8 ms·

Find Your People

• vzaliva 1y ago
  It’s a lovely speech. I’m older now and can appreciate it. However, I’m not sure if I would have in my twenties. Unfortunately, some things can't be advised or taught - you have to discover them for yourself through trial and error.
• apsurd 1y ago
  Good speech. It makes me think of why the rich get richer though. More access to more types of people earlier and throughout one's life. The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide—as wide as they can stomach—orientation of all there is in the world. It's not curation, it's not "the best". it's volume and contrasts. I debate my friends about private school. they have kids, I don't yet. Private school is actually a narrow lens, is my argument.
  • pc86 1y ago
    I don't think anybody would argue that it's a narrower lens than public school, the argument is that it's better. Not just academically, although that's the case 99 times out of 100. But as you alluded to yourself in this very comment, the kids at private schools get access to other kids (and families) at that private school.
  • ketzo 1y ago
    Aside from the pure “networking” factor, the expectations/environment are a big deal too I went to private school and in hindsight it pretty obviously altered my life for the better — I was a smart but lazy kid, and being surrounded by people who were dead-set on going to Harvard, and by teachers who expected excellence, was a huge factor in making me actually try hard. If I was a smart lazy kid at a school where I had to try to find that environment, rather than being thrust into it, I would have had a much lower trajectory.
    • apsurd 1y ago
      Environmental expectations and accountability is a great point. Hard to deny how wide the gap can be between various groups.
    • cmehdy 1y ago
      I was that other kid. Grew up in a pretty tough place, where dodging blades was no euphemism and emotional regulation was on permanent hiatus. Grew up with severe issues in personal life and balance of self, absence of anchors in family and social relationships. Was always curious, always loved understanding things. When you don't have good people around, you pay the price in time and pain. Those people will save you years and hundreds of thousands - or even millions, simply by showing you the most egregious traps to avoid and the more virtuous behaviours to adopt. They'll make your success more predictable, less reliant on the specifics of your genetic makeup, domestic instability, and odd moments of luck. I was a good kid. Didn't end up well at all. Figured I could at least try to be a good person to others as time goes on, and pass on the gotchas and virtuous habits I partly figured out myself.
    • criddell 1y ago
      I don't know what the axes are for your trajectory plot, but some of the people I know who seem to really enjoy their lives are not high achievers if you measure by status or finances. It's hard to find things that all of them have in common. They all come from supportive, functioning families and all of them are artistic people working in technical fields and have high EQ. They are all very curious but not scattered or unfocused. I didn't know if I should write creative or artistic above because they are so similar. They are different though, right?
      • jimbokun 1y ago
        > They all come from supportive, functioning families and all of them are artistic people working in technical fields and have high EQ. They are all very curious but not scattered or unfocused. Seems like it wasn't too hard to find things all of them have in common.
        • 1y ago
  • bko 1y ago
    > The best thing to give kids is access to a very wide—as wide as they can stomach—orientation of all there is in the world. This sounds good sure, but what if you give your child a wide orientation and they want to be an influencer, or club promoter, or grind it out in acting? They almost certainly won't want to become an accountant or nurse. Who would want to do that by choice? But maybe an accountant or nurse is the path to a good life. The extreme is celebrity children which often have issues. I think its good to have restraints. If you have an infinite bank roll and no real forcing function, you're likely to get lost
    • bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > I think its good to have restraints. If you have an infinite bank roll and no real forcing function, you're likely to get lost You're absolutely right I wonder how many people graduate from prestigious universities, well connected and set up to succeed, and then don't ever really make anything of themselves
  • softfalcon 1y ago
    I mostly agree with you, as a person who went to a middle-of-the-road public school. I will point out though, anecdotally, my spouse went to the highest tier of public school in our city. She has a good balance of "seeing the world for what it is" while also having an edge of being personally networked to a ton of folks who are rich, well-connected, and capable. I look at the friend groups I built when I was a kid, and then I look at hers. - My old friend groups are all stuck in a range of poverty to lower-middle-class. - My spouses friends are all doing very well for themselves, live all over the world, prestigious careers, active hobbies, highly intellectual, cultured, etc. It's a stark contrast. There is something to be said for ensuring your kids go to the best schools possible. Those early networks are pivotal in forming an above average life. Competency is secondary to connection.
    • Karrot_Kream 1y ago
      I went to a poverty level school, my partner went to one of the most elite schools in the US. My friends are also stuck in poverty or the lower-middle-class while my partner's friends seem quite conventionally successful. But several of my partner's friends are quite frustrated with their career choices. They feel like they were hemmed into high-prestige careers. A lot of them are not particularly successful in their careers because they don't feel the passion to succeed and feel like their choices were taken away from them. Many of them have very anxious memories from school of perpetually feeling like they were failing because of the high pressure of the school. There are many aspects of my low-income schooling I would not want to pass onto a child but there are also aspects of my partner's schooling that I wouldn't want to pass either. I don't really know what the answer is, but I feel like being at either end of the normal distribution of schools here isn't good.
      • ketzo 1y ago
        It’s certainly true that there are real downsides to both ends of the spectrum — but all things being equal I’d rather be wiping my tears with hundred dollar bills than tissues
        • 1y ago
  • gen220 1y ago
    Having thought about this a good amount and collected anecdotes over the years... I think the prioritization order should be (1) live in a location in which the parents feel their most authentic/happy/self-actualized selves, (2) send your children to the most geographically proximate school where they won't be (overly-)bullied for their identity (inclusive of class) one way or another. Relative school quality (performance on standardized tests, admissions to fancy schools), and public/private are proxies for these more fundamental issues. Too many parents discount the value of (1) to zero, with the idea that they're "sacrificing themselves" "for their kids". An example of one good reason to not send your kids to private school: Burning yourself out on a series of high-stress job to afford sending your middle-class kid to an upper-class private school will traumatize them. If not for their education/social experience at school, then for your lack of calming and positive influence on their emotional/relationship-forming lives. I don't think it's necessarily "wrong" for some people to send their kids to a "narrow-lens" school, even if it's often wrong. It can be right for somebody else and wrong for you.
    • ketzo 1y ago
      I think this is an excellent comment. Not enough people talk about living near other parents in this way, and you’re right that it’s a massive difference-maker.
  • alooPotato 1y ago
    Agree that a wide diversity of people is great. Disagree on the private school - it is a narrow band, but so is public school. I think ppl overestimate the diversity in public school and underestimate it in private school. Neither is enough - def need to find ways to expand kids network, especially the network of adults they know.
  • kayge 1y ago
    As someone who wishes they could realistically afford private school for their kids (public school leaves a lot to be desired for 'gifted' kids these days), I think you've got good points but I land on the other side. Using some of your quotes: private school is "a narrow lens", but that lens likely includes a high percentage of the "rich get richer" network. I think my ideal would be private school to help find a better match for my kids' brainpower (2 of them anyway, tbd on #3 :D) and make some good high-value connections, but still make a conscious effort to encourage them to interact with a wider variety of people (through travel, public sports teams, community service, etc.)
    • apsurd 1y ago
      > (2 of them anyway, tbd on #3 :D) LOL; thanks this made my chill Friday very chill. On principle, I don't like feeding into wealth disparity so I don't want to pay for private school. Your perspective is most practical and likely something I'll lean into as I do have kids of my own. "Why not do both" basically.
  • ip26 1y ago
    A wide perspective is good, but that is orthogonal to what they experience as normal. You can select for a good, healthy normal AND provide a wide experience. Your child doesn’t have to attend a school where educational attainment isn’t valued, to understand that perspective exists. Their “normal” will strongly influence their choices. For example, if you wanted your child to attend college, I would argue the single best way to ensure they do is to enroll them in a high school where 90%+ of the student body later goes on to college.
  • jgon 1y ago
    I think its important to think about this point in the context that Jessica attended one of the most elite private schools in the US, Phillips Academy, with an annual tuition that is currently ~60kUSD/year. Notable alumni include both Bush presidents, and many billionaires or their children. Afterwards she attended Bucknell University, another private elite institution, tuition ~65kUSD/year, where the median family income is > 200kUSD/year, and 73% of the student body is from the top 20% income bracket. So its important to "find your people", but as always it's as important to situate advice in the context where the advice-giver issues it from, and in this case Jessica has spent her entire life as an elite, finding other elites in elite circles, and I'm going to hazard a guess that this is probably something that has had a positive impact on her life. I think your friends are probably on to something, realizing that you're responsible for helping to guide your child as they grow up has a way of crystalizing certain arguments, and various "hypotheticals" fall by the wayside as the attraction of an intellectual experiment and being the devil's advocate just doesn't really have the same pull anymore once it's your own child's future at stake and not just some thought experiment about "volumes and contrasts". As always people are free to make their own choices, and even listen to a speech from someone who was able have almost $200,000 of money spent on their high-school education, a speech about how to plan your career that is big on "gumption" and "stick to it" energy, and surprisingly short on "be born in the top 1% of economic circles", but given that this is a speech at the aforementioned Bucknell, I am pretty sure that most of the crowd is already pretty hip to the realities of the world they're about to enter.
    • c0redump 1y ago
      Surprised that I had to scroll this far down to find this comment. I didn’t know anything about the authors upbringing, but just from reading the speech, I had a strong feeling that it was something like this. The reality is that the people who control the funding don’t want anything to do with the average slob. “Find your people” is a euphemism for “be rich and well connected, and hang out with other elites”
  • joshdavham 1y ago
    With respect to private schools, I’m not necessarily against them, but I hate the idea of living in a society where public schools are seen as the ‘bad’ option for the lower class while private schools are for the middle and upper class. I’ve heard that it’s kinda like that in the US currently but I’m not actually sure. I went to public school in Canada and it was completely fine.
• ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  In my case, the subway crashed into the station at about 100mph, and I had to crawl out of the wreckage, and repair the damage, before I could proceed. When I did proceed, I had to buck constant headwinds. Worked great. Would ride again. 10/10.
  • charlie0 1y ago
    Say more.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      It's a long story, and probably not one for this venue, but suffice it to say that the skills one develops, rebuilding a shattered life, tend to give significant advantages. > That which does not kill you, makes you stronger. - Freddy Nietzsche > Or leaves you weak and exhausted. - Bill Prekker's Corollary
      • epolanski 1y ago
        I can relate and feel the same about myself. Disasters and dramas since young age made me quite resilient at embracing change and difficulty.
      • gardenhedge 1y ago
        All very vague
        • ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
          Yup
        • ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
          BTW: I don't "owe" anything more to anyone. I wrote something entertaining. It happened to be based on my life, but it really stands alone. Just because someone is curious, and feels they are entitled to more information, doesn't mean they are actually "entitled," and that they will get it. I am grateful, when folks share intimate stuff with me. I have been in that position for decades, and I've learned not to pry for more. There's usually a good reason they don't go further. I may not think it's a "good" reason, but they do, so what I think means diddly squat. The Internet has done weird things to personal boundaries and propriety. Kinda sad, really.
• ryandrake 1y ago
  I feel like I'm too thoroughly cynical and jaded to take the tropes in "graduation speeches" seriously. Bringing someone back in who graduated in a totally different time, to a totally different world, in a totally different competitive, political, and economic landscape, to ramble about what they did when they graduated seems kind of pointless. Is her (or anyone's) story from the 90s really useful for someone graduating today? Ms. Livingston graduated around when I did. I can't think of anything that I (or she) did to launch a career, either pre- or post-graduation that would be applicable to someone graduating today. When we graduated, you could actually get an entry level job in an office as a generic English major. You were generally competing with others in your local area or state, not the entire world's best. You could spam a bunch of resumes out and count on a handful of interviews and a few offers. You had at least a little assurance that if you did a good job, you'd advance or job-hop your way to something better. Back then, your student debt was (usually) manageable post-graduation and not a ball and chain holding you back. With a little diligent saving, you had a shot at affording a home and getting on the real estate ladder. And, you could do all these things as a B or C student, without being the world's foremost expert in your field. I don't think any of these are true anymore. Graduates today are entering a dog eat dog capitalist slugfest where a lucky few winners take all. They're graduating into relative poverty and crushing debt, with no realistic opportunity to save. The job prospects for people without experience are generally awful. You're up against the world's best, plus a growing number of privileged elite "sons of the right people" sponging up all the really good jobs. Crappy work as a temp worker if you're lucky, stocking shelves or waiting tables if you're not. Good luck finding an actual full-time office gig related to your degree, unless you're top of your class. And even if you do, you're under constant threat of PIP, downsizing, or AI taking your place. "Find the people that you think are interesting" is kind of tone deaf happy-talk in today's reality.
  • snapcaster 1y ago
    What would you tell the graduating students?
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• wagwang 1y ago
  Kids not feeling like they have agency is a huge problem in the asian community which likes to put their kids on steel tracks with 0 wiggle room, this speech resonated with me big time
  • game_the0ry 1y ago
    As a south asian person, I could not agree more. The irony is that my parents were immigrant entrepreneurs and my grandparents were also entrepreneurs on both sides. Yet my parents pushed me towards medical school or a stable job at the least. I think this was for a couple reasons: 1. Asian parents express their insecurities through their children. They wanted a stable and high income (which maps to "doctor") so they push their kids to become the version of them they never were. 2. Asian parents treat their children like status symbols. Nothing says "I am the best parent" than being able to say "my son/daughter is a doctor." Saying 'my son/daughter owns their own business" just does not have the same ring to it. In asian cultures, status and conformity are very valuable, and those do not map to high agency.
    • herval 1y ago
      This sounds wildly similar to Brazilian parenting
      • yoyohello13 1y ago
        It’s a spectrum. Many parents, across all countries act like this.
        • disgruntledphd2 1y ago
          It tends to be associated with immigrants and parents who believe that they should have had a "better" job (even when they like what they do, they don't want their kids doing it).
    • jimbokun 1y ago
      Not Asian or South Asian. I'm sure what you're saying is true. But having parents that are not involved enough to push their kids towards anything in particular is a much bigger challenge to over come. If you have a degree from a prestigious university and the network that comes along with it, pivoting towards start ups or something more creative or entrepreneurial is a lot easier than if you never went to college at all or didn't finish high school.
• rubitxxx15 1y ago
  It’s a great speech, but I’ve listened to this “chase your dream” thing for decades. I took career and personality tests but nothing in them fit. I don’t fit. I’ve gotten seriously jaded and live with crippling mental health problems and constant stress because I feel like I failed to find my people and now I just hide from my people. So, as an older adult, I think maybe we need to be teaching more responsibility to kids today rather than this Disney fantasy. If people just focus on trying to do the best they can, that’s good enough. And spend that extra time improving your home, volunteering, and working on your finances like people did in the mid-to-late 20th century.
  • smeej 1y ago
    I came here to leave a comment related to this. This article has great advice, if you're normal enough that enough of "your people" exist to be able to find them and do something together. But if you've spent your whole life being told by the whole world--even people you thought were really interesting and wanted to get to know--that you're "just too fucking weird," it lands more like, "Oh. More advice for other people." Similarly, if you're a person who likes all kinds of things--but only for 6 weeks to 6 months and then becomes utterly bored of them--there is no stable group of "your people." There's just "these people, for now, I guess," and you hold them lightly because you know in a matter of months, when you don't share the passion for the one thing they're stably obsessed with, you won't have enough in common anymore for them to tolerate you. I'm almost 40. I'm really at a decision point where I have to decide if I want to keep working on my underlying trauma wounds, in hopes that if I just work hard enough, I'll eventually break into the "fun kind of odd" category instead of "too fucking weird," and blend in enough to have "people," or whether I want to own that this is just how I am, and there's nothing to be done about it, so I should really do what I can to appreciate the fleeting tolerance of "people who don't know me very well yet" while it lasts, but invest most of my energy in trying to figure out if there's any way to be both happy and lonely.
    • MicrosoftShill 1y ago
      It sounds like you need some friends in the maker space or something similar where tinkering in something temporary is normal. I'd say you're among friends in the HN space where tinkerers are more common! Keep working on your trauma. Don't however think that your healing is a requirement to have friends, love, etc. We are all broken and hurt. We are broken together.
• davedx 1y ago
  Refreshingly unpretentious and clear. Love it, thank you
• komali2 1y ago
  That was enjoyable, and I appreciated the overall message. A little bit trickier of a pitch to introverted people, maybe. One bit though I'm interested in chatting about: > The truth is there are thousands of different places you could go work, and you have to consider them all and figure out which is the best. But that sounds impossible, right? You only had to choose between 60 different majors, and now you have to choose between thousands of different jobs? How do you even do that? The first step, is to acknowledge that you have to. Do you really "have" to? I guess we can relatively safely assume that basically 99% of those graduates have essentially the same life goals in terms of financial stability, retirement, etc. Lately though I've wondered about the basically unspoken premise we pitch to our kids from the get-go. I recently found a diary entry from me when I was 7 years old that had a line along the lines of, "I finally figured out what I'm gonna be when I grow up!" I noticed also that so frequently one of the first questions asked at parties or meetups is, "So what do you do for a living?" We really seem to be telling eachother that you go to school and then you do a career and that's how you define yourself, mostly. Differentiate based on hobbies you get to brag about during a "and tell us one interesting fact about yourself" portion of an icebreaker. I have a friend here that teaches English about 15 hours a week. The rest of his time he spends painting murals on the riverside (unenforced here in Taiwan, graffiti is kinda just considered public art) or drawing people he sees on trains. I asked him why he doesn't take up more hours, he replied that actually he'd work less if he could, but he needs to hit a certain minimum annual income in order to be eligible for permanent residency. Once he gets that, he'll work even less. He's one of the happiest people I know. I've been wondering if one of the responses to late stage capitalism will be more en-masse opt-outs. There's a recognized class of this in the PRC, called "Lying Flat People," or "Full Time Children," or my favorite, "Rat People." They scrounge together enough cash for a street BBQ and beers, and then spend their day just lounging, drinking, smoking, and bbqing. In Taiwan we have "Moonlight Tribe," people who spend all their money the second they get their paycheck and then live penny to penny until the end of the month. I'm guessing other countries have similar movements - I remember meeting vagabonds (their self-description) in New Orleans that were happily living a "post-capitalism" life. It's maybe short-sighted since it basically guarantees you will die younger than most, but then again none of us are guaranteed to make it to retirement anyway so I can also respect the choice.
  • 1y ago
• m3kw9 1y ago
  There seem to be a very small chance of changing one’s life trajectory after hearing these speeches. As it’s difficult to change a persons track they’ve been on for years. The uncomfortable changes you must enact immediately is difficult. None the less, a small conversion is huge.
  • ip26 1y ago
    One single speech might not do it. However, a short anecdote. Several years ago, while sitting through a training on first aid and cpr on infants, I was bored out of my mind and complaining internally about how this was a waste of time, yet another rehash of common sense. When suddenly it hit me - no, this was not common sense. I had been taught these things repeatedly ever since I was twelve. I didn’t retain all of it after the first time, the second, or the third. But eventually, it was just common sense to me. I couldn’t always tell you where I learned it, or describe the textbook medical guidance. Why is it done precisely this way, who knows, but obviously this exact grip is how you hold the infant while delivering back blows.
• shubhamjain 1y ago
  I wasn't expecting much, and I personally didn't get a lot from the article, but if I was in early 20s, I would've been hugely inspired. Jessica surely has a gift for clear and motivating writing.
• jumploops 1y ago
  As someone who has “reinvented” myself more than once (mostly due to school/job transfers), it seems what wasn’t said is equally if not more important. Rarely can you “find your people” without letting other people go. The unspoken truth in this article is that it’s just as important to be willing to let go of relationships that aren’t helping you grow. Easier said than done. Whether it’s the negative influence of a toxic friend, or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent (who is just trying to keep you on the rails), other people rarely have your best interests in mind. Losing the people who aren’t “your people” is (usually) a necessary step to finding the right people.
  • jll29 1y ago
    > or the mediocre advice of an overbearing parent For what it's worth, I teach my students not to listen to their parents, because while most parents want the best for their children, without doubt, their assumptions are typically outdated, and were probably already wrong when they were young.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • ip26 1y ago
      As categorical guidance, that seems like a problematic thing to teach. First, parents don’t know everything, but they know their kids and have witnessed their journey, so they have a unique perspective to offer. Second, parents will begin to (justifiably!!) grow suspicious of your institution and develop resentment, which is a serious structural problem. Hopefully what you mean is something like you teach them to think critically about their parents advice as one input among many, understanding where the advice comes from and its inherent strengths and flaws.
      • socalgal2 1y ago
        My personal experience is my parents’ advice was almost universally bad. Fortunately they still supported my own decisions. I still find it frustrating talking to them about my goals/issues as their takes are extremely irrelevant to my situation
• qntty 1y ago
  I like the subway analogy. I'm sure I've heard some version of it before, but maybe because I was younger I didn't really get it. It really is a little strange to tell kids who have never really directed their own lives before to start doing it all of a sudden.
  • ryukafalz 1y ago
    There is a bit of a transition period; you have a lot more choice about what classes you're going to take in college than prior to that for example, and you're to a large degree choosing your own path there. But graduating is still the end of a structured path that you've been in nearly your whole life, so I think it's always going to feel pretty abrupt subjectively despite the fact that you have been acclimated a little bit over time.
• svilen_dobrev 1y ago
  dejavu :) Here something i told my mentees 4 years ago: searching for answers.. does not make life interesting. search questions.. then You become interesting. and inconvenient. To the answer-manufacturers. (whole industries and institutions are dealing with only that) which.. by itself.. IS interesting. Most people are either answers - pretty boring - or not even answers.. only nondescript. banal. incredibly predictable and.. like nylon bag, you see through it but cannot get through. Search for people-questions. Search. ---- Maybe it can help someone else too..
• ariztocray 1y ago
  Underrated impact of good networking is that it increases the expectations you have for yourself and the potential you ascribe to yourself. My first job after finishing college was in a factory. After many more years of drifting, I finally had the dumb luck to start encountering people doing intellectually engaging things and actually making good money. When I started surrounding myself with those individuals, I started realizing I was underselling my capabilities. And I started having higher expectations of what I wanted to achieve in specific domains. I am definitely not successful by the standards of the corporate world, but I've superseded what my prospects should have been based on my track record in my 20's. And almost all of that started by rubbing shoulders with people in stages of life that I never considered before.
• jll29 1y ago
  The talk is suitable for the target audience, the young undecided. For the rest of us, especially here at HN, it would have been interesting to learn a bit more about how she got to that Fidelity job first and how she then "drifted" towards "her people", namely the startup people, and then the book and Y Combinator in specific. Some Y combinator early anecdotes would have been great, too.
• joshstrange 1y ago
  > The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want, but really today is the last stop. Well put! This is something _so many_ college kids don't seem to understand. I had many friends who graduated then just stood around looking for where to go next. It hadn't come up in discussions but it became apparent they were surprised by the sudden end to the "tracks" while the students who saw them coming (or were told better/more often) all were befuddled, "How did you not see this coming?", "Did you expect someone to just walk up and offer you a job?", "You have never even interned in your field??". I don't blame the kids, they don't know any better. They've spent their whole life focusing on the next goal, I talked about this specifically (in blog post) when I dropped out of college to go full-time into my profession. For me, learning "there are no tracks" and more importantly "you don't need to go to the end of the college track before you decide next steps" was freeing and empowering while also being a bit terrifying.
  • parpfish 1y ago
    i think its interesting that for so many college kids, the post-graduation options that continue to provide tracks are also treated as the more "prestigious" options (go to grad school. work at big3/faang, etc). it's not because they are any more prestigious or important, but because they provide a clear sense of achievement/external validation and kids that make it to the end of college are kids that have had decades of achievement/external validation being their primary measure of success. and because of that, those places do an amazing job recruiting. i remember toward the end of my undergrad days there was huge sense of competition to get a "teach for america" position, even among folks with no interest in education. it was appealing simply because it was selective and provided a clear framework for 'next steps'.
    • RealityVoid 1y ago
      The flipside is that going off the tracks, you need to decide where you're going and you might get lost. Some people try to do something and then waste a lot of time just spinning their wheels. For them, some structure and some tracks might be necessary. I guess we all need some amount of scaffolding in our life, at one point or another.
• ChrisArchitect 1y ago
  Finding your people a theme in Kermit the Frog's speech over at UMD https://apnews.com/article/kermit-frog-university-of-maryland-commencement-7976fbba353fef1bb2ca818944f9728d https://apnews.com/article/kermit-frog-university-of-marylan... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44075293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44075293)
• nathan_compton 1y ago
  "Which leads me to my final point about getting ambitious plans: you have to be immune to rejection. People are going to dismiss you at first. If that's enough to stop you, you're doomed. So you have to learn to ignore it. And that's harder than it sounds—social pressure is so powerful. But everyone who does ambitious things has to learn how to resist it." Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and destruction in their wake. I don't care if you need this attitude to be a founder, it still sucks. I worked at a startup where the technical founder had this attitude and was, at least with respect to the product at hand, totally incompetent and it was truly catastrophically absurd and stressful and a huge waste of tons of people's time and money.
  • mjr00 1y ago
    > Lots of people who learn to do this cause lots of chaos and destruction in their wake. At the same time, lots of people who do this end up being extremely successful. The difficulty is knowing which rejection and criticism to ignore. Imagine losing out on a multi-billion dollar business because your initial pitch was dismissed by people saying your business is pointless and redundant because rsync already exists[0]. On the flip side, there's a lot of founders who... have more determination than experience, let's say, and when told their idea won't work, instead of using factual data points (or getting an MVP out to collect data points) operate purely on belief until they run out of money. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
    • nathan_compton 1y ago
      "Each time you have to make a decision, make the right one" would be what I would say in a commencement speech. Truly sage advice.
      • mjr00 1y ago
        > "Each time you have to make a decision, make the right one" would be what I would say in a commencement speech. Truly sage advice. It honestly is great advice. Most (useful) business advice I've seen amounts to "how to make better decisions". This includes things like doing market research or a business model canvas (to make better decisions about your customers), releasing MVPs quickly to test the market (to make better decisions around product and pricing), picking which metrics and data points to measure (so that you can evaluate if your decision was actually correct and quickly course correct if not), etc.
• phkahler 1y ago
  How much of that is hindsight? Was she drawn to Y-combinator or did she drift into it like she did Fidelity? Recognizing it was the right people and the right thing obviously happened, I'm just questioning when she actually knew that.
  • alwa 1y ago
    She co-founded it, didn’t she? Created it to operationalize her ideas, which, from the sound of her speech, confused people around her at the time? Or am I misunderstanding what you’re asking? > When we started Y Combinator, everyone treated it as a joke. We were funding kids right out of college and only giving them small amounts of money. How could these startups ever succeed? Now everyone knows it's a good idea to fund young founders, but twenty years ago, it just seemed lame. But we didn't care what people thought of us. We knew we were onto something. In fact it was good that we seemed lame, because that meant it took several years before people started to copy us.
  • harrall 1y ago
    I don’t know about her but when I found what I really actually liked, I looked forward it every day, no matter what challenge it gave me. And it’s still the same excitement every day 5, 10, etc. years later. I suppose I’m saying is that when you find it, you know.
• jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
  Hmm ok. What she's arguing for is "fake it till you make it". Think about it, the first thing this person did when she started steering, was write a book about startups even though by her own admission she didn't know anything about startups. I liked the rails/steering advise, disliked the fake it till you make it advice.
• 1oooqooq 1y ago
  Kudos jessica. You are still the same unstoppable machine from long ago. Even now you are selling and recruiting, and even passed all opportunity to gloat. all business.
• mclau157 1y ago
  Tangential to this but why does there seem to be a correlation between rock climbing gyms and tech oriented people?
  • macintux 1y ago
    I have no idea, but personally after 30 years of IT work, I definitely regret not finding something to strengthen my hands. They're barely useful for anything besides typing, and often not even that.
    • nssnsjsjsjs 1y ago
      Not too late right?
  • AaronAPU 1y ago
    I don’t know, but I’ve made a specific effort not to rock climb because I felt it may cause long term hand related injuries which could impact my ability to work. Not even sure how well founded that fear is, but I would otherwise love to do rock climbing.
    • mclau157 1y ago
      I believe the hand injuries would be most felt if you were climbing very difficult "crimpy" climbs multiple times a week without enough rest, these are the climbs where you really put stress on tiny individual parts of the fingers to grip onto very tiny holds, otherwise "juggy" climbing where you can grab onto a hold with a large portion of your hand uses more shoulder and back muscles which can get fatigued but definitely not as damaged as tiny individual parts of the fingers
    • hasbot 1y ago
      That's a completely unfounded fear. I've climbed on and off for 35 years and have injured my finger tendons a few times but never to the extent that it interfered with my programming job. Injuries do happen but one can learn to warm up to prevent injuries, what is likely to cause an injury, and when to back off before an injury occurs.
• whall6 1y ago
  Unrelated to tech, but I wonder if this is why so many people seek the IB to PE to HF route that seems so well trod. They just need rails that point them to the next stop.
  • 65 1y ago
    Care to explain what IB, PE, and HF mean?
    • apsurd 1y ago
      investment banking, private equity, hedge fund. I think
    • netvarun 1y ago
      I think they refer to: IB - investment banking PE - private equity HF - hedge funds or High Frequency trading (?)
      • deleted 1y ago
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    • pokemyiout 1y ago
      IB: Investment Banking PE: Private Equity HF: Hedge Fund
• throe73848484 1y ago
  > So I'm going to tell you about a trick you can pull right here at the point where the train tracks end. You can reinvent yourself. I wish I’d known I could do that. I was lazy in college and got bad grades I googled study fees for that university. $69000 per year plus expenses for accommodation, food and books. After you finish such school, you should be top level motivated professional with highly lucrative job lined up. If you drop quarter of million dollars for paper, just to discover at end you need to "reinvent yourself", you are probably highly highly privileged person, or just not so smart. 18 years old kids need to hear this speech. Not students before graduation!
  • charlie0 1y ago
    The main "trick" here was moving to where the next center of power was going to be and meeting the right people through hard work (but really the main differentiator) sheer luck.
• pluto_modadic 1y ago
  If I could downvote a post, this would be it.
• lucasfcosta 1y ago
  Thanks for writing this, Jessica. This is a great paragraph: > If you want to, you can just decide to shift gears at this point, and no one's going to tell you you can't. You can just decide to be more curious, or more responsible, or more energetic, and no one's going to go look up your college grades and say, "Hey, wait a minute, this person's supposed to be a slacker." I've often seen people get too attached to an unproductive "identity" instead of looking at things as they are. It's way too common for people to fail once and think they're a failure, rather than thinking that they just failed at that particular time. By the way, I remember meeting you during the S23 batch and how genuinely excited you were to meet us, young founders who were just getting started. It does seem like you found your people!
• jackphilson 1y ago
  Right. I feel like cultural fit is very important. You need to find the community you're most aligned with (share same memetic space) and go to them. This is why I think network states will succeed
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    I suspect very strongly that we live in a "post-community" world. There are no communities, and haven't been for a very long time, likely since before your grandparents were in their prime. We have any number of entities that function as surrogate communities, but without the benefits the real thing would provide. Quite often though, they have many of the disadvtanges of those, plus a few extra. The community you're most aligned with, that you rush into hoping to feel as if you fit in, it might be more like an angler fish just waiting for you to jump into its jaws.
    • jackphilson 1y ago
      Well, we have it mildly solved on the internet layer (hackernews). Issue is these bonds aren't very strong because they're not supported by physical space (can't use evolutionary hardwiring). This is why I think network states are good because they're a projection of community on the internet layer onto the physical layer. I think community is very important, and the world will tend more and more towards happiness (generally speaking), so the resurgence of community living I think is inevitable. I think the atomization is a temporary blip caused by increased convenience (tiktok, amazon). I think the characterization of a community as an angler fish has some merit but might be a little pessimistic. In any case, it's way better than interacting with people who you know are definitely not your community.
      • thimkerbell 1y ago
        What happens to makerspaces, that goes wrong?
    • trinix912 1y ago
      Communities still exist, but you have to make an active effort to find and become a part of them. Hobbies often have communities, same with fandoms, church groups, etc. Online and offline, whichever you prefer.
• farahkh 1y ago
  "And if you find yourself working at a place where you don't like the people, get out"
• joshdavham 1y ago
  > Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college [...] And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want I've never envied the people who graduate college and then immediately go to work at big tech companies where they start off as an "SDE 1", then "SDE 2", then Mid level, senior, staff, principal, etc. There's definitely more security and stability in that, but I think these people are also missing out on a lot.
  • coolcase 1y ago
    Startups might be the new SDE1 while trying to do stuff outside of capitalism might be the new startup. Not in terms of financial reward of course. But in terms of rewarding career off the beaten path. Personally while I want to do a startup I am finding the boring path you mention quite fascinating!
  • epolanski 1y ago
    Every time I'm assisting those Ama/MS/Apple labels for their rate race I want to cringe so hard to be honest.
  • udev4096 1y ago
    It does not matter. Everyone is a code whore. You will work at a place which pays you the highest, regardless of the ethics. Majority of "big tech" are unethical places and yet people will sell their souls to work there. Tells you a lot about the majority of CS grads
• neilv 1y ago
  Final sentence: > Find the interesting people. Note that this isn't advice for everyone. Go back to earlier in the piece: > But in the middle, there's a group who wish they had ambitious plans, but don't. This speech is for you. I'm going to tell you how to get ambitious plans. The "Find Your People" of the title is the more general advice, for a larger audience. Your people might well be a quiet small town environment that's doing OK economically, has good school(s) for children, people are neighborly and supportive, not a lot of inequity and all that follows, etc. You might not think of that as interesting, at least not in the abstract, but it might be your people. For myself, who seems to be a natural startup person (maybe including a little bit of both Swartz and Altman), I've been thinking that I'm most likely to find a concentration of my people in a town with a good liberal arts college, intermixed with economically OK non-college people, and easily accessible to a major metro area -- without feeling cut off too much from activity and opportunity, and with having a regular infusion of a little freshness/change. (I'm not convinced that Cambridge/Boston, San Francisco, or NYC can be that place, long-term, unless you have enough money to insulate yourself from the VHCOLA downsides. And then maybe you end up mostly only associating with people who also have enough money to be sufficiently insulated, which isn't the complete breakfast.)
  • chrisweekly 1y ago
    VCOLA - Very high Cost Of Living Area
• tosh 1y ago
  agency! very timely
• famahar 1y ago
  If your country allows it and you can afford it, I recommend every graduate to do a working holidays visa in another country. Embed yourself in the community. Volunteer, work odd jobs, practice art , learn a language. You'll find what you unexpectedly love and hate during that time. Following the tracks of life and getting a career out of college sounds safe and comfy, but you'll be surprised what new joys life can throw at you when you go off the beaten path a bit.
• agcat 1y ago
  such a timely advice
• andrewstetsenko 1y ago
  Such a wake-up call to take ownership of your direction, rather than waiting for the next “station” to appear.
• deleted 1y ago
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• compumike 1y ago
  > This fact is so terrifying that a lot of people try to remain in denial about it. I remember talking as college seniors about how: for two decades there’s always been some near-future end-of-school-term date that we’re all marching together toward, and isn’t it so strange that the whole cycle is about to disappear? if next_end_date.nil? # ?!? FIXME end Some rhythm of starting and efforting and finishing and relaxing, before starting the next cycle. Of course it’s somewhat possible to join new calendar cycles. A two-week engineering sprint. Even YC’s batch concept recreates this for a few months, to great effect! But not the same. But for the most part, when the calendar rhythm is no longer the source of medium-term stability and inspiration and motivation, I think this makes a good point that the people you surround yourself with can be. If not, what else? Thank you, Jessica.
• jamesgill 1y ago
  It's great advice. Reminds me of Steve Jobs' statement: When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
  • throwaway1921 1y ago
    I find myself in the former position more than ever. Feeling kinda trapped... it's what my parents and their parents did before me. Not sure how to break out? It becomes much harder to take risks once you have an entire family to take care of.
    • buggyipadmettoo 1y ago
      Just gotta compare it to the risks of not having a family to take care of.
    • eastbound 1y ago
      If you don’t succeed enough, most men experience that the wife drops us. You must take those risks. And if you fail, they will be no-one for you. We try to hide this to teens because it’s a raw deal, but generations before us were sent to war without much thought either. You must succeed at life above the others, or there will be no family thing. At each generation, 30% of males don’t reproduce at all, and there is no plaque for them, no memorial, people simply won’t talk about you. Do a startup and do not fail, you do not have a real choice here.
      • deleted 1y ago
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      • shutupnerd0000 1y ago
• dowager_dan99 1y ago
  I went to my daughter's (high school) graduation yesterday. The speeches were uniformly weak except for the school trustee, who's job is basically campaigning or speaking at graduation ceremonies. Part of it was a graduate talking to his former principal at the 25-yr reunion: says the alumnus: "...and I've tried to live my life by the advice you gave to me that day." "Can you refresh my memory?" asks the principal. "You said to me 'keep moving! keep moving!'"
• gilbetron 1y ago
  > You fall into three groups She lost me at that statement. I hate these kind of reductive statements that are presented as a thoughtful statement. There are vastly more than three groups in that audience (granted, it is self-selected elite University, so the number of groups is still constrained comparatively).
  • rufus_foreman 1y ago
    She mentions "want ambitious plans, have ambitious plans", "don't want ambitious plans, don't have ambitious plans" and "want ambitious plans, don't have ambitious plans". What are the vast number of groups outside of that set? Of course there's "have ambitious plans, don't want ambitious plans", which would probably be more interesting than the other three, but what are the other missing groups?
    • gilbetron 1y ago
      People aren't binary - there isn't just two groups of "want ambitious plans" and "don't want ambitious plans". It is reductive, there's all kinds of beliefs and desires between those two points. "want ambitious plans but needs to take care of aging parents" or "would like ambitious plans if it doesn't mean selling their soul" or any amount of nuance.
      • rufus_foreman 1y ago
        >> "want ambitious plans but needs to take care of aging parents" That would be want ambitious plans, don't have ambitious plans. >> "would like ambitious plans if it doesn't mean selling their soul" That's don't want ambitious plans, don't have ambitious plans. I mean you can do it as 2-D graph like political compass, but it's all pretty clear. I'm in the lower left quadrant, don't want ambitious plans, don't have ambitious plans. Don't want any amount of nuance either. Don't want nuance, don't express nuance.
  • jemiluv8 1y ago
    You might as well add other categories about their majors or gender or age groups. I wouldn't call this reductive so much as a way of thinking about a group of college graduates. This classification was never presented as universal, just as a way of looking at things.
• thomasjudge 1y ago
  I wish Jessica would write essays
• deleted 1y ago
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• susiecambria 1y ago
  Watching the speech, had a flashback to early 1986 when I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do now that I had graduated from college. In addition to what Jessica talked about, I left school a semester early having earned enough credits. I was quite off-balance, didn't have any peer support or friendship. I moved in with my parents and I'm grateful for that. But they were not helpful in any way with helping me think through what was next for me. As I've said here before, it was a long road of mental health and drinking challenges and I finally got it together enough to have a direction somewhere. As I reread this, I recognize how whiny this privileged white girl (!!!) sounds. But I also know that my not-so-great experiences got me where I am and I desperately want more for my grandkids and hope that I can be what they need me to be for them.
• FlamingMoe 1y ago
  “I would have liked to work hard on something I cared about. But I didn't have anything I cared about” This is one of those sentences that make me jealous I didn’t write it. Just such a perfect description of early adulthood for many.
  • nntwozz 1y ago
    I channeled most of my energy into playing MMOs in the early 2000s, I have some wonderful memories but it fried my dopamine reward system and it took me more than a decade to wean myself off of the bad habit. Not having something real and tangible to care about can be devastating.
    • angrydev 1y ago
      I'm between jobs (burnout) and have found MMOs (Classic WoW) to be the only thing that makes sense anymore. What did you do to replace this and move on?
      • nntwozz 1y ago
        I changed my lifestyle from mainly indoor hobbies (series/movies/games/music) to mainly outdoor activities. I bought a dog, I started riding mountainbikes again (as I did when I was a kid) and I got into bushcraft. Now I live off grid with solar and firewood. In a sense I replaced the grinding part I did in the MMOs with taking care of the property. I hand fell trees and process them for firewood, the branches go into a wood chipper. I trim the grass, use pruning shears etc. I live in a timber house that's 125 years old, there's always something to work on be it painting, renovating etc. It's fun to develop real skills and use power tools. There's immense satisfaction in seeing the results of your own work. When I want to play I ride my bikes (I also enjoy servicing them); I still enjoy music and movies/series but I no longer have any interest in actually gaming. I occasionally read/watch videos about it as a nostalgia trip.
        • sph 1y ago
          I feel inspired by your comment. I have gone through burn out, found unable to satisfy myself with gaming as I used to, and I am called to the wild and real work with my hands, that for the time being I am completely unable to indulge in. I am working on getting there, but for now I stare at my Steam account after work to decompress, unexcited by anything, bored to the gills, while deep in my heart all I want is to go mountain biking with a dog, carving wood, fixing a house and reading philosophy under a tree. I am still a few months away from being able to do all that, and it’s excruciating.
• raywu 1y ago
  Jessica - if you are reading the comments, I have to say - Founders at Work changed my career trajectory. I read it fresh out of college in 2008. I told a buddy to read it and it also changed his trajectory. Guess what, after years of meandering (YC, Series A, big tech) I still come back to the moment I first discovered your book. Also, please tell PG, I knew about your book before I knew what YC was :-)
• babyent 1y ago
  I agree with this so much. You really do need to treat your friends as a revolving/evolving Rolodex. Get rid of “friends”/people who hold you back. Their problems are not your problems. You have your own goal in life. They can deal with their own problems, and maturity is realizing it’s up to the individual to change. Get friends in your life who add value to your life. These will be hard to find, but once you have such friends they are friends for life. These are people who are riding the same wave as you, who yearn for better waves. They love the sport of life. I don’t talk to anyone I went to college with because I realized they’re not on the same wavelength. I’m not interested in cruising through life. They didn’t really add value to my life, and I didn’t want to be bored or annoyed. I’m talking nihilistic people who are ok with just status quo. Yuck! The friends I’ve made since have improved my life. They’ve shown me how to really make the most out of life. Challenging myself to be better, and they’re smarter than me which is encouraging as well. I have maybe a dozen close friends. I’m glad that I’m one of their close friends too. Sorry if I sounded harsh ESL btw.
  • thimkerbell 1y ago
    We don't have a culture of connecting people.
    • babyent 1y ago
      Well we have a lot of choice and it’s easier than ever to find people (internet). People choose to fall in some doom loops or waste their time doing anything but making connections. That’s their problem. For everyone else, there’s work, meetup/luma, discords, and so on to connect.
• mirawelner 1y ago
  I’m still processing that this is the Ycombinator cofounder. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing - although tbh it’s better this person founded Ycombinator than say, a nepo baby which is always what I had kind of assumed. But the idea that the cofounder of Ycombinator didn’t discover their ambition until after undergrad is going to take a bit for my brain to absorb.
  • defrost 1y ago
    > didn’t discover their ambition until after undergrad I mixed with a lot of very ambitious people at university, some had a clear plan of how to exercise their ambition, not all of those plans worked as intended, many had ambition with no specific plan at that time other than to learn a breadth of useful knowledge, make good connections, take on early work with great networking potential .. and then pivot when they had a better handle on the world as it was at that time a year or three after graduation. Ambition to succeed doesn't have to come with a specific predetermined path on how to succeed .. there's still room to adapt and morph as one moves forward.
• rr808 1y ago
  I kinda like the speech but she was also super lucky to be in the right place at the right time - advice is possibly still relevant but I dont see any bright spot for new grads to go to.
  • yapyap 1y ago
    If you saw the bright spot easy enough from an outsiders perspective it would be oversaturated already. Truth is nowadays it’s really about networking however messed up that might be. Inherently that’s pretty luck based but it’s a near guarantee to bring you _something_ as long as you don’t give up.
• udev4096 1y ago
  YC is a joke. Imagine letting your company be in the hands of soul less venture capitalists who do not care anything about your "vision". They want their instant paycheck by getting you ready for an IPO. That's their goal, not to nurture you. YC is delusional and so are the people who take funding from them
• gardenhedge 1y ago
  Most of us try get a job for money to survive
• tchock23 1y ago
  Really liked the recap in the last paragraph. I wish more speakers would do that.
• curtisszmania 1y ago
  [dead]
• mizzao 1y ago
  Is it true that every field that originally started with no rails, eventually leads to rails being constructed there? Every trailblazer can create a well-trodden path For example, startups were one of the most canonical examples of going off the rails. Yet now, many people equate doing a startup with (1) apply to YC, (2) raise a round from a prestigious VC, and other rail-like things. Some even go down these tracks with no firm idea of what they want their company to be, hoping that the train tracks will reveal it to them.
  • roncesvalles 1y ago
    Rails become constructed when there's a need for a large volume of good talent. E.g. there are well-established tracks into careers such as software engineering, investment banking, medicine, big law etc. Since the VC game relies on volume, it is natural for tracks like YC to have emerged.
• w10-1 1y ago
  Many thanks for the openness that offers some insight into success, and the kindness that can see and unlock the potential in (underperforming) people. "Find your people" is presented as finding those who can unlock you, show new worlds and opportunities. It can sound like the wonderful promise of networking bringing you opportunities (like a land of milk and honey). But at the same time, you're told you must tolerate rejection and disbelief. So perhaps the key is first to find something you believe in enough to stake a claim to it. Then some people will reject you (and leave), but you'll find others who buy in. Then you'll have the terrifying responsibility of making it true, for yourself and for them, and your (mutual) commitment becomes, well, serious. Are they "your" people? Are you leading them, or following what you've targeted? When you need to pivot, are they following you, or are you all following the moving target? It's complicated, but there's a phase/governance shift from interaction to trusting and being trusted that makes the entire dance possible. It's your reliability in your commitment that leads them to trust your vision and direction, and willingly fill your many gaps and blind spots. So I wouldn't mis-read "find your people" as "suck up to those handing out opportunities you want". It's not just getting off the tracks, but setting your own direction - reliably - that might secure other's trust.
• thimkerbell 1y ago
  A separate section on how to find your people to work with or otherwise make stuff with would be good. What are the various ways to gather a pool of interested people who would get to know each other, post-college?