SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Vindu Goel reports at the NYT that Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, addressing questions from Facebook users at his second town hall meeting with the public, shared the secret of his success telling users that mistakes are good and that successful people not only learn from their mistakes but spend most of their time making mistakes. “If you’re successful, most of the things you’ve done were wrong,” said Zuckerberg. “What ends up mattering is the stuff you get right.” If you get a few big things right, he said, “you can make some pretty important changes in the world.” Zuckerberg also discussed the importance of software programming skills. “If you can code, you have the power to sit down and make something and no one can stop you,” he said, predicting that schools would eventually require everyone to learn a little coding because it sharpens analytical skills that are useful in a wide variety of professions.
When asked what he thinks about Facebook becoming synonymous with wasting time, Zuckerberg said he wasn't sure he agreed with the premise of the question. He explained everyone is told they'll have time for life after finishing school or their homework, but they forget to realize that friends and family is what matters in life. Facebook, he said, helps connect people in a way society doesn't always offer. "We're proud of our contribution there," Zuckerberg said. "If we could make people a little more connected then I think that's valuable."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday December 12 2014, @12:09PM
Tony Robbins says "success leaves clues" but he seems to never fully explore the implications. Over the years, I've noticed the most important factors in success are outside of a person's control. What family they're born into, being in the right place at the right time, and so on. The stuff you can control, all things being equal, usually aren't enough for success. Then we look at successful people and try to find a formula (remember that story recently about Google's secret to success?) and say anyone can follow the formula and be successful.
Failure that Zuckerberg talks about is a good example - some people can't afford to fail. Failure would ruin them financially for life. Then there's Bill Gates, who literally (yes, literally) could not fail when he started Microsoft. If his company had flamed out, he would have just gone back to Harvard on an all-expense-paid education. If I had started a company and dropped out of college, I would never have recovered in life if it had failed given where I started in life.
I would say Zuckerberg is wrong that commodity coding skills matter. Coders are a dime a dozen, and ideas are a dime a dozen. Both together produce some outliers which are successful and stick around. But these are exceptions. What happens to all the people who were wrong and we never hear from them again? That's the problem with looking only at successful people to find clues. You can also find clues in the failures.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Informative) by metamonkey on Friday December 12 2014, @03:37PM
It's called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. [wikipedia.org]
There's tons of people who tried and failed and they would tell you they did the same thing. Gave it their all, tried and failed and tried again and unfortunately kept failing, sometimes because of situations completely outside their control.
I had a small business that was doing very well until the 2008 crash. Then everything changed. The industry changed. Nobody spent any money. I spent years working my ass off, trying new things, reinventing the business over and over to adapt to changing market conditions. After 5 years of killing myself I had to give up and get a real job. Lots of other people did/are doing the same thing.
But you'll only hear from the few who "followed their dreams" and it worked out. "Gosh, I'd rather follow my dreams and fail than never try at all...." Fuck you. I tried and failed and it cost me years of income, stability and my health. But nobody's asking me for interviews.
And if I did, people would just say I "didn't try hard enough" or "didn't want it bad enough."
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday December 12 2014, @04:29PM
We can learn more from your story than all the success stories. Thanks for sharing it.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)