Conventional advice directed at young people seem shockingly bad. I sat down to generate a list of anti-advice.
The anti-advice are things that I wish I was told in high school, but that are essentially negations of conventional advice.
You may not agree with the advice given here. In fact, they are deliberately controversial. They may also not be good advice. YMMV.
When picking between colleges, do care a lot about getting into a prestigious/selective university. Your future employers often care too.
Care significantly less about nebulous “college fit.” Whether you’ll enjoy a particular college is determined mainly by 1, the location, and 2, the quality of your peers
Do not study hard and conscientiously. Instead, use your creativity to find absurd arbitrages. Internalize Thiel’s main talking points and find an unusual path to victory.
Refuse to do anything that people tell you will give you “important life skills.” Certainly do not take unskilled part time work unless you need to. Instead, focus intently on developing skills that generate surplus economic value.
If you are at all interested in a career in software (and even if you’re not), get a “real” software job as quickly as possible. Real means you are mentored by a software engineer who is better at software engineering than you.
If you’re doing things right, your school may threaten you with all manners of disciplinary action. This is mostly a sign that you’re being sufficiently ambitious.
Do not generically seek the advice of your elders. When offered unsolicited advice, rarely take it to heart. Instead, actively seek the advice of elders who are either exceptional or unusually insightful.
There is some good stuff here! And i think it is accurate that some of these are controversial. But it also seems like a strange mix of good and “reverse-stupidity is not necessarily intelligence” ideas.
Directionally good but odd framing: It seems like great advice to offer to people that going straight for the goal (“software programming”) is a good way to approach a seemingly difficult problem. But one does not necessarily need to be mentored—this is only one of many ways. In fact, many programmers started and expanded their curiosity from typing something like ‘man systemctl’ into their shell.
I agree that it is possible to learn quickly without mentorship. However, I believe that for most programmers, the first “real” programming job is a source of tremendous growth. Why not have that earlier, and save more of one’s youth?
The first two points… I wonder what is the relation between “prestigious university” and “quality of your peers”. Seems like it should be positively correlated, but maybe there is some caveat about the quality not being one-dimensional, like maybe rich people go to university X, but technically skilled people to university Y.
The third point, I’d say be aware of the distinction between the things you care about, and the things you have to do for bureaucratic reasons. There may or may not be an overlap between the former and the school lessons.
The fourth and seventh points are basically: some people give bad advice; and for anything you could possibly do, someone will find a rationalization why that specific thing is important (if everything else fails, they can say it makes you more “well-rounded”). But “skills that develop value” does not say how to choose e.g. between a smaller value now or a greater value in future.
The fifth point—depends on what kind of job/mentor you get. It could be much better or much worse that school, and it may be difficult to see the difference; there are many overconfident people giving wrong advice in the industry, too.
The sixth point—clearly, getting fired is not an optimal outcome; if you do not need to complete the school, what are you even doing there?
Conventional advice directed at young people seem shockingly bad. I sat down to generate a list of anti-advice.
The anti-advice are things that I wish I was told in high school, but that are essentially negations of conventional advice.
You may not agree with the advice given here. In fact, they are deliberately controversial. They may also not be good advice. YMMV.
When picking between colleges, do care a lot about getting into a prestigious/selective university. Your future employers often care too.
Care significantly less about nebulous “college fit.” Whether you’ll enjoy a particular college is determined mainly by 1, the location, and 2, the quality of your peers
Do not study hard and conscientiously. Instead, use your creativity to find absurd arbitrages. Internalize Thiel’s main talking points and find an unusual path to victory.
Refuse to do anything that people tell you will give you “important life skills.” Certainly do not take unskilled part time work unless you need to. Instead, focus intently on developing skills that generate surplus economic value.
If you are at all interested in a career in software (and even if you’re not), get a “real” software job as quickly as possible. Real means you are mentored by a software engineer who is better at software engineering than you.
If you’re doing things right, your school may threaten you with all manners of disciplinary action. This is mostly a sign that you’re being sufficiently ambitious.
Do not generically seek the advice of your elders. When offered unsolicited advice, rarely take it to heart. Instead, actively seek the advice of elders who are either exceptional or unusually insightful.
There is some good stuff here! And i think it is accurate that some of these are controversial. But it also seems like a strange mix of good and “reverse-stupidity is not necessarily intelligence” ideas.
Directionally good but odd framing: It seems like great advice to offer to people that going straight for the goal (“software programming”) is a good way to approach a seemingly difficult problem. But one does not necessarily need to be mentored—this is only one of many ways. In fact, many programmers started and expanded their curiosity from typing something like ‘man systemctl’ into their shell.
Thanks for the feedback!
I agree that it is possible to learn quickly without mentorship. However, I believe that for most programmers, the first “real” programming job is a source of tremendous growth. Why not have that earlier, and save more of one’s youth?
What do you mean by arbitrage?
The first two points… I wonder what is the relation between “prestigious university” and “quality of your peers”. Seems like it should be positively correlated, but maybe there is some caveat about the quality not being one-dimensional, like maybe rich people go to university X, but technically skilled people to university Y.
The third point, I’d say be aware of the distinction between the things you care about, and the things you have to do for bureaucratic reasons. There may or may not be an overlap between the former and the school lessons.
The fourth and seventh points are basically: some people give bad advice; and for anything you could possibly do, someone will find a rationalization why that specific thing is important (if everything else fails, they can say it makes you more “well-rounded”). But “skills that develop value” does not say how to choose e.g. between a smaller value now or a greater value in future.
The fifth point—depends on what kind of job/mentor you get. It could be much better or much worse that school, and it may be difficult to see the difference; there are many overconfident people giving wrong advice in the industry, too.
The sixth point—clearly, getting fired is not an optimal outcome; if you do not need to complete the school, what are you even doing there?