What have I gained from reading this other than learn that the author is a high achieving person? I'm a software engineer in my late twenties in America. I would guess this blog is geared toward people like me, yet the author seems comedically unaware that very few, remarkably close to zero people, have opportunities like pursuing a PhD at MIT. So you chose MIT... I think most people would have. This is just a self congratulatory story with a cheap facade of wisdom.
"My career choices were amazing, it was hard to pick between all the fantastic options. I made a decision to pick the better option and am happy with what I chose. You should do all these things too"
As someone with lots of options too, I think hes trying to say-
>Dont do something comfortable or high paying for those reasons alone
>Think through decisions
>Set yourself up for the future
I sold out and took the money, but I had a future of building my personal projects and my job got me into electrical engineering where I was chemical prior.
I think this can apply in other fields, but consider it a list of things NOT to do.
And "I'd like to share three lessons I learned while building my startup, which is called ___ and includes innovative features such as ___ and here's where you can sign up for the email list..."
You're almost right. But it's also a perfect story and excuse to write a self congratulatory story masquerading as entrepreneurial wisdom.
Being able to do that is kind of the definition of success. Revisionist founder narratives are like the Epics of Giglamesh; personal myths perpetuating egos and archetypes.
I like individualization; unique interesting people who don't just have 1 or 2 opportunities like this in their life but infinite and dimensonless opportunities.
Everyone's life is like this. Every moment is infinite as long as you don't define it solely by Establishment-confining paths like academia or high finance.
On the other hand, in 2004, I was... not that much older than the author... and making not that much less than the author said microsoft was offering them (of course, instead of 4 years of school, I had ~6 years of post highschool work experience) I totally would have qualified for the next tier down from the author in industry... while in school? I'd have qualified for the very bottom tier.
The point may simply have been that while the microsoft job might have seemed special to someone without family/friends in the industry, it wasn't that much better than what was available to someone the educational establishment would see as bottom-of-sight, while a computer science PhD at MIT is certainly something very special, something I almost certainly will never have the opportunity to get.
(I am currently trying to get into a good school... and it's super interesting and different from anything I've ever tried before, in that the good schools? they judge you as much on your failures as on your successes. In industry? it seems to be the other way around; my failures, if anything, are bonuses. I failed at this that or the other and I learned these things and you should hire me because of it. In getting into college, though? as far as I can tell, they want someone who hasn't failed, because they are afraid of you failing at this, too, and ruining their stats. Of course... I guess that's part of why I want to get into an elite program, too; I figure that if you have a 90+% graduation rate, you are setup so that people don't fail. I mean, I know you pick good people on the frontend... but I know these people from work, and they aren't superhumans who don't fail in the real world when it comes to tasks that I personally consider quite a bit easier than academia.)
I am glad you wrote this comment. I had a pretty bad feeling when I read the article but I thought maybe I am just too cynical. Most of us can be happy if they ever encounter one good option in life. They never have to deal with choosing between two very good options.
I wanted to cheer to this because I'm plainly jealous of the author. There is nurture, and there is nature. And there is privilege (of many kinds and hues) and luck. Some people get an unreasonable amount of it, some others make the best of what they got, but the majority of the world simply struggles against both externalities and self-imposed limitations.
But this is Cal Newport, and he's shared what made him successful by heaps of writing - both his blog and his books, esp. "Deep Work" and "So Good They Can't Ignore You". You can't get his genes or his upbringing, but he's generous enough to teach what makes him tick. And if he's ostentatious, it is of the intellectual variety, and not of power or wealth, which is a minor lapse that doesn't deserve attention.
This is the same fundamental flaw that dooms Paul Graham's startup essays to near irrelevance for 99% of people. He was seemingly oblivious to how much financially security and Ivy League pedigree assisted him at every turn of his startup founding and investing career.
The lesson to learn is that good advice applies to your situation and bad advice does not.
Cal Newport writes like this. His stories read like, "Joe Bloggs was a loner, a drifter. When he pulled up his beat-up truck, moving back to his parent's swamp ranch in the summer of 2006, he had no idea what to do with his life. Two years later, when he had completed his PhD in automated high-frequency trading at Caltech, he was still wondering what to do with his life."
With that said, it doesn't make him terrible. He's just a somewhat-elitist, academically-focused, motivational writer. He has literally written a book on how to be a straight-A student in college. It's not much help to someone who can't even break into those circles, but his ideas still have a place for those who can.
This is the stuff we really need to fix together as a community. This article says next to nothing but name drops a couple prestigious companies and universities? I don't want to value things of little substanance simply because they feel elite.
I don't think he was focusing on the opportunities themselves but the choice between them and why he chose what he did.
It could apply to a broke high school dropout too. Choose the path that provides more opportunities to grow. Don't choose based only on the starting pay.
While I agree that it's sort of self congratulatory, I have a similar anecdote where I chose poorly. I'd been offered an internship with a CS prof when I was an undergrad, after doing what I thought was trivial extra credit on an assignment. I never took him up on job because he was offering was only paying minimum wage, and I was already making more than that. It was extremely short sighted of me at the time. It would have opened way more doors and even way more salary if that was actually all I cared about. It was a decision that probably set me back a decade in my career alone, never mind the chance to work with an amazing researcher. I just couldn't see it at the time, because I wasn't thinking in terms of future potential. Which is sort of just saying I was young and foolish.
This is similar to the "advice" you see in sports criticism that boils down to "Just recruit good players and have those players play consistently well! Easy!"
The part that's actually difficult is in the omitted details, privileges, and luck involved in getting the author to where they are now.
First, the whole blog is about trying to be the best you can be. To a small extent, it is targeting people who want to be high achievers.
Second, how do you think it would sound if an MIT PhD started giving examples using underprivileged folks? I think many would equally dismiss him for being way out of touch.
Third, I see nothing in the advice given that limits it to privileged folks.
My point is that I don't think he's given any advice that isn't painfully common sense. "Choose the path you think will be best for you." I read more intellectually stimulating bullsh*t on the back of a kumbucha bottle at lunch.
But mix in the letters M, I and T and people suddenly think he's tall engineer Confucious.
People need to think about who they idolize and what it says about them.
My point is that I don't think he's given any advice that isn't painfully common sense. "Choose the path you think will be best for you." I read more intellectually stimulating bullsh*t on the back of a kumbucha bottle at lunch.
But mix in the letters M, I and T and people suddenly think he's tall engineer Confucious.
We as the tech community need to think really carefully about who we choose to idolize and what that says about us.
I'm not going to defend his phrasing, because it isn't clearly written. However, this is not what he is saying. He did not know if the job was a better or worse option than grad school. His point is to pick the option that provides for more flexibility. With a job, your options to change to something different 3-4 years down the road are limited. With a PhD, you have many more options open to you (or at least, the flexibility to create those options).
He took a gamble and is writing about how it worked out for him. If you have doubt, I can assure you I know people for whom taking that route ended up worse. Especially folks who went to a school like MIT for their undergrad.
>I read more intellectually stimulating bullsh*t on the back of a kumbucha bottle at lunch. But mix in the letters M, I and T and people suddenly think he's tall engineer Confucious. We as the tech community need to think really carefully about who we choose to idolize and what that says about us.
I see no indication that this is getting posted to HN due to his MIT affiliation, and you are essentially attributing intentions to people, which is almost never a good route to go. I do not see anyone here idolizing him. In fact, to be honest and blunt, most people I know who idolize him are non-achievers (sorry for the judgment!). Finally, and this may get me into trouble, the implication that the tech community should be uniform and consistent in who they idolize and who they don't is the most troublesome to me. I sincerely hope the tech community never becomes a community so easy to characterize.
A $28,000 MIT stipend and PHD does not seem that great..it's not that much money. The odds of producing ground-breaking research are slim even for someone brilliant, as the author evidently is. The $85k Microsoft offer would probably be just enough to cover rent and other expenses, although there is room for promotion. Its not like these are huge sums of money. Then again, I am assuming Seattle living expenses.
85K in 2004 would cover more than "just rent and other expenses" or I'd eat my hat. It was a different time, with different costs, and a much less inflated market. The author even calls it "about as much as you could possibly earn right out of college."
MIT is obviously about the prestige and academic opportunities more than the money.
If you're saying these aren't great options for a college senior in 2004 you need to talk to a lot of college seniors to get some perspective. Your comment sounds like "this college student hasn't made millions of dollars or groundbreaking research, I don't know why you think he's any different than the average kid."
Shit, 85K as a college grad TODAY still puts you solidly into the upper ranges of your demographic.
If you think that's "just cover rent and expenses" money, how do you think the people you buy coffee, food, or anything else from live??
The author also doesn't seem to discuss what he did the 8 following years, which seems baffling.
> I didn’t know which traits I ultimately wanted in my career, but I appreciated that MIT would offer me more options for the career capital I generated.
So which traits did you build?! Tell me up front why I should listen to you if I wanted to build a career (it's not cause you had two nice offers coming out of college - that's why I'd listen to you if I was a high school senior).
> If you think that's "just cover rent and expenses" money, how do you think the people you buy coffee, food, or anything else from live??
Since 2000, mostly through consumer debt. Wages have been stagnant in the face of increased cost of living; you can get financing for literally anything these days. Walmart dropped their layaway program in favor of pushing credit cards. Aaron's will rent you furniture for low monthly payments that add up to 5x the retail price. You can even take out a loan specifically to go on vacation.
$85k was worth a lot more in 2004 than it is now. It's still a king's ransom in rural/middle America but it doesn't get you far on either coast anymore if urban proximity is a requirement.
Back then, Seattle/Redmond was much, much more affordable. In 2004, the Case-Shiller Index for Seattle was 125, while the national index was 140 (!). Today Seattle has a 250 index while the national index is 195.
In other words, Seattle housing went from pretty well below-average to wildly more than average in ~15 years.
So $85k in Seattle in 2004 then would be roughly like $160k in Columbus today.
A single person in Seattle can comfortably live(not own a home, mind you) on 85k assuming they don't have any massive debt obligations- not to mention we're talking about Seattle in 2004.
I'm assuming Seattle living expenses, which are higher than national average. Also it's not like he keeps all the $85k. Taxes take a chunk of that . I keep reading stories of how hard it is to live in Bay Area on low six figures, so I assume that $85k in 2004 in Seattle would also be somewhat hard.
$85k adjusted for CPI is something like $113k today. Microsoft is in Redmond not Seattle. Hard is certainly relative but living in the suburbs of Seattle, fresh out of college making $113k is nearly objectively not hard.
You can find a decent room in a share for $1500 in any city in the USA, and significantly less than that in most. When you're 22, that's pretty much 100% of your mandatory expenses, beyond maybe $200/mo in food and $100/mo for an unlimited transit pass or $10/mo to own/operate a bike.
Everything on top of that is gravy, especially when you're working at a tech company that pays for your healthcare and a lot of your food and coffee and maybe your commute.
You can walk to the Microsoft Shuttle, which covers the cost of your commute, and walk or take transit or a bike or a cab to the rest of Seattle, for maybe $100/mo in transportation expenses.
Eating well can be a couple hundred a month if you know how to cook for yourself, $1000/mo if you're spending $30/day on food.
None of these numbers come close to hitting $85k, especially when you pay $0 state income tax.
Obviously things are different as a sole provider for a family, but most 22 year olds aren't that.
This article is bordering on tautological, with post-hoc rationalization.
Something is a bargain when it has a large ratio of value to cost.
The trouble with career choices is that the value is in the future - it is, at best, only probabilistically estimable.
Thus this advice merely moves the problem from choosing between alternatives to estimating future value of those choices. This doesn't really decrease the problem difficulty at all.
The justification for "methodology" is post-hoc. There was no guarantee he'd pick up rare and valuable skills in academia; to the degree that he did, using that fact as justification is very shaky.
I've worked with a number of people who spent years in academia and came out in varying states, some less suitable for the workplace, others enamoured with a way of living more compatible with student life than professional life, others more interested in digging into problems than getting things done, etc. I think these risks are real if you're aimless on a post-grad path.
Survivorship Bias. Take existing successful people, ask them what they did and what traits they had, and then draw a conclusion that those actions/traits lead to success. Ignore the people who also did those things and had those traits who did not meet with success.
See also: any “how to succeed in business” book like Good To Great.
I couldn't understand how the title related to the advice until I finally looked up the definition of "bargain".
"an agreement between two or more parties as to what each party will do for the other."
I've never, ever heard anyone use the word "bargain" in the way that the author is doing. I can't deny that it technically fits the definition, but if you want to be understand, I think it's important to use language the way other people use it.
The author repeated uses the word "traits" in the body of the text instead, and I think changing "Seek Bargains" to "Seek Traits" makes the title way more understandable.
> I've never, ever heard anyone use the word "bargain" in the way that the author is doing. I can't deny that it technically fits the definition, but if you want to be understand, I think it's important to use language the way other people use it.
This surprises me as much as the author's usage did not. Are phrases like "bargaining chip" or "more than they bargained for" not common enough that this sense of "bargain" is widely understood?
I think it is about the phrasing. "Seek Bargains" sounds very similar to me as "Bargain Hunting", which would lend to an object more than a negotiation.
For reference, there appear to be two definitions of bargain:
1.an agreement between two or more parties as to what each party will do for the other.
2. a thing bought or offered for sale more cheaply than is usual or expected.
I believe that the author actually does mean to use definition #2. One of the section headers in the article is "Bargain Shopping Careers." This certainly implies looking for GOOD deals not simply 'agreements.'
While I agree the first definition of bargain is also commonly understood, if you say 'seeking bargains' and all you mean is a that you are seeking agreements AND you are talking to someone who grew up in United States, I would advise you to just say "seeking agreements" otherwise the person will assume you are specifically looking for 'good deals' not simply agreements.
"more than they bargained for" is not a phrase that I think about. I know what it means, but it's always used as a set phrase.
"Bargaining chip" is a bit more obvious, though. I admit, it does mean that, but I still think of it as a thing instead of 2 separate words. Right up until you pointed it out.
Even "you drive a hard bargain" comes through my head full of meaning, and I have to think about the word itself to realize it means that.
So a point of clarification: I've never heard the word used that way that wasn't part of a colloquial phrase.
What most people “do” with their lives is a Job. At face value they do this for pay, but Jobs aren’t free and you also have to make a payment: time and attention. Make sure you are getting a Bargain for what you’re paying.
Completely agree with what is stated. Jobs where you can learn something are much more valuable than jobs that pay well from the beginning.
I'd like to add that at least for me it was confusing how many valuable skills I need before I can really sell myself consistently. It's not enough to just develop in a programming language. You need to know how to QA your code, how to project manage, how to deploy your code to users, how to sell, how to survive office politics, and on a higher level how to survive the office politics that happen at your customer/partner companies where you are not on-site on a daily basis.
Not the single skill is the value, but the combination of the right skillset. Think about it from a customer perspective. You don't pay for a car that only screwed together correctly, it also needs to drive, it also needs to be useful quickly to you (intuitive), and needs to get repaired if it breaks down, even if you are the one who used it incorrectly. Only if you have the feeling you get all of that then you will buy the car.
The thing is that a leader without labor experience is not a leader but an a*hole idiot boss, and not idiot because people don't like him. More like idiot in the traditional sense.
No, seriously. If you never went through producing anything, the trouble of actually making it happen, the difference between the nice university theory in contrast to the real life experience of working with people, too little time and resources, etc. The stuff you never learn in any school because no teacher has the experience either.
It's really hard to express, but you are completely unable to lead without productive experience, as in show the way forward, as in organize resources, as in understanding organizational problems.
The best laborers are what becomes the best leaders, if they learn to use their laboring skills to improve others' performance and make people work together in a similar direction.
Wow, having worked as a database guy in a number of academic institutions I find it hard to believe that he is suggesting academia over a high paid stable career in MS.
Maybe CS PhDs are different, but biology ones who I have worked with are low paid, stressful, and highly competitive to get past a couple of postdoc positions.
It might be more interesting work, but is your work the only real interest you have in life? There is so much more to explore than sitting in front of a screen trying to make code work.
CS PhDs are different than biology PhDs. They are still low-paid relative to industry, stressful, and competitive. However, multiple postdocs in CS are pretty uncommon, and it is not uncommon for a PhD candidate to get faculty offers with no postdoc (though many do a year of postdocing anyway, since it's less pressure than being junior faculty but at least twice the pay of being a grad student).
I think a reasonable rule of thumb is that the quality of life for grad school in area X is directly proportional to the employability of a BA/BS or MS in area X. In CS most anybody doing a PhD at a decent school could leave for a CS job paying at least twice as much. In biology this is less true, and in the humanities it's even less true. IMO this explains mych of the difference in grad student experiences across these areas.
The older I get, and as my family grows, I find it harder and harder to invest time in projects outside of work. If I can rig or find a job that fulfills my need for mastery, it ticks one of my most important needs. I can go home and focus on my family instead of having my attention wander to another task.
Here's the catch in that, my master's experience convinced me that even academia, isn't as free as it is hyped up to be. There's a strong marketing drive to hype up the freedom in academia, but there's a strong guide/suggestive coercion from the guides, to do your work along the lines and plans they have. Eventually i decided not to do a ph.d.
Note: This is the case of an average coursework. Perhaps cal newport was always extraordinary and so had extraordinary options, but the advice has it's limitations for applicability to everyone.
Making life decisions is no different than trading Bitcoin. I learned this the hard way. Sure there are the obvious ones: If you make a bad choice (ie: do drugs and not save any money on your young years the trading equivalent of "you invest in a scam ICO), it'll end badly.
But given two similarly good options, it's a shot in the dark. The OP could have gone to Microsoft and became a CTO or CEO. Then he'll be writing how his Phd friends wasted their time in an academic career blablabla
You can't "see into the future of something". Especially when we are talking very long time frames (10-15 years). Someone who moved into Asia in the last 10 years would have done massive growth compared to someone who would have invested in south America (ie: Venezuela).
"the right way to build a remarkable life is to first identify the traits that define your vision of “remarkable,” then pursue only jobs that will reward you with these traits if and when you master rare and valuable skills."
That's a tough read. I think I read this sentence 10 times, and I still didn't know what it meant.
Finally moved on to the rest of the article to discover that he's talking about aspects of a job, such as having an impact.
So to rephrase, if you want to make an impact in your career, take the job that will allow you to make an impact if you do that job very well. Substitute 'impact' for whatever aspect of a job you'd like to have. Maybe a bit obvious when stated this way.
A question about "rare and valuable skills" - since many want to have valuable skills, and so they become common, is the only way to get rare skills is choosing to learn very difficult things?
I think that's one way, but not the only way. A single specific rare and valuable skill ("software engineering") can make you stand out, but a bundle of related or even unrelated skills can be even better (software engineering + design + business skill + good writer).
Scott Adams talks about combining skills like that in his book How to Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big [0]. He talks about his own combination of skills being "funnier than average" and "decent at drawing". I thought it was a good read. His talk of systems vs goals was also very worthwhile.
I would says so. If it's a rare and valuable skill, but is relatively easy to acquire, then people will eventually do exactly that. Perhaps they haven't just yet because word has not gotten out, but it will.
The only way a skill remains rare and valuable, is if the skill is difficult to acquire and master at a high enough level to be useful. All the high paid professions fall under that category. Software engineering is definitely one of them.
I don't think the skill has to be inherently difficult (although difficulty might have a direct correlation with ease of access to documentation, which means rare skills will always be difficult because no one has an incentive to maintain public/low bar access to documentation). The difficulty might lie in understanding or predicting that a particular skill will be rare and valuable in the short/medium term. Being an early adopter is risky, but if you make a winning bet the world will be your oyster.
A lot of the top comments seem to be intentionally misunderstanding the point of the article to score cheap privilege points. Yes, the author happened to have the luxury to choose between two objectively good options.
The core advice could be rephrased as “optimize for convexity (in the Taleb sense)” or even, “optimize for long term rather than short term value”.
Put this way, it seems uncontroversial, as many HNers agree with these sentiments.
