Right now it is 12-10-2024 for me. It is finals season here at Penn and I didn’t have much time to write and process my thoughts lately, so today’s post is more of an update, really. I had to write this because I’ve been thinking a lot lately to the detriment of not doing anything else (homework, Contrary Research, normal research, etc…) Just wanted to get this on paper so I can focus and now wander away in my own world.
On 10X engineers, seriousness, students, college, and the hiring market:
Had a conversation with some recruiter friends of mine and some computer science college friends of mine. The recruiter friends narratively say that new graduates and students are terrible, unskilled, and non-serious. The student friends use data to show how the market is terrible, recruiting is difficult, and knowledge is becoming more difficult to absorb. Jeff Bezos once said, when data and anecdotes conflicts, the narrative tends to be right, and I agree. As a neutralist (no experience in CS recruiting and no experience in recruiting), my intuition lends me to agree with the recruiters.
Students overall are just not serious anymore. That is my observation among the people at Penn. They do CS and pursue premed for the end goal of money, not because they love it. They don’t even know why they do CS or want to become a doctor.
People can tell when you do something and don’t love it. It shows. Back then, becoming a SWE is unusual. You were the black sheep – doing it because you loved it. You did it when you were ten, slowly learning the esoteric because you wanted to, not because you had to for a job. You were contrarian. So back then, the SWE market was filled of people with genuine love. That is how 10X engineers are born.
My belief is 10X engineers, founders, whatever, do not emerge in pursuing things they don’t like. In almost all cases, it was because they loved it for what it is and had fun doing so. They loved programming. They loved founding. Not the money, not the status, not the clout.
I don’t see people like that anymore.
College doesn’t make people like that anymore. College makes money-following, soulless people.
A tangent here, but Penn is probably the worst school to be to find people who do things because they love it. Penn is a cesspool of clout-chasing individuals – clubs are competitive for no reason even though they suck and the startup culture is all about quick cash-grabs with no long-term visionary will to change the world for the better.
Another story: in high school, I did a lot of research. Even after I got into college, I continued to find a research position at PennMed – because I loved research! I love biology. I love learning for the sake of learning. Someone I knew, who also did a lot of research, mocked me in continuing research – why do I still do it when I’m already in college?
I was shocked. I thought she did research for the same reason as I did, but it turns out this is untrue for almost everyone I know. I do research to have fun. She does research as a means to an end. She will never understand what it means to love engineering and learning.
By the way, I asked her why she didn’t continue, and her response was “I only did research to get into a good college. Now I can find a rich person there, marry, and live a comfortable life.” Moving forward 2 years to now, she no longer is studying biology, but in computer science and pursuing venture capital internships. Exactly what I mean by college selects for money-following, clout-chasing, soulless people.
Lots of tangents, but the lesson here is students are no longer serious, are way too distracted, do things as a means to an end, and thus cannot be 10X engineers and find the market hard. Recruiters find it harder to find those who love CS for programming sake.
By the way, I do want to say that everytime I write about college, lament how much it sucks, and why other people are wrong, it makes me cringe too. I glaze myself slightly too hard and think I’m different, when I’m not really too different. At least, it makes more sense to look down on others if I’m noticeably different. But I’m not. Who am I to say this? I’ve done nothing important – I’m just your average student.
On growing up, success, and change:
People change when they grow up or become successful. Their values drift, their personalities change, their identity differs. One friend of mine became successful and I was really happy for him. But success ate into his mind and now he is a different person.
I suspect I likely changed a lot too and didn’t recognize it. I was a nobody in high school, and got a lucky break in senior year high school, and I think it got into my head. And I think this happens to a lot of people, and they become hated.
I’m afraid that this will continue to happen if I continue to be successful. If I build the next unicorn company, here are the principles I want to follow:
- To be a good person
- To remember those who’ve helped me
- To not be motivated by money, but by curiosity and relationships
- To be nice
- To be nice
- To be empathetic to others
- To be empathetic to others
And the things I want to do:
- Donate to organizations pursuing an impactful missions: likely in ocean conservation
- Setup national Asian scholarship
- Fund the contrarians
- NOT start my own venture capital firm for no reason
These, by the way, are outlined in my Mission and Principles. If I ever stray, I pray that someone will slap me in the face and remind me of this.
Success (money) is corrupting. What I’m hoping for is that I can chase it and still be myself.
On little behaviors and overall personality:
I anecdotally notice that a lot of people’s little behaviors can describe the overall trait of a person. Friends have told me that they have pet peeves of people, and I realize that there must exist little trivial behaviors that highly correlate with good people and bad people.
I will think on this more. The words they use, the way they describe friends, etc.
One quick example I have right now is personal. I’m Dropping Out, so my friends tell me that my grades don’t matter and that I can fail my finals. I don’t know why, but I just do not want to do bad on them. My pessimism over school is not “I don’t like learning” but that school is an inefficient method of learning. Don’t confuse me dropping out as I don’t care about learning! It is the opposite.
But yeah, little behaviors like these can be a profound insight into individuals.
On creators and curators:
Creators make data. Curators organize data.
Everyone wants to become a creator. It’s fun, it’s flashy. But curators are important. I’m thinking about databases for certain fields – notably the recent phage database – they’re important for accelerating creators. When I’m dropped out, I want to think about how I can curate useful data for others to use.
On learning, having fun, and accidents:
This is going to be a more in-depth blog post, but how I came to this is that I watched/read the biographies of famous inventors and scientists, like Newton, Einstein, CTR Wilson, Feynman, Wozniak, Linus.
Each person above contributed majorly to the world. Interestingly, they did so when they had fun in learning and doing the things they did. In exploring their curiosities, not in exploring things that were popular at the time.
Another set of interesting observations is how accidents are important in science. A lot of discoveries in the world (conductive polymers, microwaves, cosmic background radiation) were a result of accidents. But scientists today are rule-following, risk-aversive people. How can we cultivate students and future scientists to play around, follow curiosities, and create environments where “accidents” can occur?
On culture, narrative, manipulation, and storytelling:
Group dynamics and culture is something I’ve been reading a lot about recently, and it is so fascinating. I want to collect my overall learnings in this area. Some initial thoughts:
- Everyone has a narrative in their mind on how things work
- Culture influences this narrative, which influences how people behave
- Thus, you are the average of your friends is true, that there is a New Yorkness to New Yorkers and California-ness to Californians is not anecdotal, and family culture is highly influential in the type of person you evolve into
- Storytelling is a form of sharing narrative. Sharing narratives is a way to manipulate other’s narratives
On trivial decisions, profound effects, and college roommates:
Grades in college is super important now, but trivial in the future. Everyone worries about it because it is in their face and everyone talks about it.
But I’m more interested in roommates. Roommate selection is trivial in the present, but probably the most impactful factor in your college and future life. People choose roommates without a second thought, but that decision can change the direction of your life instantly. A drug-using roommate will affect you. A career-focused roommate will affect you. An ambitious roommate will affect you, long after you aren’t roommates anymore.
On venture capital, contrarians, and averseness:
The more I learn about VC, the less I want to go there and work there in the future. This is quite a stark change to what I believed in just a couple of months ago, when I really wanted to intern at a venture capital firm and become an investor in the future. Now, I think becoming an investor will be an insult to myself. I don’t want to become one unless I truly find that investors are missing a group of people that I believe should get funding – meaning differentiated by people, not idea or industry sector or stage.
Firstly, I never realized that there were so many VC firms - there are likely thousands of firms with equally thousands of venture capital investors. If I join the industry, what more would I be than just yet another person fighting others for allocation? Quite a zero-sum game. What’s more important is to do good work and to do real work.
I can make the case that maybe a couple of decades ago, when the venture capital industry asset class was not as well established, that it didn’t make sense for people who wanted to change the world to go there. There were a lot of people seeking funding and not a lot of firms to provide that funding. But it’s changed now – there’s so much funding that honestly if you have a hard time raising for your startup, I think that’s just a skill diff on your part. You probably just suck at storytelling, can’t demonstrate your skill, or your idea is just terrible. But funding is not hard to get, and this is quite a radical take, but this is something I am starting to believe in.
Earlier I said how I still want to fund people who do cool things and do real work. That doesn’t mean I want to become an investor at a venture capital firm. I would rather prefer becoming an angel investor where I fund independently based on my own choice, my own will, based on arbitrary singular decision making processes where I do not need convince a group to fund. That consensus will almost always divulge into the average and will always seek to be risk averse.
I already see it now – that the whole industry is becoming more risk averse and only funding things that have a prior precedent of being successful or just make sense. A lot of things don’t make sense. A lot of radical ideas simply don’t make sense and are prone to a lot of risk. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be finding - those ways to help those push through the risk and be successful and change the world? The problem now is that this is no longer the case, and it disappoints me. As soon as you become big, you no longer are incentivized to fund the contrarians; you will fund the average.
On organizations and betrayal:
Recently I was quite betrayed by an organization that I was working with. We were trying to set up a pitch competition for deeptech founders, and the whole goal was to bring together deeptech founders and encourage them to build in deeptech. I decided to work with the organization because they said they believed in my idea and would help me, but as soon as they took control they cut me out, left me in the dark, and brought their own partners to take over the planning.
This means that it is no longer a pitch comp for deeptech founders, but more of a celebration gala for that organization’s new funding round. They recently raised money so they can invest in their thesis and their thesis is no longer deeptech but in climate and healthcare. Why? Why would you say that you would help me come along and cut down everything I’ve done? I don’t know if this is a lesson for me to be less trusting of others and more cautious or that I just need to find organizations and people that are aligned with me.