I think history tends to be written by the winners when it comes to entrepreneurship. It's a lot harder- and a lot more luck involved- than many would admit.
I think the problem is not the failure to admit - most entrepreneurs would admit the struggle with honesty. It is more like an availability heuristic - success stories make the news, failures usually do not, and so many people have no idea what the success rate is.
Not necessarily. Only a very naive entrepreneur would fall for this and they would be sorted out rather quick. People fail or know/realize the huge amount of uncertainty and still choose to do startups. Different people have different levels of risk aversion and there is no common goal/value system.
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure all of his books point out that 9/10 attempts result in failure; the trick being to see the failure early enough to recover and move onto the next attempt before it is too late.
Yes, and he also said that people lose three businesses before they succeed. But people are afraid to fail even once because traditional education teaches students that it's bad, terrible, wrong, etc. to fail.
You need to fail fast and keep tweaking your idea until it becomes a success. You also can't be married to one single idea. Many people have a problem with this.
I'm 29 right now, and that feels about right for my permanent age. I always felt a little out of place with the pace of life when I was younger, I like having stable relationships and a reasonable balance between career and social life. I like being comfortable with money and being able to travel and do what I want. At the same time, I'm not anxious to have a family and sacrifice so much of my time.
A lot of people seem very smug about ridiculing liberal arts majors for their life decisions. Please realize that most of us working in software are also lucky enough to be paid well and love what we do, we followed our hearts AND our heads. Imagine a world where there were no software jobs and you needed a PhD in french poetry to get a real job?
Very true. None of my pals who chose software really came in for the money. Though I know a few lawyers and MDs who claim to be in purely for the cash. I don't know should we even wish for that kind of culture (comes with financial prestige...) in STEM-education
But the thing is, there is a lot of people who know they'd rather be playing with children in a kindergarten, doing archeology or reading books all day - but knew that following PURELY your heart is not the smart & rational thing to do when we signed up. Part of the problem is, that libart-schools are filled with kids who thought stuff will just work itself out, like it has always happened for them. Romantically just following ones dreams to the end.
I honestly don't know how else we could be sharing the lesson of pragmatism to the newer generation if we can't point out the consequences of everyone chasing their hopes at the same time. An imaginative person figures out new goals and dreams every day anyhow...
"Part of the problem is, that libart-schools are filled with kids who thought stuff will just work itself out, like it has always happened for them. Romantically just following ones dreams to the end."
Part of it is that, but part of it is our parents giving us incomplete advice. The message is always, "go to college and everything will work itself out" and their kids get the impression that choosing a major is sort of a personal decision that doesn't have any tremendous impact.
I think that advisors at private 4-year schools should have a responsibility to strongly advise against a poor choice of major compared against a bad student loan situation.
In my experience once most middle eastern/arab people are "integrated", people see their appearance as vaguely mediterranean and don't really think twice about it.
I agree. I'd also add that I don't think that experience is the same as African-Americans. People do distinguish between middle-eastern/Mediterranean and African-American. At least in my experience.
Like Louis CK said in a stand-up routine- "I'm not saying white people are better, but being white is clearly better." i.e., you're not likely to ever have an opportunity denied to you in life due to your skin color, or gender.
I'm not blaming them, racism is always unfair to the recipient but on projects I've worked on Indians have done absolutely nothing to combat it. By that I mean, they hang out together, they go to lunch together, they basically avoid any unnecessary communication with non-Indians. I ask them to go to lunch and I get a reaction like "um, we kinda go to lunch together." I understand that there are a lot of cultural barriers there, but people are naturally very social and fair or not, they aren't going to have as much trust and faith in people that they don't have a social relationship with.
Well, I can see that happening. Even within "Indian" groups, people tend to group themselves with people from same state/language. People from some states are known for almost hostile exclusion of people from other states, including neighbouring ones. I speak this from experience as an Indian living in the US.
As regards to lunch, many Indians are very selective about eating habits (for religious reasons). That prevents them from eating in meat-'contaminated' areas.
None of this excuses them from socialising however.. But, socialising with people you already know is easier than making new connections. Which is just lazy, IMO.
I've taken the care to invite foreign engineers to dinner at my home at each job I take. In each case the comment is the same - "This is the first American home I've been invited into." Never mind they were 2, 5 or 10 years working in America.
I think that this may in part be due to the fact that the idea of "inviting someone over for dinner" is beginning to erode away culturally. Some of my best friends have never been inside my home, and visa versa. I think this is a large part of why establishments like bars, skating rinks, coffee houses, LAN cafes, and court clubs are so big in most of the cities I've lived in: a lot of their business is driven (I suspect) by the fact that they provide a neutral socializing ground, more than the actual service that they provide. When I think of the idea of "taking someone to dinner," the idea of bringing them to my house never really crosses my mind.
I've never lived out of a city with a population of less than 100,000 so I suspect that the social dynamic might be somewhat different there.
