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A comment on Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job. Parent comment

Re:Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus o... by dnautics on Monday October 12, 2020 @09:21PM (#24761353)
nobody is claiming that my experience is extrapolatable ad infinitum. However, if it was such a rare thing, what are the odds that someone like me would exist?

> An individual example is useless when the question is about if something works at (even minor) scale

That is incorrect. The plural of anecdote is data.

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Re:Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus o... by boyobo on Monday October 12, 2020 @10:54PM (#24761789)
> However, if it was such a rare thing, what are the odds that someone like me would exist?

Someone wins the lottery every week. What are the odds of winning the lottery? Is playing the lottery a good strategy to make money?

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Re:Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus o... by dnautics on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @03:55AM (#24774251)
Did you not see the "n=5" bit?
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Re:Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus o... by boyobo on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @01:09PM (#24778994)
Do you understand the concept of correlation?

"Usain bolt won the olypmic gold medal many times (n=8).

If winning the gold medal was so rare, what are the odds that people like Usain Bolt exist?"

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Re:Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus o... by kyawzazaw on Monday October 12, 2020 @11:46PM (#24762066)
It's the rare thing. I bet that if you go to any big tech companies, you will find that pretty much none of the engineers got hired by impressing a CEO
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Re:Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus o... by dnautics on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @03:56AM (#24774262)
Not all CEOs are CEOs of big companies. I went to a middle class high school in the US and no less than 5 of the students in my class of 70 are or have been CEOs.
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