Comment by vintermann
13 hours ago
> Lee's stated goal was to “desensitize everyone to the phrase ‘cheating.’” If you say it enough, he argues, “cheat begins to lose its meaning.” A16z praised Lee's approach as “rooted in deliberate strategy and intentionality.”
Investors: but surely they won't cheat me!
Y Combinator's application still asks: "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." They don't actually use the word "cheat" but that's what they're asking for: Are you willing to cheat if it gives you an advantage?
Eh everyone I know in YC answered this in an ethical way. In fact, I suspect YC keeps this wording to catch people admitting to something unethical while rewarding people who see something in a system that could be different.
My answer that got me accepted was that there was a lip syncing competition at my college that was dwindling because everyone had to submit a CD and sign up in advance. It also was held in an auditorium.
When I took over, I moved it to Spotify and moved the venue to the lawn, and we went from ~20 people the previous year to 1.2k the year I ran it.
Is that really a surprising trait to expect from a venture capitalist persona? As we go on, especially as most of the simple problems get solved, the system everyone blindly trusted has turned to uphold generally positive trends has turned to lies, manipulation, exploitative practices, loophole engineering and abuse. What I would expect from a successful VC applicant today isn't savvy business sense and actual good ideas, but an unrelenting willingness to do anything short of putting your life on the line for profit. There's no such thing as going low for these people, they are rewarded for using every trick in the book to earn an extra cent.
> anything short of putting your life on the line for profit
Why should they put their own life on the line when there are so many others whose lives could be used instead?
Is it really cheating if the system is vulnerable? What about things like a filibuster or slow walking an order?
By your logic, hacking is legal due to vulnerabilities
Do they care? Just cheat the people in the next round!
Some of these SV "founder mode" people do speak like sociopaths. It's probably a good base for success in the industry.
"I don't get it, why are they confessing? They are not confessing. They are bragging"
They speak that way because they are.
society is a coordination problem which involves costly cooperation of individuals to gain surplus for society as a whole, when selfish defection is advantageous.
being largely ethical and being ruled is so baked into the identity of a citizen that we do not see mass defection. someone who does defect by being unethical gains and maybe rules others.
there is no requirement for a cooperative agreement or social contract signed by the leader or plutocrats of a society. they can and do defect by being corrupt.
more people are realising in the middle class that they too can defect and gain personally at others' expense. for example, realising that not recycling saves time and harms only others, or starting these companies listed in the article.
the more people that do defect, the less cooperation, which is a social breakdown. under mass defection you have the law of the jungle, which is the existing paradigm of marc andreessen and peers, they are sociopathic.
this is all to say that A16Z can cheat in the knowledge that only comparable competitors will cheat, the people as a whole who are harmed will not.
They just need to get out before the next fool gets in.
Cheetahs ate my face.
Cheaters ate my face. FTFY :-)
whoosh
I'm tired of cheats.
Lee is a product of his environment. Tech interviews are bullshit and he exposed it. School work is mostly bullshit and he exposed it.
How can you honestly tell this young man not to cheat and get ahead when the president does it regularly? We’re a spiritually dead country and the youth is reflecting it. Don’t use Lee as the scapegoat.
If you see a pile of trash by the side of the road and tell yourself it is ok to dump your trash there, well, you just explained why there is a pile of trash there in the first place.
You have agency over your own actions. Don't blame others for your self inflicted "spiritual death."
Millions decided to reward a liar and cheater with the highest office in the country. Twice! At one point, socially attuned people are going to go that way. And even if you try to educate your children well, they see in their formative years what society rewards.
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This - though I'm not certain that the product really solves any of these identified issues of "y is bullshit"
In America, solving something is to exempt the individual from the problem.
So it solves it by letting you pass the tech interview.
The operative part of schoolwork is … not the work part? Of course school work is bullshit, in the sense that the teacher already knows what 7x9 is or who fought at Waterloo or whatever. The point is not the work product, it’s that the student produced it and has been incrementally improved by the experience!
I disagree that tech interviews are bullshit. The biggest tech companies (MS, Google) have invested many dollars, and changed course at least once (remember MS's lateral thinking questions? How many screws in an airplane?) in looking for the most effective ways to quickly gauge whether someone is likely to be a productive SWE. They have done this because they correctly believe that there is a wide range of candidate abilities out there and it is critical to hire as few "lemons" as possible; in particular, not hiring lemons is much more important than neglecting to hire someone who would have been really good. Thinking about it from their POV makes this immediately clear.
I think what you're really saying here is that you don't like tech interviews, which is understandable, but ultimately doesn't amount to either a moral or a technical argument against them.
> How many screws in an airplane?
So you're suggesting that an enterprise that would ever have even considered routinely using any stupid bullshit question along those lines is somehow engaged in a finely-honed and effective process for creating an optimal screening system? It doesn't matter how often you "change course" if you obviously have no idea how to steer in the first place.
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