The first rule of "some level of self awareness" is to not completely hand yourself over to survivorship bias. So the argument is that Mark is a smart hacker and possesses "balls of steel" -> Mark is successful? And because you're the opposite way -> you'll fail?
No. He's been completely blindsided by survivorship bias. It's actually the other way, from that Mark became very successful (via good luck which was probably modulated by some highly attainable level of skill in execution) -> everyone thinks Mark is a super hacker with balls of steel.
It's terrible advice which gives you premonitions about yourself which would keep you from even trying. Or maybe the author can actually tell innate potential to some uncanny degree, in which case he should join YC to vet founders.
Seems somewhat odd to abide by this kind of principle instead of considering the real changes which we believe have been made, as Zoom seems to have cleaned up their act to some degree in response to the backlash, though you might think not enough.
In any case, if you're being watched, you're not likely to cut corners, and Zoom is being watched. I'm not surprised if the 'suspicious public' effect averages out over all cases to account for the chance that a company is still keeping some unsavory practices under the covers.
The first rule of "some level of self awareness" is to not completely hand yourself over to survivorship bias. So the argument is that Mark is a smart hacker and possesses "balls of steel" -> Mark is successful? And because you're the opposite way -> you'll fail?
No. He's been completely blindsided by survivorship bias. It's actually the other way, from that Mark became very successful (via good luck which was probably modulated by some highly attainable level of skill in execution) -> everyone thinks Mark is a super hacker with balls of steel.
It's terrible advice which gives you premonitions about yourself which would keep you from even trying. Or maybe the author can actually tell innate potential to some uncanny degree, in which case he should join YC to vet founders.