then work your way up the saddle.

Starting a startup is a _lot_ easier when you're (relatively) financially
secure. There's no way I would have been able to survive the first 6 months of
my startup (when I didn't have any revenue coming in) if I hadn't saved up a
decent amount of cash from working elsewhere (not to mention that working for
others gives you important skills). The important bit is to think about this
systematically: if you're going to take a job to accumulate financial and
human capital, have a plan for how long you'll work there and how much capital
you need to accumulate.

Being able to found a startup on your own terms (without having to desperately
find angels) is very freeing and I definitely prefer it this way. My current
startup is doing _much_ better than my last one because this time I'm not
worrying about investors at all.

~~~
madamelic
>There's no way I would have been able to survive the first 6 months of my
startup

How much do you think is a 'good' amount to have saved up? I have a little
over 6 months saved up but all the articles I read are like "You need 18 - 24
months. Minimum." which I think is complete BS, especially for a tech founder
with an MVP (this isn't to say non-tech can't do it, it was more that tech
people can find freelance work)

Thoughts?

~~~
YPCrumble
There are a lot of variables in play so a perfect answer isn't possible,
however, calling 18-24 months BS is almost certainly wrong. 18-24 months
sounds like the ideal answer.

Note that you can spend $8k/month or you can spend $2k/month, depending on
where and how you want to live while you're founding your startup. The nominal
dollar amount could be a huge range.

You could also reduce the dollar amount of savings you need by the revenue in
your MVP - if you're making $1k/month on a software startup you'll probably be
able to net that against your monthly spend, even if most of that $1k/month is
currently going towards fixed costs. The difference between an MVP that
generates revenue and one that does not is enormous.

------
pipio21
As founder of several companies myself I always recommend people NOT to start
startups. I will help or mentor them if they are really interested. Really
interested people will do it anyway.

It looks today like everybody and their dog have to make a company, but first
you need to have a very strong conviction that the world needs something that
you provide. Starting a company is going to be very hard at first, specially
when you are trained by school that effort always rewards you with results and
you need a very strong force behind you to be able to face the difficulties.

The great shock is for great students that are used to have good grades or
have a great job but in real startup life they struggle. In a company they
will succeed but on their own they will depress and enter a death spiral. It
is hard for them, for their partners, for their parents, even for their
mentors.

You need a totally different set of skills than in a normal job, like the
ability to manage yourself, manage risks, made decisions,make investments,
choose your people, understand markets, creativity or selling yourself in
front of others.

------
nikanj
There's the very real possibility that in 10 years, you'll be broke with a
failed startup. Articles like this often act as if risk didn't exist, and then
claim that everyone should quit their steady jobs for a moonshot dream career,
be that in arts, acting or startups.

~~~
austenallred
Honestly I think that risk is overstated.

I started a company, failed miserably, but it was easy to get a well-paying
job with a salary and a lot of stock when I did. And the company I'm at now I
joined long after product-market fit. I was still ahead in my career of people
who were in the same place but didn't start a company. And I paid myself
slightly less but still well enough to get by, so the only painful part was
the transition between jobs. If you're a talented engineer you'll be _just
fine_. I've probably had a job offer per week since then, too.

Now I've Saved up enough money, and I'll make another go. If I fail? Back to
the same pretty-damn-good default position.

~~~
naasking
> I started a company, failed miserably, but it was easy to get a well-paying
> job with a salary and a lot of stock when I did.

Your anecdotes are not an indication that the risk is overstated. Who knows
what factors decreased the risk for you, and while you attribute it to
'engineering talent', it's far more likely to be something like more skill at
using the network of connections you've established (most jobs are still
filled this way).

Whatever that factor is, it isn't necessarily a common skill.

~~~
austenallred
Find me a talented engineer in the Bay Area who started a company and now
can't find a job. We have $5,000 referral bonuses and severe engineering
shortages so I'd love to refer him or her.

~~~
alpos
Consider offering remote positions. Even if those positions are only used as a
way to open new people to the possibility of moving to SF. If your shortages
are severe, why limit your talent pool to the smallest, most competitive
market?

~~~
austenallred
The shortage at our company isn't severe, but in the bay area it is. And you
do so because having people in-house is much more productive and decreases
organizational cost. There's a reason people want employees in-house, and it's
not mentioned much on HN.

I ran a remote company once before. I'll never do it again.

------
ISL
As a counter-point, PG had this to say about startups:

"The surprising thing here is that you can safely hill climb. If you guys are
programmers... What percentage of the people here are programmers? Ok, a lot
of programmers, so you all know what hill climbing is. You just do this
simplest growth algorithm, you just go wherever it leads up from here. And you
don't plan for the future, you don't try and think about the global picture,
you just think what's going to grow this week.

The surprising insight there is that that is safe to do in a startup, that you
can hill climb your way into something big. It turns out the space of startup
ideas--I didn't know this, this is something I learned empirically--but it
turns out that there are not dangerous local maxima. You can safely hill climb
without really thinking that much ahead, and you will grow. You won't even
know what you'll grow into, right? Just week by week you see.

And this works for a lot of things besides starting companies too. This would
work for writing. You know, you just like work on whatever interests you and
every week you try and do something more interesting, and eventually you'll
look back and say "Holy cow, look, we started out way down there." You know?

So who would it not work for? It's very dangerous but there are some startups
where you have to go off and build something for some number of months before
you can start this sort of cycle of interacting with users. Like if you want
to build a new database company, you can't just like write a version 1 in a
week."

It's a passage that comes to mind from time to time. I've found that it can
apply outside of the startup world, too. Interesting and easy directions in
research often give insights that make harder problems easier, too.

Source: [http://www.bnjs.co/transcript-paul-graham-in-conversation-
wi...](http://www.bnjs.co/transcript-paul-graham-in-conversation-with-nathan-
blecharczyk/)

------
peterwwillis
First of all, if you know what you want to be doing in 10 years, and you are
under 30, you are likely wrong. A lot of people change their plans in their
20s, and sometimes it just doesn't work out.

If you are over 30 and look 10 years ahead, it's 40 - body breaking down,
retirement planning is well underway, some form of collateral, possibly a
family, etc. If you're gambling on startups then, you better be damn sure it
doesn't crush all the other stuff you're juggling.

Dixon's advice is misguided. He's trying to say "Don't fear starting over",
which is good advice, because you will probably start over some time in your
life without intending to, and it will be fine. But he's trying to make
startups sound like a good idea, or "try random things" a better one.

I would not treat life like a CS problem - I would treat it like an Operations
change management action. List the departments of your life that are affected
by the change. List the change(s), the work needed to implement it, the
expected results, a test to evaluate, and a rollback procedure. In this way
you can make a risky change and understand fully what it involves, and have
some plan for how to revert if things go awry. Definitely try new things, but
when it comes to changes that have potentially bad side-effects, use due
diligence.

------
dheera
This is exactly why I disagree with the 24/7 work style that some startups
have. I use a large fraction of my spare time (i.e. nights and weekends) to
randomly drop myself on other hills.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Totally this. I'm ready to work 24/7 when I feel I'm on the right hill :).

~~~
dheera
When you feel you're on the right hill, you might still be on the wrong hill.
You can climb Mt. Fuji and feel like you're on top of the world. But you're
really not.

~~~
madamelic
Why not just live day-to-day on whether you are happy rather than critiquing
whether you are on "the right hill".

~~~
dheera
And what do you do when you are not happy? Go uphill (and it may be the wrong
hill) or drop yourself randomly on new hills every day? Both are suboptimal.
You should do a bit of both. Like go uphill 80% of the time and test random
points 20% of the time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's the "exploration vs. exploitation" problem.

C.f. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
armed_bandit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit).

------
shouldbworking
This is related to the human tendency to overestimate the danger of
unpredictable risks.

The danger of a major financial disaster for a healthy and educated young
person in a developed country is much lower than it seems. I know many such
people that traveled across the country, some with no money or possessions to
their name. None of them were broke for more than a few months, and within 6
most of them lived a similar lifestyle to the one they left behind.

The danger is much greater if you're unhealthy, uneducated, or have other
liabilities, but that doesn't apply to a good portion of the HN crowd.

What a lot of people don't think about is that a true disaster will knock you
out even if you have a steady job, insurance, and education. I know several
people whose lives were forever changed by a lawsuit, medical bills, and
health problems. These risks are barely affected by anything you can control,
so in most ways it's best to just go on as if they don't exist.

------
BeetleB
Kind of in a similar bind.

I work for a big company, and am paid decently well. I'm respected, but I have
impostor syndrome. I really am doing nothing other than basic business logic
coding. We have good tests, but no unit tests. We're not doing what I would
consider as optimal programming practices, and I have not been able to
convince them to change.

Yet when I look around in my city for jobs, most are lower paid than I am. Do
I take the lower pay temporarily? I worry if I stay in my current job then in
another 5 years, if I lose my job, no one will hire me.

I've kind of decided to make a goal for this year: Gain enough influence in my
role to change some of the mindsets (e.g. convince them to introduce unit
tests). If I succeed, I will have learned valuable influencing skills. If I
don't, I should just find another job.

~~~
daxfohl
If you're at a big company and paid decently well, I suspect that you'll not
have a problem finding an equivalent job sometime down the road. I had those
concerns going into my own job search last year (plus at 40+, ageism) but
found none of them were valid. All companies care about is whether you can
code, and your ability to deliver.

Still, sure, push for unit tests. Be careful though because everyone has a
different idea of what a good unit test pattern is. You might paint yourself
into a corner where you have to have 100% code coverage measured by some tool
or mgmt sneers. Or dev time goes up temporarily and everyone blames you for
it. Know the end game you're pushing for. Unit testing is a means, not an
ends.

~~~
BeetleB
>If you're at a big company and paid decently well, I suspect that you'll not
have a problem finding an equivalent job sometime down the road.

While I'm at a big company, the company is not highly regarded in the software
world, which is my concern. And I don't have anything to show for it other
than: Coding on a 1MLoc code base, with mostly business logic. Occasionally I
run across cases where knowing something is O(N^2) matters, but only
occasionally.

I think a part of me just feels I should do slightly more challenging work,
where either knowing algorithms well will help, or having some greater domain
knowledge will help (e.g. Operating Systems, Parallel programming, graphics
algorithms, embedded systems). As it is, I'm doing nothing that sets me apart.

I suppose that's why I want to go more into the "influencing" realm. I suspect
employers will care more for my ability to change important architectural
decisions for a team of 30+ people - without having the authority to do so
(I'm not the manager and cannot dictate to people).

As for unit tests: I'm not too religious on it. I think it has value, but my
experiences doing it in C++ also taught me that there are too many ways "to do
it wrong" (i.e. make the code horrible) and only a few that will do it right.
If I'm to convince the team to go that route, I need a way to ensure they "do
it right" and not just do it any way they feel they should. My management
feels the team in general doesn't have the ability to distinguish between the
two and are pushing back.

The victory for me wouldn't be that the code base will have unit tests. The
criterion I'm setting for myself is:

1\. Can I influence enough people to make this change?

2\. Can I do it in a way that is not chaotic?

I'm merely picking "unit tests" as the way to achieve those two.

~~~
daxfohl
No, you shouldn't feel the need to preemptively move to a "tech" company.
Doing software at big tech companies isn't all that different from doing
software at a non-tech company. Products are so big and diverse that you're
usually contributing to a tiny little subset of some far flung feature. That
said, the ceiling is certainly higher for top-tier developers.

So, I wouldn't say you should take lower pay now just to get a foot in the
door. But if you do get to the point where you're hitting a glass ceiling,
then certainly make the jump.

That's just the financial/career perspective. As far as how much you like the
job / how much you contribute, well per my experience, the grass is always
greener on the other side. When you're working on something small, you have
greater influence on the product but the scope of the product itself isn't so
great, and vice versa with big things (though of course there are some jobs
that fail on both influence and scope). But ultimately your goals there are
something you have to establish for yourself.

------
cybernytrix
If one were to use a similar analogy as the author -- a startup is like a huge
hill but a mirage. Once you're off of whatever you are smoking, you realize
it's just a mole hill.

------
geomark
He says "Then, a few years later, they finally quit their job, but only after
having spent years in an industry they didn’t enjoy, and that didn’t really
advance them toward their long term ambitions." It seems to me there's a
glaring oversight in his statement, which is that they could very well have
gained some valuable domain expertise that will serve them well if they later
decide to found or work at a startup. I mean, VC's so often mention the
importance of domain expertise and the way you usually get that is working at
an established company first before you f(l)ounder around at a startup.

------
GoToRO
Except in a startup you can discover that the high hill is a deep valley.
Doesn't mean anything really. Only you can decide if you want to take that
risk or not. I stopped pushing people one way or the other simply because only
they can know what is best for them.

Another option is to work in a big company. After a few years there will be
nothing new for you so you can bootstrap something while still having money
for... food :)

------
cool_shit
Leave it to a computer scientist to leave out the quantum tunneling metaphor.
Well, here it is:

 _skips current hill_

"I know somebody."

------
mcguire
"Do you want to be a startup founder?" is a trick question. Most people hear
"Do you want to be Zuckerberg or Musk?" Most questioners mean "Do you want a
chance to be Zuckerberg?" But the real question is neither of those.

" _Over the years, I’ve run into many prospective employees in similar
situations. When I ask them a very obvious question: “What do you want to be
doing in 10 years?” The answer is invariably “working at or founding a tech
startup” – yet most of them decide to remain on their present path and not
join a startup._ "

"In 10 years, I want to be working extremely hard for extremely long hours,
for low pay and a miniscule chance of real reward. I want to be a share-
cropper on a venture capitalist's farm. I want to have a trail of failures
behind me. I want to be doing the same thing over and over, because a MVP is a
MVP is a MVP. I want to be ready to pivot at any instant, because shoveling
everything into the crapper is better than spending an extra minute looking at
another, greener pasture."

On the other hand, "I want to be working on the most interesting problems I
can find" is crappy, too.

------
CalChris
Startups, that's plural, add some randomness to this hill climbing. Most
startups fail and then you get pulled off of a local maximum.

But your next startup should not be exactly random. Like the VCs who invest,
you should learn something from failure and you should have the lay of the
land. If you don't, if it's a random walk again, then perhaps you don't belong
in startups or in VC.

------
marginalcodex
I've sent this blog to dozens of people. While it's not universal, it offers
an important concept applicable to many facets of life.

Here's another take on the same concept: [https://www.edge.org/response-
detail/27033](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27033)

------
atemerev
I wonder how the author is 100% sure that working in a startup is always
better than working at Wall Street. I tried both ways, and there are ups and
downs on both sides, but I liked it just a tiny bit more in big finance
(though not in big banks).

Other people's mileages may also vary.

------
rdiddly
Seems to me a local maximum that definitely exists is not too shabby compared
to a higher hill that has a 90% chance of going dead flat on you.

------
Jare
I went through pretty much the situation he describes: had developed
videogames since I was 15, but while at university I joined the bank entity of
a huge corp. I knew I wanted to do games, graphics and related stuff for the
rest of my life, so after 9 months I had cold feet, got the show, accepted the
offer and stayed three more years.

One of the best decisions of my life.

I learned tons of stuff that I wouldn't have learned going straight back into
games. Not about COBOL or accounting, but about leadership, management and
understanding the balance between business and technical needs.

------
vaidhy
I honestly do not understand this metaphor at all. There are reasons why some
of the algorithms are better implemented in a computer. Is there some magic
that will allow me to clone myself to try multiple paths in parallel? Maybe I
can speed up time so that I can climb the hills fast?

As a human, I have limited time and that places a huge constraint on what is
feasible. Ignoring that and trying to draw parallels to algorithmic domain
seems to miss out on crucial constraints.

~~~
madamelic
I think the deeper meaning is that rather than trying to predict what path
will be most optimal, you should be taking whatever step seems most optimal
without trying to predict the future.

------
jankotek
> _works at a large investment bank. He has decided he hates Wall Street and
> wants to work at a tech startup (good!). He recently gave notice to his
> bosses, who responded by putting on a dog and pony show to convince him to
> stay_

Wrong choices. Better to stay a few years, then start your own company or
consulting business.

And in my experience large corporations, are often more progressive than most
startups (work from home, technical equipment, software stack,
conferences....).

~~~
js8
Was about to write something similar. Working for bigco can give you
experience with technology, understanding of the market and contacts that you
are unlikely to have coming fresh from school.

------
VLM
How bad is the ageism with respect to career length?

For example the average professional NFL player running back career length is
a bit over 3 seasons. On the other hand the average lifespan in the USA is
lower than real 1st world countries, at 78, but still not too bad.

So in the introduction the implication is throwing away a year of career is
utterly tragic WRT "starting over" now in terms of career damage is throwing
away one year like throwing away an 1/3 of their pro football running back
length career or like throwing away 1/78th of their lifespan which is a
rounding error?

Another way of looking at the world, is if ageism is so rampant that the dude
will be permanently unemployable in the field by 30 such that throwing away
one year is a substantial measurable loss, you have to consider it from a long
term perspective in that a lifespan of 78 and unemployability starting at 30
means you'll live, unemployable, for nearly a half century after your career
ends, half a century of wondering what would have happened if you had made
that jump to try the startup. I mean, lets say due to ageism your career does
end at 30, at age 55 will anything be different in your 55 year old life if
you had stayed put rather than trying? So you may as well try.

You're gonna live a long time. For various macro economic reasons your career
will only be a couple years. That implies you should never live to work and
should only work to live. In that situation it would be foolish not to take a
risk.

Extreme ageism is like terminal illness. If you know your career will be dead
in five years no matter what you do for reasons way outside your control, you
can complain and feel bad, or make the most of what little time you have and
risk it. You're done in five years anyway no matter what, so you may as well
go for it while you can.

~~~
daxfohl
I was very concerned about it last year, starting into the corporate job hunt
at age 41, where I'd quit my last regular tech job at age 28, doing
freelancing, startups (just coding, not as founder or anything), some long-
term travel and misc piddling in the interim.

I had no problem at all. Got on site interviews at three of the "big four",
some big industrials, some smaller companies, and a couple better-than-I-
expected job offers. Maybe I got lucky or maybe it's typical, but that's my
one point of reference.

The org I'm in, I'd say I'm slightly older than the others at my level, but
not a ton. And it seems pretty fluid, I think within 2-3 years I'll "catch up"
to the level I'd have been at if I'd not taken all that time off.

------
mathattack
Going temporarily downhill is very hard for most. I know dozens of bankers who
want to move to tech, but can't handle the cash paycut.

~~~
justinator
No risk, no reward.

I'm not going to convince a banker that -

but maybe that's why there are bankers and that's why there are people who
race sailboats solo around the world.

------
tpetricek
What if the space you are searching is not a landscape with hills, but a maze?

I'm not saying it is, but the metaphor that makes the post so strong is not
particularly well-grounded. Maybe we programmers tend to think about life as
hill-climbing precisely because that's metaphor we often think about when
solving programming problems...

------
untangle
This article seems based on a false analogy.

Real (geologic) hills can be measured. Their dimensions and slopes are
objective quantities. There is no debate about their shape.

Mr. Dixon's hills (objective functions) are the stuff of wants, dreams, and
deep conjecture. Their shapes are highly subjective and highly dimensional. So
much so that the 3d-terrain construct adds little to the topic – whether a
gradient, simulated annealing, or any other analytic approach is employed.

To me, the article is a whimsical piece of entertainment and is not useful for
even notional career planning.

------
daxfohl
Or just try something outside of tech completely. You have time to explore.
Yeah you'll likely end up with more money having worked at a big firm your
whole life, several of my peers are more advanced in their careers than I am
now, but it's not like you end up in the poor house either. I spent five years
away from tech, seven in a startup, three freelancing from home before finally
going back to big corp, and no regrets.

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real-hacker
Most people intuitively know this. But sometimes it takes 10 years or even
decades to climb a hill, and the probability of picking a random spot in a
valley or on a plateau is high. People are just risk-averse. And I think most
winners win not because of this strategy, but because they can climb hills
much faster than others, thus have a higher rate to try new spots.

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shkkmo
> People early in their career should learn from computer science: meander
> some in your walk (especially early on), randomly drop yourself into new
> parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don’t waste any
> more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up
> might appear.

I particularly like this advice.

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intrasight
That's why humans are not very good at finding non-local maxima, and why a lot
has to do with the luck of where on the terrain you are randomly dropped for
your initial climb.

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AznHisoka
Why will working at a startup prepare you to start your own? Wouldn't it be
better working as an employee in the industry you want to start a business in?

~~~
madamelic
You'll see how a startup works, funding rounds, how to set things up, etc.

In a big company, you are insulated against that and you only do your specific
role. Startups require employees to have a much higher, cross-company view.

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learn_more
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

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dsjoerg
Needs (2009) tag in title please.

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kutkloon7
I don't particularly like this kind of blog posts, for multiple reasons.
First, they tell people what to do.

Second, the argument is backed up by a false analogy. The whole reason that
hill climbing works, is that computers are fast. If it takes 5+ years to
'climb a hill', starting at some random point costs a lot more. Actually, it
is not even clear how 'starting over at a random point' translates to real
life.

Third: The point (I would say is "Try something else once in a while" \- and I
mostly agree with this) could be captured in a single line. The blog post is
basically the blog-equivalent of a motivational picture.

~~~
heisenbit
A fourth point: The landscape in tech is changing. Career in tech also
requires one to deal with hills that are caving in.

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Zelmor
>everyone should work on their own startup, fuck the profession you studied
for years and that is stable, well earning and can teach you a lot about
business!

This mentality is why the quality of HN went to shit.

