[civilian]

I think that what successful people tell themselves is not that important of an issue. What's important is the narrative we give people who are not yet successful.

I have a friend who's smart, and is a really good listener. We have really good philosophical conversations, and he kicks my ass at board games. I've been wanting him to get into programming, because right now he's working as an assistant manager at a sandwich shop chain. He absolutely has the talent to understand programming, but he has never put an ounce of effort into it. He really likes the idea of making 50k/yr (which would essentially be a doubling of his salary) so he could be less depressed about finances.

I offer him help... I tell him how I self-trained into programming, without a C.S. degree. And he just has a total lack of effort, and I think that he just tells himself that he can't do it.

When we establish the narrative that the only barrier is hard work, then we ought to be able to motivate people because they'll recognize that most things are within their reach with enough determination.

[beachstartup]

i have friends like this.

trust me, you're not going to convince him.

he's probably going to just do nothing, for a long time, and tell you how lucky you are every time you visit.

[pmoriarty]

I have two counter-examples for you. I had two friends like this. I convinced them to learn programming while they were working menial jobs. Both of them did, and went on to have successful careers in the tech field.

I have a story of failure too. Two other frends expressed interest in learning to program, and I tried to teach them C while I was learning it myself. Big mistake. They quit after the first very intense and long lesson. I think I threw them in to the deep end of the pool, trying to teach them C as their first exposure to programming (when I myself didn't even know C and was learning along with them).

In the successful cases first mentioned above, both of my friends taught themselves languages they were interested in, at their own pace, and in their spare time (what little there was of it). They were also clearly very motivated, which my other two friends may not have been.

Moral of the story: I think it all depends on the student, the teacher, what they're trying to learn, how they're learning, how they're taught, and how motivated they are. You can't just generalize and say it'll work for everyone or not work for everyone.

The successes make me cautiously optimistic and I will personally try to help people again, if given the chance, despite there being no guarantee that it will work. In fact, I'd still try to help even every one of my previous attempts had failed.

[civilian]

Awesome to hear! So are you like, 2 for 4 as a mentor? That's much better than my 1 for 5. I have another teaching-inclined buddy who is 0 for 10.

I have remained optimistic, but yeah.. I do my best just to casually mention it to everyone that it's possible to get into, and that I'm always available as a resource.

[beachstartup]

OP was talking about repeated attempts to help the same person.

[eutectic]

So we should be willing to lie if it makes a better story?

[chillwaves]

I'm not sure how you got that idea from the post you are responding to.

[civilian]

I kind of understand how he got that. I do genuinely believe that hard work is the key to everything (although you do often need a little intelligence), but the way I talked was about what story would best help motivate people. It just helps that the two things match up.

I mean, imagine a world where I talked to my friend and was just like: "oh yeah. You're not smart enough. You never finished any bachelor degree. And I guess you could get into it anyway if you have been born into the upper class, but you weren't. There's no reason to try for anything better, you'll just fail." I'd be a pretty bad friend by modern standards.