In my experience being good friends with people =/= accepting and applying their life advice. I have plenty of people I consider good friends who do almost nothing to further my career goals but are worth so much to me in terms of emotional support, companionship, and sharing in common interests.
Regarding the Google/Facebook group of potential friends: I would describe most people there as hardworking, diligent, and smart - all wonderful traits to look for in friends even if your end goals aren't necessarily aligned. And given the nature of the companies they're working for - there's plenty of value in hearing their perspective of how things operate from the inside of these companies in addition to the potential networking/social connection opportunities.
My advice (for whatever it's worth) would be to focus on finding a few people you could consider mentors or advisors - preferably people that have founded or are in the process of founding companies and look to them for advice on your particular path and situations. You're right that you likely won't find these people at school; I'd say the a better bet would be something like AngelList, Twitter, in-person events, or even cold-emailing those who you think you can provide some value to (this is important).
Exactly! It doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't be good friends with people, only because you wouldn't apply their life advices. There are many other qualities in people that you can benefit from.
- Following your curiosity and passion often leads to amazing things
- Sometimes you simply don't have enough information to make a super calculated decision and you have to trust your gut and just go for it
- Performing stack traces on my beliefs and following them down to the people & things I originally got them from has allowed me to clear some real garbage out of my mind
So this really began with reading through Eliezer Yudkowsky's post series on LessWrong about Fake Beliefs [0].
In summary: start with a thought/opinion/belief (the more recurring or obvious the better; thoughts about what I should or shouldn't do, beliefs about society, economics, politics, or biology). I then try to write out my understanding of that concept and try to dig at two questions (and I find typing this stuff out is much better than doing it in thought, but talking to someone works as well):
1. Where did I obtain this understanding of the world - was it my education, something in the media, friends, coworkers, family, childhood) and is it factually accurate? Generally this involves research and attempting to see how in line this understanding of the world is with evidence-based literature or people I trust.
2. Does this belief or understanding actually allow me to make falsifiable predictions about the future or the state of the world, or does it merely give me the feeling of doing that while occupying space in my brain? [1]
Personally, this involved facing and digging into assumptions I had about the world that were given to me before I had a chance to form my own judgement of their validity. Beliefs about morality, societal expectations, and sexuality were at the top of the list but I fixed plenty of my perceptions of economic policies and government regulation. I will say this is an ongoing process, one that I think will never actually end - but it's allowed me to become much more sure of who I am and what I base my decisions on.
> Everyone around you seem to know how you should lead your life, listen to only those whose life is similar to what you aspire, filter out the rest.
Well put. I thought about this a bit when collecting advice on next career steps from a range of acquaintances and contacts earlier this year - I realized that it made almost no difference the level of detail/context I provided to them about my situation - they invariably ended up suggesting something in line with what they wished they would've done themselves.
So my way of handling that was just like you wrote - working backwards and prioritizing the feedback from people whose path seems to be in line with my own and heavily de-prioritizing the rest regardless of who they were.
I used this back when I was on Windows - an absolute delight to use. As a developer I hope to someday create something as useful and well-designed as this tool!
Reminds me of the conversations between Pan American's Juan Trippe and Boeing's Bill Allen described in Skygods [0] (don't have exact quote but this blog [1] is close enough).
> With the head of Boeing as captive audience, Trippe laid out his vision for an airliner that would multiply the astounding success of Boeing’s 707 by adding capacity for more than twice as many passengers. Allen, already sitting on the substantive plans of Boeing’s proposal for the USAF CX-Heavy Lift System (soon to be won by the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy), was more than interested.
> The meeting is supposed to have concluded with his famous line ‘If you’ll buy it, I’ll build it.’ To which Trippe replied ‘If you build it, I’ll buy it’.
Short story: helped found a startup in the political/finance space. Got burnt out, tired, and depressed building software to help make bigger banks bigger while they seem like they are only benefiting from running the environment into the ground.
So I've put in my notice. Re-enrolled in school to buy myself time, a network, and a more supportive environment for putting resources into bigger and more pressing problems. What that looks like- I'm not sure yet. There have been some interesting projects and groups posted here which I've been looking through. Long term plan is to end up back on the west coast within commuting distance to SF.
If anyone has any ideas - do share! (email in profile) Experienced in Python backend development, data scraping, parsing. Interested in simulations and models, IoT, mathematics, physics, and still have a bit of a mechatronics background from school. Love figuring things out and learning, especially tough, real problems.
I just want to be able to look back and say, at least I tried.
For someone who's been harping about how great Spotify is for years, I kinda of feel like an idiot for not realizing this side of it earlier. Of course they're going to monetize emotional data... what else would they do?
Assuming even as a paying customer one's data is mapped with FB/phone number/email/friends/profile name against a myriad of other data for advertising. As silly as this might seem, I almost feel a bit betrayed...
As someone with a lack of a formal cognitive science background which (I think) would've forced me to read through and trace a lot of this from the beginning - I've often times wondered "where" a certain paper, set of experiments, or even an entire understanding/perspective fits into the broader picture. Especially given how many of these developments seem to invalidate or shift previous theories and experiments. This is immensely helpful in that regard!
I second this site - it's research-based and takes an objective view at several factors including how solvable a problem is, how many people are already working on it, etc. The podcast they host has some great interviews as well.
Marta - I find myself on a similar path and I wish you the best of luck going forward!
Regarding the Google/Facebook group of potential friends: I would describe most people there as hardworking, diligent, and smart - all wonderful traits to look for in friends even if your end goals aren't necessarily aligned. And given the nature of the companies they're working for - there's plenty of value in hearing their perspective of how things operate from the inside of these companies in addition to the potential networking/social connection opportunities.
My advice (for whatever it's worth) would be to focus on finding a few people you could consider mentors or advisors - preferably people that have founded or are in the process of founding companies and look to them for advice on your particular path and situations. You're right that you likely won't find these people at school; I'd say the a better bet would be something like AngelList, Twitter, in-person events, or even cold-emailing those who you think you can provide some value to (this is important).
Best of luck on your adventure!