Tweet critique
Biggest red flag on a résumé—Data and decisions—When to strive to win
Hi all,
In today’s “Tweet critique”, I analyze a few tweets I thought were interesting and had more than one side to explore. If you enjoyed this article, please give it a like here!
If you missed the last few editions of Thoughts from a Bench, below are the most recent previous posts:
Thank you,
Brendan
Tweet #1
Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI, is the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. He obviously is dealing with a candidate pool in which glaring résumé spelling errors are not a relevant issue!
Nit-picking aside, I do see his point here. He’s in favor of hiring risk-takers who have failed and pushed through adversity, who have gone after what they wanted. He steers clear of the ambitious yet fragile hoop-jumpers who have been helicopter-parented through the Ivy League and prestigious consulting companies.
I want to agree with this badly, because I’m an idealistic romantic too. I love a good, tough story. I admire those people who had to take a lot of risk and eat ramen for 6 years and decimate their credit score when they started their company. (Wang, who dropped out of MIT at 19 and was promptly funded by Y Combinator, ironically does not really fall into this bucket.).
Despite my admiration of those on the true, risky hero’s journey, I’m skeptical when an extremely successful person argues heavily in favor of it. 90% of startups fail, and we shouldn’t just listen to the founders of the 10% who succeeded… or the 1% who succeeded wildly. That advice is likely to engender a sense of false optimism. This applies to any kind of serious risk-taking, too, beyond the narrow domain of startups.
Risks are real; they can implode one’s bank account and recede one’s hairline. We need to take risks, but not imprudent or unnecessary ones. Risks don’t exist for the sole purpose of feeling like a hero.
The well-trodden path through “high brand companies” has it’s own challenges, but one benefit is that it’s great for cultivating skills and relationships that can improve your odds of success in the long-run.
Consider the following from writer Oliver Burkeman in his book Four Thousand Weeks:
“In many areas of life, there’s strong cultural pressure to strike out in a unique direction—to spurn the conventional options of getting married, or having kids, or remaining in your hometown, or taking an office job, in favor of something apparently more exciting and original. Yet if you always pursue the unconventional in this way, you deny yourself the possibility of experiencing those other, richer forms of uniqueness that are reserved for those with the patience to travel the well-trodden path first.”
Silicon Valley may chide those on the well-trodden path as risk adverse and fragile. But there’s nothing wrong with using this path to acquire the expertise or relationships that can only be attained with time and patience. In fact, the young businesses started by founders in their 40s and 50s are much more likely to succeed.
The one caveat I’ll add to the well-trodden path strategy is that it assumes you can find meaningful and interesting work and collaborate with great co-workers, which unfortunately is not always the case.
Tweet #2
Experimental data from clinical trials help physicians decide whether to adopt life-saving new therapies. Historical data help meteorologists accurately forecast storms, often saving lives (and leather jackets). I wouldn’t want our doctors or meteorologists basing their decisions entirely off of taste…
I think what John is saying —without explicitly saying it—is that data is useless for making certain subjective decisions. I can get behind that nuanced point. In specific important personal decisions—whether to marry someone, for example—you clearly can’t rely on data alone because you have no data!
This is the premise of Russ Roberts’ book Wild Problems. He argues there are certain decisions for which data is useful and certain decisions for which it is not, and he provides a framework for assigning decisions to the right bucket.
I disagree with John’s point mostly because he doesn’t touch on this nuance, instead implying data should be thrown out altogether.
Tweet #3
Win at what? Win a big piece of work for your business? This advice certainly applies. Win at having the biggest house in the neighborhood? That’s a personal choice, but fine to me. Win an argument in a relationship? Be careful; that’s a Pyrrhic victory.
The devil is in the details here, because not all activities in life are a structured game in which there is a prize for the winner. That’s why always holding a competitive, ambitious perspective can be a double-edged sword. In the right environment, it motivates one to perform better and strive for victory. But in the wrong environment, it can create tension or even hollow out some of life’s meaning.
On this latter point, the philosopher Kieran Setiya experienced this as he found himself teetering on a midlife crisis after a decade of striving for tenure at the University of Pittsburgh. Life was beginning to resemble this hurdle-clearing exercise, in which there was always some more prestigious prize or position to capture down the road. He was burning out on some Red Queen treadmill, and he realized he needed to invest more time doing things that had no end goal, and certainly, no prize to be won.
Activities like reading, walking or spending time with others have no real point or goal. You certainly can’t win at them. But they’re definitely healthy for us to spend time doing, and trying to win at them is besides the whole point.
It’s important to save competitive energy for the real games and competitions we encounter. In those situations, to Schrödinger Brat’s credit, we shouldn’t be bashful about wanting to be the best and performing at the highest level.
Thanks for reading! I love when these thoughts lead to conversations with readers. Did you find anything interesting or surprising? Reply to me and let me know.