I would imagine dreaming big is pretty good for children.

A big reason for why I'm optimistic in life is because I have hope for achieving something. I truly can't imagine a life where my father/mother would only hammer in the fact that I am just an average joe and should stick to climbing the corporate ladder. Such an uninspiring take, this one. Depressing.

That is depressing! But also not what the parent comment said -- you seem to have accidentally taken a much more severe meaning from that comment (than I did, at least).

The top-level comment is just talking about being pragmatic. It's hard to walk the line between having idealistic visions and knowing that most of them won't pan out, and probably harder still to teach walking that line to your kids. I think that's what the comment was talking about -- not advocating for falling entirely on the latter side of that line -- which, as you say, would be super depressing!

So what? Why be so terrified of failure? I think it's better if kids learn to be brave, and pick themselves up in life after they stumble. Living life in utter fear of failing at anything seems like a terrible way for your children to start off life. Besides for which few things are better learning experiences than trying to start your own company.

And who knows. They might even succeed beyond their wildest dreams, as some do.

It was that it is foolish to tell/teach/encourage people to expect that things like "start Google" have any reasonable likelihood of succeeding.

And it is even worse when that encourages people to fail to organize, vote, protest, push for better work and better working conditions for everybody who are not founders of unicorns.

You've lost me here. How does working at a startup make it any more difficult to do this than working at a bank or hospital? For that matter, would you discourage someone from pursuing basic research at a university or a doctorate degree because that doesn't directly advance a political agenda?

I would rather have my children dream of becoming astronauts than becoming the next Steve Jobs.

But I do not think most kids today, once adults, will be very happy with their parents if they just blindly support them in that dream, neglecting other realistic career possibilities in blind faith that their kid will be a star.

I'm not saying you should tell your kid 'no! you can't be, I won't let you.' - but like, maybe nudge them in the right direction, have them meet influencers and hear how hard the job actually can be, hear how lucky/unfair who becomes popular and successful can be - then if they are comfortable with and understand those risks, support them in any way possible after that.

Funny enough is successful people like pg themselves become essentially social media influencers after they’ve achieved things. Fame and following are the next pursuit after wealth.

> and keep a pulse on what the thing is they're focusing on

It might interest you to know what I was employee #2 at amzn.

It can be a lot more depressing to learn you are a loser well into your adulthood, after a long time of thinking very highly of yourself.

But like you said, this is peak SV. Luckily there is a whole world outside of SV where the rest of us operate :)

I’ve founded failed startups. I don’t regret a single one of them. I’ve worked at failed startups and big companies and I learned more and had more fun at the startups than I ever did at a big company.

The point is, if you try to found a company, you don’t have to make a billion dollars to consider it a success. In terms of personal growth it’s easily the equal of any big company job.

You'll get FAR MORE practical and useful knowledge doing it yourself, and being exposed to other businesses.

Most of what you'd get from college can be had reading a handful of well-written books on the subject.

Sure, they aren't all mega behemoth tech companies, but what of it? Setting your ambitions high when you're young is still worth it. It can be a major difference maker in motivating you to learn the skills necessary to build a successful business, and it turns out that those same skills are helpful for landing good jobs, too.

Most of the people I know who are doing well now dreamed relatively big when they were young. And many of the people I know who stress about making ends meet never had anyone telling them to aim high when they were young.

If you believe you can, you might try, and you might make it. If you believe you can't, it's madness to true, so you won't try, and you won't make it. These are basic building blocks of motivation and success.

Your pessimistic message could be applied to anything. Why try to build the next Google? It's impossible! Why try to build a smaller business? The odds are against you! Why try to get a high-paying job? Most people work average jobs! Why go for an average job? You're competing with the vast majority of the country! Why get a less-than-average job? It's so stressful and barely worth it.

The statistics are pretty clear that you almost certainly will not.

So by all means give it a shot if you can do so without screwing your chance at whatever you'll do if/when it fails.

People deserve dignity and meaning no matter what work they do. This should not be reserved to the folks who manage to start unicorns (let alone Googles).

This is an area where I think this quote applies.

Don't reach Google status and build the next $1T company? Okay, maybe you'll make a unicorn. Don't make a unicorn? Maybe you'll start a $100M company. Or a $10M company. Or a $1M company. Or hell, a $100k company is a hell of an achievement.

And if you fail to do that? Well congratulations, you're eminently employable. Because on your way to "failure," you likely taught yourself a lot about code/tech, work either, managing people, raising money, marketing, and business, to say nothing of the professional contacts you made along the way.

I haven't met founders who feel that by starting and failing companies they have "screwed their chance" at something, at least not in a professional capacity.

One caveat (and it's a big one) is people going all in* on startups in their 20s, neglecting their health and relationships.

- Get good at tech - Build projects that you want - Get good grades and into the best university you can

I really hope my kid does that. I tried incredibly hard at projects I loved. That built me untold skills. Who cares if they start Google, or fail and get a job or get aquihired, they’ll be fine. They’ll know what their boss wants. They won’t just sit and bitch about parking. And at the back of their minds they might remember that this isn’t the only way to live so maybe they’ll be braver than they would otherwise.

If one is trying to recruit future Sergeys Larrys, then it’s prudent to write to a very narrow audience.

This article addresses that audience perfectly well, imho.

> The absolute worst of SV thinking, personified.

… or maybe the best.

This is not “general life advice from pg”. It’s highly targeted and narrow.

That’s ok. That needs to be ok. It’s one of those things that makes SV unique and uniquely strong, imho.

Edited to add the following:

The advice goes from broad (you don’t have to get a job, you can start your own company) to very specific (how to start a hypergrowth startup), with lots of other (good, imho) advice in between.

This will resonate with some folks in the (ostensibly high school) audience, many of whom may be unfamiliar with startups, the startup world, and maybe even the tech world in general. It will fall on deaf ears for most of the rest, because that’s not the life or lifestyle they are looking for.

From a psychological standpoint not aiming high would have been a bigger miss to the person taking the shot. They clearly chose risk no matter how they sulk afterwards.

The ratio of posts about "work-purpose porn" for employee bees and pipe dream madness for misfits is never going to satisfy everyone on HN.

Maybe a big part of the founders' skill is to actually hire the right management which in turn is capable of hiring the right employees. In which case, the credit goes to the founders after all.

Or maybe the quality of employees does not vary that much (after controlling for the the obvious factors like location / funding / business area). In which case, the company's success is explained by something else. Again, founders' skill? Or maybe something else?

I tend to think that it's a combination of founders' skill and being lucky to start the right business at the right time. I'd understand if others put greater weight on the founders or greater weight on luck.

And even if you fail to become Google, you might still make a living. Some people would gladly make a modest income doing something they love, with the possibility of making more, rather than working for someone else making three times as much but doing something they hate.

As for what good comes of it, just think about it. Where do new companies come from? Should we have no more of them? What would happen then?

I think it probably has a lot to do with the US being the number 1 economy in the world so yes, it does appear to have society-wide benefits. Does it have personal benefits? I think this is probably more controversial. I suspect some people push themselves too hard and would have been happier otherwise, whereas others do indeed benefit from this advice. I suspect that the users of HN probably fall in the latter category.

Being "the number 1 economy in the world" (Actually kind of debatable by some metrics, but that's beside the point) is a measure of the power of the few that hold it, not the general living conditions of the populace. "Society-wide benefits" being the same as having the richest aggregate economy is to say the least pretty dubious

I also want to point out it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that most founders come from well off backgrounds. Their parents can essentially foot the bills while they're getting things off the ground combined w/ the natural access to capital growing up in wealthy circles provides.

Currently Michigan's idea of business development is to write big checks to folks who promise thousands of jobs.

Yet when the automobile industry got started in Michigan no one wrote them any government checks yet it became our largest industry. We can do much better and more startups is the answer.

> You can't know whether it will turn into a company worth billions or one that goes out of business. So when I say I'm going to tell you how to start Google, I mean I'm going to tell you how to get to the point where you can start a company that has as much chance of being Google as Google had of being Google.

People seem to think that Google is some sort of existence proof that there's a non-zero chance (and perhaps even quite a good one) of starting a company with this level of success.

And they are correct.

However, this is not the same probability at all as the chance that your company will turn out like that.

Depends on the size of company. A small company maybe is more probable than being a top athlete.

Yes, VCs flourish by it.