I don't usually play the part of armchair psychologist, but this essay appears to me to be an excellent example of projection.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_bias" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_bias</a><p>The author assumes that because he doesn't know what he's doing, other people also don't.<p>I disagree. Sometimes people can know exactly what they're doing, and be fairly confident about the possible consequences.<p>I made a viral hit similar to the author's YT instant, and I very much did not know what I was doing. Then I did it again with different code, without leveraging the existing user base, just to see if it was all luck. It wasn't. I think a better argument would be that "sometimes successful projects are successful by accident", but that would make a terrible post title.
"I decided to turn off the incessant trivial chatter on Twitter and TechCrunch, get my hands dirty, and just build something."<p>Hence this exchange a few days back: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2556295" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2556295</a><p><pre><code> "He seems to leave virtually no trace (other than awesome software) on the Internet."
"Probably because he spends his time writing awesome software."</code></pre>
Is it just me or is this perhaps taking the story of YouTube Instant a bit far?<p>I mean ya, I guess it got some press and got him a job offer, but it's not like he invented cold fusion or something. It was a cute idea. Can we really draw any kind of real conclusions from it?<p>Seems like that type of success, of a cute meme taking off is actually rather common, it is the longer term, build a sustainable company, king of success that is much more difficult.<p>PS. Hate the font formatting, ugh.
I'm surprised no one's brought up the counterexample of Steve Jobs. He turned Apple from an unknown garage startup to one of the industry's most powerful players in just a few short years.<p>When Jobs was ousted, Apple went to the dumpster. When he returned, Apple once again rose to great success. Jobs was directly responsible for enough wildly successful products to make probably any other company or inventor in history green with envy.<p>It would be silly to claim that Apple's success is due to blind luck. Jobs' relationship with Apple and Apple's products appears causal and has been repeated in different market environments with vastly different product lines, which flatly contradicts the idea that _all_ successful people wing it and succeed based on luck.<p>Sure, some people succeed on accident. Some people succeed because they have real talent and just happen to get publicity at the right time. But some people succeed on purpose.
Your claim that most people who hit success dont have product vision may be true. Even though this might not be quantifiable, I get a similar idea from what I read. But I definitely think that it is not as uncommon as you think among Fortune 500 companies. I would think Bill gates( controversies/ethical questions apart) had a great vision. The reason why I say this is, I could say cancel a trip to Bahamas hoping to build something and see if I make it big. However, I would probably not drop out of a prestigious school to build something unless I am dead sure it will be a success. Obviously I am talking about Bill here.
The grammar of this headline really bugs me. The author correctly remembers that "None of us" is singular, but then spoils it by throwing in the plural "we're".<p>The correct version would, I think, be "None of us knows what he's doing", although both the feminists and the languagelog folks would complain about that.
Well, yeah.<p>No one knows what they're doing. They only have the appearance by doing the sensible thing and doing the best they can.<p>The result is that in reality a lot of people know what they're doing; but they're still resting on that cardinal assumption:<p>whatever you're doing, it could fall to pieces. Even the most egotistical hacker, in his/her private moments, acknowledges the chaos of the universe.