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by jacalata
4948 days ago
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Let's take this sentence:
If you say you're willing to work for free, that tells me one thing: You think your work is of no value to me. And so if you think that, I will also think that your work is worthless to me. Instant turn-off. As someone who has never even held a job, apparently, let alone hired another person, why would anyone believe that what you would think in this situation is in any way similar to what an actual employer would think? (Have you ever done or used any open source work? If so, how does that reconcile with your apparent theory that work done for free is valueless?) Yes, my post is saying 'you do not have enough experience to make the statements you just made'. Ad Hominem is a logical fallacy because theoretically, 100 monkeys typing could have come up with the world's greatest business plan. However in practice, that does not make it worth people's time to read everything typed by monkeys. I see from your other replies that you are using HN to practice sounding confident. Consider this as feedback that while it is sometimes valuable to sound confident even when you are ignorant, it is more often valuable to be able to understand when you actually don't know and what the limits of your understanding are, and on many occasions it is even more valuable to be able to communicate your own knowledge of these limits. Learning to use simple qualifiers like 'in my experience' will help you avoid sounding like an idiot and being easily tripped up by someone who hears your foolish generalization and says 'actually if you want to work in x, you pretty much always have to start by working for free'. Then you will say 'obviously I meant this advice only for y' and they will ask why you didn't say that?', and you will think 'because I made a bunch of stupid assumptions!' but feel too ashamed to say that and start blustering. You might as well say 'database x is always the best choice'.
Of course, that is only my experience (from both sides) of how those conversations often turn out, you might go through something different ;) PS: I am a 'she'. |
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Oo, soory about that.
>why would anyone believe
I'm not asking anyone to believe. I'm asking to have a discussion on the points I bring forward.
>how does that reconcile with your apparent theory that work done for free is valueless
Work done for free has value. I was discussing the psychology & relationship between employer and employee when all employees at the company are already salaried and "new person" comes in and offers to work for free.
>you are using HN to practice sounding confident
That's not the way I would put it. I think (similarly to pg) that points are best expressed tersely, and so I try to keep my writings very brief and to the point.
>sounding like an idiot
Why, thank you.
>Learning to use simple qualifiers like 'in my experience'
Not necessary. This follows from the context.
>being easily tripped up
I don't see where I've been easily tripped up. Though I do enjoy that so many people jumped to respond. Even though almost no one managed or even really tried to refute my points and rather took issue with other things (boohoo you don't have enough experience to be talking about this kind of stuff, etc.)
>Then you will say 'obviously I meant this advice only for y'
This is Hacker News. We're talking tech startups here. Yeah I won't add another paragraph to talk about other industries because it's _obvious_ to everyone what I'm talking about and "Don't work for free" is an oft repeated advice on here anyways.
>'because I made a bunch of stupid assumptions!' but feel too ashamed to say that and start blustering.
I think that none of the assumptions I made are stupid. Though I am starting to notice that if I don't carefully package my opinions I will get a bunch of people in the comments who APPEAR to talk about the points I made, when really they're just annoyed at my attitude. This leads to the kind of circulatory arguing we see here, when my advice is sound but people still feel I should be less confident about my position.
>You might as well say 'database x is always the best choice'.
I would only say something like that if the purpose of the database was very clear from the context. I would never randomly drop such a statement onto HN, because everyone here uses all kinds of different databases. Your analogy is invalid.
>100 monkeys typing could have come up with the world's greatest business plan. However in practice, that does not make it worth people's time to read everything typed by monkeys.
Again an analogy that does not work. However much time however many monkeys spend on trying to understand human psychology they will not make much headway. Though if _I_ as a fellow human, take some time to try and understand human psychology, I do think it is worth the time to hear my points and argue on their merits, no matter if I had 0 or 100 jobs before. If I'm indeed talking gibberish, you're free to try and argue against my points, but since I see you talking about everything BUT my points, I'm assuming that you don't really take issue with them, but rather with me.