Let there be more biographies of failures(commonreader.substack.com)
commonreader.substack.com
Let there be more biographies of failures
https://commonreader.substack.com/p/let-there-be-more-biographies-of
154 comments
The Brady Heywood podcast (https://www.bradyheywood.com.au/podcasts/) is great. It analyzes engineering failures, and is produced by a guy who's part of a forensic engineering consultancy.
The Apollo 13 series of episodes was gripping, and they're some of my favorite podcast episodes I've ever listened to. Way more technical detail about Apollo 13 than I had been exposed to before, along with amazing story telling. (Those episodes start here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/apollo-13-teaser/id115...)
The Apollo 13 series of episodes was gripping, and they're some of my favorite podcast episodes I've ever listened to. Way more technical detail about Apollo 13 than I had been exposed to before, along with amazing story telling. (Those episodes start here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/apollo-13-teaser/id115...)
My thinking is that many of the kinds of engineering failure stories you refer to are about the failure, itself, or the victims of the failure (Therac-25, for example), but not often primarily about a single individual's life of failure (or even a single individual's sole role in a failure).
They might also be about the engineering teams/groups involved (Challenger explosion) and sometimes about a specific engineer (Allan McDonald).
I'd argue that all of these have immense value. The Allan McDonald story can be seen as both success/failure (failure to stop the launch, success for being right and standing firm on that belief). And while "pure failure biographies" related to engineering failures probably exist, I was able to come up with a number of examples while writing this comment for every other form of engineering failure that doesn't qualify, but couldn't think of a good example that does which I have seen/read. Many on business failures that focus on a CEO (and sometimes those CEOs are the engineer, but, again, nothing that wouldn't require reaching out to Google).
Thinking about it -- I'm glad about that. The kinds of "excellent essays and books about engineering failures" that you mention are the kinds of things I love to read. I wish there were more of them.
What I hate when I'm reading these things is the colorful, biography-like nonsense that major publications (and self-important "journalists") like to toss into stories: "I pulled up to the diner at 8:00 PM, the paint on the door was clearly done in another era; when this small part of (nowhereville) was an up-and-coming metropolis, and the place that Bob Thomas grew up and learned that hard work and determination can do anything. The "O" in the "Open" sign had failed long ago, leaving only "pen". It was a sign from the universe as I was here to write about the startup-to-empire-to-bankrupcy of ePens Custom Pens. Though I was a half-hour early, Bob was waiting for me, his hair and beard flowing together not knowing where one begins and the other ends. One can't help but being reminded of the race condition that would ultimately lead to the unraveling of the machine he'd spent his life building".
No thanks. Tell me what went wrong. Tell me what led up to the failure -- include technical details and process/technical/decision-making that led to the failure. I don't know the engineer and my interest is in the idea/technology, not the person. And I care even less about the guy writing about the person... :)
They might also be about the engineering teams/groups involved (Challenger explosion) and sometimes about a specific engineer (Allan McDonald).
I'd argue that all of these have immense value. The Allan McDonald story can be seen as both success/failure (failure to stop the launch, success for being right and standing firm on that belief). And while "pure failure biographies" related to engineering failures probably exist, I was able to come up with a number of examples while writing this comment for every other form of engineering failure that doesn't qualify, but couldn't think of a good example that does which I have seen/read. Many on business failures that focus on a CEO (and sometimes those CEOs are the engineer, but, again, nothing that wouldn't require reaching out to Google).
Thinking about it -- I'm glad about that. The kinds of "excellent essays and books about engineering failures" that you mention are the kinds of things I love to read. I wish there were more of them.
What I hate when I'm reading these things is the colorful, biography-like nonsense that major publications (and self-important "journalists") like to toss into stories: "I pulled up to the diner at 8:00 PM, the paint on the door was clearly done in another era; when this small part of (nowhereville) was an up-and-coming metropolis, and the place that Bob Thomas grew up and learned that hard work and determination can do anything. The "O" in the "Open" sign had failed long ago, leaving only "pen". It was a sign from the universe as I was here to write about the startup-to-empire-to-bankrupcy of ePens Custom Pens. Though I was a half-hour early, Bob was waiting for me, his hair and beard flowing together not knowing where one begins and the other ends. One can't help but being reminded of the race condition that would ultimately lead to the unraveling of the machine he'd spent his life building".
No thanks. Tell me what went wrong. Tell me what led up to the failure -- include technical details and process/technical/decision-making that led to the failure. I don't know the engineer and my interest is in the idea/technology, not the person. And I care even less about the guy writing about the person... :)
The engineer in me completely agrees with you, but I have a feeling the non-fiction books are geared to be as much entertainment as they are enlightening. If you want to forgo the former, look for case studies and mishap investigations instead. The government oversight agencies have a lot available online. They are more dry but leave out the prosaic fluff
E.g., https://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html
E.g., https://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html
> What I hate when I'm reading these things is the colorful, biography-like nonsense that major publications (and self-important "journalists") like to toss into stories
I've noticed that many supposedly serious, non-fiction books written in the past two decades begin (and are liberally interspersed) with such "prose"; I personally find it so irritating that I invariably drop the book immediately and read no further. As such writing doesn't seem to be associated with any particular author, publisher or theme, I imagine it represents an effort, across the publishing industry, to make non-fiction books more appealing to the general public.
I've noticed that many supposedly serious, non-fiction books written in the past two decades begin (and are liberally interspersed) with such "prose"; I personally find it so irritating that I invariably drop the book immediately and read no further. As such writing doesn't seem to be associated with any particular author, publisher or theme, I imagine it represents an effort, across the publishing industry, to make non-fiction books more appealing to the general public.
Good story sells and can help reach a wider audience. Wouldn't that be valuable if you want people to learn from these failures?
As an example, the wiki page for Falcon 1 rocket is jam packed with information [0] There is a recent book pretty much depicting the same period [1]. I already knew the details thanks to the wiki page. That doesn't mean I'd want to skip the book.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1
[1] - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger?v...
As an example, the wiki page for Falcon 1 rocket is jam packed with information [0] There is a recent book pretty much depicting the same period [1]. I already knew the details thanks to the wiki page. That doesn't mean I'd want to skip the book.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1
[1] - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger?v...
> I imagine it represents an effort, across the publishing industry, to make non-fiction books more appealing to the general public.
It's the "long form journalism" style; try to make journalism into "art", stretch the length of the content, and slap a minimalistic design with a fresh logo on the website in an effort to get a certain kind of audience.
Or a bit of the ego of the writer is getting in and becoming the story.
"Tell me what led up to the failure -- include technical details and process/technical/decision-making that led to the failure. I don't know the engineer and my interest is in the idea/technology, not the person."
I agree with the emphasis on the technical side of things, but I would argue that some failures might have indeed something to do with the person. Their characteristics and habits. Their way of life. Even their taste in music and art. That all influences failure or succed of projects. But it is surely harder to get meaningful data out of it ..
I agree with the emphasis on the technical side of things, but I would argue that some failures might have indeed something to do with the person. Their characteristics and habits. Their way of life. Even their taste in music and art. That all influences failure or succed of projects. But it is surely harder to get meaningful data out of it ..
Yes, the populist-biography kind of writing you describe is unsatisfactory, to say the least; the reason I point to Petroski's work is that he did not write like that.
Another great book to read to examine modes of engineering failure is Feynman's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" which includes some of his thoughts on the Challenger disaster.
Another great book to read to examine modes of engineering failure is Feynman's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" which includes some of his thoughts on the Challenger disaster.
Thanks - I haven't read either of those, but based on your description, I'll be checking them out.
Life is full of failure. Write a a memoir and reframe it.
> and why each new generation will forget past lessons.
This is also a reason why open source is such a useful concept
This is also a reason why open source is such a useful concept
the problem with wanting to write biographies of failures is the same problem with publishing negative results in science: there are too many failures, and too many ways to fail. It's like entropy - there are so many ways to do something wrong that it's not very efficient to learn how to do something by enumerating all the ways you cannot do it. Much rarer is success, which is why it's more worth the time to study. Maybe this is a controversial opinion.
Maybe adjacent failures are worth study - studies of people who very nearly succeeded compared to someone who did, where subtle differences ended up being significant. These kinds of things can create "what to watch out for" kinds of guides.
In addition - what is failure? Was Nikola Tesla a failure? He died broke... but he still invented AC generators...
Maybe adjacent failures are worth study - studies of people who very nearly succeeded compared to someone who did, where subtle differences ended up being significant. These kinds of things can create "what to watch out for" kinds of guides.
In addition - what is failure? Was Nikola Tesla a failure? He died broke... but he still invented AC generators...
I think the counter-point to this (Which you kind of bring up, "what to watch out for") is that success is often more about not losing than winning. So reading about other people's failures can be very helpful in ensuring you don't lose.
The other thing is that although a failure may be unique overall, there are undoubtedly common aspects among failures. So I feel like you can sift through a lot of failures relatively quickly once you find some of the common patterns.
For example, one of the most common failures of startups is no market for the product. Therefore, if you're researching a failed company and it seems like this is the case you can assume there will be little value in this failure and skip ahead.
Another possible technique following this line of thinking is to apply filters. If they failed before they reached x point, you can skip ahead.
The other thing is that although a failure may be unique overall, there are undoubtedly common aspects among failures. So I feel like you can sift through a lot of failures relatively quickly once you find some of the common patterns.
For example, one of the most common failures of startups is no market for the product. Therefore, if you're researching a failed company and it seems like this is the case you can assume there will be little value in this failure and skip ahead.
Another possible technique following this line of thinking is to apply filters. If they failed before they reached x point, you can skip ahead.
> Was Nikola Tesla a failure?
He was a brilliant innovator that added value to the world. He was a failed entrepreneur that did not recapture part of the value he created. That makes him a huge success in my books but I wish he was more comfortable and content in his final years.
He was a brilliant innovator that added value to the world. He was a failed entrepreneur that did not recapture part of the value he created. That makes him a huge success in my books but I wish he was more comfortable and content in his final years.
Biographies of failures are not the same as negative results in science. A negative result has value and it may not be as sexy as a positive result but should be published if not for anything more than to prevent other people from going down the same path or to add more data in meta studies. Also, negative or positive depends on how the original hypothesis is framed. One person could claim that X has no effect on Y as the null hypothesis, and another could claim that X has an effect on Y, and the same results would give a positive result for one, and negative for another.
I don't think negative vs. positive is a useful bifurcation here, both for biographies and scientific results. I'd rather we do interesting/surprising vs boring/expected. In other words, can we learn something from this? There are biographies of "failures" that are full of wisdom and reflection, as well as biographies of "successes" that have stumbled upon the success without so much as a second thought, and vice versa. Same for scientific results.
> it's not very efficient to learn how to do something by enumerating all the ways you cannot do it
I think the better way to look at it would be to look at ways that it could've been done better. Everyone's a genius and mastermind that knows exactly why a certain product fails ("if they only had know this") or that the "bubble was there all along". Learning what could've been done better is much better than success stories where people knew what to do from some divine inspiration.
I think the better way to look at it would be to look at ways that it could've been done better. Everyone's a genius and mastermind that knows exactly why a certain product fails ("if they only had know this") or that the "bubble was there all along". Learning what could've been done better is much better than success stories where people knew what to do from some divine inspiration.
Yes, it's right. Still, in some form, these should be valuable because they would help understanding what actually made a difference for the ones who did succeed. Because most of the time we just ask them (or they tell us without asking) how they did it. But they may have no idea whether what they think was the key actually was the key.
In short: it could help with removing (some of) the survivorship bias.
In short: it could help with removing (some of) the survivorship bias.
This sounds adjacent to the Anna Karenina principle: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Amen! I've found that 9 times out of 10 successful people follow the same advice and believe the same things as unsuccessful people (at least they SAY they do). So it's really useful to look at people who failed yet followed the same advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_biasOn top of the survivorship bias I would add the fundamental attribution error, or a close cousin to it. Our stories about successful people tend to attribute their success to inherent qualities and under-emphasize the role of their environment, especially just getting lucky.
Yes—the wealthy sympathetic parent. This is always left out of the speeches.
It’s not a hard equation. The wealthy can afford to take risks. They want their kids to succeed. Can take care of that marginal DUI. I could fill up a page of entitlements?
They know important people, or have the money, to influence important people. They can get their kids out of trouble. Can pay for schooling. Can risk money on multiple business/career ideas.
I grew up with Gavin Newsom. Went to the same high school. He was voted “Most Fashionable”. If this guy didn’t have that powerful, wealthy family, there is no way he would be where he is now. His younger year screwups, and learning difficulties, would have hobbled most of us for life. (I like Gavin. I think he’s a good guy. I’m just using him as an example. Marin County has many fine examples of wealthy kids getting ahead, but figured most of you wouldn’t know them.)
I grew up in a wealthy enclave, and pretty much every successful kid had a wealthy encouraging parent. A few middle class kids came out as good financially as dad if they went into his line of business, and didn’t work at screwing it up when “finding themself” in their 20-30’s.
A few low income kids succeeded if they finished college, and got a professional degree.
(I don’t equate success with money, or career. Some of the worst people I know are considered successful.)
It’s not a hard equation. The wealthy can afford to take risks. They want their kids to succeed. Can take care of that marginal DUI. I could fill up a page of entitlements?
They know important people, or have the money, to influence important people. They can get their kids out of trouble. Can pay for schooling. Can risk money on multiple business/career ideas.
I grew up with Gavin Newsom. Went to the same high school. He was voted “Most Fashionable”. If this guy didn’t have that powerful, wealthy family, there is no way he would be where he is now. His younger year screwups, and learning difficulties, would have hobbled most of us for life. (I like Gavin. I think he’s a good guy. I’m just using him as an example. Marin County has many fine examples of wealthy kids getting ahead, but figured most of you wouldn’t know them.)
I grew up in a wealthy enclave, and pretty much every successful kid had a wealthy encouraging parent. A few middle class kids came out as good financially as dad if they went into his line of business, and didn’t work at screwing it up when “finding themself” in their 20-30’s.
A few low income kids succeeded if they finished college, and got a professional degree.
(I don’t equate success with money, or career. Some of the worst people I know are considered successful.)
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After reading a few business books I noticed that everyone uses the same case studies (i.e. Toyota) but claims the companies were successful because of the title of the book I happen to be reading.
If I understand, we are talking about a very narrow definition of success and failure here, professional success which is recognition, fame and riches? That seems to be a rare product of being lucky; where what you like doing and what you have an aptitude for, is exactly what's needed by the society in the field you're working in. Then you need to know the right people and be in the right place to get the recognition for it. All these things need to align, so it doesn't surprise me that these are rare events. And if you do happen to be one of the successful people it often deludes you to think it had something to do with YOU, rather than it mostly being a product of all the circumstantial things beyond you.
Well put! But I do think there are people who are uniquely skilled at seeing things align around them and using it to their advantage, and that can take place is any context, not just professional success.
I think the important bit is to pay attention to what the successful do differently from common sense advice, not the bits that everyone follows. For example, Elon Musk's housing choices when traveling, Steve Jobs' higher education, Tesla's approaches to thinking.
I don't think those are the defining factors of why they got famous or successful out of all the highly intelligent and hard working people out there. The fact that they got famous brings light to their ideas, which makes you think there's something special about them.
You'd be surprised to find many many many highly intelligent people out there with clever way of doing things, and I'd argue no less intelligent than elon musk or jobs or any other famous person. Our culture right now worships successfuly entrepreneurs as Gods with amazing brains who cracked the problem, but really it's more of luck and being at the right place at the right time.
You'd be surprised to find many many many highly intelligent people out there with clever way of doing things, and I'd argue no less intelligent than elon musk or jobs or any other famous person. Our culture right now worships successfuly entrepreneurs as Gods with amazing brains who cracked the problem, but really it's more of luck and being at the right place at the right time.
I don't see how that helps either with survivorship bias or with attribution bias.
Maybe if you just imitate everyone's quirks you will become master of the world.
I certainly think it's worth trying them. And I believe in trying anything three times before giving up.
I think the quirky information which you have to dig up is much more likely to be the "secret sauce" than the all-to-familiar stuff which almost everyone is doing.
I think the quirky information which you have to dig up is much more likely to be the "secret sauce" than the all-to-familiar stuff which almost everyone is doing.
> So it's really useful to look at people who failed yet followed the same advice.
Meanwhile, once a month or so, have some crisis happen that threatens to shut the place down. Do this for several years until your customers -- all of whom have far less faith in your company continuing to exist (in a space where that's really important) -- are finally willing to send orders big enough your way for you to get any financial benefit from the work you're doing (and give most of it to your tireless staff who -- while paid on time every month -- went without raises for a long time and barely complained[0]). It was 90% struggle, 90% problems, solving one at a time, moving on to the next, and never getting overwhelmed. Unsurprisingly, he was also a very good small plane pilot (IFR/Weather and a mess of others; he flew multiple times/week often cross-country with a breathing mask hooked up to a tank due to the altitude and lack of pressurization on a Cherokee).
So basically my lesson was that in order to be successful, you have to suffer for a long time, work harder than you're capable of at the peek of your health, and if you can figure out all of the problems while still providing something your customers want, you'll be successful. The first two parts are almost always "minimum requirements" -- there is the occasional "lazy genius" and the more frequent "trust-fund successful", but if you're starting at 19 years old, newly married out of high school (no kids) doing construction, you're very unlikely to become wealthy without a lot of hard work (outside of the lottery/similar luck-related ventures that don't serve any educational value to the consumer). As irony would have it, the story of my Dad's life is one of the (smaller) reasons I chose to work for someone rather than run a business[1].
I think most of us watch/read these things more for the entertainment value. Perhaps I tell myself it's learning, but it's a mix of curiosity and voyeurism. But nobody has to tell me watching a biography about a successful person means "success is easy" or more common than failure. I've watched, participated in, read about or seen on TV nearly every form of failure there is. Thankfully the "participated in" category isn't as bad as it could be.
[0] It's hard to complain when the owner will pull crap out of a toilet with his bare hands before asking an employee to find a plunger, can and does do any job on the factory floor and seemingly lives at the place. There wasn't a menial task below him and he'd take it if someone could do the more important job better ... he was always a humble guy.
[1] I'm not afraid of hard work -- it was mostly about what he had to work on and knowledge (from a brief stint running my own business) that if I had to do that with the majority of my time, I'd be miserable. The products/services my Dad's business sold weren't "his life's passion" even though what he provided was extremely important to his customers and ultimately, anyone who drives a car. Running the business, managing the finances, and making "the machine" operate were his life's passions, so spending almost all of his time on finances/growing the business was what drove him.
There are, of course, lots of ways to define success, but if you're talking about running a business then your Dad's experience largely matches what I've seen in my professional life (small business).
The interesting thing to me is that the desire to work that hard, and sacrifice that much, is largely an innate trait, not a conscience decision (at least that's been what I've seen). And the people who struggle the most are not those who work the most but who are torn because they WANT one thing but lack the inherent traits required to do it.
Personally, I don't think that professional success and money are good reasons to work that hard. Working that hard is gratifying in and of itself (to some people) because it teaches you things about the world, helps forge relationships with people, and forces you to develop skills you didn't know would benefit you later in life.
The interesting thing to me is that the desire to work that hard, and sacrifice that much, is largely an innate trait, not a conscience decision (at least that's been what I've seen). And the people who struggle the most are not those who work the most but who are torn because they WANT one thing but lack the inherent traits required to do it.
Personally, I don't think that professional success and money are good reasons to work that hard. Working that hard is gratifying in and of itself (to some people) because it teaches you things about the world, helps forge relationships with people, and forces you to develop skills you didn't know would benefit you later in life.
Uh, you..failed at providing a clickable link. (Don't put spaces in front!)
The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful.
Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that prevents people from even trying, but there's only so much of that form of self-help a person needs before they move on.
Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that prevents people from even trying, but there's only so much of that form of self-help a person needs before they move on.
>The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail
Do you mean infinite ways in life? I’m trying to reconcile your statement as it would apply to a specific domain rather than something as broad as the scope of ones life.
Reliability engineering would tend to disagree with the above quote. For a specific engineering application there are a certain number of fault modes that can be ideally mitigated and quantified as a reliability risk. Good engineering practice documents these in the form of fault trees, failure mode effects analysis etc. Sure, unknown failure modes still may pop up, but to the point of the article, if they get discussed and documented they can be mitigated in future iterations. While maybe never reaching zero, over time the remaining unknown risks become smaller and smaller probability events.
Do you mean infinite ways in life? I’m trying to reconcile your statement as it would apply to a specific domain rather than something as broad as the scope of ones life.
Reliability engineering would tend to disagree with the above quote. For a specific engineering application there are a certain number of fault modes that can be ideally mitigated and quantified as a reliability risk. Good engineering practice documents these in the form of fault trees, failure mode effects analysis etc. Sure, unknown failure modes still may pop up, but to the point of the article, if they get discussed and documented they can be mitigated in future iterations. While maybe never reaching zero, over time the remaining unknown risks become smaller and smaller probability events.
I was thinking of it more in ways businesses fails given we're on HN and that's a bit more narrow than the "in life" version of the article so that it's more useful.
However that's a really great point that in the context of a specific engineering application failure can be enumerated to the point where such study of failure is incredibly powerful. Thanks for pointing that out.
However that's a really great point that in the context of a specific engineering application failure can be enumerated to the point where such study of failure is incredibly powerful. Thanks for pointing that out.
Businesses also have common failure modes. I used startups as an example of learning from failure in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26498875.
If you read these 13 stories of failed software products that I collected you'll see that they have quite a lot in common:
https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-lessons-f...
Also, hanging out on forums for software entrepreneurs, I see people making the same standard mistakes again and again.
Also, hanging out on forums for software entrepreneurs, I see people making the same standard mistakes again and again.
can you tell me some of them?
Off the top of my head:
Not doing market research.
Taking too long to release v1.
Not spending enough time on marketing.
Lifetime licenses.
Obsessing over piracy.
See also: https://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/21/ten-mistakes-micro...
Not doing market research.
Taking too long to release v1.
Not spending enough time on marketing.
Lifetime licenses.
Obsessing over piracy.
See also: https://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/21/ten-mistakes-micro...
You also need to read about failure to account for survivorship bias.
Eg, did some entity fail even though they were doing the same things as the successful entities?
If you detect that, then it's evidence that the techniques of the successful entities are no guarantee of success. That some other technique or factor or luck was the actual differentiator.
That's useful information when you're trying to decide what techniques of successful entities may be worth repurposing to your situation or not.
Eg, did some entity fail even though they were doing the same things as the successful entities?
If you detect that, then it's evidence that the techniques of the successful entities are no guarantee of success. That some other technique or factor or luck was the actual differentiator.
That's useful information when you're trying to decide what techniques of successful entities may be worth repurposing to your situation or not.
Not so many ways to _recover_ from failure and go on, though.
That's usually seen as success though.
I'm fairly confident in saying no success has come without recovery from failure
I'm fairly confident in saying no success has come without recovery from failure
It may not be something you can publish as success, though.
Actually, there are only finite ways to fail. It just happens to be a large number. Thinking of interactions of the world as propagations of signals and considering Kolmogorov-style descriptions of entropy would lead one to this conclusion of finiteness. See: "Kolmogorov complexity"
Further, there are a finite number of patterns of failure, which is of course less than the number of absolute ways things could fail.
The biggest detriment is not that things can fail, but that people get overwhelmed by believing that such things are infinite in scale.
Further, there are a finite number of patterns of failure, which is of course less than the number of absolute ways things could fail.
The biggest detriment is not that things can fail, but that people get overwhelmed by believing that such things are infinite in scale.
As an example, there are only 16 categorical manifestations of software exceptions based on the following categories:
- Synchronicity, Scope, Origin
For Synchronicity we have:
- Synchronicity
- Asynchronicity
For Scope we have:
- Process-specific
- Cross-process
For Origin we have:
- Data origin
- Temporal origin
- External origin
- Process origin
Then you combine them such as "Synchronous-CrossProcess-Temporal Origin." The total is 16 ways. Even if something were somehow to be missing from this categorization scheme, it would only add a finite amount of possibilities to the permutations. Yet this taxonomy seems quite complete as is.
See: “Error Handling in Process Support Systems” by Casati & Cugola.
- Synchronicity, Scope, Origin
For Synchronicity we have:
- Synchronicity
- Asynchronicity
For Scope we have:
- Process-specific
- Cross-process
For Origin we have:
- Data origin
- Temporal origin
- External origin
- Process origin
Then you combine them such as "Synchronous-CrossProcess-Temporal Origin." The total is 16 ways. Even if something were somehow to be missing from this categorization scheme, it would only add a finite amount of possibilities to the permutations. Yet this taxonomy seems quite complete as is.
See: “Error Handling in Process Support Systems” by Casati & Cugola.
If the context isn't a formal proof, you can safely substitute infinite with 'might as well be infinite' most of the time to get the intended meaning.
There are categories of failure though. Those not only tell you where to look but give you starting points and substitutions.
Substitute one set of problems for a better known set, and go from there. When engineering figures out how to solve the less known set, then you can do something “new”.
Today you might solve liquefaction by running pillars to bedrock and then design for earthquake damage caused by being anchored to bedrock.
Some day you might use the Dutch trick of building houses that can float instead.
Substitute one set of problems for a better known set, and go from there. When engineering figures out how to solve the less known set, then you can do something “new”.
Today you might solve liquefaction by running pillars to bedrock and then design for earthquake damage caused by being anchored to bedrock.
Some day you might use the Dutch trick of building houses that can float instead.
You can derive pattern though. You can learn about recuring weak links. And you can learn about solutions. Those are nice.
Reminds me of a quote from Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Like most proverbs, it only seems insightful and true if you don't think about what it is claiming at all.
Almost Perfect by WE Pete Peterson [0] is the story of WordPerfect and how it burned up. I think it was a good example of 80s/90s software startups and think the author, CEO I think, was frank about what went wrong. And it’s free.
[0] http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
[0] http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
The whole TV show “Halt and Catch Fire” was basically about serial failure by a bunch of technically minded narcissists. I’ve never related more to a television show. Notably, it got ignominiously cancelled.
I think failure is bad entertainment.
I think failure is bad entertainment.
I loved that show and think it finished rather than was cancelled.
But many of the folks I recommended it to, didn’t like it. Various reasons provided but I remember stuff like “depressing” and “failure” coming up a lot.
But many of the folks I recommended it to, didn’t like it. Various reasons provided but I remember stuff like “depressing” and “failure” coming up a lot.
I tried watching it, couldn't get past the first season because of the characters. I've dealt with enough asshole Steve Jobs wannabes and the 10x rockstar programmer types in real life that watching them on screen gives me PTSD.
At least with Silicon Valley you get to laugh through the tears.
Part of the joy of that show is seeing how the characters evolve personally throughout the seasons. It’s often not predictable - but I would say it is believable.
Yeah, similarly pain for me too. But I think it was accurate based on my experience and I think showing the four broken, jerk people was really representative and accurate. Turning them into likable characters would be even more of a fantasy than it already was. I suppose there’s nice people somewhere, but I had the bad luck of not working with them.
Yeah, that's what's stopped me from continuing with the show so far, the characters are all insufferable. At least in Silicon Valley they're insufferable and hilarious.
It just felt so contrived to me, above and beyond what is normal for a TV show. These 6ish people are responsible for pretty much every revolution and success in the tech sector? Yeah fuck that. It felt like tech-bro worship, completely ignoring the same folks everyone else always ignores who tend to be the ones putting in the uninteresting work that keeps those types able to make their successes.
But I watched every second of it with interest so I don't know what that says about me.
But I watched every second of it with interest so I don't know what that says about me.
> These 6ish people are responsible for pretty much every revolution and success in the tech sector?
But they weren’t. All their “revolutions” were me too products alongside compaq, aol, and yahoo. It seemed like how there were lots of almost-wases around those times. Just look at all the ibm compatible companies who all made similar stuff and didn’t make it.
But they weren’t. All their “revolutions” were me too products alongside compaq, aol, and yahoo. It seemed like how there were lots of almost-wases around those times. Just look at all the ibm compatible companies who all made similar stuff and didn’t make it.
I grew up in that era, and maybe that's the problem, but it struck me as a poorly-done "Mad Men" for geeks. The nostalgia wasn't just tacked on, it was duct-taped and painted bright green to make sure you noticed. One scene that stands out in my mind was when the older business owner is ordering some US Robotics modems. As the scene cuts away from him with a phone in his hand: "Of course I want the V.32!!!11!"
I cringed so hard my shoulders ached for two days.
I cringed so hard my shoulders ached for two days.
For us youngsters, I think that was probably a necessary move - I don't know what I'm supposed to feel nostalgic for, so by making it obvious enough, I could vicariously imagine "Oh, I bet other people are supposed to be feeling nostalgic right now." shrug
How is HACF bad entertainment? Greatest show ever IMO
I'm saying I like it a whole lot. I'm just saying I think it had limited appeal because it wasn't really the hero's story archetype. Or even an anti-hero archetype.
Haha, well you can read about my failure to make a cartoon episode. It was very depressing, a lot of love went into it, and it crashed and burned after hundreds of hours.
https://jerseyfonseca.com/blogs/failingkiwi
https://jerseyfonseca.com/blogs/failingkiwi
That's honestly a heart wrenching story. Your bravery to write it as straight as you have is testament to you. You obviously cared a lot about the film and the people you worked with. That will go with you.
Damn, I never thought anyone would read it or care. I very deeply appreciate your comment, and that you took the time to read it.
I really hope I can try again one day in the future with actual animators!
I really hope I can try again one day in the future with actual animators!
I enjoyed your story too. Good on you for going for it! At the very least, you tried!
Thank you, I really appreciate it :)
I find that whenever I post about my failures, my blog gets more comments and readers are just more engaged in general. They can relate to it! There's way too much "look what I can do!" out there.
https://miscdotgeek.com/first-qrp-portable-ops-failure/
My favourite book ever is "The Book of Heroic Failures". It celebrates failure. In the introduction, Stephen Pile wrote:
Success is overrated. Everyone craves it despite daily proof that man's real genius lies in quite the opposite direction. Incompetence is what we are good at: it is the quality that marks us off from animals and we should learn to revere it. Of course, the occasional Segovia does slip through the net with the result that we all cut sandwiches and queue in the rain for hours to watch him play the guitar without once dropping his plectrum down the hole. But this book is not for the likes of him. It is for us: we, the less than good, who spend hours shaking the plectrum out and impress only our mothers. Here, collected in one anthology for the first time, are the great names: Coates, Falconer, the abysmal Nuttall, the immortal Carolino, the dire Foster-Jenkins and McGonagall. People who were so bad in their chosen sphere of endeavour that their names live on as a beacon for future generations.
I am sure that I am not the only one who cannot do things and the slightest investigation reveals that no one else can do anything either. This being the case, it seems to me that Mankind spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about the things he does well, when these few blades of grass are surrounded by vast prairies of inadequacy which are much more interesting.
More and more I find myself agreeing with the author.
Success is overrated. Everyone craves it despite daily proof that man's real genius lies in quite the opposite direction. Incompetence is what we are good at: it is the quality that marks us off from animals and we should learn to revere it. Of course, the occasional Segovia does slip through the net with the result that we all cut sandwiches and queue in the rain for hours to watch him play the guitar without once dropping his plectrum down the hole. But this book is not for the likes of him. It is for us: we, the less than good, who spend hours shaking the plectrum out and impress only our mothers. Here, collected in one anthology for the first time, are the great names: Coates, Falconer, the abysmal Nuttall, the immortal Carolino, the dire Foster-Jenkins and McGonagall. People who were so bad in their chosen sphere of endeavour that their names live on as a beacon for future generations.
I am sure that I am not the only one who cannot do things and the slightest investigation reveals that no one else can do anything either. This being the case, it seems to me that Mankind spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about the things he does well, when these few blades of grass are surrounded by vast prairies of inadequacy which are much more interesting.
More and more I find myself agreeing with the author.
"The funniest book of the year." - Irish Times
Pile, Stephen. The Book of Heroic Failures: The Official Handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. 1980.
..I see he has a newer book published too:
Pile, Stephen. The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures. 2011.
Pile, Stephen. The Book of Heroic Failures: The Official Handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. 1980.
..I see he has a newer book published too:
Pile, Stephen. The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures. 2011.
I really enjoyed this story because it introduced me to an interesting person I had never heard about.
I did not enjoy the last paragraph where it tried to shoehorn a bunch of bizarre lessons learned from this story, some of which didn't make sense and at least one seemed contradictory.
I did not enjoy the last paragraph where it tried to shoehorn a bunch of bizarre lessons learned from this story, some of which didn't make sense and at least one seemed contradictory.
Yes, the small treasure here is the story of Paul Otlet's ideas and work. The 'lessons learned', not so much.
It's a sound concept to learn lessons from the failures of others, even, and perhaps especially those others who otherwise excel in their field. However, as this piece shows, it's easy to draw the wrong lessons from singular biographies.
A better approach might be how failures are investigated, analyzed, and cataloged in various fields such as aviation and rock climbing. Those seemingly dry failure reports can make surprisingly fascinating reading, and the collections that bring them closer to data than anecdotes can provide powerful insights.
So, maybe some kind of Institute For The Study of Career Disasters? Not entirely joking, it'd be genuinely helpful to, for example, go beyond just the "90% of all small businesses fail in X years", and provide actual analyzed insight (not just more anecdotes) into what makes the difference between success and failure, and what failures have good prospects of successful restarting (i.e., their death was more likely just bad luck /Force Majeure vs pilot error)...
It's a sound concept to learn lessons from the failures of others, even, and perhaps especially those others who otherwise excel in their field. However, as this piece shows, it's easy to draw the wrong lessons from singular biographies.
A better approach might be how failures are investigated, analyzed, and cataloged in various fields such as aviation and rock climbing. Those seemingly dry failure reports can make surprisingly fascinating reading, and the collections that bring them closer to data than anecdotes can provide powerful insights.
So, maybe some kind of Institute For The Study of Career Disasters? Not entirely joking, it'd be genuinely helpful to, for example, go beyond just the "90% of all small businesses fail in X years", and provide actual analyzed insight (not just more anecdotes) into what makes the difference between success and failure, and what failures have good prospects of successful restarting (i.e., their death was more likely just bad luck /Force Majeure vs pilot error)...
When I saw the title, I initially rolled my eyes[0], but I have to concede a lot of the points the author is making with regard to the examples he's chosen. There is value in biographies covering failures.
My first thought was "there's no market for it". But yes, there definitely is -- at least, I'm part of it. I remember watching a documentary on covering an early .com failure that with a few tweaks would have been a biography about the failures of the CEO and the tragedy of that experience in his life. It was a very unique failure and it interested me because it was a failure at a level I had not experienced in my life[1].
There is a very similar market in the "failure biography" category: True Crime. I feel it's the closest analog. Outside of the books that are written simply because the crime is so gruesome, many are about particularly clever criminal(s) and the errors that led to their capture[2]. While these books often focus on the whole process, and might center around an investigator's hunt for a criminal, there are plenty where "A Biography of Stabby McMurderFace" would be a better title. I'm sure there's an abstraction and a way to map the successes/failures from a true crime book to adequately apply to non-criminal life. Everything I know about software development says it must be true. /s
[0] There seems to be a growing trend with hating on people who are successful, whether it's entirely dismissing their success as "luck" or pointing out the obvious fact that "reading a Biography will not teach you how to become a multi-millionaire". Or worse, that reading about a successful person's life is a harmful way to use your limited entertainment time <rant>(when did it become popular to write articles talking to adults like they've not been on this planet their whole, adult, life? Do we need to be told that wild success is an outlier just because a few adults need instructions to operate Shampoo?).</rant>
[1] I won't deny it, I was watching it 80% for the "train-wreck" of it all and only 20% for the cautionary tale aspects, but you consume both.
[2] There is the third, "unsolved", category and I don't know what percentage all of these books represent of the whole, but I'd consider only the "failed criminals" which at-a-glance appears to be the most common.
My first thought was "there's no market for it". But yes, there definitely is -- at least, I'm part of it. I remember watching a documentary on covering an early .com failure that with a few tweaks would have been a biography about the failures of the CEO and the tragedy of that experience in his life. It was a very unique failure and it interested me because it was a failure at a level I had not experienced in my life[1].
There is a very similar market in the "failure biography" category: True Crime. I feel it's the closest analog. Outside of the books that are written simply because the crime is so gruesome, many are about particularly clever criminal(s) and the errors that led to their capture[2]. While these books often focus on the whole process, and might center around an investigator's hunt for a criminal, there are plenty where "A Biography of Stabby McMurderFace" would be a better title. I'm sure there's an abstraction and a way to map the successes/failures from a true crime book to adequately apply to non-criminal life. Everything I know about software development says it must be true. /s
[0] There seems to be a growing trend with hating on people who are successful, whether it's entirely dismissing their success as "luck" or pointing out the obvious fact that "reading a Biography will not teach you how to become a multi-millionaire". Or worse, that reading about a successful person's life is a harmful way to use your limited entertainment time <rant>(when did it become popular to write articles talking to adults like they've not been on this planet their whole, adult, life? Do we need to be told that wild success is an outlier just because a few adults need instructions to operate Shampoo?).</rant>
[1] I won't deny it, I was watching it 80% for the "train-wreck" of it all and only 20% for the cautionary tale aspects, but you consume both.
[2] There is the third, "unsolved", category and I don't know what percentage all of these books represent of the whole, but I'd consider only the "failed criminals" which at-a-glance appears to be the most common.
> "Do we need to be told that wild success is an outlier just because a few adults need instructions to operate Shampoo?).</rant>"
No, we need to be told that wild success is an outlier because there's a huge push for people to work ever-longer hours with the wild success stories dangled in front of them as the carrot. There's a huge chunk of people arguing and voting that suffering poor humans shouldn't be helped based on the simplistic idea that work -> success, therefore !sucess means !work, and !success is inherently shameful. Your father clearly worked hard to provide for his family, you also say that his passion was solving problems and organising the system, a passion you don't have - is "being born the right kind of person" not a kind of luck? Another commenter says their mother was an incredibly hardworking person until she got ill and couldn't. Is there no luck in your father's health staying good enough that he could do those sleep-interrupted-nights for years on end? You say in another comment "as if saying so implies that people who are unsuccessful /don't/ work hard" but if people who are unsuccessful also work hard, what is it that distinguishes them from Bezos if not luck? You could say it's the /type of hard work/ they do, and I'd partly agree and say that's a good reason to push back on the meme "work harder, work harder!". Would you say that Jeff Bezos worked 170x harder than your father, for example? Why does pointing out the role that luck plays diminish your father's life in your eyes so much that you're posting multiple times about it? Elon Musk didn't "luck-in" to running SpaceX by sitting around playing video games waiting for the world to discover him, but if you try and follow in his hard work footsteps by setting up an online bank you'll be somewhat stumped by it not being 1999 and you not having a father who owned an Emerald mine.[1]
I am someone who often does your "growing trend with hating on people who are successfull by dismissing their success as luck", but it's not hating on Bezos with a claim that he didn't work hard, it's hating on the idea that if everyone worked hard they could be Bezos. It's hating on the idea that Bezos is a superior person to all the people who worked hard and got nothing from it, more deserving of being in the spotlight. It's hating on the idea that Bezos earned all the money he controls through his hard work and dismissing the contribution of all the other Amazon employees to that wealth. It's hating on the way the media puts the materially successful person because it's easier to make a "top 100 richest people" list than a "top 100 contented people" list. It's hating on the implication that everyone should strive for material success and the way to achieve that is by working harder, even though for almost all employees working harder will not get them much more than burnout - even people who want to improve at something need to focus their practise on improving, not just churning harder and harder. Would you not say that your father's life would have been better if he'd achieved the same success with less work? Would you say he was less respectable if he'd achieved the same with less work?
I don't exactly encourage "not working hard" when I say these things, I more encourage that hard work should be on your own terms, for something you love the process of working on - as you describe your father was passionate about organising and solving problems. Hard work that you are forced into by circumstance and necessity is a worse kind of work than hard work you choose to do of your own free will, and is different again from that which society pressures you to do. Donald Knuth works hard on TAOCP, it's not done for vast financial success, it's very respectable nevertheless. A hospital pushes an ICU nurse into another 12 hour shift with too-few coworkers, while cutting back on staff to increase profits; that's respectable that the nurse endures it, but objectionable for the system to be exploiting in that way. Jiro Oni from the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi - a lifetime of searching and striving hard for perfect sushi got him 3 Michelin stars and a family run restaurant which could seat a dozen people, and that's a far better kind of hard work and success than a 90 hour weeks striving to make partner at a law firm doing work you hate, because society told you that you don't matter unless you're visily suffering long-hours and own a McMansion. And society is telling us that, that the poor don't matter, that the rich and famous do matter, that the way to get higher social status is to sleep less and work more, that it's more respectable to stay 10 hours at work than to leave early to walk by the river. That it's intensely shameful to be unemployed. That your contribution at work isn't measured by the customers you please, but by the much easier to measure time you spent in the office. That it's awful to be part of a union which pushes for more pay for less work.
HN is a place of generally more educated people than average, doing work that's paid higher than average, and having more range of places to work than average, and there's still a continual trickle of comments saying "I could do much better work in less time if I could change ___ but the company doesn't want that, they want longer hours and people looking like they're suffering at crunch time". It's the orientation of life around work, the systemic pressure to treat employees as resources to extracted wealth from by working them harder and the corresponding messages for employees to align with that by seeing it as the only thing which is virtuous, which is objectionable. Not because of some "instructions to operate Shampoo"(???)
If working hard at a job you hate provides for your family, that's good on you, but it's not praiseworthy that that's how society is. It's the sacrifice for others which is respectable, not the lack of sleep or the Calories burned in themselves. If working less hard at something else brings you more money, that's not inherently bad because you aren't chasing material success and aren't working as hard as you can, there are other things than work.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came...
No, we need to be told that wild success is an outlier because there's a huge push for people to work ever-longer hours with the wild success stories dangled in front of them as the carrot. There's a huge chunk of people arguing and voting that suffering poor humans shouldn't be helped based on the simplistic idea that work -> success, therefore !sucess means !work, and !success is inherently shameful. Your father clearly worked hard to provide for his family, you also say that his passion was solving problems and organising the system, a passion you don't have - is "being born the right kind of person" not a kind of luck? Another commenter says their mother was an incredibly hardworking person until she got ill and couldn't. Is there no luck in your father's health staying good enough that he could do those sleep-interrupted-nights for years on end? You say in another comment "as if saying so implies that people who are unsuccessful /don't/ work hard" but if people who are unsuccessful also work hard, what is it that distinguishes them from Bezos if not luck? You could say it's the /type of hard work/ they do, and I'd partly agree and say that's a good reason to push back on the meme "work harder, work harder!". Would you say that Jeff Bezos worked 170x harder than your father, for example? Why does pointing out the role that luck plays diminish your father's life in your eyes so much that you're posting multiple times about it? Elon Musk didn't "luck-in" to running SpaceX by sitting around playing video games waiting for the world to discover him, but if you try and follow in his hard work footsteps by setting up an online bank you'll be somewhat stumped by it not being 1999 and you not having a father who owned an Emerald mine.[1]
I am someone who often does your "growing trend with hating on people who are successfull by dismissing their success as luck", but it's not hating on Bezos with a claim that he didn't work hard, it's hating on the idea that if everyone worked hard they could be Bezos. It's hating on the idea that Bezos is a superior person to all the people who worked hard and got nothing from it, more deserving of being in the spotlight. It's hating on the idea that Bezos earned all the money he controls through his hard work and dismissing the contribution of all the other Amazon employees to that wealth. It's hating on the way the media puts the materially successful person because it's easier to make a "top 100 richest people" list than a "top 100 contented people" list. It's hating on the implication that everyone should strive for material success and the way to achieve that is by working harder, even though for almost all employees working harder will not get them much more than burnout - even people who want to improve at something need to focus their practise on improving, not just churning harder and harder. Would you not say that your father's life would have been better if he'd achieved the same success with less work? Would you say he was less respectable if he'd achieved the same with less work?
I don't exactly encourage "not working hard" when I say these things, I more encourage that hard work should be on your own terms, for something you love the process of working on - as you describe your father was passionate about organising and solving problems. Hard work that you are forced into by circumstance and necessity is a worse kind of work than hard work you choose to do of your own free will, and is different again from that which society pressures you to do. Donald Knuth works hard on TAOCP, it's not done for vast financial success, it's very respectable nevertheless. A hospital pushes an ICU nurse into another 12 hour shift with too-few coworkers, while cutting back on staff to increase profits; that's respectable that the nurse endures it, but objectionable for the system to be exploiting in that way. Jiro Oni from the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi - a lifetime of searching and striving hard for perfect sushi got him 3 Michelin stars and a family run restaurant which could seat a dozen people, and that's a far better kind of hard work and success than a 90 hour weeks striving to make partner at a law firm doing work you hate, because society told you that you don't matter unless you're visily suffering long-hours and own a McMansion. And society is telling us that, that the poor don't matter, that the rich and famous do matter, that the way to get higher social status is to sleep less and work more, that it's more respectable to stay 10 hours at work than to leave early to walk by the river. That it's intensely shameful to be unemployed. That your contribution at work isn't measured by the customers you please, but by the much easier to measure time you spent in the office. That it's awful to be part of a union which pushes for more pay for less work.
HN is a place of generally more educated people than average, doing work that's paid higher than average, and having more range of places to work than average, and there's still a continual trickle of comments saying "I could do much better work in less time if I could change ___ but the company doesn't want that, they want longer hours and people looking like they're suffering at crunch time". It's the orientation of life around work, the systemic pressure to treat employees as resources to extracted wealth from by working them harder and the corresponding messages for employees to align with that by seeing it as the only thing which is virtuous, which is objectionable. Not because of some "instructions to operate Shampoo"(???)
If working hard at a job you hate provides for your family, that's good on you, but it's not praiseworthy that that's how society is. It's the sacrifice for others which is respectable, not the lack of sleep or the Calories burned in themselves. If working less hard at something else brings you more money, that's not inherently bad because you aren't chasing material success and aren't working as hard as you can, there are other things than work.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came...
You shouldn’t be afraid of failure, but it’s a bad fetish. If failure can help future endeavors great, but there’s nothing inherently interesting about failing a lot.
If you work on things with a 5% chance of success but 1000x potential return, it absolutely makes sense to keep trying if you have the capacity to take on that much risk.
> If you work on things with a 5% chance of success but 1000x potential return
Let's say you do this 10 times in a row. There is still a 60% chance you fail every time. You've only got one life to live.
And if we're talking startups, because this is HN, I'd ballpark each one as having at most a 1% chance of success, and I consider that incredibly charitable. Series B companies are already derisked and don't count (there's unlikely to be more upside than going to FAANG anyway), I'm talking companies trying to get seed funding.
Taking risks is fine, but don't assume it'll work out just because you want it to.
Let's say you do this 10 times in a row. There is still a 60% chance you fail every time. You've only got one life to live.
And if we're talking startups, because this is HN, I'd ballpark each one as having at most a 1% chance of success, and I consider that incredibly charitable. Series B companies are already derisked and don't count (there's unlikely to be more upside than going to FAANG anyway), I'm talking companies trying to get seed funding.
Taking risks is fine, but don't assume it'll work out just because you want it to.
Sure; but nobody who takes the 1000x risk does so believing they don't hold something that reduces that 1000x risk, either, whether deluded in that thinking or not.
My Dad knew the statistics about his chances for success, and he had a very realistic picture (which turned out to be true) of what those statistics would look like when the variable being applied was "him".
But the 1000x risk issue applies in some ways. My Dad was and is successful -- wealthy, retired, married to the same woman since his 20s, spent the latter part of his working life working when he didn't have to, financially. But I'm sure he really would have preferred if it came without a new, dream-ruining, potential problem every other day weeks with sleep replaced with work, being away from home more than home at times, and the myriad of other grief involved. Even though he never let on to us kids, I don't doubt that my Dad probably felt like he was failing for a solid decade, much of which he went without a paycheck, part of which he spent in court filing suit against the former owner of his last business venture (and ended up "winning", which cost him more -- financially[0] -- than had he just ignored it, entirely).
The flip side is that if you really do have something that would reduce that 1000x risk (for your niche product/narrow case/whatever it is that you're doing), explore it, test it, try it. This isn't a "you can't win the lottery if you don't play" sort of things, it's a "you're clearly a smart person or you probably wouldn't understand half of the stuff that's written about on this site, so maybe that idea you think is 'unrealistic' could use a little prodding before you 'bin it'"
Maybe the HN crowd has different problems in this area than the world-at-large, but "an unrealistic expectation of success in business" is not common among grown-ups. Most adults suffer from motivation to simply "learn something new" and their experience (personal and through stories shared by others in our lives/24-Hour News) tell them that most people fail most of the time. If the thing they're trying would benefit them "greatly", that's when the real failin' begins!
Some of the world needn't take the 1000x risk to have a total failure -- life throws that at you on its own and while successes come, too, I tend to focus on the failures. Sometimes they prevent me from taking acceptable risks to achieve something greater. I might have failed at that, but the vast majority of the time, the downside to that failure is just "lost time". Usually the thing I want to make is 100x easier/simpler than things I've done countless times. Doesn't matter, no point, it won't work out. My only hope in those cases is that the thing I'm done has some other benefit, like "at least I'll learn something about this technology if it doesn't work", but I find that focusing on the failure modes is probably the strongest demotivating factor to doing anything, for me.
Conversely, focusing on what (realistically) could result "if this is successful" is a very strong motivator to doing that thing. Granted, the things I'm doing require minimal investment and don't carry with them a risk to loss of life/limb/life-savings, so I can't say that focusing on the success side of things would make much of a difference against those odds, but focusing on the loss of life/limb/savings would result in either "not doing it at all" or "losing said life/limb/savings"
---
[0] It was an issue of sale of the business. Nobody but this individual wanted to sell and this individual didn't have the ability to make that choice without the others' involvement but he believed they'd be unwilling to sue him knowing the result would be losing more money than they'd hope to get out of a positive outcome. And if the guy had gotten to know my Dad well enough, he'd not have been surprised when my Dad took the attitude of "let's see who goes broke, first". While Mom wasn't too pleased, I think my Dad actually joked that it was "money well spent" at one point. Mind you, he did this while starting his new business, not collecting a paycheck, and having a very large mortgage on a brand new home in his late 40s, so his opponent's bet that he wouldn't sue was probably a good bet; except that my Dad's humility ended at being stolen from.
My Dad knew the statistics about his chances for success, and he had a very realistic picture (which turned out to be true) of what those statistics would look like when the variable being applied was "him".
But the 1000x risk issue applies in some ways. My Dad was and is successful -- wealthy, retired, married to the same woman since his 20s, spent the latter part of his working life working when he didn't have to, financially. But I'm sure he really would have preferred if it came without a new, dream-ruining, potential problem every other day weeks with sleep replaced with work, being away from home more than home at times, and the myriad of other grief involved. Even though he never let on to us kids, I don't doubt that my Dad probably felt like he was failing for a solid decade, much of which he went without a paycheck, part of which he spent in court filing suit against the former owner of his last business venture (and ended up "winning", which cost him more -- financially[0] -- than had he just ignored it, entirely).
The flip side is that if you really do have something that would reduce that 1000x risk (for your niche product/narrow case/whatever it is that you're doing), explore it, test it, try it. This isn't a "you can't win the lottery if you don't play" sort of things, it's a "you're clearly a smart person or you probably wouldn't understand half of the stuff that's written about on this site, so maybe that idea you think is 'unrealistic' could use a little prodding before you 'bin it'"
Maybe the HN crowd has different problems in this area than the world-at-large, but "an unrealistic expectation of success in business" is not common among grown-ups. Most adults suffer from motivation to simply "learn something new" and their experience (personal and through stories shared by others in our lives/24-Hour News) tell them that most people fail most of the time. If the thing they're trying would benefit them "greatly", that's when the real failin' begins!
Some of the world needn't take the 1000x risk to have a total failure -- life throws that at you on its own and while successes come, too, I tend to focus on the failures. Sometimes they prevent me from taking acceptable risks to achieve something greater. I might have failed at that, but the vast majority of the time, the downside to that failure is just "lost time". Usually the thing I want to make is 100x easier/simpler than things I've done countless times. Doesn't matter, no point, it won't work out. My only hope in those cases is that the thing I'm done has some other benefit, like "at least I'll learn something about this technology if it doesn't work", but I find that focusing on the failure modes is probably the strongest demotivating factor to doing anything, for me.
Conversely, focusing on what (realistically) could result "if this is successful" is a very strong motivator to doing that thing. Granted, the things I'm doing require minimal investment and don't carry with them a risk to loss of life/limb/life-savings, so I can't say that focusing on the success side of things would make much of a difference against those odds, but focusing on the loss of life/limb/savings would result in either "not doing it at all" or "losing said life/limb/savings"
---
[0] It was an issue of sale of the business. Nobody but this individual wanted to sell and this individual didn't have the ability to make that choice without the others' involvement but he believed they'd be unwilling to sue him knowing the result would be losing more money than they'd hope to get out of a positive outcome. And if the guy had gotten to know my Dad well enough, he'd not have been surprised when my Dad took the attitude of "let's see who goes broke, first". While Mom wasn't too pleased, I think my Dad actually joked that it was "money well spent" at one point. Mind you, he did this while starting his new business, not collecting a paycheck, and having a very large mortgage on a brand new home in his late 40s, so his opponent's bet that he wouldn't sue was probably a good bet; except that my Dad's humility ended at being stolen from.
> Maybe the HN crowd has different problems in this area than the world-at-large, but "an unrealistic expectation of success in business" is not common among grown-ups.
Have you never met someone who opened a restaurant? Peter Thiel actually uses this as a talking point. The surest way to lose money is to open a restaurant, and yet there are always people lining up to do so.
Have you never met someone who opened a restaurant? Peter Thiel actually uses this as a talking point. The surest way to lose money is to open a restaurant, and yet there are always people lining up to do so.
> Have you never met someone who opened a restaurant?
Both of them are tricky situations. My brother-in-law sold his business after being moderately successful (he did it full time and made a living for himself, but it was a lot of work for what he took home). He sold to form a new business with his wife, which is very successful. My brother-in-law, though, had no loans and started the business while living with mom/dad so had it failed, he'd have been out his "life savings (at 22) with no paycheck coming in". He ended up with a business that could sustain itself and him, and did so for a few years, but just barely.
My friend's fancy restaurant completely failed. His restaurant was one of the best places I've ever eaten[0], located in a lake-house town where my family has a vacation house. He lived upstairs with his family, and the place was packed during the summer, but he couldn't charge what he needed to charge to re-coupe the cost of the quality of food he served. His business failed, he moved out of town and went back to teaching but I believe he's opened up a new place out of state, recently.
Did they both expect to be successful? Yes. And since I didn't know Andy (fancy place) prior to his restaurant, I can't say for sure what his thinking was going into it, but the first year he was open he admitted that he knew he was taking a huge risk -- there is literally no business between October and May, and previous fancy places like this have failed regularly in that city. It's a bummer -- this place was amazing.
[0] It was a place you could go on the weekend and were bound to run into a local celebrity/basketball/football/baseball player; it busy/reservation only but small. He was only open Thu-Sun, everything locally sourced and the menu that day based on the best of what he could find (usually bought that morning).
Are you making the argument that "people who think it's a good idea to start restaurants" are representative of "grown-ups?"
I think you're right insofar as you point out that opening a restaurant is a fraught enterprise, but I don't really think that refutes the comment you're responding to - the overwhelming majority of adults don't open restaurants, even though there are always plenty of dreamers who think it's a good idea.
I think you're right insofar as you point out that opening a restaurant is a fraught enterprise, but I don't really think that refutes the comment you're responding to - the overwhelming majority of adults don't open restaurants, even though there are always plenty of dreamers who think it's a good idea.
> "people who think it's a good idea to start restaurants" are representative of "grown-ups?"
All that to say, for some people, it probably is a really good idea to open a restaurant. There are examples of extremely successful restaurants all over the country and restaurateurs who are capable of taking a pile of cash, picking a location/staff and turning the pile into profits. It's easy to under-estimate the skills required to do this when a quick walk/drive leads you to a row of successful (struggling) restaurants, all packed to the gills[0] charging 10 times grocery prices for food/liquor and think "I can do that".
And I'd agree with you -- that's not really representative of a "grown-up"[1]
[0] Because you showed up there on Saturday just like everyone else.
[1] I used that term over "adult" as it implies emotional maturity but wasn't sure it'd be clear. :)
My point was many adults do have unrealistic expectations of success. Sure, most people don't start restaurants, but an irrational amount of people do it thinking they'll make it. This is hardly unique to restaurants, this was just an obvious counterexample to poke holes in his argument. I live in San Francisco and see people start companies for the stupidest fucking shit all the time, convinced of their assured success because of their Ivy league degrees. I also watch as almost all of them fail (some just haven't had enough time to fail yet, but obviously one might surprise me some day).
Questioning his assumptions is not meant to refute his argument, only to question it.
Questioning his assumptions is not meant to refute his argument, only to question it.
There’s bad failure and good failure. I try to find the “validated learning” in a failure and that helps me distinguish good from bad.
It’s funny when people talking about how great failing is and fetishizing it without getting the point that lots of failures are good because it gets you to success faster.
But big, stupid, so if failures that are repeated over and over should be a bad sign (eg, “I failed because all my co-workers are idiots” x10 is a really bad failure because it probably means I’m the idiot and aren’t getting better)
It’s funny when people talking about how great failing is and fetishizing it without getting the point that lots of failures are good because it gets you to success faster.
But big, stupid, so if failures that are repeated over and over should be a bad sign (eg, “I failed because all my co-workers are idiots” x10 is a really bad failure because it probably means I’m the idiot and aren’t getting better)
[deleted]
> but it's a bad fetish
I read comments talking about how awful it is that there are success biographies and I can't help but feel pity half the time. Like it or not, if you go into something expecting failure, you might as well skip it. For a lot of folks, the "failure fetish" serves only to reinforce an attitude that "the reason they're (insert desire here) and I'm not is luck. The vast majority fail, so I shouldn't bother.". My Dad's attitude, to us kids, was to finish that of with ", but they're not me." But he had many, many failures along the way, he just addressed each problem and landed on the right decisions enough that his company continued to grow/establish itself until the scariest of those problems started to vanish.
Inwardly, my Dad's attitude was less certain, but still landed somewhere at "It's just another problem, I've solved the last several successfully, I can solve this one", but ultimately, he knew the totality of the risk he was taking -- outright bankruptcy, losing a really, really nice house, not to mention the emotional effects such a catastrophic failure to provide for your family would be. He didn't focus on the "worst-case scenario" (partly because every one of his problems had the same worst-case scenario), because your options are rarely that binary -- while it might be "fail to pay the bill and they cut off service" it's often "if I call before the bill is due, I can get another month or a partial payment will cover us" -- another problem created, but an improvement to having the lights shut off. When the engine fails in-flight, the choice is one of many, many bad options, but "an emergency landing at a different, nearby, airport" beats "setting her down in the clearing just after those trees". As much has he flew, there are tens of stories that should have ended with the plane creating a burning crater, but even when the engine cut out over Lake Michigan in the "you're swimming" zone, he managed to problem solve his way to an airport.
It really feels sometimes there's a plague of jealousy-masquerading-as-concern (or worse, Nanny-ism) -- it hasn't gotten terrible here compared to other forums, but it's everywhere these days. It's almost shun-worthy to imply that someone achieved success through hard work[0]. As if saying so implies that people who are unsuccessful don't work hard, or that working hard, alone, will only guarantee you'll be tired, that knowing your market/product and being a really good problem solver are as important and that even then, you're going to put up with a lot of external BS for the privilege of choosing how you want to make money. And if you want the privilege of offering work to someone, there's a whole lot more you're going to enjoy. If you ever make the mistake of implying that the person who worked so hard for said money deserves the money they took such risks/worked so hard for, well, good luck with that (oops).
[0] I even feel the need to bullet-point-out that "obviously that's not the only factor, it's just the only one that's going to work for you since Mom/Dad aren't paying your paycheck".
A good life is often a fine balance between pleasure risk taking, size of risk, and increase of good outcome/experiences.
Or is the problem we revere “great people” and refuse to see their failures? A biography that holds their subject on a pedestal is not a very interesting one after all.
Ulysses Grant was a fantastic general that kept the US together during the civil war. He did commendable and not so commendable things as president. Grant was a born sucker if ever there was one. He constantly fell for every scheme in the book. He was unambiguous to a fault, and had a hard time promoting himself. He just by happenstance, and out of desperation, fell into the one thing he was much better at than anyone else. Otherwise we would have never have heard of him.
Washington did dedicate a lot of his time, energy, and wealth as general and president to the US. He had a kind of reserved outward lack of ambition that let him balance the egos around him. But, despite acknowledging slavery was contradictory to the revolution, he could never commit to freeing his slaves or finding a path to emancipation that robbed him and his wife use of their enslaved labor during their lives. They even pursued runaways like Ona Judge with some zeal and tried to lie to themselves that enslaved people enjoyed being part of their “family”.
These biographies are interesting because of the contrast in the failures of their lives with the successes.
Ulysses Grant was a fantastic general that kept the US together during the civil war. He did commendable and not so commendable things as president. Grant was a born sucker if ever there was one. He constantly fell for every scheme in the book. He was unambiguous to a fault, and had a hard time promoting himself. He just by happenstance, and out of desperation, fell into the one thing he was much better at than anyone else. Otherwise we would have never have heard of him.
Washington did dedicate a lot of his time, energy, and wealth as general and president to the US. He had a kind of reserved outward lack of ambition that let him balance the egos around him. But, despite acknowledging slavery was contradictory to the revolution, he could never commit to freeing his slaves or finding a path to emancipation that robbed him and his wife use of their enslaved labor during their lives. They even pursued runaways like Ona Judge with some zeal and tried to lie to themselves that enslaved people enjoyed being part of their “family”.
These biographies are interesting because of the contrast in the failures of their lives with the successes.
This post is more historical and highbrow than my usual tastes, but one of my favorite such reads in the tech space, at least, was "Boo Hoo: A dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe" about the development and failure of boo.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com - a British e-commerce business that burnt through $135m of VC money in 18 months. Worth a flick through if you get the chance, and it's almost like a period drama now given how 1998 was on the Internet compared to now.
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> The real benefit that reluctant young lawyers like Otlet get from their career is boredom. Their minds wander.
This reminds me of Einstein's stint as a patent clerk where he "hatched the most beautiful ideas [1]". Sometimes a boring job is simply a means to an end -- time to let one's mind wander and pursue one's raison d'etre.
1: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life-and-times/car...
This reminds me of Einstein's stint as a patent clerk where he "hatched the most beautiful ideas [1]". Sometimes a boring job is simply a means to an end -- time to let one's mind wander and pursue one's raison d'etre.
1: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/life-and-times/car...
"Banvard's Folly"[1] is a good read about "people who were ignored by the world, whose ideas came before their time, whose great work was left in ruins".
[1] https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Banvards-Folly-by-...
[1] https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Banvards-Folly-by-...
Write a biography of failure, watch those offended by the failure descend en masse to condemn the subject.
For illustration, see nearly any HN discussion of a bug.
For illustration, see nearly any HN discussion of a bug.
It’s probably true that biographies suffer from selection bias towards successful people, but simply publishing additional biographies of notable unsuccessful people probably isn’t going to eliminate selection bias very much. To eliminate that bias one would need to actually gather data and develop explanations for what choices and circumstances are favorable to success.
I think of this topic this very morning.
I am entering the fourth month of second entrepreneurial attemp. It feels harder than my last attemp, which failed. I have no funding (yet) and I have a child now. I can't keep 8 hours straight sleep.
Will my body cracks? I interviewed my mom this morning, who failed her several attempts in business and got lupus erythematosus.
She said that she never felt tired at that time. She just worked and worked. She used to be called the Never Tired Woman. But her businesse just didn't work. Then one day, she felt so tired. It turned out that she had this problem called lupus erythematosus. Then she gave up her career as entrepreneur. That was fifteen years ago, when she was in her fourth year as businesswoman rather than clerk.
I heard successful entrepreneurs adviced us to work as hard as you can. But what does that acutally mean? Should I work so hard as to hurt my health? My mom's story tells me, health is the prerequisite for entrepreneurship. As for working hard, there is bottom line there.
I am entering the fourth month of second entrepreneurial attemp. It feels harder than my last attemp, which failed. I have no funding (yet) and I have a child now. I can't keep 8 hours straight sleep.
Will my body cracks? I interviewed my mom this morning, who failed her several attempts in business and got lupus erythematosus.
She said that she never felt tired at that time. She just worked and worked. She used to be called the Never Tired Woman. But her businesse just didn't work. Then one day, she felt so tired. It turned out that she had this problem called lupus erythematosus. Then she gave up her career as entrepreneur. That was fifteen years ago, when she was in her fourth year as businesswoman rather than clerk.
I heard successful entrepreneurs adviced us to work as hard as you can. But what does that acutally mean? Should I work so hard as to hurt my health? My mom's story tells me, health is the prerequisite for entrepreneurship. As for working hard, there is bottom line there.
The very obvious answer is no, nobody should ever work so hard as to hurt their health.
Same for education. Let students see how many failures and wrong theories occured in the past, even from the smartest brains of their days. And stop forcing godspell like knowledge onto brains. Make them try, think, sweat, imagine, converge or diverge and correct themselves with some guidance to avoid too much confusion.
I used to play a particular game of code golf with my co-workers. Basically write the most awful code you could. We would usually pick some rule for the start of the game that week to have a theme. Something like 'write a loop that finds a string' or 'make a case statement'. There were no real rules other than every language construct and library is on the table to do it and it had to fit on the whiteboard with everyone else. So for example you may be a C++ shop that avoids throw in all cases that you can. In this game you could use them.
It had a really interesting side effect. The code in the office that was checked in went up dramatically in quality. As we learned first hand what was 'bad code' and why.
We basically forced bad things just to have a bit of fun but accidently learned something while doing it.
It had a really interesting side effect. The code in the office that was checked in went up dramatically in quality. As we learned first hand what was 'bad code' and why.
We basically forced bad things just to have a bit of fun but accidently learned something while doing it.
real data + fun + no pressure often leads to improvement it seems
I've thought of this before. I think a Studs Terkel style oral history from some otherwise successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs where they recount times they failed horribly would actually be pretty amusing, if not cathartic if done correctly.
I did a startup of my own in the 2000s... I decided to change the domain/company name to something shorter. I assumed I'd just redirect requests and all would be fine. I totally didn't think about the effect that the change would have on my Google SEO. Things were fine, then suddenly the traffic dropped to almost nothing. The new domain wasn't being indexed and the old domain disappeared because of whatever stupid HTTP header I put on it. Cut from this event to three months later having my car repossessed and it's a "fun" story.
I would definitely enjoy a book of fuckups like this from others.
I did a startup of my own in the 2000s... I decided to change the domain/company name to something shorter. I assumed I'd just redirect requests and all would be fine. I totally didn't think about the effect that the change would have on my Google SEO. Things were fine, then suddenly the traffic dropped to almost nothing. The new domain wasn't being indexed and the old domain disappeared because of whatever stupid HTTP header I put on it. Cut from this event to three months later having my car repossessed and it's a "fun" story.
I would definitely enjoy a book of fuckups like this from others.
Best one that I know of is Daniel Dyer's biography about Jack London:
https://www.amazon.com/Biography-Jack-London-Daniel-Dyer/dp/...
Jack's life was, per his famous saying, a burning comet. His notoriously stringent working life, as Dyer kinda argues, is what lead to his premature death.
It's a great lesson in failure, one of the few specific ones that I can remember and learned from.
A good intro to Jack and his over-passions is here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/jack-london-quotes/
https://www.amazon.com/Biography-Jack-London-Daniel-Dyer/dp/...
Jack's life was, per his famous saying, a burning comet. His notoriously stringent working life, as Dyer kinda argues, is what lead to his premature death.
It's a great lesson in failure, one of the few specific ones that I can remember and learned from.
A good intro to Jack and his over-passions is here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/jack-london-quotes/
One confounding factor is that people don't fail alone (or succeed alone) - at least in anything really interesting.
So to really dig into failure it is not enough for an individual to share - the culture around the person needs to share and support the discussion. Otherwise the failure sharing effort is doomed to failure. (Post mortem culture is a bit of an answer here but difficult to initiate).
I think this is why the classic tragedies have withstood the test of time - they generalize failures wise people have witnessed and are great learning material (with surface entertainment as bonus!). I strongly recommend reading some of them with the perspective of being a student of human behavior.
So to really dig into failure it is not enough for an individual to share - the culture around the person needs to share and support the discussion. Otherwise the failure sharing effort is doomed to failure. (Post mortem culture is a bit of an answer here but difficult to initiate).
I think this is why the classic tragedies have withstood the test of time - they generalize failures wise people have witnessed and are great learning material (with surface entertainment as bonus!). I strongly recommend reading some of them with the perspective of being a student of human behavior.
Yes. Also in sports journalism, I'm not really interested in the stories of people who finished first, second or third. I want to read about those who always finish 10th place or lower. Their struggle must be much more interesting.
You might really like this documentary on Netflix called "Losers" [1][2]
"Storyline
In a "winning is everything" society, how do we handle failure? This series profiles athletes who have turned the agony of defeat into human triumph."
[1] https://www.netflix.com/title/80198306
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9817218/
"Storyline
In a "winning is everything" society, how do we handle failure? This series profiles athletes who have turned the agony of defeat into human triumph."
[1] https://www.netflix.com/title/80198306
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9817218/
as a basketball fan, i'm fascinated by the players barely hanging on to a roster spot on any given team. the storylines vary widely, from veteran there to teach the youngsters, to scrappy upstart who barely made the cut, to the sibling of a star player.
in the nba, these are guys who are literally better than 99.9999% of the planet, and yet, they often seem to be treated like hangers-on rather than some of the best.
in the nba, these are guys who are literally better than 99.9999% of the planet, and yet, they often seem to be treated like hangers-on rather than some of the best.
I like to think that's part of the appeal of Crash Davis and just the lifestyle of a minor league baseball team in Bull Durham.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Durham
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Durham
It's out of print, but if you can get your hands on a used copy, Rob Trucks' Cup of Coffee might be right up your alley. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/476455.Cup_of_Coffee
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“Armanis, or the Love of
Technology” by Bruno Latour is an excellent example. It’s describing the failure of the self guided transportation system intended for Paris. The most interesting perspective is written from the perspective of the train system itself.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/667397
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/667397
Yes, absolutely!
For starters we all need to stop sugar-coating the word "failure" and - at the same time - we need to accept failures as necessities in our quest to innovation and excellence.
Then, we need more storytelling about failures: blogging, articles, interviews, podcast and biographies too.
Failures should be celebrated. Failure News. We need more and more failures in order to achieve success faster and better.
For starters we all need to stop sugar-coating the word "failure" and - at the same time - we need to accept failures as necessities in our quest to innovation and excellence.
Then, we need more storytelling about failures: blogging, articles, interviews, podcast and biographies too.
Failures should be celebrated. Failure News. We need more and more failures in order to achieve success faster and better.
Check out The Library of Mistakes:
https://www.libraryofmistakes.com/
https://www.libraryofmistakes.com/
I loved the Nova episode "Parallel Worlds, Parallel lives". Mark Everett (maybe you have heard of his band "The Eels") talks and learns about his late father, Hugh Everett III, the quantum physicist author of the Parallel Universe theory.
A very good look at failure.
https://vimeo.com/58603054
A very good look at failure.
https://vimeo.com/58603054
I have found a lot of power in doing a retrospective on my own failures.
This post is very well written and I completely agree with the author that we should hear more about failure from others but I also think too many of us go through our day to days and rarely do a proper retro on where we failed. If only so we could get better.
This post is very well written and I completely agree with the author that we should hear more about failure from others but I also think too many of us go through our day to days and rarely do a proper retro on where we failed. If only so we could get better.
"Let there be more biographies of failures, people who were ignored by the world, whose ideas came before their time, whose great work was left in ruins."
Alan Kay.
Simply because everyone misunderstood OOP and completely missed the point. The idea was too far ahead of it's time to have not been misunderstood.
Alan Kay.
Simply because everyone misunderstood OOP and completely missed the point. The idea was too far ahead of it's time to have not been misunderstood.
"Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." — Emerson, Self-Reliance
How about biographies of mediocre people? I'm not really successful or a failure. Granted my professional and personal life is very boring. I don't see people wanting to read it, but it would be more accurate of the average experience than either end of the bell curve.
> How about biographies of mediocre people?
I think it's the best way to put it: A biography and reality TV cherry pick the most interesting parts of a person's life. I have had some interesting things happen to me -- some would fit well in a Reality TV show, others would fit well in a biography of successes (the failures fitting into the Reality TV space). We're not interested in biographies about average people -- yes, average people always have a few stories that are worth hearing/sharing, but rarely have a life that is so filled with stories as to warrant someone else to want to catalogue them. Much like if you put a bunch of cameras in my house and filmed for a year you might end up with minutes of Reality TV worthy entertainment, if you did a biography of a mediocre person, you'd have no market (itself, mediocre). Heck, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of the time spent awake in the most interesting peoples' lives ends up being pretty mediocre, so it's something everyone has knowledge of/experience with and probably not something worthy of "fun time".
Aside from nobody wanting to buy it, it'd be hard to give away. Of the various reasons I have for reading and writing, using that skill to "do something I experience with the vast majority of my existence -- reading mail, preparing food, writing boier-plate, fixing various broken thing around the house -- and something, at that, which I don't particularly enjoy" is going to land very low on a long to-do list :) My house will become self-aware before I get to that task.
I think a lot of literature is normal people writing about their normal lives—except that they happen to be particularly good at writing. A Dutch example is the writer J.J. Voskuil who wrote 5000 pages about his live as an office employee—and quite a few people read it too! But there must be many more examples.
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As someone who has failed as a CEO - I can’t write about it, because it would have a bad impact on my former team, who is still working away.
Not only must you find someone willing to document their failure (I am), they have to be free and clear (I am not).
Not only must you find someone willing to document their failure (I am), they have to be free and clear (I am not).
My favorite failure biography was Riding the Runaway Horse, the rise and fall of Wang Computers.
They were really ahead of their time. But Wang’s obsession with his family’s legacy unwound it.
They were really ahead of their time. But Wang’s obsession with his family’s legacy unwound it.
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
One good field with a lot of “failure stories” is military history. Even the most successful commanders, say Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, or Kublai Khan, tended to fail often or conclusively.
I found Bill Brysons : “A short history of nearly everything” rather including regarding people who nearly made history standing in the shadow of the people history remembered.
Maybe if you can study failures, systematise, cluster them, find common patterns, causality, structure, then maybe you can go through incredible volume of failures...
Most startups fail because they are too early.
Steve Martin's biography "Born Standing Up" is all about his life before he became a sensation. It's not engineering, but it details a lot of failures.
There’s the Museum of Failure: https://museumoffailure.com/
The almost-autobiography of Scott Adams is literally titled “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life”
I’ve always regurgitated the old saying “take the time to fail at something new everyday”
Otherwise, how are you supposed to learn anything
Otherwise, how are you supposed to learn anything
im reminded of this iconic (and fake) image
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/2d/84/882d84006a19f91c521b...
Reporting failure is not rewarded, unfortunately. Unless the incentives change, things won't change.
All well and good -- but humans don't like to talk about failure.
It's like, well, we failed.
It's like, well, we failed.
Can't we all just look around to see the biographies of the failures?
"Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan."
-- John F. Kennedy
-- John F. Kennedy
Thinking that everybody understand life as a pass or fail exercice is neurotic mindset projection. We have no idea about how Otlet experienced his existence. COVID put brakes on a lot of life projects... are these humans all failures?
There is intelectual life outside the Boomer-Brains their Corporate-Pax-Americana-Safety-Bubble. Here is a list of loosers to ponder about ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
Obviously I am all in studying the past in order to not repeat the same mistakes. But please, do it without the self whipping of clasifying humans as 'exceptionals' and 'failures'. Getting a few bruises along the way might help to open your mind and help you becoming yourself.
There is intelectual life outside the Boomer-Brains their Corporate-Pax-Americana-Safety-Bubble. Here is a list of loosers to ponder about ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
Obviously I am all in studying the past in order to not repeat the same mistakes. But please, do it without the self whipping of clasifying humans as 'exceptionals' and 'failures'. Getting a few bruises along the way might help to open your mind and help you becoming yourself.
The biographies of "successfull" people are full of failure already. Stefan Zweig committed suicide out of despair in 1942. Stalin, undeniably successfull, was a depressive paranoid maniac. Blaise Pascal renounced math and lived in a religious convent. The author provides their own example!
Reading biographies makes me feel deeply satisfied with my boring, stable life. Biographies help with that perspective precisely because so very few of those who make it into the pages of history managed to achieve that dream.
Reading biographies makes me feel deeply satisfied with my boring, stable life. Biographies help with that perspective precisely because so very few of those who make it into the pages of history managed to achieve that dream.
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you will run out of paper
Start with: "To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design" (1985)