I wasted a lot of my life being too scared to make something out of fear. This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didnt make every perfect decision for their product.
Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
Unfortunately those two things often come together, in which the only bit of attention is a single negative comment. Social media sites (forums included) are optimized to reward criticism, no matter how small, instead of positivity.
Supposedly this is because upvotes are intended to replace comments like "Great!" or "I really like this, good job." But obviously that doesn't work out in reality.
I see this on HN frequently. Someone posts their thing and you get some low quality banter about the name choice or hosting provider or whatever, and then the top thread is a big unsubstantiated criticism plus some pilers on. You never really know what to make of it but it feels pretty much the same as if the post was just ignored.
I used to worry about shipping because I thought “you only get one chance to make a good impression.”
But as long as you use negative feedback to improve, you will always[1] get another chance! Statistically speaking, 0% of the world has seen your product.
[1] Obligatory disclaimer that if you really fuck up, you don’t get another chance. But that’s super rare.
Yes, I think if someone cares enough to leave negative feedback, they found it interesting enough to at least try it out, and they're (often) at least invested enough to see if their feedback has any impact or makes a difference. They will look again.
The people who see your thing as useless and don't even try it are the people you never hear from.
I totally agree with negative reception! It means that people give enough of a shit to feel about your product. Which means that with more development - either in product or in market - you’ll find people who love what you made.
Negative feedback is a signal, yet not a guaranteed good. It could also just mean someone stumbled into your product and found it fatally flawed. Sometimes one needs to hear hard things.
Then again when building only for myself all feedback (or lack thereof) is irrelevant!
In interpersonal life, you have more to go on about the source. He or she is obviously an opinionated know-nothing loudmouth. Online, you either have to know the sender, or guess from the community.
StackExchange is especially infested with those, so you can safely assume anyone trashing your idea is one of them. Reddit, too, pretty much. HN has some of those, but not everyone is like that.
I can understand how this conclusion is reached, but I would position that it's less about the specific skill in any given subject and more just about a person's own perception of what is and is not appropriate for interpersonal actions. I know a lot of incredibly smart and gifted people in the programming sphere who are the most gregarious and kind persons you might ever meet, ready to help on just about any problem they're able to -- I've also met the types you're mentioning, and I'm not sure that their way of handling themselves is a requirement or even characteristic for such genius.
Bumping into such personalities when it comes to their subject matter of expertise might be a challenge, sure. They are sure of themselves, direct to a fault, and it takes a lot to get them to reconsider their point of view or even explain it sometimes as they tend to get pretty dogmatic about it. It can be tempting to associate this with their skill level in the subject matter, but I see the same boisterous bravado from the C-levels and VPs when they decide there is something they _must_ opine on without having any knowledge in the domain.
In my experiences, those who just react "screw you guys I'm going home" when challenged aren't quite the superstars they present themselves as; the real superstars are far more open to their ideas being challenged because, in my experience again, they _like_ that sort of challenge. It's not earth shattering for their ego to be corrected, it's a moment of embarrassment, then a moment of appreciation as their mental model adjust and they begin to realize how many axioms they've held based of their previously incorrect logic begin to change/drop away, and they are unburdened by this correction, not harmed.
That is to say, I'm not sure that it's at all related to the skill level or special geniuses, it's just too easy to fall into a perception for oneself of "smart people are always right and when someone challenges them, the only correct path is to assert dominance above all else"; I don't think you need to tie such behavior to any particular industry or skillset, I can guarantee you that this happens in virtually all spheres.
With regards to the article, I think the author maybe has the start of a well developed idea that is marred by trying to associate it with success in the tech world; Steve Jobs may have bucked trends in the industry by going all-in on a nascent technology which ended up making Apple the household name for smartphones; I don't think it was out of any particular inspiration except that "this is coming anyways, and it's gonna make us a shitload of money"; Jobs might have known when he was wrong, but from the stories available, doesn't seem he was often humble about it.
But I would propose don't associate that kind of toxicity with the field; there are a lot of things that encourage such behavior, sure, but I think a lot of this is just the same outdated/ineffective ideas of leadership and decision making that have plagued the world for some time -- it's quite fast to see that this is in just about any community that gets big enough, and it's not exactly a game we _have_ to play, it's just one we continue to play for whatever reason...†
† Addendum: This is not to speak of workplace hierarchies and the ridiculousness that is the structure of a Corporation. From personal experience, such hierarchical power is absolutely a farce, the same in my mind as a pyramid scheme. My reasoning for this is that despite my very fancy title and rapid rise to this title, I know that the title is only useful so long as the person I'm talking with is willing to give it power. My colleagues will absolutely "go over my head" instead of discussing items with me if they don't get the answer they like right away, and our clients will do the same. I think the sooner we can do away with such stringent and pointless hierarchies the better, as it's hard for me to see them as anything but a show to allow the people with real power in such hierarchies to get their way.
> The power in heirarchies, is not the title, but the relationships between 'brothers' inside it.
I would disagree to an extent -- for those in the brotherhood, yes it's about the relationships; for the rest, it's about the title(s). The hierarchy exists as an exclusionary barrier ensuring those outside it respect the hierarchy, while those inside play with the hierarchy of the brotherhood.
From my experiences across many businesses, this is an accurate representation of hierarchy and titles; they are a tool of force against those without the title, except for those who are close with someone else within the hierarchy who is willing to forgo the hierarchy and mission/purpose of the org. It's wildly inconsistent, prone to errors and really bad decision making, and it's quite hard to unravel for virtually anyone who wants another way of doing things.
Businesses and corporations need a heirarchy to withhold knowledge and information from outsiders and 'insiders hungry enough to be dangerous'.
But the natural state for a heirarchy is in an institution, or a military, or a government.
As soon as you make money, your final measure of existence, heirarchy is crippled (to varying degrees) as a concept.
Heirarchy in a business is nearly identical as keeping people 'on a shelf' ready to be deployed onto the storm and stress of work. Businesses heirarchies are flatter, often chaotic and lose rigour and discipline, anytime someone sees financial benefit in bending the rules.
A pure heirachy like something seen on a british navy frigate, or in a religious instution, is a better mental model for the concept. Business needs, flatten out what the ideal concept is capable of producing.
i get what you’re saying, but i don’t see those as true hierarchies either. they suffer the same issues and problems as described above.
the simple idea of implicit authority because of rank or position does not seem to work as soon as there is an incentive to misuse it; i don’t know what the answer is to this but i don’t really subscribe that the majority of the hierarchies matter so much.
the open source model of “just fork it if you don’t agree” isn’t great, but i would say it’s a start. maintainers define the goal and purpose of the project, but if you don’t like the rules, fork and go your separate ways. this is vastly simplified of course, but i think it better represents a model that would be reasonable for a hierarchy.
Most communities have that though; they don't like others having success, they don't like talent/genius in others, they laugh at failure (both by large and small companies) etc. Really one of the best lessons in life (often learned at a higher age) is to give two shits about what anyone thinks about whatever you do.
Just building stuff (fail/success doesn't matter so much) is more than by far most will ever do; they are mostly jealous of people who get anything done at all.
I made a game with a group of well educated friends back in the mid 2000s. It was released (against agreements) when the core gameplay was roughly-in place, but all the art assets were 'programmer art'.
It made the top ten worst Steam Greenlight games (on some dead blog) and attracted huge quantities of negative criticism.
Even though it was never linked to my public reputation and I found it hilarious at the time...
It did make me very hesistant and perfectionist in future projects and took out a certain amount of faith that 'it will work out'.
I learnt a lot from the experience and I'm glad I did it. But gosh I wasted a lot of good juice and youthful exuberance on that.
> It did make me very hesistant and perfectionist in future projects and took out a certain amount of faith that 'it will work out'.
But that's because you still cared about others. And maybe didn't read enough startup/entrepreneur books or know enough people who did that. Once you know what crap companies willingly release which go on to be successful, it will make you far less perfectionist.
I had the luck of having a few family members in computing in the 70s when I was born, so I heard early on about Allen debugging/fixing the basic interpreter he wrote on a PDP for a processor he didn't have access to at the time on the plane for one of the most important meetings of Microsoft at the time. The absolute and total garbage Oracle released for many years when they started. etc. And those are old stories, but this happens all the time; a lot of products that are launched by big or small companies are so full of bugs that I wonder sometimes if anyone bothered to try them.
I simply stopped caring about perfection as it drove me insane and no-one cares anyway. Even, in line with this article, even if I make something ONLY for myself, I rather just finish it and then change it over time then try to get it in a 'perfect state' from the start. It doesn't make me happy as perfection is not really something that's easy to define; especially in software, it is so incredibly hard to get to anything better than 'ok', that striving for perfection (Dijkstra like) will drive you completely bonkers and nothing ever gets released.
This is something I learned being in bands. Fame and fortune weren’t in the story, but because we made the music we wanted to hear, I have an album and 3 EPs worth of music that I can listen to and enjoy, over a decade later.
> This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out
This isn’t toxicity. This is normal human behaviour. Either you deal with it yourself internally or you will be suffering it forever.
Maybe this is why childhood trauma helps sometimes at being an entrepreneur (I have first hand experience), being bullied made sure I didn’t really care about negative feedback later on in life.
My point is calling it toxic doesn’t help. It doesn’t help you, because you place your own self worth in someone else’s hands. This is bad. Secondly, you’ll never change this, because it’s normal. People don’t like new things, except for a few exceptions. You have to build something really cool or people won’t care. Society just isn’t some 100% love, accepting place. Sorry. Evolution didn’t make it that way. Society doesn’t have an obligation to you to be nice.
But that’s the whole point of this article too. Just build stuff you enjoy. Who cares what others think? Stop blaming society for your issues.
We need more spaces where young, passionate folks can get some encouragement and support. It can be really hard to find that, especially when you're inexperienced.
This is something college is good for, FWIW. Everyone is expected to be young and inexperienced and it's set up to build experience at a reasonable pace, with supportive external validation.
I always feel like the "school is useless" meme ignores all this stuff.
> Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
Glad you’ve seen the light. Too many fail to recognise that this another type of hacking and painting, but without the backing of venture capital. Pure unadultared freedom. Riskier too.
> This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didn't make every perfect decision for their product.
Start through another community then? It is nobody's fault if you can't impress people. But I find people being very welcoming here to bad ideas and half-baked products that are absolutely low quality and soon gets abandoned.
Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.
I wish I'd learned that sooner.