From my experience in the tech industry I can say with utmost confidence that "not smart"/"talentless" people who are determined and hard-working lead to significantly better real world results than geniuses who are lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented. The vast majority of problems at any company are easy and don't need any big technological breakthroughs to solve. They are instead held back by (1) lack of effort or (2) lack of organization. If you can manage either (or preferably both) you will have a good career in the industry.
PSA for people that believe they are somewhat smart, have cool ideas yet seemingly no power whatsoever to actually work on them. If you believe you are chronically lazy and feel it is causing issues in your life. If you feel you are living at 10% your true potential:
Get tested for ADHD. If that is your problem, know that the chemical fix for it is extremely effective.
It's taken me 30+ years of self-hate, a suggestion en passant from someone that I might have ADHD, diagnosis, medication and my life has completely turned around in ways unimaginable before (3 years and counting).
Email's in the profile if you wanna chat about it.
EDIT: I did write a post last year about my experience and research on the topic: https://combo.cc/adhd/
No motivation to start cool new projects is not among them... Actually, reading all those symptoms really puts into the light the 'disorder' part in the ADHD.
And here's a philosophical question to ponder: should we change[1] to fit society's expectations or should society adjust itself to our needs? Should we take drugs so that we can be 100%, not even one percent less, productive 9-5 because that's what we're supposed to do?
I see where you're coming from, but comments like this are why it's taken me 30 years to understand there was something not exactly right with me. It doesn't help anyone because ADHD is something no one has completely understood, especially those that do not have it, and keep muddying the waters at any chance they get.
In my experience, if it has any value, ADHD is also lack of motivation to start new cool projects [1], despite you telling me that I'm wrong. Sorry for being curt, but I somehow have to add disclaimers and clarify every time I talk about it. It's a bit tiring.
Re: 9-5: that's also nonsense. Medication helps if you work in a cubicle, as well as to work on flexible hours and no bosses like I've had the luck to do lately. It does not necessarily make you into an effective drone.
--
1: The story is much more complicated, as it often is. I used to love starting new projects. 30 years of starting and never finishing does have its toll on the psyche, and I just internalised I am a lazy bastard that will never amount to anything, so I just stopped altogether. What does the CDC say about it?
Wanted to note that the pattern of starting and never finishing projects maybe fits the CDC symptoms around difficulty directing one's attention. Potentially then a lack of motivation to start new projects could be a common experience of people with undiagnosed ADHD later in life, but it is perhaps less common for those without the accumulated guilt of past experiences (speaking hypothetically and without expertise).
I empathize with how the complexity of these experiences and their knock-on effects make understanding what is happening with ourselves difficult.
I just accepted never finishing anything I guess? I still enjoy the starting, and the never finishing part mostly comes from not wanting to do tedious work.
I do find that as I get older the point where the work grows tedious increases. I’ve spent years on a project, and while not finished it’s certainly usable.
I don't care about society's expectations. I just want a fulfilling life. My procrastination and lack of motivation is a detriment. If microdosing amphetamine will get me there, I'm all for it.
Maybe this is a throwaway remark, but FYI there is some evidence that microdosing amphetamine and possibly some other stimulants is more dangerous than a normal dose, in that it can have permanent undesirable effects:
> No motivation to start cool new projects is not among them...
Starting projects isn't the issue (personal experience w/ ADHD) - following through and finishing them is, which is listed in various ways under the inattentive section
I've got plenty of new project folders, draft blog posts, plans written down, database schemas, etc - but no shipped results. This is the main issue for me. Starting a project is easy, working on it is the issue!
> And here's a philosophical question to ponder: should we change[1] to fit society's expectations or should society adjust itself to our needs? Should we take drugs so that we can be 100%, not even one percent less, productive 9-5 because that's what we're supposed to do?
Should we? Absolutely not! There's loads of value in people with different brain wiring. "Think outside the box" is our default setting!
Do we have to if we don't want to starve? Until we live in a post-scarcity world with infinite food and shelter.. unfortunately we're gonna have to.
> plenty of new project folders, draft blog posts, plans written down, database schemas, etc - but no shipped results. This is the main issue for me. Starting a project is easy, working on it is the issue!
You've done the fun parts. Isn't that enough to hit a good ratio of satisfaction-to-time-consumed ?
Depends on the creator really. It's a waste of time for me personally because I'm supposed to be grinding down some debts, paying the bills, and making sure there's food on the table. As I'm working freelance and billing hourly anything that doesn't earn cash directly or have the potential to be a new income source takes resources away from that goal.
Once my finances are more stable I'll be much more free to tinker with fun projects rather than focusing on potential business/income projects.
To be a bit more clear I only mean it's timewasting for me, not for humanity as a whole! I highly encourage anyone without my current constraints to code stuff for the fun of it without worrying about false starts or failed projects! :)
But until then I need to feed my family and not get fired for not working. And I'm not talking the difference between 99 and 100 [and getting fired]. I'm talking almost 0 to 100, meaning paralyzed with dread from starting any significant task.
Since receiving an ADHD diagnosis and being medicated, your latter point was something that constantly had me putting away my meds for weeks/months at a time. My heart rate has been permanently elevated and I'm watching my diet with a microscope so my blood pressure doesn't skyrocket.
It honestly feels sick that I take this drug not to necessarily feel better (though I will concede that I can handle more of my passion projects on Adderall) but in order to best fit a standard established by business magnates like Henry Ford.
I agree that the over-emphasis on medication as the only treatment for ADHD can be damaging. On the other hand, the jump to "I don't need to change" overlooks a very depressing reality: a lifetime of being told you're inadequate because you lack the focus to be reliable in school, work, or life is definitely impacting your psyche on a daily basis.
The people I know who have ADHD and are doing fine were diagnosed at a very young age and were medicated or otherwise built strong coping skills. They don't have any of the emotional baggage. I think it's important to think of ADHD not just as an executive function disorder but as the lifetime of trauma that accrues when, like you said, society's expectations don't line up with what you're capable of delivering without additional support.
The more we overlook the emotional/psychological aspect of ADHD, the more people are going to continue to suffer, and meds might help many people reach a place where they can work through those feelings, but it's just a tool.
I agree wholeheartedly. We have rampant drug problems plaguing society but within the white collar and academic world amphetamine is a safe substance for the “unmotivated”. I have trouble agreeing with that.
Note that those pills fixes focus, not motivation. Even with pills you will fail if your motivation falters, just like regular people.
I think the main tell of ADHD is if you feel you lack motivation to complete simple but tedious tasks that has high rewards that you really care about. In that case you don't lack motivation, you really care about the reward, you don't lack confidence since the task is simple, you just lack the ability to focus on simple tasks.
Having a hard time doing tasks you don't care about or tasks you are afraid of failing isn't ADHD, that is just normal. That includes schoolwork if you don't care about grades or feel you will fail anyway, and so on.
> Note that those pills fixes focus, not motivation.
Very true, but focus is crucial. If you have focus, motivation is "just" about learning good habits. If you have focus, the Pomodoro technique works. If you have focus, the common advice to "just do 5 minutes" actually works. Without focus any form of habit is impossible.
I feel people believe stimulants are only useful to get through the boring tasks. The issue with ADHD is that you cannot muster the strength to do the meaningful stuff you want to do. That is the soul-destroying problem.
> I think the main tell of ADHD is if you feel you lack motivation to complete simple but tedious tasks that has high rewards that you really care about.
You might be right, but, at least for me, the number of tasks that meet that criteria is too low to a useful metric.
They measure motivation by how hard the person works at achieving that goal, of course if you measure it that way the pills will "increase motivation". ADHD isn't a failure of motivation, it is a failure to put in effort doing stuff you are motivated to do. It doesn't magically make you motivated to do stuff you don't care about.
> You might be right, but, at least for me, the number of tasks that meet that criteria is too low to a useful metric.
Do you file taxes? Pay your bills? Those are simple and high reward tasks, every persons life is filled with such things.
> Doing taxes and bills are not what I consider high reward more like moderate penalty
Try not paying bills or filing your taxes and you will see what happens, doing the task prevents you from getting a severe punishment (relative time spent on the task), so it is high reward. People with ADHD tend to be late paying bills or doing taxes and struggle with filling in forms in general, ie they regularly fail to do simple high reward tasks.
Me browsing HN instead of filling out an invoice so I can get paid so I can pay my tax bill before the end of tomorrow haha. Fiine, I'll get back to it after this comment..
> You’ll pay a late filing penalty of £100 if your tax return is up to 3 months late
As ADHD taxes go this one's pretty chill. It's a decent chunk of change sure but compared to the rest of my finances (legacy pre-diagnosis debts I'm still grinding down).. it's on the low end lmao
I wish I had the "draw the rest of the owl" part but the thing that clicked for me was this comic (apologies for the rehost, couldn't find the original)
Motivation is too fleeting to rely on it to get you through the entire project. Use any rare moments of motivation to practice discipline rather than go into a project raw
Again sorry I don't have the how-to, (un)fortunately just seeing this comic clicked things together for me. If I can ever figure out how to put it into words I will do.
Personally I picture the lil motivation guy in my mind powering up the big discipline guy and it's often enough to get me off my arse and into gear.. at least, it's worked so far. I'll probably have to find another method when the novelty wears off. ADHD gonna ADHD haha.
Of course I am aware that this doesn't fix ADHD. If it did I'd be a millionaire already. If it helps like 1 time out of 100 it's worth thinking about, right?
I have attention deficit disorder and I agree with you. I got diagnosed as an adult and treatment changed my life. It felt like my brain's features had finally been unlocked. The effect of the medication got less pronounced over time but it is still very noticeable. The effect also proved to be long lasting: significant improvements in my cognitive functions remained even without the medication.
> PSA for people that believe they are somewhat smart, have cool ideas yet seemingly no power whatsoever to actually work on them.
Well, in some organizations it's pretty easy to feel like you have no power. The org structure almost seems built for it.
Related to the OP here, I'm a huge fan of the phrase "it's easier to ask permission than forgiveness." The rules as you think you understand them are almost never the real limits of the possibility space.
Figuring out the right rules to break is a hell of a skill.
Thank you for posting this. I can confirm, and there are new forms of stimulant medication (like lisdexamfetamine) that work better (at least for me) than Adderal (dexamphetamine + amphetamine) and Ritalin (methylphenidate).
The hard part: getting mental health support as an adult requires good executive function! Unless you are lucky, you will encounter suspicion, gatekeeping, and just general bureaucracy. ADHD's symptoms make it hard to actually get treated.
On medication for ADHD, it helps in the short term, but I still struggle to commit to working on things in the long term. I either get bored or forget or find a new shiny.
My job involves static analysis and I have an interest in PLT, so I've found some papers (Abstracting Abstract Machines) that I'll read through and get a rough idea. But to truly understand things I have to implement the ideas, but the scope of what I want to do expands so fast that I get demotivated and eventually move on.
Categories for the working mathematician, Software Foundations, contributing to mathlib are all things that I sort of start working towards and cannot force myself to get to any meaningful conclusion. At the same time starting so many things is how I slowly accumulated the foundations necessary to even approach these things.
It doesn't help that I also have PDA autism, which leads any sort of structure I try to impose on myself eventually becoming too stressful. I feel like I've reached the extent that modern medicine (I'm just short of max dosage of XR Ritalin) and therapy I can afford can help me.
> On medication for ADHD, it helps in the short term, but I still struggle to commit to working on things in the long term. I either get bored or forget or find a new shiny.
Could just be that you're a "scanner" rather than you having some condition. Barbara Sher wrote multiple books about the subject of "I want to do everything, what's wrong with me?" and while the book I read ("Refuse to chose") is filled with lots of empty platitudes and overly positive language, I think the core idea discussed in the book is reasonable.
At first glance that does seem to match my temperament. I love this quote as I have recently discovered it working for me
If you want to think clearly, be calm and be smart; schedule a Micro Nervous Breakdown at least once a day.
not sure if that is healthy though.
I guess with regards to mental health DSM type issues vs other issues, it is difficult to untangle for me. It may not be an actual disorder, but it certainly causes me distress. It's like being a science enthusiast that can't move past reading pop-sci articles (but wants to).
> But to truly understand things I have to implement the ideas, but the scope of what I want to do expands so fast that I get demotivated and eventually move on.
This is your motivation doing its job, instead of wasting your time on such low reward per effort tasks it tells you to do other things, this is how motivation works for regular people. Pills doesn't change this, so unless your motivation loves to learn and understand new topics the pills really wont help you get there.
I have a hard time with this advice. Is it for teens?
My daughter has severe ADHD and is a disaster without medication. One of her current doctors asked which parent has similar traits, and my wife says it is me. My daughter's academic and behavioral track record is shamefully like mine.
So I've been to two psychologists and my GP, and all three say that ADHD doesn't exist in adults, it's something kids grow out of.
This is heartbreaking. It's possible you might not have it, but that response is so inadequate – and from three doctors!
If you want to read more on the condition, Gabor Maté's Scattered Minds is a good introduction to ADHD (he's apparently very good at conveying what it feels like, which might be helpful to you at this point).
Considering there's no biological measurement being used to diagnose or correct ADHD, it's more of an "art" than a science. I presume you're looking for the safest drug that's also effective, because the safest would be not taking any drugs and optimizing for general health and lifestyle.
I've heard of people achieving modest success with modafinil. Also with l-thyeanine/caffeine combos. Both of which have very well understood safety profiles. In the states you'll be unlikely to get a modafinil prescription as psychiatrists here have some perverse relationship with more potent and more harmful (dextro)amphetamines.
Psychs won't prescribe it because it's a wakefulness promoting agent, not a typical stimulant. There's insufficient evidence to prescribe it as a first-line treatment for ADHD. Insurance companies are also unlikely to pay for it in absence of a diagnosed sleep disorder.
Methylphenidate is the clinically correct alternative to amphetamines.
So we should first-line treat people with addictive, known long-term harmful medicines rather than try things that have a known long-term safe profile simply because it's understood to be less likely to work?
That's just bonkers to me. I'll try every single safe potential treatment before resorting to higher evidenced unsafe treatment.
Also this "wakefulness" doesn't mean much. It's much like ADHD doesn't mean much - we're just describing symptoms. If we decided to describe the symptoms of taking modafinil as increasing concentration (which being more awake does) then it would be just as accurate.
There is no chemical being measured when we diagnose these medications and there is no chemical being measured when we clinically determine a successful treatment. It's all symptoms and entirely subjective. Which is exactly why we should tell people safe things work and allow the science of suggestion alongside medicine help treat people more safely.
If Modafinil is truly effective, then why is it not commonly used?
The fact that is less commonly used seems to point two potential reasons:
1. It's safety profile is actually not that much better the what is commonly used for ADHD.
2. Its efficacy is significantly worse than what is commonly used, and thus, there is no point in using it.
> There is no chemical being measured when we diagnose these medications and there is no chemical being measured when we clinically determine a successful treatment.
I'll give you that one. I have personally always been bothered by this too. I just cannot understand why so many psychs have to go through a rigorous and scientifically based education program only to discount much of it in practice.
> 1. It's safety profile is actually not that much better the what is commonly used for ADHD.
Modafinil is sold over the counter in many countries. Your claim does not reflect modern research findings. It's really not even close.
> 2. Its efficacy is significantly worse than what is commonly used, and thus, there is no point in using it.
efficacy for whom? ADHD isn't an infection that is treated with specific antibiotics. It's symptoms that arise in individuals with potentially drastically different root causes. For some people modafinil is effective for treating ADHD symptoms.
Speaking of other countries, Japan won't prescribe methylphenidate for ADHD - only issues prescriptions for sleep disorders. Most ADHD medications aren't even legal to bring into Japan, much less get prescriptions for them.
I think you'll find there isn't some global consensus on ADHD and medications and there's a good reason for that. ADHD treatment is barely science.
> Modafinil is sold over the counter in many countries. Your claim does not reflect modern research findings. It's really not even close.
What I was trying to say was that there are to potential reasons why Modifinil is not commonly used for ADHD. By potential reasons, I meant those two reasons might some of the reasons that could be an explanation, but that does not mean those two reasons are the definitive reasons nor the only reasons.
Now, I would agree from what I have read that Modifinil is probably safer than Amphetamine or MPH based medications in terms of addiction safety. Though all the reports of SJS and other issues do not seem like it's some perfectly safe medication either.
> efficacy for whom?
A large enough population size across multiple studies to deem it a safe and effective treatment -- like all other medications approved by some kind of governing regulatory agency. The approval of one medication does not disprove the efficacy of other medications.
> For some people modafinil is effective for treating ADHD symptoms.
Sure, the same can be said for caffeine, nicotine, plenty of other substances, exercise, etc.. I understand there is an individual aspect to all medication conditions. However, a medical system, at least none I have ever used, curtail all treatments to an individual. There seems to be more of an procedural approach to medical treatments in which the results are "good enough for most people."
> Speaking of other countries, Japan won't prescribe methylphenidate for ADHD - only issues prescriptions for sleep disorders. Most ADHD medications aren't even legal to bring into Japan, much less get prescriptions for them.
Are claiming that Japan based this decision on medical research and not [historical] social issues which plagued them? I would not cite Japan's drug laws, as well as plenty of other laws in their legal system, as the paragon for the world to follow either.
> I think you'll find there isn't some global consensus on ADHD and medications and there's a good reason for that.
I would imagine it's quite difficult to find global consensus on plenty of medical practices.
I think we mostly agree, but this is a particularly interesting point
> I would not cite Japan's drug laws, as well as plenty of other laws in their legal system, as the paragon for the world to follow either.
Japan is one of the (if not _the_) healthiest countries in the world. Further, US has one of the worst medical malpractice rates in the developed world.
Why would we _not_ cite Japans drug laws or any of their medical practices as a paragon for the world? Certainly we would in relation the US healthcare.
> Japan is one of the (if not _the_) healthiest countries in the world.
Sure, I could believe that. I have never been (always wanted to go). I am quite fond of some of the more romanticized elements of their culture, but I would not claim to know a lot about Japanese culture. So, I imagine my expectations would not intersect reality. However, I do love my pure bred Shiba Inu, so they can cultivate some great dogs. ;)
How much of Japan being the healthiest country can be directly attributed to their drug laws and healthcare system?
Sure, both might contribute, but I also wonder how things like having walkable cities, a sense of community/social homogeneity, dietary differences, genetic differences, etc. also play a factor.
I'm sure their healthcare and drugs laws do not make most individuals worse off. Is healthcare socialized in Japan or is it private? (I guess I could look this up). But I would imagine this could be a factor too.
How litigious are people in Japan compared to the rest of the world? I could be wrong, but I want to believe people in the US are probably more litigious than in Japan, but I have nothing to base that on other than unfounded stereotypes.
Alcohol is more dangerous than most commonly used drugs, but it's perfectly legal in Japan. So is tobacco. So, clearly what is deemed acceptable is arbitrary and based on cultural values and not public safety.
If Japan wasn't so tweaked in the 50s and 60s, then perhaps they might have a different outlook on substances?
While we are on this topic how does Japan view addiction? Is it viewed as a moral failing or a disease or something else?
Also, somewhat irrelevant, but do you want to know something ironic? Did you know a Japanese company, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, is the proud owner of a significant amount of R&D and rights of the most popular stimulant medications? They merged with Shire in 2019, which is the company that R&D'd Adderall XR, Vyvanse, Mydaysis, Daytrana, etc..
They now pocket money off drugs they cannot even legally touch in the country they are headquartered in.
Your argument has several flaws. First, we prescribe drugs based on expected risk and reward. The likelihood of successful treatment absolutely matters. Otherwise, we'd require a trial of a homeopathic placebo for every mental health condition, before prescribing something that's clinically proven to work. Homeopathy is 100% safe, and 100% useless. But hey, sometimes the placebo effect works, right? That manic guy who thinks he can fly? Let's give him sugar pills for a year before lithium, just to be safe! Natural solutions and "alternative medicine" are always best, after all. The stuff that actually works is a last resort only! Just look at Steve Jobs, he's doing so well these days! His cancer was completely cured by his weird diet. /s
Second, you assume there's a significant difference between the risk of amphetamines at low doses and the alternatives -- usually off-label anti-depressants with a slew of nasty side effects. Do you really believe the science is unbiased when the DEA has been meddling in it for decades now? Come on now. These are the people that still insist cannabis is more dangerous than fentanyl. They're thugs, not scientists. Every 1960s housewife in America was microdosing speed in the form of diet pills, and it was mostly fine, until Nixon's alcoholic ass started a war on other drugs that broke everyone's brains. Then on the other end, you have Big Pharma corrupting FDA officials to make their newer, more dangerous, and less effective drugs look better than they really are.
More importantly, you assume there's no risk to delaying treatment. It's no big deal that someone loses a job and their health insurance because the "safer" drug you made them trial first did nothing or made things worse. It's probably already taken you months, if not years, to get the diagnosis and an appointment with a psychiatrist. The status quo probably isn't going great for you. Relationships, school, career, etc are suffering. Oh, not to mention the significantly increased risk of death of dying in a car crash when we're unmedicated. But sure, giving us some shitty placebo for three months, that's totally safer for everyone! Including you, right?
Can you people please stop peddling this anti-intellectual nonsense about a disorder you know absolutely fuck-all about, outside of stigmatizing pop culture memes? You're not a doctor. And get your damn vaccines too, while you're at it.
Safety is a spectrum. I take dexamfetamine, which is the most researched and effective (if you can tolerate it).
It has addictive potential, but in my experience, treating it with the respect it deserved, I would say it's nothing compared to caffeine. I can easily skip meds from an entire week (which I will spend scrolling HN), yet every single day there is a voice in the back of my head telling me that a cup of coffee would be a fine thing to have right now.
I'm on the same medicine, but coffee is significantly easier to quit for me. If I take a single day off meds, then I feel it, and that feeling compounds for about a week. The withdrawals, in my opinion, while not particularly painful in a physical sense, and still fucking brutal.
I'm on a child's dosage too, which is crazy. Yeah yeah, I know everyone is different and all that, but I can see why this drug is a Schedule II Controlled Substance in the US. I am not sure how addicting it is from a psychological point of view at therapeutic dosages, but it's damn easy to build a dependence in my experience.
Physical dependence and addiction is a very different thing. If you’re physically dependent then you’ll just plan accordingly (taper if necessary) and ride it out, but if you’re addicted then you won’t be capable of doing that and 90% (or more) of the attempts will fail because of the behavioral overrides. This can turn something that could be tapered in couple months into multi-year struggle. I’ve learned this the hard way.
Based on that description, maybe I am addicted lol.
I can technically go without, but what I crave more than the feeling of the meds is the ability to be semi-functional. I do not respond super positively to the meds to begin with, but they are definitely better than nothing... and perhaps sometimes detrimental (focus on the wrong thing).
I always try to take breaks when I can, but life rarely allows for me to do such anymore. On weekends now, I typically just half-dose or take a day off. Seems to be enough to help with the burnout.
> If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.
This feeds into one of my pet hypotheses about human ability: the most important biological factors determining success lie not in whatever influences IQ or other intelligence or creativity attributes but in the dopamine system.
Take 20 IQ points from someone and replace that with the ability to engage focus and flow state at will and see what happens.
Our dopamine system is tuned for a world that is far slower than this one and largely unchanging. From the perspective of modernity almost all humans exist in a state of catatonic depression. Few humans are able to sustain the level of focus and activity that would be optimal in today's world. When we do, in short bursts, we see amazing results.
Unfortunately drugs like amphetamines have side effects and are addictive. From what I've seen amphetamines and similar focus drugs often lead to a lot of focus and engagement but mis-regulated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf3e1F1a0Hg
An AI would not need to be superintelligent to outcompete humans in virtually any endeavor. It would just need to have ordinary human intelligence plus infinite tireless focus.
This also implies that a way to boost focus that worked better than amphetamine (and without addiction and other side effects) and similar things would be much more significant for human potential than a way to boost IQ.
The other alternative would be to drastically extend life span, allowing us to slow down and be okay with that. The reason we tend to fast forward everything so much is that we don't live very long. The systems of capital and capital allocation that drive society run at a speed that is far in excess of what our dopamine systems are adapted to handle so they can deliver results within an acceptably small fraction of a human life span.
Either we are too slow or too short lived. Pick one.
Time is a variable which is heavily factored into IQ scoring. At least on some sections...maybe all?
I imagine if time was not a factor, then scores would be quite different. Life is usually less time constrained than some proprietary, standardized test, so I think you might be surprised at what people with "normal" IQs could accomplish if properly motivated, engaged, etc..
Then again, it's not like IQ is the be-all and end-all of intelligence measuring. It's just the (debatably) best we have now.
Also, plenty of people with extraordinary IQs accomplish absolutely nothing of value in life, awful social skills, etc.. Hell, I had a professor once that while rather arrogant about her IQ, would also claim that having an IQ as high as hers is actual a disability -- you struggle to relate with people. Von Neumann didn't have that issue, but hey, everyone is different.
Just like most everything else in life, amphetamines lie on a spectrum. People like Paul Erdos[0] would disagree completely.
People who are prone to addictive behavior should stay away from recreational cocaine use. Meth is pretty destructive. But lots of people basically become functional (ADHD) on amphetamine.
I've seen people with ADD/ADHD go from basically non-functional to brilliant and together from a very modest dose of amphetamine or something similar.
You don't see the same gains in people without these conditions though. It's certainly not a wonder drug for productivity or executive function in people without a condition.
While that’s true the world is even more full of hard working people who are treading water, and taken advantage of.
Determination and persistence is only effective with a goal or vision that comes from the heart. Then the quote is true. But both words are hijacked by everyone from managers and linked-in gurus to inspire another day of artificial purpose. Meaning cannot be manufactured.
100 percent determination describes most conspiracy theorists, it isn't a good trait to have that much of. So I'd argue that you need to drop quite a bit of it for the person to even reach average effectiveness, otherwise the person will be stuck trying things that will never work.
That is a really good point. Determination without direction (or at least a misguided one) produces a lot of wasted energy. i guess the idea here of determination with lack of intelligenxe assumes some sort of intellectually elite group that can steer the determined work to some optimal outcome.
> i guess the idea here of determination with lack of intelligenxe assumes some sort of intellectually elite group that can steer the determined work to some optimal outcome.
I think that idea comes from school where you can do well just by repeating simple patterns, there mindless determination can take you very far. But after school it starts to hurt you if you don't re-evaluate what you do often enough, which is why many who get great grades never achieve much afterwards, they are just too determined on a set path and don't look around enough.
It really depends what you're referring to as tech work here... Low IQ people in my opinion are almost incapable of tackling certain technical problems – generally those which require complex maths or reasoning ability.
That said, most tech work isn't that. In fact, most tech work isn't even technical. Designers or product owners are tech workers, but don't necessarily need to be "smart". And even the technical roles tend to be basic UI work or building a CRUD backend in which case you're 100% correct.
reminds me of the saying that every year, the intelligence threshold needed to end the world drops a bit more - cannot for the life of me find it again...
Moore's Law of Mad Science: "Every 18 months, the minimum IQ to destroy the world drops by one point." - said by Eliezer Yudkowsky at the At Singularity Summit 2007.
Writing an embedded C program using ESP-IDF that polls a Bosch BME688 sensor, feeds it Bosch BSEC library (compiled for ESP32, of course) and then pushes the response to an AWS mqtt queue.
In case you have multiple sensors and your organisation is already on AWS?
Also, in this particular case, it adds complexity to task (https on embedded, for example, it's not as straight forward as on a normal server, for example)
"ChatGPT, write me an embedded C program using ESP-IDF that polls a Bosch BME688 sensor, feeds it Bosch BSEC library (compiled for ESP32, of course) and then pushes the response to an AWS mqtt queue."
good luck with that, ESP-IDF + BSEC is one of my go to tests for evaluating LLMs; it's such a niche topic, and complex too, that there is (probably) no training data covering it and all LLMs hallucinate when asked for a solution.
I can think of a few examples that often pose challenges for less experienced Devs, some of whom don't overcome these challenges, whether due to lack of motivation, capacity, or any other reason:
- Handle DateTime in different timezones consistently, according to the expectations of each customer and their geography.
- Proper use of caching, basic search algorithms and data structures.
240V, that's an unfair example. As a low IQ person, I sidestepped trying to actually calculate the heat generated by different resistive wires (has to be above the melting point of styrofoam) and thought linearly about what I wanted to do, which was cut styrofoam, so google styrofoam cutter hot wire, got me to amazon.
Your parent never mentions overtime. Personally I agree with his assessment and none of it requires overtime.
Lack of effort literally means people that show the level of effort your reply seems to suggest you are putting in. A normal level of effort, not just doing exactly as much as you need not to get fired is generally enough to stand out and have good results (output and pay wise). No overtime required.
A good level of organization helps in that regard because you aren't wasting any of the effort you are making. It cuts out the overtime by itself.
Hard disagree, bruteforcing work for rewards is waaay sub optimal in the vast majority of cases. Most people are better off interviewing, job hopping and always-be-leaving and/or social engineering their careers. Note, I'm talking about competent people who can hold a job. Any unit of effort put in over not-getting-fired is almost 100% wasted (financial) reward wise.
Exactly. It's much, much easier to get promoted if you brown-nose or schmooze with your boss. If anything, being the hardest working man in a team is a sure way to not get a promotion because you are too valuable as a work-horse
We may have very different ideas about all this. And different experiences and expectations of life.
I'm not sure what "bruteforcing" means here. I definitely had people on my team that were of the "just-enough-not-to-get-fired" variety.
In most places they would not have been fired - agree. But they worked for me and I expect you to actually be doing your job and not just kissing up to the boss. I don't expect you to do overtime and I will protect you and the rest of the team from said overtime BS. I'm really really allergic to unrealistic BS "deadlines" and I'm super extra allergic to deadlines that get set because someone else did not do their job properly (like a PM not planning properly and such).
The general "pretend to be busy for 60h a week" culture is something I despise. Put in a regular 40h (or if that's your place 35h, 37.5h etc.) of work but I don't want to "see" you be on Facebook (or HN for that matter) on work time. And you have to actually display competence when we have a technical conversation. There are so many people being passed off as intermediate to senior level that just do the bare minimum not to get fired that are perpetual juniors with 20 years of experience. The worst guy was actually one of those and he really thought he could weasel his way out of actually doing work with the typical "I ran into issue X and Y and Z and it took forever to solve them" dance. For things that literally take 5 minutes to solve for someone that is not just pretending. Provably. So yeah, not with me. Go work for someone else.
And yes, I got to this place by - horror, shock - actually doing good work. I've gotten 20% raises without asking for them by just doing a regular 40h week doing my normal work.
> not just doing exactly as much as you need not to get fired
This is a normal level of effort. Also, any level of effort above this is not legally overtime, but it is in spirit. And has very uncertain rewards. Might pay off in the long run (many years) but even that is unlikely.
Small groups of like-minded people (from the same cultural and social background) move faster because they have less friction and a shared mission statement.
That is something that translates badly to bigger groups, no matter the reward. Us tech guys already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay.
Making an effort in general (in all things: dressing well, speaking well, working hard) is almost completely a social activity. If there's nobody to impress, it's 10x harder to motivate myself. You end up having to imagine a hypothetical future person that your effort would impress, which is much less convincing to the lizard brain.
2 and 3 are often intertwined. A lack of proper reward sometimes is exactly what lack of organization means or results in.
I've worked at many different jobs, the really dysfunctional ones tend to punish rather than reward good work.
Also, be careful with the overtime. A really well organized company is able to pay its employees for every hour that they work. They also don't need overtime to make up for dysfunctional planning. Overtime is, after all, a lack of reward by definition. That is, I'm assuming unpaid overtime of course.
Its not always like this, though in my experience the really messy organizations put a lot of value on overtime, either because there was a crisis all the time or it was the 'look me being busy (with my career)' kind of politicised org.
> Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it?
Because they enjoy it. Because they want to create cool stuff. Intrinsic motivation!
Maybe they have to turn it into some kind of business in order to sustain it. Sometimes things have huge operational costs and people are unable to maintain their existence without making money. The ideal of creation for its own sake remains though.
Small teams get more done with less because communication overhead is low and agency is high in each individual.
Big teams tend to struggle because people don’t know exactly what to do to move the whole shambling enterprise forward. It’s less about effort and more about coordination. Aside from the specific IC skills present, some understanding of the social dynamics and systemic outcomes of the teams ways of working needs to be sprinkled throughout the team to keep things on track. People tend to want to draw a box around their role so they have clarity in their work, but problems don’t conform to these boundaries, and often the hardest thing is framing challenges in the right way so that the team can make progress and avoid devolving into finger pointing or learned helplessness. Forget rewards for a second, just recognizing small actions and statements that have huge net negative impact on a team can be surprisingly difficult at scale.
For a job where the "reward" (mainly salary) is fronted and somewhat fixed (no bonus or bonus isn't worth it), some (even most) people basically work as little as possible to not get themselves fired.
But it would also be challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman.
> challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman.
profit sharing.
This happens at the executive level, because it correctly aligns the incentives. But somehow, the run of the mill employee cannot be trusted to think for themselves and be incentivized?
Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?
There's an old interview with Rasmus Lerdorf somewhere on the net, where he talks about just hacking something together and make it work. It doesn't have to be good or the best way of doing things, then some "computer science guy" can come along and fix it later.
In many ways that's a good way of creating security issues, but it's also an excellent way of actually getting a feature build. The smarter people is being given a sense of direction, by being shown the bad implementation and tasked with improving it.
Perhaps this is how the world ends up with "PHP: a fractal of bad design"?
Not that I want to be too snarky about it: I used PHP a bit back in the LAMP stack days, and as bad as the language was it was easy to get stuff up and running. So perhaps Mr Lerdorf is right. (I hear PHP might be somewhat better now, though I can't vouch for that myself)
They probably can't lead the project but they can definitely contribute.
I'm not quite sure what "intelligence" is - some people have strange personalities that make them hard to classify - but you don't need to be exceptionally good at anything to contribute to research (or R&D).
I don't think this is true for all R&D. Or even most? I often start working in a new area that I can begin with a subset of options, then need some larger very complete set of info to get complete coverage. Filling in all those tables takes a lot of time.
Having someone help do that, or ideally just do it all, vastly increases my cadence.
It does require someone who can understand and deliver clear objectives. And then wrangle lots of messy info from messy and random sources into a clear standardized form, so it's immediately usable.
Another area, is someone to put a new tool through a lot of sanity checks. This takes someone with some creativity, to come up with lots of interesting oddball toy problems, and ensure the new tools work smoothly for every crazy idea. Fast and prompt ad hoc testing can jumpstart an unusually thorough test suite (as well as catch problems very early).
I personally run out of steam a bit when it comes to testing all corner cases. When ever I run out of steam on some repetitive or exhaustive task, it is a good time for some secondary help.
I expect there are many such high time cost, repeatable, semi-regular tasks. You still need good worker fit.
As with any valuable work, we each should spend our time where our hours are most valuable. A tendency to do it all, may mask a poor ability to organize, communicate and delegate (or just a poor budget for getting help).
IDK, working on research experiments has a lot of required effort that can be done by pretty much everyone, I'd estimate that about 80% of our total person-hours is spent on all kinds of "glorified plumbing", wrangling data, etc. And for other domains, if you get a chance, ask a biochem researcher about how much of the contribution required for some discovery involved really thoroughly cleaning glassware.
I'm in R&D and am constantly reminded by other coders around me that I'm not very smart, but these smarter people are constantly doing predictable and suboptimal things in their very complicated ways and getting poor results, over and over and over.
I think I've got suckered into a clickbait substack and a circular discussion on HN to cause various people to respond each in their own silos, asserting their own worth either as self-assigned intelligent or self-assigned stupid people.
I'm a stupid person (not least for falling for that) but I get paid to think uncommon things, which turns out to be not only marketable but productive. Some of what the substack invokes is perfectly true: I get by on determination and crunch, to the point that I have to watch it (right now I'm experiencing health issues which I think trace back to the amount of crunch I can't resist doing, out of fear.)
I daresay there's usefulness in reminding people not to just pursue the 'highest intelligence' path. From where I'm standing that's a ridiculous mistake. Higher intelligence can quite easily give rise to high rationalization and rigid thinking. This is probably why some tech folks go in for self-destructive behaviors like getting wacked out on ketamine in the belief that it will increase their brain plasticity. I don't get to do that stuff with drug abuse so I have to go about it in simpler, experiential ways.
It's a 'right tool for the right job' situation. It's not broadly useful to be hyper intelligent or hyper plastic. Willingness to try and ability to care about the situation go a long, long way, and that's very much the purview of this substack post. Not a bad summary, I'd say.
Can confirm; for some reason I keep getting pulled in to product development at my company because my opinion is somehow valuable. For context, the rest of these attendees are all engineers. I'm just a wrench. I don't think I've ever contributed anything aside from a head nod and a confirmation that I can build what's on the print (which always has errors anyway, so answering yes or no is irrelevant since I don't have a choice but to try and build what they tell me to). But, they still pay me, so I show up.
You still have to be reasonably intelligent to be personally well-organized, which is a key component. Also, getting a company (or just your group) organized and maintaining task-focus is definitely a type of talent. So yeah, you don't have to be a math genius or software expert to be the next Steve Jobs, you just need find a lot of Wozniaks who will do what you tell them and let you keep most of the money. Which is extremely difficult.
If you want a really good career in the industry, I sugesset mixing "not smart"/"talentless" with a healthy dose of "lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented".
What you just said is true and not exclusive to the tech industry. Effort and grit will likely elevate pretty much anyone. Of course, nothing beats hard work in addition to talent.
> From my experience in the tech industry I can say with utmost confidence that "not smart"/"talentless" people who are determined and hard-working lead to significantly better real world results than geniuses who are lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented.
This hit me especially hard in university, where I went from being "the smart kid" to suddenly encountering subjects where I could no longer get by with crunching on the evening before the test and instead needed to actually have a work ethic for studying long term. The same applies to programming or learning more skills - you might need to fail more times than someone has even tried to get good at something, whether that's fighting the compiler for a new language, or reading the same material and doing exercises in a book multiple times until the dots finally connect.
> Be audacious. Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s more often than not the case.
As far as the article goes, though, I am very curious about this point. I've also seen this and have experienced it myself, for example when needing to message someone and ask about a thing or organize something without necessarily knowing the full picture. Personally, I'd say it's almost like anxiety, due to not knowing all of the variables and overthinking things, or even just wanting to be considerate and not waste someone's time on a social level... whereas in actuality working on the issue is almost always better than just ruminating.
I've heard the expression of "You get what you ask for in life" and think that it holds true - if you want to make things happen in life, whether that's getting a promotion, getting a new job, or making progress on a project, you're unlikely to do any of those by just thinking about all of the details. Same with circumstances like running a business on some hackathon level code - that person is going to make money and eventually be able to refactor things, whereas someone else won't even launch while chasing the perfect codebase, the perfect landing page, the perfect mobile app or component library or tech stack.
> Ask your naive questions.
With the previous point in mind, this has been particularly hard, especially when you start worrying about what others will think of you for asking questions that might seem a bit basic. You should still ask them and get as many details as possible.
That can be the difference between not asking the important stuff and wasting weeks of work to hit some roadblock way down the road, or asking a bunch of silly questions in a meeting, having someone scoff at you a bit, but ignoring their attitude and realizing that the way they want their auth system to work isn't realistic, bringing that up, and saving everyone a major headache after setting them back on the right path.
Plus, in general it's good to make sure that everyone is on the same page and for taking notes, as the article mentions. On that note, do take notes whenever you can, maybe even have meeting recordings somewhere!
> I could no longer get by with crunching on the evening before the test and instead needed to actually have a work ethic for studying long term.
haha, I use to do it an hour before the test. I one time successfully "read" 5 books during a 20 min train ride.
I had this standard joke with a guy in my class where I would pretend the test was about the next chapter. He knew I was joking but freaked out completely ~ every time. He started working weeks in advance on things that should imho take 5 minutes then he would barely pass.
And then it suddenly involved actual work, something I was 100% unfamiliar with. The exotically untalented guy knew he had to start MONTHS in advance.
I ran into him 30 years later. He has a fabulous job that involves weekly courses. I ask him if he got any better at studying over all those years. He said he still starts studying all weekend, when he gets home and after dinner and still panics along the way and freaks out at 1 am on a daily basis - non of it makes any sense! After he barely passes the test he continues to study the material because he needs to know it but doesn't.
It's kinda sad as it sounds like he has no life, then again it is also extremely impressive and there must be something about the process that he really loves.
Others might think different, he is a legend to me.
Sure but just because someone is smart doesn't mean they don't work hard. And a smarter person can achieve what a stupid person can with less effort. This is just reality.
I mean it's akin to saying a car can drive faster then a plane if the plane doesn't accelerate. Of course. I think as stupid person I can find certain niches and excel in areas where smart people typically don't attempt to try, but reality is reality and we have to face it.
No he didn't. I'm adding to his statement. Saying it's kind of a meaningless statement as meaningless as saying a car can go faster then a plane if the plane isn't moving.
A hard working stupid person can accomplish more then a smart person if the smart person isn't working at all. This statement is as obvious and insightful as the statement about the plane. And it sort of obfuscates the fact that smart people have a huge advantage in the fact that they have to work less hard.
Additionally despite all of this, there's no magical thing stating that all smart people never work hard. Smart people may in many cases even work harder than stupid people.
The article made me think of General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's officer classification:
"I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."
"Be audacious. Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things."
In general smart people want to understand what they are doing before they do it. This means you can often beat them at a task by simply doing without understanding, which is why General Kurt told us to be wary about such people.
A concrete but flawed implementation can also be an excellent catalyst for brighter minds, gives them something newer to focus on, discuss, iterate on, etc.
This sounds like a significant refinement over KvH-E quadrants above, and indeed highlights the danger of the dumb and not-lazy. But it's probably not Napoleon..
Napoleon would more likely say something along the lines of..
"Know when to go for it and when to take it slow."
After all, he signalled his willingness to work hard with his bee emblem.
Your comment makes me think of taoism's wu wei. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. And when you do do nothing, you'll look like a lazy person for sure.
Isn't taoism more on the lines of making things happen by design and not fight through things to get them done?
Sure many times that means doing nothing at all, But most of the times it means working with things in a way that things are so well designed you just flow with things instead of fighting through the system to make them happen.
i think so. I'm not a taoism expert by any means. From what I gathered, it's something like 'do not try to resolve things that will resolve itself'. An example is parents who speak to their baby a lot so that the baby might learn to speak. It's just not needed. If anything, baby talk might be harmful. And tiring. It leaves entitlement in the parent and foster bitterness later down the line. In reality a baby will learn to speak by themselves quite naturally. The parent can forget that and have a semblance of a life instead.
Also I really love the character of Mr.Shaibel in 'queen's gambit', who i thought is the embodiment of the taoist ideal in a person. Again, I'm not really learned in taoism.
A minor flaw: it is said in a way like it is 2 choices out of 4, which gives you 6 combinations. But it is more like two choices each for 2 independent “axes”, which gives you 4 combinations, exhausted in the elaboration that follows.
(For example, someone who is both clever and stupid, and someone who is both hardworking and lazy don’t make sense.)
> I am thinking is in IT industry 'too clever and hardworking' the same as 'stupid and hardworking'?
The thought of someone stupid turning out the most code in a team used to make me shudder. But then I got some not so bright people on my team.
It's true that stupid left to their own devices turns out terrible code. But they have their strengths. Janitors for example are often classed as stupid, but a stupid and hardworking janitor will do a far better job than of the other types.
The key insight (and this was pointed out to me by of all people someone in marketing, designing campaigns to make products appeal to certain crowds), is janitors like routine. I guess stupid doesn't like to be made to think, they like to do what they excel at, which is doing. So the key to making it work is the smart (and preferably lazy) people design the routine, and the stupid execute it. You can rely on stupid and hardworking to do it consistently and quickly.
In programming terms, this means you need strong coding rules, lots of examples, thorough reviews which takes enormous amount of patience. A smart programmer will cafe at the oversight required, as it prevents exploration of ideas. Give stupid that and something remarkable happens - they produce very good code. Why is it good? Because it's so simple. Anyone can understand it. It takes almost no effort to read.
An even more surprising thing happens when you get them to design UI's, as in "I want a form that takes in X and does Y with it". Again, what they come us with is so simple, my grandmother could use it. Stupid people don't design complex things. Give them anything more complex than a single form and you are asking for trouble of course, as they can't zoom out and pull in the big picture, then zoom back in and execute it.
So it's horses for courses. Stupid hardworking take a lot of investment in management time. They reward that in the long term by turning out a lot of code. But you need a cookie cutter task that lasts for years at least to make the investment pay back. They don't work in a consulting where novel short term tasks are the rule. But you'll find them happily toiling away in bureaucracies, and being paid stuff all for the privilege of being the backbone of the organisation. Which explains the why stupidest thinks we have to deal with in life are bureaucracy. The people you are dealing with aren't paid to think.
This is just good advice in general. The number one thing that has led to my career success (albeit at the cost of much stress) is following my Grandfather's adage: "Someone has to do it, and it might as well be me." I struggle day-to-day to convey to engineers that a grind is required, and sometimes work just needs to be done. People would rather take 60 hours writing a script, instead of just doing work that takes 10 hours (and I'm not even being facetious with that estimate).
I'm a big believer in the fact that you have to hear the right lesson in the right way from the right source. This piece might not resonate with everyone, but it really spoke to me. I needed to hear it.
This is good advice, but I think it is for people who think they are not smart, but are actually just inexperienced. I feel like someone who was actually not smart would have trouble executing on these steps
A group I've encountered that this could help are those without tenacity. I have smart friends who are hugely into tech who somehow remained unemployable even during the boom times in that industry.
I try and try to push them towards opportunities but they argue 'I just have no natural talent for that' and stop before they even get started.
Eg. they tried programming for 3 days, still hadn't fully groked it (because no one does in that amount of time!) and gave up with the above line. Somewhat frustrating to deal with as a friend and also clear cut in what's holding them back as an outside observer: they simply aren't aggressively fighting internal and external demons that tell them they aren't good enough for something. The mere suggestion that you can't possibly do something should fill you with burning determination and it's a positive emotion to feel in that scenario but they seem to just roll over.
Can be a case of child prodigies. When you get told early in your development that you are smart, smarter than the others, some tend to not put any effort because... well, they are smart so the answer will come naturally to them right ?
When any obstacle arise to this magical solution, you just fold and flee any difficult task. Trying and failing would make them realize that you weren't so special to start with.
> some tend to not put any effort because... well, they are smart so the answer will come naturally to them right ?
Also, it's easier to preserve that self image by not putting in effort and failing. By putting in effort and facing an uncertain outcome, one could jeopardise their self image.
>The mere suggestion that you can't possibly do something should fill you with burning determination and it's a positive emotion to feel in that scenario but they seem to just roll over.
Literally everyone with a somewhat weak self-esteem will shy away. Those friends of yours should maybe start programming as a hobby, for a small, defined project that scratches one of their itches, and then go from there.
I am structured like that and that's how I got into a well-paying job in software development.
I like AnotherGoodName's advise, a lot. But as you say, it will hit a nerve only with people who already have some confidence in their abilities so if they hit a wall, instead of giving up, they say to themselves that "oh, I guess I just need to learn even more things" and then do. A person with low confidence in their abilities will probably say "oh, I'm not smart enough".
When it comes to this and most other trades, I'm with Gordon Ramsey. Anyone can become a good programmer. "Smartness" and "intelligence", they are such ill-defined concepts. I'm not sure I believe they are real things.
I thought he once said "anyone can become a chef" but after Googling I realize I might have a false memory. Was it another famous chef who said it? Sry.
I thought all my life that I had no talent for video games. I recently installed Doom II (bought for around 2€ on the Microsoft Store) and two weeks later gzDoom.
I did play around a bit with Doom 30 years ago and thought the graphics was nice but I wasn't good at it, was never going to be good at it, and it also wasn't all that interesting.
About a month after the install I'm a fairly decent Doom player. I can complete all the three original Doom episodes (and the first one on Ultraviolence).
Turns out I just never practiced enough -- and I didn't even need much of it!
> This is a blog post aimed at people who want to do important work or make meaningful contributions to work, but **feel** they aren’t that smart and don’t have any talent.
So yeah, it's not for people who truly are not smart, it's for people who limit themselves as a result of mispercieving their own abilities.
This is really interesting but I disagree that this advice only applies to the "not smart" folks and likely applies to everyone, I like to think everyone is smart in their own domain until they are not the only smart person in the room.
If you ask a smart person do the grunt work for their own work, they will be scared,a little clueless and might feel its unnecessary too but someone smarter than them asks them to do all this for them. The then smart person now thinks that they could help the smarter person achieve something they themselves cannot, extending their own intellect which will help them become a little smarter.
I think the range of being smart of most people is very wide, extending all the time.
If you want to do big things, there is something else: borrow one or more smart persons. I was once part of an infrastructure project that I (and others on it) simply didn't know how to advance. At some point a few really smart folks got into a room and thought hard about it, and wrote a detailed roadmap. It was still hard to implement, but doable by us mortals. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and ask for help.
I always wonder why these articles are focused on the individual rather than teams or organizations. It is easier to leverage intelligence in a good organized team that individually. Even if it is an individual with enough resources (e.g. social capital) it he/she can recognize its own weakness and left other solve thos problems where you are not good or capable at.
This is the importance of the vision (what) rather than the "how". The secret in execution is balancing these two things beyond focusing in the individual talent that is more connected with ego.
For example, if suddenly you want to build and indy game and don't know about games but you have a good idea, team up with other people who know about that.
Last, if time is not a hard pressure be patient. Look for example at people who apend years polishing ideas and creating software that is a craft [1].
Be the person that solves problems.
Employers want people that can solve their problems. they may not even care how it gets solved... as long as they problem they have will get solved so they can move forward.
Often this takes talent and skill, but in my live I've found that sheer bloody minded persistence and doing things the hard way will often be exactly what is needed and appreciated.
Maybe also "be the one who understands the problem." Often times the problem that actually needs to be solved may be simpler than the problem you're tasked with solving, and being a small-brained person can help you from getting bogged down in unnecessary complexities.
You do not have to be successful in any time frame.
Just put in tine learning.
Make one small goal after another, and burn hours until you are pretty good.
People who are "natural athletes" often just spent their childhood practicing every sport they knew about. "Natural engineers" aften spent their childhood playing with test equipment. They git good through many years of practice not through being loud or audacious.
> I'd always admired Adaobi Adibe from many of our interactions. Whenever our paths crossed, I found that she spoke with a frankness and transparency that was rare to find, and often reiterated the importance of authenticity even in the most challenging of spaces. Her curiosity led her to build Jargon, technology which translates online jargon and makes information more accessible to the masses. She's also a researcher exploring organ manufacturing, and is currently undertaking a fellowship with the Old Vic. Adaobi is a woman with a great mind, but equally a woman on a mission.
> At the age of 25, she has end-stage kidney failure. It's a life threatening condition which has had a considerable impact on her day-to-day life. However, it has also considerably altered her pursuits too. In her mission to build great things, kidney failure was not enough to deter her from her work, and in fact was inspired to look into solutions for end-stage kidney failure, and the distrust in medical professionalism which runs rampant in Black communities.
Meet Adaobi - a woman on a mission.
I think the writer just suffers a huge case of imposter syndrome! Most seemingly 'smart' and 'talented' people are just people who know that 'Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard'
I don’t think it’s facetious, I think it’s inspirational to point out that most of the time it’s just about hard work and doing the jobs nobody else is/wants to be doing.
Hey no kidding, some pretty insightful stuff in their more newsletter/blog-y posts. Their medical research is way over my head but also seems extremely cool.
What about people who seem to be able to do things on their own but when they ask for help they turn totally stupid?
Like I have a guy in my company who seems to handle some stuff well, but obviously for things where he lacks knowledge would often seek help. And then if you have him in a videocall, telling him how you think you would do he just turn into a robot that just type what you ask him to do with no sign of understanding what he is doing, like he put himself in cruise control mode.
Getting results or becoming rich has a magical property where overnight you are viewed as turning into a genius! ;)
Having persistence and constantly monitoring yourself so that I did't get trapped in the weeds! That's how I got stuff done anyway, and I've never been considered very talented or smart! Except of course after I started to get results, at which point some people started to consider I was talented and smart :)
I am sad that I have but one up vote. I have made a career out of some of the behaviors described here. Asking dumb questions has saved me countless bad outcomes on projects. Being bold and just talking with the people who use the tools you build. So much of these soft skills are just ignored for being able to code a freaking linked list or some nonsense on a whiteboard.
Yes and of course they weren't dumb questions. As a young student beginning to attend research seminars I remember that it tended to be those at the top of the academic pecking order who asked the supposedly dumb questions most of us thought would likely make us look stupid.
Here's another blog post that got popular on HN a few years ago and explains how doing much of what this article advises (not all) will get you nowhere: https://noidea.dog/glue
I don't think either are fully right or wrong, but I thought it was interesting to see the difference of opinion.
I'm not sure if this was intended to "flip the script" on the talented & smart, as this is sage advice for any entrepreneur. It wouldn't surprise me if the author was trying to give the "T&S" permission to do things without getting in the way of themselves.
I recently completed a project on behalf of a privately-held company in the financial sector. Big, successful, and very corporate. The owner (a single individual) was in town and spoke to a few leaders (biz, tech, marketing) in my group. His message: get in the weeds, learn the business, understand every function, ask questions, get outside your comfort zone, be persistent, act with urgency, and finish things. (Those were literally my notes from that meeting.)
He gave his team room to do the things necessary to let their talent & smartness be most effective.
Great article. I felt like I was reading a guide on how to properly interact with the perfection monster in my own brain. Perhaps believing you're not smart and don't have talent leads to better work anyway! Clever. Great read.
…and how many self-help books they have purchased over the course of their lives :)
I'm certainly guilty of the latter, and recognized the link as something that would scratch that still-relevant itch. Though I've grown out of compulsively chasing the purple cow :)
“Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things”
I have noticed this a lot in my career, I think it’s because these people self identify as smart/talented and every time you attempt some task, there is the possibility of failure - and for the “smart” person, failing at a task takes a stab at the heart of their identity. Self cushioning in a cloud of rationales “well, I can’t do X but at least I’m smart” means that if “being smart” is ever questioned, the possibility of them failing terrifies them.
This causes a paralysis.
Its total nonsense of course - the path to any success is littered with failures - failures are prerequisites of success, and are not optional.
I was an A student in school but I wasn’t naturally an A, I had to work for it, and I watched myself pass all of the “natural As” who snickered at me, told me my ideas were impossible, and then tried to join in when I showed them they weren’t. This went on throughout my career and is even happening now, there are people MUCH smarter than me at work, but through sheer willpower, grit and never giving up I have already achieved what they were telling me was impossible a year ago. This includes people like heads of departments at top tier universities - I was told my one that my idea on catalysis prediction was crazy and wouldn’t work - this man was the head of a certain department at an A-Tier US university, working in catalysis for 20 years, 6 months later, I have achieved it. Just keep working, asking questions, and adjusting course every day. If you’re gritty enough you can do it.
I often wonder if this kind of “identity bounding” as well as “fear permutations” are the downward pressures on intellect in the Darwinian sense
As one of those 'naturally smart' types, part of the trouble there for me is that everything is easy right up until it isn't. I was well into college before I ever had to actually study or prepare or do second drafts on anything at all to succeed, and for obvious reasons I sucked at it and crashed and burned completely with several subjects before I got any kind of grip on things.
The good news is that addressing this kind of thing is the hot topic in gifted education, and has been for some time. The “I suddenly got very dumb” story’s nigh-universality has been noticed, and they’re working on fixing it.
The bad news is that you may have been too early for that. Well, and also that I’m not sure how effective efforts to address it have actually been.
> for the “smart” person, failing at a task takes a stab at the heart of their identity. Self cushioning in a cloud of rationales “well, I can’t do X but at least I’m smart” means that if “being smart” is ever questioned, the possibility of them failing terrifies them.
Yes, I see it much the same way. If you're curious, I wrote about a related theme a few years ago here [1].
> When the work is uncertain, she withers: uncertainty means the unknown, which means risk, which means failure, which means she's worthless. The thought of fumbling in the void terrifies her.
Most people that I've taught (sometimes fairly advanced) computer skills to have been held back up to that point almost entirely by their own fears. First actions I've always taken is whatever I gotta do or say to get them past those fears so that the actual learning can begin. Once they're no longer scared of the subject matter at hand, they almost always have no troubles actually grasping the concepts (as long as they're explained in terms that make sense to them). Lotta folks are a lot smarter'n they give themselves credit for, even about things they think they can't understand, but their fears create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.
Right? There's a lot in that for actually average to smart people who just struggle with the daily grind.
e.g. making sure you reduce friction for the team (they give some example with antibody prep time, but it could also be build pipelines, or onboarding docs) is something a lead developer should have in mind and either do herself or create a ticket so it gets done.
Given how people on HN think they're so smart I'm surprised this article got voted up. Usually it's some article about how high IQ correlates with people who drink water. They just vote up the article for self validation.
Now it's an article for the Narutos of the world. Guess a good number of people think they're stupid. I think both sides are wrong.
You must be new here, hard work beating talent is an extremely popular topic.
People mostly reads these and see themselves as the superior side, if it is an article about hard work beating talent people see themselves as the hard worker, if it is an article about smart people doing X then of course the reader is on the smart side etc.
So an article on how most hard work is wasted since it wasn't well thought out would also be popular since there the reader would view his hard work as fruitful and only dumber people than them are wasting their time.
It is only when you start to poke hole in that self image people have built up that the downvotes starts to come. Most people aren't significantly smarter than their peer, most peoples hard work isn't well directed, but they don't want to hear those things.
No there's a lot of articles on IQ and intelligence. Less on hard work. Mainly because most people on here are programmers and the job and interview is related to intelligence. People who take pride in there programming skill think they're intelligent.
As a programmer myself I think most programmers are average. Programming isn't a very hard job imo. It doesn't require a huge amount of intelligence hence the reason why it's one of the few occupations that can be entered without a degree, with self training, or a bootcamp.
People think this is a field that requires high intelligence. This is false. It's a field that requires slightly above average intelligence mostly. It depends on your specialty but for the typical web dev software engineer it's more closer to average.
Results that talks about the importance of intelligence get way less votes and are way less popular. Hard work tend to get hundreds of upvotes and are among the most popular on this site, articles about important of intelligence barely get any so are hard to even find via search.
> Be audacious. Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s more often than not the case.
Because they are book smart. As in raised in right conditions and sent to the right schools.
Also not smart enough to actually realise they will die one day and contemplate on that.
They are focused on resume and status building as if they are eternal. Common traits involves plugging a lot of keywords while talking, posting a lot on twitter/linkedin/instagram etc
If they do realise their own mortality they won't be so scared and not afraid to do anything meaningful.
