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80,000 hours appeals to a particular type of person, and I think this is good but vague advice for that sort of person.

Reputation and social standing matters, you have to network, be humble and learn from people older and wiser than you, don’t try to go it alone, be willing to work on smaller challenges — these are all things I think people in this specific subculture probably would benefit from hearing.




There should be no shame in admitting you made a mistake - I've made several hundred thousand dollars in mistakes - sometimes they turned out to be the same mistake twice - but I owned up to them, and worked harder to make it right.

I've been bit often by:

Poorly Defined Requirements

Incomplete Understanding of the Problem

Incomplete Understanding of the Solution

Customer Created Access Difficulty

Customer created process issues

Poor documentation or data inputs

Excessive Complexity Customization driven by customer needs

I'm getting better with time, and I'm better at determining what the actual requirements are, and I now more fully understand what my solution is capable of too.


There's no shame, but it is still a signal.

Similar to the study a while back of whether VCs would rather fund someone who's a "natural" at what they do or someone who's had to work hard to reach that "natural" level. (It's the former.)




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