Ask HN: What advice would you tell yourself ten years ago? - adawg_4
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closeparen
You don’t get to choose whether to care about athleticism, appearance, social
graces, etc. They aren’t decorative garnishes. They’re fundamental to being
accepted and desired by the people around you. You may not think that’s
important, but your lizard brain does, and the hellscape it’ll build for you
when you cross it is unimaginable. A little nausea or shortness of breath is
nothing. Play a damn sport.

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deanmoriarty
Don’t even think about joining those couple startups as early employee, go
straight to FAANG, work on amazing tech and gain your financial freedom.

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tessting
I've spent the first five years of my career at two FANGs, and I think the
grass is greener in terms of amazing tech. Maybe I've been unlucky, but so
much of my time is fighting with the enormous weight of the infrastructure to
do anything. Builds, deployments, running tests, getting support from internal
teams, using internal frameworks are all so stressful and unsatisfying to me.
Not to mention I've never even sniffed any fun javascript framework or python
work. It's been 99% Java.

Don't get me wrong--I've been lucky enough to work with and learn from some
_incredibly_ brilliant people, the work pays insanely well and lifted me from
the bottom quintile to the top, and I don't have to worry about VC funding
running out. But I also feel10% of the flow that I do when I'm at home
cobbling together a javascript or python whatever. I understand that it isn't
fair to compare my toy apps with the insane size of these companies, but
still, I don't think your decision was that terrible in terms of just tech.
Shoot, there are acquaintances who joined bitcoin startups when we graduated
in 2015 and those people are probably worth a few million right now.

I wonder if there is anyone here who works at a unicorn and can tell me if
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, etc are a happier medium?

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Kephael
This sounds like Amazon, Amazon isn't at all comparable to F/N/G or any of the
companies you're asking about with the exception of Uber.

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tessting
Amazon and Google, which I have found to be similar in a lot of respects.
Personally I prefer Amazon's versionsets to the monorepo at Google.

Curious why you think Amazon is so different from the other FNG+?

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wolco
Amazon's culture is very different. It is more microsoft crossed with shark
tank and with this strange hint of moneyball guiding projects/promotions.

~~~
tessting
Yes, I agree with that, but I guess I thought we were discussing more of the
engineering culture. I think at both places the biggest factor is your
specific manager team, but that the average team at Google is more relaxed and
enjoyable with higher QOL.

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psv1
None. That person had plenty of available advice that he didn't listen to.
What he needed was better role models and people to emulate, not advice.

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opportune
Start lifting weights and exercising.

Note this is not dependent on some historical events happening like Apple
stock or bitcoin. If you aren’t into fitness now I highly recommend you get
into it.

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keiferski
Do a few small things daily, consistently, 365 days a year, for the next
decade. E.g., learning three new words/phrases in a foreign language per day
takes about 5 minutes yet adds up to over 10,000 in a decade - essentially the
number it takes to pass a C1 exam.

This kind of slow steady progress is useful for virtually anything: learn
foreign alphabets one letter a day, read the encyclopedia one entry a day,
etc.

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elliekelly
I took French classes from 5th grade all the way through college and could
speak basically zero actual French. For maybe six months now I’ve been doing
about 20-30 minutes a day using the “Fluent Forever” method and I’m already
able to converse with native speakers and watch movies in French. It’s really
opened my eyes to how inefficient learning “sprints” are compared to small but
consistent progress.

~~~
keiferski
Yep, this is called the spacing effect and it’s really powerful.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect)

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caspervonb
Don't get involved with web development.

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rxpad
Why

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caspervonb
Many reasons; like it's a bit dull but primarily we are creating user hostile
software and thats the norm.

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allendoerfer
I am in my late twenties. All the other advice seems to come from people my
age. I would also have similiar advice:

\- Focus on your relationships, they take work. Manage your input and your
expectations.

\- There are probably easier ways to make money. It's okay to take an easy
route and improve from there. Time is valuable and interests compound.

\- Which inner desires are your goals feeding into. Is there an easier way to
get there?

This thread is full of advice like this and there were probably similar
threads 10 years ago. Have we listened? I would not have. I learned it the
hard way and now believe in it.

A better question probably would be: What advice would your future self give
you in ten years?

For me it would probably be around health. Maybe family and friends.

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ruslan
Pay attention to your health, don't eat junk food, get more sleep.

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adawg_4
I've seen this on ycombinator's yt and it has improved my wellbeing
dramatically: [https://youtu.be/LH1bewTg-P4](https://youtu.be/LH1bewTg-P4) I
second this.

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wnkrshm
Get diagnosed for adult ADHD.

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monissiddiqui
How did you realise that something was wrong and that you needed to go to the
doctor?

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lower
Get out of academia

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moralestapia
Did you do it? More details on why this advice would have worked for you?

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gshdg
You can do that job, and you can be good at it. But it would take you a lot
less time to get good at it and you’ll do a lot less damage in the interim if
you hired an executive coach now.

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tylordurden
Travel more.

~~~
ggm
If i went back to myself ten years into whats turned into a twenty year career
of travel I could agree and also advise travel less...

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sheinsheish
Value your time and health more. Give time to your family (kids) Practice /
learn Don’t get angry. Start meditating sooner

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beamatronic
You will be alive in 10 years!

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Rerarom
Ask yourself what do you want/like and why.

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probinso
Don't complete your master's degree

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JaggerJo
Interesting. I don’t have a degree and sometimes think I maybe should have got
one.

Could you explain why completing your masters degree was ‘bad’ ?

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probinso
The value add can be less than the emotional and opportunity costs; Completing
2/3 of the degree would have satisfied my goals going in.

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tylordurden
Don't rely on other's

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jeffrallen
But do learn how to avoid the grocer's apostrophe.

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mashby
They mean other's advice. Does one own one's advice?

I could be wrong too. :)

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frogperson
Get a colonoscopy asap.

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notomorrow
Do not ask clickbait questions?

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rayhendricks
Buy bitcoin. Sell 10% stake each year (dollar cost averaging per day) starting
2015.

Also get ripped sooner.

~~~
muzani
I feel like this is a cheating way to answer the question. Of course hindsight
works, but in 2010, what's the way to spot good investments in general, like
Bitcoin and Facebook?

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almaslaah
Both of those things were not only known about by hacker newsers but spoken
about a lot (a lot!) They were sometimes dismissed for very petulant reasons,
"fb is just a php site" etc.

I think an amusing piece of investment advice to consider is to do the
opposite of whatever the sentiment about a paticular asset is on hacker news.

How did they talk about Snap in 2018? Twitter in 2017?

Generally, people on hacker news do not really know anything other than what a
server is etc. Hacker Newsers are also made up of the sort people that fall
victim to Authority Bias most frequently. If you want to spot good investments
you have to think for yourself. You have to make the decision. If you are
prepared to do that you already have an unfair advantage. But, if you are
wrong, you are wrong.

To answer your question more directly... Have a reliable stream of information
(reuters deals) as your core...then it is up to you.

