diminium

Can you expand on what you believe is the best way to show your abilities? How do you get pass the gatekeepers? How do you make sure your getting leveled at the right level during the process?

Yes, there are actually people with real life issues who actually face this scenario.

Your a newly arrived immigrant from Europe. You wanted to make your fortune in the Americas.

During your journey, your portfolio sank with your ship. You have no contacts in the New World. It would take months to years to gather the letter of recommendations from Europe - that is if they are still there and you remember their address from memory. The other evidence of your work is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

A historical notion that still has applicability in today's world. Think refugees.

How about the pigeonhole effect of linking titles with compensation?

Also, in many places, having the "Junior Dog Walker" outshine the "Lead Dog Walker" can end up being a severe career limiting move. This seems to lead to some hierarchical tensions as many people seem to want their juniors to be juniors and little more but not too much more. How is this countered?

Has anyone tried it before?

This is what I mean by a long lecture :(

"Jargon increases the accuracy and efficiency of communication between specialists." I think this statement is too broad. This really depends if we're on the same page (i.e. think Java and Javascript). We could end up having a long conversation about something and end up with two ends if we're not careful.

If we've been doing the same thing and working together for many months on end, then I would say yes, jargon works as an efficient means of communication. If we've never met each other and you and me have 20 minutes (realistically 15) before the next interviewer takes me - then we're going to have a problem.

Here's one. "What is polymorphism?" Things go downhill after that. I know I'm going to be listening to a long lecture.

I don't consider using Adblock unethical.

What I consider unethical is sites which track you across hundreds of internet sites while trying to figure out your previous URL history of sites it doesn't track all the while hiding behind the fine print saying what it does is legal.

Internet advertising is nothing like newspaper or magazine ads. Internet advertising has a tracking component built into it and that tracking component doesn't stop once you leave the site. It follows you forever.

"I guess the point I am getting at with all of this, is that perhaps we should all try a bit harder to try to understand what's really going on when we use those libraries and abstractions we have come to embrace so much."

The answer to the question is "follow the money".

People don't get paid to learn the inner workings of something. They get paid to do stuff that produces results even if they do it in the worst possible way. Except for a rare few companies (who usually are very good at what they do but are rare), the incentive to make things better does not exist.

The short and even medium term payout of deeply learning the inner workings of something is very small. The people who decided that are the ones with the cash and cash is what most people follow.

How was their used test equipment like? Was it overpriced? Was it useable?

What would you do if you aren't a founder with limited control but you've noticed it growing among the company?

What do you suggest to people who need a good lawyer bug have a low budget?

I don't know how to explain it but - thank you. You answered so many questions I had about math that I didn't know before until you said it this way.

Apple, I have no experience.

Amazon, from my personal experience, is average. For example, one of their products used an official picture that was different from what they sent me. The customer service agent basically said I had to CAREFULLY read the fine print and the picture was wrong. Yes, the company which invented "One Click Shopping" wants you to carefully read the entire product description for a common product while if I go to Wal-Mart for the exact same thing I can immediately see what I'm getting. I got the issue resolved but it wasn't an enjoyable experience with them making them making me feel like this was completely my fault and they were faultless and doing their best to avoid resolving any problems. Which, from my experience is - average.

The hard parts (colleges, taxes, money, etc) are relatively easy to get compared to the soft parts. I think those soft parts is what makes silicon valley better than most other areas. My theory is that those soft areas are in the cultural part of society, this is the area which the vast majority of people in the world DON'T want to change.

Take one (of many) soft components - acceptance & praise of failure with learning. For some strange reason, this is a hard concept for most people to accept. Many people are shamed by failure or hide their failures pretending they aren't failures at all. They never learn anything useful from their mistakes. They also won't accept people who had any failures. This causes people to have careers of "no failures" which basically means they pretty much only succeed in mediocre things. I don' know if Austin overcame this one example but this type of thinking is a major roadblock in many areas.

How do you deal with these "one year non compete agreements" or "every idea you think while working for us belongs to us" contracts that quite a lot of firms make you sign to work for them?

I kind of want a start a company with my own ideas, not one I gave to a company and have to steal back from them.

Sadly, that's because other areas of the US are trying their best to NOT be an innovation capital. There really should be more Silicon Valleys but most other areas in the country don't have the will to do so.

Anything which results in making the world an exponentially better place ;)

People seem to like hearing how awesome they are and what they are doing even if it isn't.

"To put it another way: If you think you can identify winning ideas/teams with even 50% accuracy, then drop what you're doing and raise a fund, because you're going to be the most successful investor of all time."

Oddly, I think I can but I probably won't be as good as guys like Jeff Dean of Google as a big whale of an example. The principals that Jeff Dean provide aren't rocket science. They are grounded in science, theory, and a bit of art.

If I were in a hiring mood and an unknown guy like Jeff Dean walked up to me and started talking about computing. It would probably take only less than 5 minutes for me to want to hire him. If I brought him to chat next to Anders Heisenberg of Microsoft, I'm sure Anders would want to hire him just as fast if not faster than me.

Now if I brought Anders and Jeff to a typical corporate world (obviously hiding their resume & history), I can see a small disaster occurring. They would probably insult them both and suggest they start at the lower end of the corporate ladder. They probably won't even hire Anders due to his lack of degree. (I still don't understand the corporate mindset as well).

A very good technologist is extremely noticeable (unless they are also a very good actor) once they start talking about technology and how they think about how stuff works together. It's like a giant spotlight shining on you. It's hard to not be blinded.

I don't see a difference a big difference in the investing world vs the technology world. A very good investment should have the same effect but for some reason - people ignore the light.

Your going the wrong direction. Bluetooth and iPhones are highly advanced hardware systems. It would be like teaching someone who knows nothing about programming by dropping them in the middle of a complex software API and hope they can figure things out from there.

Start with a microcontroller AND a FPGA or it's simpler CPLD cousin of some type. Learn how to use both of them and understand what your doing with both of them. Look up the Altair! You know, the world's first PC. Find stuff that was popular in the beginning of the computer age. See how hardware Pong was made. Try and see if you can recreate it on that microcontroller. After that, see if you can recreate it on the CPLD. It will you some idea about what your about to embark on.

From there, try taking on a communication protocol. Ask around for something simple you can learn in a month.

By this time you will hopefully have enough knowledge to give Bluetooth a shot and then see exactly how big a divide there is between the hardware and software world and how much stuff was "hidden" from your view.

Good Luck

Which part does it mention news.ycombinator.com?

From what I've read from the book, it looks like Steve would have loved to have another Steve in the company. I think he would have liked someone who thought the same way he did.

What do you think corporate culture tries to accomplish?

If it was money, firing Steve Jobs would have been the worst mistake any company would have made. Apple is worth a lot more then most other companies combined.

It doesn't sound like corporate cultures are after money.

"I would even say that this isn't even the manager's fault, but the bottom line. Risk is something that sounds scary to people who want a consistent paycheck."

This sounds like an interesting point. Do you think most corporate cultures are designed to create a "stable" atmosphere where the next day is fairly predictable?

"A-Plus Players tend to underestimate the value other people find in stability, predictability and routine."

What stability? There is nothing stable in this world. There are things that stay the same but those are dependent on other factors - none of which never last forever.

Predictability and routines is typical of most people as well. A lot of things useful in life is trial and error doing the same thing over and over again slightly differently until something interesting happens. Look at the Olympic Athletes and how their training regiment works. It's very predictable and it's very routine.

"What is being described isn't a genetic trait; it is curiosity and optimism that is all to easy to loose or waste."

Why is it so easy to loose?

This feels like deja vu. I asked a similar question in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182993

B2B is also very dysfunctional. You almost have to operate in a different reality to survive there.

diskdoctor answered with "Marketing and selling software to enterprises is the most dysfunctional cycle of decision making you will ever see in business. In almost all cases the individuals in the business who actually derive value from the technology are entirely disconnected from those who make the purchasing decisions. Many times those purchasing decisions are made based on "perceived" synergies with other software systems already owned from the same vendor, having never been vetted by the actually consumer in the business."

This is probably the biggest difficulty in B2B.

Steve Jobs even said something similar "What I love about the consumer market, that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves. They go ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and if enough of them say ‘yes,’ we get to come to work tomorrow. That’s how it works. It’s really simple. With the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don’t decide for themselves, and the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused. We love just trying to make the best products in the world for people and having them tell us by how they vote with their wallets whether we’re on track or not.”

It happens all the time. See GoDaddy

"That is, as far as I can tell, one could count on one hand all the 'information technology' equity investors in the US who would be at all "innovative". "

What do you think some of those are? Yes, they are rare and getting funded by one probably has better odds than hitting the lotto but who are they?

Wow, in this case, I stand by my statement 'The world is big, huge, and interesting. Don't think its as small as the adults want you to think it is' even more strongly now.

"pitfalls that we know are there, drugs, debt....study or whatever"

Congratulations! Out of the infinite amount of things in the world that are good and the infinite amount of things in the world that are bad, this parent just taught the kid to worry ONLY about drugs, debt, and homework.

If there's one thing about children I can say without a doubt is that they are the ultimate copy machines. The thing they are completely focused on desperately trying to copy? Their parent.

So in reality, the best possible way for a parent to teach their children their dreams they want is to personally live those dreams. However, for 97% of people in this world, this so hard that they don't want to do it. Thus they choose the easier alternative - lying. This, ironically, then teaches the kid this technique as well since kids, well, copy them.

"The adults in your world are lying to you. Yes, I said lying. LYING. The reason why they say what they say is to make their lives easier, not yours. They don't care for you as much as you think they do. They don't even care for each other as much as they say they do. They are lying. Even if it seems true, they aren't. They are just very good at lying to you and themselves.

The world is big, huge, and interesting. Don't think its as small as the adults want you to think it is. Don't even think its as small as your friends of the same age say it is. They are are just repeating other 'cooler' adults are saying. 'Cooler' adults are still adults. Chances are they too will end up being just like the adults who are lying to you right now. Stop thinking about them, go out there & explore!! See what's really out there.

And if you feel like giving up after exploring, don't. Stop staring at the ground, look up, open your eyes, and see the wonderful scenery your in. Will it be painful to try to look up? Of course! However, if you can overcome that pain and actually look up, you will see a marvelous sight that few other humans can see. A sight that is worth all the pain and troubles you will face in reaching it. Only then can you see the truth that exists in this world. Only then can you truly start your life as well.... you'll see :)

P.S. If it's not painful to try and look up, stop pretending your exploring!! Go out there and explore for real!"

I'm beginning to think a lot of my problems will be solved if I just moved ;)

Top universities are few and far in this area. There's a major regional university nearby but......

How about for those of us that have ethical and moral priorities? What do we do?