I recently received a copy of Ben Horowitz’s book “The Hard Thing about Hard Things” at an a16z event. There’s a chapter in the book where he starts to feel sorry for himself and his company Loudcloud after the market crashed. And he sees this interview with Bill Parcells, the NY Giants, who talked about in his first season as coach how so many of his best players got injured. When he called Davis, the Raiders owner, to complain about how he could win with most of his good players injured, Davis just told him, “Bill, nobody cares, just coach your team.”
Nobody cares. Why do we spend so much time thinking of reasons why we failed? Why do we have so much pride that we have to make these reasons why we messed up when nobody cares? I know that when I used to play pingpong competitively, I took losses very personally and had thoughts that haunted me about whether I could’ve done anything differently or if anyone could blame me for losing. But these thoughts don’t change anything. And no one cares about why you lost 5 days later. Horowitz says, “A great reason for failing won’t preserve one dollar for your investors, won’t save one employee’s job, or get you one new customer. It especially won’t make you feel one bit better when you shut down your company and declare bankruptcy. All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current mess. Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do.”
Another benefit of realizing no one cares and stop coming up with excuses is that you free yourself from the constraints of other’s opinions and can fully focus on what you’re doing. There have been a lot of pingpong matches where I worried about how others thought of how I played and couldn’t fully immerse myself into the game. You cannot be your best self if you are worried about what others think. And when you can put away your pride and stop trying to elevate your image by thinking of reasons for failure or loss, then the magic can start to happen.
In maybe a more relevant example to my current life, I feel that the community in computer science is sometimes very prideful for the wrong reasons. I hear too many times people making the same excuses for why they didn’t get an internship or an interview or did bad on an exam to justify themselves to others. I’m not saying that these excuses aren’t valid, but do they really “make you feel one bit better”? I know it certainly didn’t make me feel better. And I definitely make excuses still, but I’m trying more now not to care about what others think but just focusing on my own progress.
A bigger issue that bugs me is that a lot of students want to get an internship/job with a big company and don’t really care/know about lesser known startups. There’s nothing wrong with interning at Google or Facebook; I think they are great companies. But I’m concerned about how students are not interested in working at these companies because of their mission or being on a team that’s working on a product that they like. It’s more that they are interested in the big name to impress people. It’s to boost their resume. These are not good reasons to join a company. It’s hard not to be prideful though because in the end, we want people’s approval. And this is a reputable way to get someone’s approval. Just to repeat, I don’t think there’s anything wrong about working at a big company. There are good reasons to work at a big company such as you can go more deeper into a topic, there are more resources and documentation internally, and many other things. Maybe I’ll intern/work at a big company some day. I just think that the reasons you choose to work for ANY company has to be more concrete than pride and impressing people.
When I told people that I’m interning at Illumio, most people just looked confused and not impressed(since most people aren’t familiar with the company. I wasn’t also very familiar with the company until they gave me an interview). And to be honest, I like impressing people. But I can’t live my life trying to impress people forever. And after reading that chapter in Horowitz’s book about nobody caring, it’s really led me to start caring about my own goals and stop caring what everyone thinks. I shouldn’t want to intern at a company because of personal pride. These last three weeks at Illumio have been one of the best summers of my life. And maybe if I got an offer at a big company, I would have never had this experience . I would have never heard Horowitz speak to us at a private event, or learn more about startups, or start putting away my pride and look for what I want in a career instead of what impresses people in a career. And I definitely have not stopped caring about what people think of my career choices all the time, but it’s getting better. It’s a process after all.
P.S. This is a PRIDE of lions. Haha get it sometimes I even make myself laugh