
Notes for the New Year - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/notes-for-the-new-year/
======
itsmemattchung
> ... don’t be afraid to ask for what you want

10 years—that's the number of years it took me (in my personal and
professional life) to reach a where I'm able to comfortably express what I
want (although I still struggle). I often made the fatal mistake of assuming
that others—like my partner, or manager—to simply "know" what it is, exactly,
that I want. In retrospect, I'm unsurprised: asking for help was not something
my parents, or culture (Asian), encouraged. It was the opposite.

Not only until I began managing people (in my previous role) did I realize how
difficult it really is to infer what people want. I'm not a mind reader.
Nobody is.

So, I agree: don't be afraid to ask for what you want.

~~~
jay_kyburz
How long did it take you to actually know what you want? I'm neary 45. On one
hand I want to work 3 days a week, on the other I want cash. What do I ask
for? WHAT DO I ASK FOR!

~~~
tedmiston
What is it that you want to do with the other 4 days a week?

------
tyre

      I think the best way to pick what you want to do is to find
      the intersection of what you’re good at, what you enjoy,
      what the world needs, and what the world values.
    

Notice how "what you need" is not listed. The classic startup founding advice
of "solving a problem you have" has led to oversaturated markets solving 1st
world problems (e.g. food delivery.)

Don't be afraid to look for people who need help and about whom you know
nothing. Empathy will take you the rest of the way. When we started Seneca
Systems, we knew nothing about local government, but no person is too far away
for you to ask questions and understand what they need.

~~~
orthoganol
In the same vein, don't be afraid to defer your startup dreams for 3, 5, 7
years while you develop true specialization in an exciting field. I think too
many young people (myself included) just want to start a startup to be a
startup person, while I think some of the great, sustainable startups that can
truly change the world demand years of patience, discipline, and discovery
even before you start the prototype. ...And to be on the cusp of a startup
like that has to be the greatest feeling in the world.

------
uiri
_The super successful people I know spent a very long time pursuing their
ideas, way past when most people would have given up._

Not to take away from his advice on giving up but is there survivorship bias
in this statement? How many people persist for just as long (or longer!) and
still fail?

I think it might be more useful to look at success/fail rates for various
levels of persistence.

~~~
bmmayer1
Great point. Probably more accurate to say "not giving up is a necessary, but
not sufficient condition, for success."

------
DelaneyM
I empathize with the "find your tribe" concept, but am deeply disappointed by
how sama has framed it here.

> You want to find your tribe – the types of people _like you_ that you can
> imagine working with for the rest of your career. Within that, you want to
> find a small group of people _whom you trust_ , and _whose opinions you
> really respect_. [emphasis mine]

There are a handful of people in the world who are "like me", with whom I have
any significant intersection of history, interests or identities. And though I
am able to include others in my circle by celebrating our differences, this
mentality (and advice) encourages them to exclude me from theirs.

I really wish the commonly accepted advice when forming one's "tribe" would be
to seek out others to connect with who are _different from you_ , but who you
share enough with to forge a bond. It's not just better advice to create a
healthy whole, it's idiosyncratically more interesting (and professionally
more profitable) to have a variety of friends and colleagues with different
histories, biases and networks of their own.

~~~
zavulon
I think you can interpret "like you" in a few different ways. Someone can be
"like you" if they share common values, even if they have completely different
background, interests, personalities, etc.

I don't want to speak for him, but I believe Sam's point is that those are the
people that you forge the strongest bond with.

~~~
DelaneyM
I agree that's a better interpretation, but this is a post for an audience to
whom that's not necessarily the most obvious way to read it.

I'd hypothesize that diversity is both among the best qualities to have in
one's tribe and something which requires the most intentional approach to
assemble. That's well worth pointing out, and probably a more helpful reminder
than "make some friends".

------
askafriend
> Be a doer, not a talker – history belongs to the doers.

Actually, History belongs to no one. How many of the _most exceptional_
individuals or entities from 100 years ago does the average person in the
world appreciate or _even know about_? Very very very few. Success (and life)
is so incredibly fleeting.

Now think 200 years? 1000 years?

~~~
FLUX-YOU
I think in 200-1000 years we'll have a completely different baseline of the
feeling and capability to remember something. So I imagine of the trillions of
humans to eventually be born, someone's going to stumble across all of these
terrible posts I've made and have a laugh.

------
sailfast
Sam Altman sold a company before most people enter professional life, so while
I agree with him that equity and ownership is the best way to extreme wealth,
I think he should probably acknowledge the TONS of people making great money
who are quite wealthy on a salary basis as well. Discounting that as a "young
man's misunderstanding" seems... weird.

~~~
edanm
Well it depends what you mean by "TONS" of people, or "great money", but I
don't think you're right. Most people on a salary _don 't_ make enough money
to be considered rich, IMO.

~~~
automatwon
The 60,000 employees at Google seem to be making "great money". That seems
like several Tons.

------
sethbannon
"I think the best way to pick what you want to do is to find the intersection
of what you’re good at, what you enjoy, what the world needs, and what the
world values."

Sam, how do you figure out "what the world needs"? As you point out, this is
often very different from "what the world values" (see: Coca-Cola).

~~~
ProAm
> what the world needs

For HN its really 1) What are investors willing to contribute to or 2) What
are customers willing to pay for.

~~~
sethbannon
You're answering the question of "what the world values" not "what the world
needs".

~~~
ProAm
Exactly for HN, startups and SV it doesnt matter what the world needs. I mean
for marketing purposes it does, but not for the game we play here.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You can interpret the words of 'sama as an invitation to play a different
game.

------
smacktoward
_> Take more risks... If you do fail or end up in a crisis, you’ll probably be
OK._

If you ever wanted a pithy description of what separates the lives of the 1%
from the lives of the rest, now you have one.

~~~
alexmingoia
It's a little cringe-worthy coming from someone like him. Sam sold a company
before ever having to work a job to support himself, AFAIK.

------
edanm
Great set of notes. As usual, I love Sam Altman's very terse, to-the-point
writing style.

This is a great list of things I think anyone should take to heart in terms of
how to structure their lives (if you're into that kind of thing) - invest in
yourself, work on things that are _big_ opportunities, etc.

------
blizkreeg
I agree with a lot of what Sam has to say, but from my own experience quitting
my job, starting a bootstrapped venture, working on something unsexy, and
going through a multitude of challenges in the past year has taught me to
ignore all "advice" and think critically for yourself. You will not remember
most of what any of the advice-givers tell you, and it won't fit like a glove
on you either but the conclusions and answers you arrive at yourself will make
a lot more sense and work out better in the long run.

------
d_burfoot
> the right thing ... will likely take a long time and you’ll face a lot of
> criticism.

Is this true, empirically, for the most successful companies? Of the
"Frightful 5" (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft), only Microsoft
seems to have had an extended period of only modest success before rocketing
into the stratosphere. The others did so in just a couple of years.

~~~
w1ntermute
That depends on how you define the beginning of the company. For example,
Zuckerberg had built quite a few different "social" websites before building
Thefacebook. Jobs and Woz had been building circuit boards and other
electronic devices for a couple years before they built the Apple I.

------
protomyth
"You should probably be willing to move."

Willing and able are two different things. Sadly, all the amazing technology
hasn't really changed the need in a lot of people's minds to be physically
close. We'll see if VR succeeds where phones, e-mail, chat, and video
conferencing have failed.

~~~
alex-
The greatest issue I have when working, or even just talking with people in
different places is not technological, but timezones.

I don't want to be catching up with my family in Europe at my 3am in the
morning. Or working a hard problem at my 9pm to be in touch with people in
India.

I think if you are in the same timezone good video conferencing works really
well.

~~~
protomyth
Timezone are pretty awful for across the ocean work, but within most countries
is pretty minimal. An hour or two is really a low bar objection to
telecommuting.

~~~
alex-
Totally agree. I find dedicated video conferencing equipment works really well
for this case.

Although I guess I work in the industry so get a lot of good equipment.

------
sqrt
> I think the best way to pick what you want to do is to find [...] what the
> world values.

> Don’t chase other people’s ideas of what matters.

Er...

~~~
tzar
I believe you're suggesting a contradiction here, but I think the
juxtaposition is actually quite insightful if we consider the differences
between these two things!

What the world values ought to be a mostly objective question, though one that
isn't easy to answer. An accurate measure of what the world values probably
implies success, even. Our values are expressed by the totality of our
collective actions, and are certainly not guaranteed to be consistent with
what we say. The obvious (but certainly not perfect) proxy for what we value
is what we choose when there are costs involved.

But other people's ideas of what matters strikes me as a completely different
thing. These are constructs and abstractions that we use to help model our own
individual decision making, and unfortunately we're often all-too-eager to
share these with others even when they're by no means universal. If I tell you
that "what matters is security and predictability" or "what matters is family"
or "what matters is the pursuit of creativity and novelty", all I'm really
saying is that I have this axiom that floats around in my head with a tenuous
connection to reality even in the context of my own life but is clearly
meaningless relative to yours! These things are not to be chased, because
they’re not real.

------
nether
I don't care about becoming very wealthy. The odds of success are too low. Sam
ignores the hard question, which is what is the likelihood that you will spend
many years of your life on a "hard problem" (or multiple problems) that end
fruitlessly? I suspect it is quite high, and the failures are underreported.
I've decided to just settle for a regular five-figures job that lets me afford
my hobbies, which I find much more invigorating than wealth or coding. I have
a side-project, which is numerical weather prediction in mountainous regions
(something unlikely to be highly profitable), but it's a tinkering project
that I enjoy even if it doesn't work out.

~~~
ianai
I bet you could mix that with information on climate to find rare mushrooms
and the like. Might add some excitement.

~~~
nether
I'm actually a hobbyist mushroom forager. I think mushroom growth is too
dependent on micro-environments, like proximity to a certain tree and
receiving the right amount of shade, to be predicted by weather. I could be
wrong though.

~~~
Gargoyle
This is where you start training neural nets to recognize tree types and
small-scale terrain configurations from google earth data. ;-)

------
Spearchucker
This plays to the SV mentality, which is ok for those into that mindset.
Personally, I feel like it promotes the life-objective point of view. Work, be
successful, die.

Loosely, from a talk i heard ages ago - the universe has no purpose. No goal
or objective. It just is. Similarly, a dance or a song. It's purpose is not to
end, but rather the thing itself, in it's entirety. If the objective was the
finish, you'd start a dance where it ends, and be done with it.

Life is a little like that - ALL of it, every moment, is like a song. Each
note is like a day, stanza like a year. Have fun, always.

...or, spend your best years slaving away for a (maybe) payoff at 40, 50 or
60, move into a retirement home and wait for death.

I love writing code, but i love other stuff that takes me away from code for
months on end too. The SV thing scares the h*ll out of me. The obsession over
the next big thing, being right, getting paid, being a name... I get depressed
just thinking about it all.

~~~
nether
It's a little perverse how "successful" means "extremely wealthy" around these
parts. It could also mean just having happy relationships and basic material
needs met. In fact I suspect that is a far more common definition in the
world.

A really eye opening experience was hanging out with my hispanic girlfriend's
family. They were just _content_. I'd tell them about personal finance tricks,
like credit card churning or buying things in bulk, and they'd blow me off.
They'd rather save by putting spare change into a jar, or putting in extra
hours, which did work for them. They got to go on vacations, buy clothes they
liked. It was like the pain that I felt with wasting money didn't happen for
them, they just took it all in stride. They weren't reaching for anything, and
they seemed much happier and even more personally _secure_ and present than
most tech people I've met.

~~~
bittercynic
I think this confuses symptoms and causes of moderate wealth.

When you're moderately wealthy, you can churn cards without the temptation to
use them for things that you really can't afford. If you and your family are
living month-to-month, it is nearly impossible to restrain yourself when you
see how much credit is available.

Similarly, if you're from a large, close family where everyone lives month-to-
month, you might be perceived as greedy if you start to accumulate wealth
instead of sharing with your family. For some reason it is more forgivable to
imperil yourself by borrowing money to buy an expensive car than it is to let
money pile up in your savings account.

If you're from a family where there is a culture of long-term financial
thinking, this stuff is pretty easy. If you aren't, it isn't. It is partly
that you haven't learned habits of financial planning, but also that there are
cultural forces that prevent it.

~~~
jay_kyburz
The only reason you would ever need to churn cards is if you are buying things
you can't afford. Pay the cards off and burn them. You dont need them, you
sure dont need to waste your time juggling them - playing thier game.

~~~
bittercynic
You may not need to, but it can be worthwhile. You can get free flights and
cash back on many cards. The normal reward rates are very low, but some cards
have sign up bonuses that are worth a few hundred dollars if you spend a
certain amount in the first few months. Many cards will keep giving you the
sign up bonuses if you cancel and re-sign every couple of years. For me, the
few hundred dollars is worth the trouble of churning the cards.

------
tptacek
_You want to find your tribe – the types of people like you that you can
imagine working with for the rest of your career. Within that, you want to
find a small group of people whom you trust, and whose opinions you really
respect._

This is a common belief that is worth challenging.

I think we overvalue our "tribe", and often allow false intuition about who
our tribe is mislead us into limiting opportunities for personal and
professional growth.

I started thinking this a couple dozen years ago, when I was first getting
involved in security and being repelled by the cliques of insiders who passed
around secret security knowledge. Anyone familiar with the underground of the
time knows how this worked with exploit scripts and warez, but I think fewer
people realize that it's also the way that the defenders worked as well: there
were secret security lists, like Core, whose members got to learn about
exploits long before normal people did.

But then Bugtraq happened, and along with it the modern full-disclosure
movement, and if you're a vulnerability researcher you'd be embarrassed to
have put your chips down on things like the secret Core list.

The same pattern repeats over and over in our industry. The IETF, for
instance, has historically functioned like a giant web of cliques. Almost
anything the IETF came up with from '95 to '10 is hamstrung by IETF group
dynamics and its autonomic responses to outsider opinion. If you wonder why
our addresses are still 32 bits wide and our traffic is still unencrypted,
that's worth considering.

My convictions about this got even firmer after I learned to hire, at a
company I started called Matasano. Like every other company, we started out
hiring from within our tribe. But we worked in software security, and our
tribe got expensive faster than we could pay them (good for them!). We did a
couple of things that resulted, ultimately, in us discarding resumes and most
of interviewing altogether, and managed to drastically grow our team --- to
the point where I'm pretty confident we had simply and permanently solved our
hiring problem --- by looking past our "tribe".

I understand the point Altman is making here, that you start your career out
with a tiny and poorly-defined network, and that it's good to find people you
can rely on. I think that too! But I think it's also worth being wary of your
immediate personal network, because the universe works pretty hard to keep you
connected to those people, even when limiting yourself to those connections
isn't really in your best interests.

People are generally pretty awesome once you get to know them. Rather than
looking for a couple people to work with for your whole career, I'd urge you
to instead look for sets of principles you might share with a much larger
number of people, and to think about how you might identify those shared
principles, in order to maximize the number of people you'll work with
effectively throughout your career.

I'm in contracts hell this week and not articulating things well, but my "be
careful about your tribe" thing is one of my bigger, more important beliefs,
so I hope I'm somewhere in the vicinity of communicating it.

~~~
rubidium
I agree with what you're trying to express, and was the biggest "be careful
not to overdo this". Getting outside your tribe is really healthy and good.

I'd phrase it like this: "find the people who are best in the world at what
you want to do and learn from them". And then I would add "but get outside of
their circle frequently. It will be good for them and you".

------
sebastianconcpt
For the "what the world values" part, I've found is not so hard to predict
once you dig into the Cultural Wars subject.

------
ssn
A tribute to _work_. Depressing.

~~~
beachstartup
every hobby and social activity that's worth doing is also work. it's just not
the work _you_ get paid for. that's why it's fun; there are no expectations
other than your own, and you're free to have none whatsoever.

i mean, what's _not_ work? watching netflix? chilling by the pool and drinking
booze? can you really do that all day, every day? do we need tributes to that?

p.s. people worked their ass off to make netflix+chill possible for you to
enjoy in your leisure time.

~~~
roymurdock
I guess you could consider things like hiking, surfing, camping, playing video
games, going to parties, having lunch with friends, driving up the PCH with my
dog, etc. as work but that seems awfully depressing. Sure...viewed from a
business lens it's putting hours into honing a craft or building a
network...but is it really _work_ if you're not expecting a payoff at some
point?

There's no right answer to the question I just posed, but I feel healthier
when I look at activities outside my 9-5 as leisure and outlets. It doesn't
mean I can't be good at them, but I would feel that I was cheapening my
enjoyment of these activities (maybe by putting any value on them at all?) if
I thought of them "work".

~~~
nostrademons
Sure, but you can also consider things like coding, designing new products,
talking to users, meeting like-minded people, reading about technology, etc.
as "not work". You don't _have_ to expect a payoff from them, and it's often
less depressing if you don't.

~~~
roymurdock
For sure, activities that are intrinsically fun/challenging/engaging and that
ultimately result in unexpected, tangible financial payouts are the best.

In reality, I find myself doing a lot of projects at my 9-5 where I need to be
realistic and explicit about their expected value - especially when I need to
be accountable to my boss who has business goals to meet, and who knows the
approximate value of each hour of my time in the office. So it's nice to do
things with no metrics or strings attached or bosses (besides myself) in my
free time.

Luckily I don't have to justify every activity at work...such as
reading/commenting on HN :)

------
hncensorsbigly
Anyone else have the tune to this song play in your head as you read?
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bwVVpwBKUp0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bwVVpwBKUp0)

------
maxsavin
When did YC become a self help blog

~~~
nether
Believe in yourself!!! No really, just believe!

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Don't believe in the me who believes in you. Don't believe in the you that I
believe in. Believe in the you who believes in yourself.

------
Gravityloss
"I've decided to just settle for a regular five-figures job" Stuff HN says...

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13321354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13321354)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
Gravityloss
Thanks. I somehow misread it as over hundred thousand per year (five zeros).

