Something I read a while ago that stuck with me - ‘When you are looking for a new opportunity, you are really just looking for a person.’
This reframing totally changed how I look for new jobs, and what suprised me more was how willing people were to refer me, even if they had never met me.
I agree. Instead of applying for a job, I do my best to figure out who's in charge of hiring and connect with them on LinkedIn. Once they accept I mention what I like about the company, that I can fill the role they have open, and that I'd like to talk further about it in the next day or two. I never let more than 4 days pass without a message between us as long as the position is still open and I'm still interested. This works a lot better than hoping I get an email back from their applicant management system that they'd like to setup a phone call. It puts a little more agency in my hands.
They are likely referring to the MLA style manual, which is heavily used in some academic areas, and is often the subject of complaints regarding its highly specific and easy-to-mistake rules regarding citations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLA_Style_Manual
Have you read the book Traction yet? It provides a very usable growth framework. More importantly, It also allows you to start thinking of marketing as a testable iterative process, and this simple change in mindset can do wonders for the engineer/hacker.
Slightly OT:
The biggest collective fiction today is probably this idea that as tech person, we can change the world, and as a result we should try to change the world. Anything less impactful feels like a waste of potential. The general society has bought into it - because we've been hearing this for years: Johnny - you are such a smart programmer, where is your world changing app ?
Among other things, this translates into working ridiculous hours in expensive cities and convincing a set of investors that they too can be part of this world changing process in exchange for a few shekels. Now these shekels will drive innovation, and they will push civilisation forward.
But the magic of the fiction is that poor Johnny will never feel like he did much to change the world, and so he will keep trying ad infinitum.
Yes, capital is still king. However, I would say that Zuckerberg (for example) did achieve a lot without selling his product for capital. That is pretty magical.
Selection bias is something worth avoiding in understanding health studies.
It’s quite likely that you know about these folks because they had the right genetics to be healthy outliers, and by extension, famous. It’s no different than saying I know x people who didn’t die of lung cancer due to smoking, which doesn’t change the implication that y% of smokers will always get lung cancer, we just haven’t figured out what fully constitutes your risk ( genetics etc)
I have to agree. "Just do what they did and you'll have as good a chance as any." is very dangerous advice for many reasons. Besides selection/survivorship bias, you have NO idea what the true lifestyle of celebrities is outside of what you are shown.
People have survived smoking a cigar a day for decades, but that's a terrible reason to justify the habit, especially when information says otherwise in the other 99% of cases.
This is why it is better to look at long-term national data rather than selective studies (such as the one noted in the title) which fail to control for obvious discrepancies in their data which would contradict the click-bait headline. The populations that have the longest average lifespans seem to have a few things in common and carbs are one of those common factors.
This comment made me realize why I never remember summaries of self help books.
Using examples makes it easier to relate and remember, whereas summaries require an additional step of mapping an ongoing situation to a stored summary in your head, and this is very hard to do in realtime.
Even though this incident sounds more personal than idealistic, it keeps bringing back up the question of the purpose of universities.
I am okay with universities being a medium of education, where one can take any courses they want, and passing and failing is irrelevant (MOOCs?)
I am okay with universities being a place to enjoy four years of camaraderie and self exploration before committing to life or career goals.
I am okay with universities being a stamp of selection, i.e you were good enough to get into harvard so you must be smart.
However, universities try to be all three and fail miserably at all of them, while leaving students in a large debt that most are unable to reconcile with what they got out of it, along with a life-long 'average gpa' that barely reflects abilities.
>I think you are confusing "universities" with "USA universities"
When the thread topic title starts with "Texas College Professor" on a US hosted web site, in English, not appending "in the USA" to every single assertion is not unreasonable.
Most USA-people do this, and they're aware of it: when they talk about 'universities', or '[some class of] people', or 'VC' or whatever else. I think the reasons they do it are a combination of efficiency and a feeling that the rest of the world isn't always necessary to the discussion.
Those of us outside the US may feel it's naive, but it's unlikely they'll change. The simplest thing for us to do is to assume they always mean USA-[topic].
Define cultured? Say you're an average European. Hop into your (rented) car and drive 4 hours in any linear direction? Who are you going to see? Chances are someone from a different culture and history and probably one who once warred with you. I jump in my car and drive 4 hours, I'm at my state capital. I drive another 4 hours, I'm in Georgia.
America is a huge country. We were the EU before unioning was cool. The "countries" (states) we interact with are all the same. Nothing but Sun Glass Huts and McDonalds coast to coast.
Does that make us uncultured? No, it makes us so cultured that we can get along with 25% of the worlds economy. Just some historical things to think about.
> The point is that we have, at a macro level, a common, homogenous culture.
Only if you focus on the mass-marketed commercial culture, which reduces your argument to a basic tautology: "We have a shared mass-market commercial culture, therefore we have a shared mass-market commercial culture." Guess what: Europe has a shared mass-market commercial culture, too, and it's partially the same one America has.
If you can go from Maine to New Mexico without noticing any change in the local culture, I posit that you must be not only blind but deaf and lacking an olfactory sense as well.
> We have a common language, shared history, and shared cultural context.
We have a language with multiple dialects, a history which is only shared by those who are not recent immigrants (otherwise the concept of "shared history" loses all meaning), and to the extent a shared cultural context makes sense, that changes based on generation and, yes, region.
There is a certain American cultural context which is shared by most Americans. Sure. However, it isn't as homogeneous as you make it out to be, and it certainly isn't focused entirely on mass-market commercial culture, as you seemed to imply.
I've lived across the various parts of the country. I've never been confused if I'm still in America. I've been through New York. They'll say things like, "Going way up there, eh?" But I still know I'm in the US and not Canada. Drive in New Mexico, there are points that just looking at the landscape, you might think you wandered into Old Mexico. As soon as you hit town there is an American feel; even along border cities.
Never have I been unsure that I'm in Canada. Crossing from Detroit to Canada feels like I'm in Canada. The country has a feel. I bet that there are few Europeans that are unsure they are in a different country. Again to reference the Brits, moving within the UK still can feel like being a different country ('cause you are).
That's what makes the argument that Europeans are so cultured humorous to me. They are cultured in the sense that they have to be. An Italian in a major city HAS TO BE aware of the German ethos. They don't have to like it, they don't have to speak the language, but the feeling is there regardless. America is "uncultured" because Europeans don't realize that we are cultured, it's just that we're versed in a gigantic culture that they will not match for at least 100 years while the EU (if it does) solidifies.
You are, but you're still fundamentally in the US. The system of government is the same, the general ideas are the same. Heck, most of the people that fought in the South weren't really pro-slavery as anti-federalist. Anti-federalist isn't original to the those states, Jefferson, the 3rd president, was anti-federalist.
Even more to the point it was a civil war. Most Brits can drive around and find that. Heck, they might just have to cross the street for that.
I take your point. Last fall we drove for 8 hours, from Austin, TX to Big Bend National Park. We'd have to drive several more hours before leaving the state.
On the other hand, there are many subcultures in America. Just going from an urban environment to the countryside will yield a big difference in the perspective of those living there.
And having just recently moved to TX from the East Coast, I also now realize a marked tendency of those on the coast to ignore the fact that the country covers 4 time zones. Today I'm booked in meetings from 12-2, as east coasters overlook the fact that my lunch schedule is an hour off their own.
I'll agree on the debt side. The grade issue is infinitely worse in a lot of competitive cultures.
Even if you take the money factor away, Have non-US universities really figured out higher education? Most of them tend to either be a lot more rigid in structure, or they copy from the US system.
Personally, I'm much happier I went to a UK university where the final degree "class" was based almost entirely on what you did in the final year (I think it was 80% fourth year and 20% third) as I was a terrible student in the first year, average in the second and did really well in the final two years and got a first.
Not saying that this approach is "better" - just that it suited me!
The idea that a student can be educated in 4 years is a factory mentality. It completely ignores people who want the education but are unable to commit the required time in a given semester (aka people with jobs instead of loans). It also ignores the fact that a pretty high percentage (based on people I knew in college) didn't really know what they should major in immediately. Changing majors three years in, is a good way to extend 4 years into 5. Or for that matter, four years of taking classes in one major provides a similar level of competence to four years of another major. It also assumes that everyone learns at the same rate, maybe some people take a little longer in $SUBJECT does that make them inferior?
This whole graduate in 4 years idea, is primarily driven by the college rankings. The lack of a good metric for post college "success" or information learned, means the rankings rely on feel good metrics like the average number of years to graduation.
