Ask HN: Is attitude more important than knowledge?
I am old and overeducated. I grew up poor with uneducated parents, after high school I had to get a job. Later in life I put myself through college all the way to an MBA from a top school.
All my life I have wanted to be an entrepreneur but while I started a few companies, they all failed.
Over the years I have heard here and there various versions of "Attitude is more important than knowledge" and each time I was furious, since I have invested a lot of time and money into acquiring knowledge. Alas I am starting to suspect that I was wrong all along.
While "some" knowledge is essential in business, "attitude" triumph knowledge when it comes to entrepreneurship, and business in general, by orders of magnitude.
So, what does HN think?
And how can I leverage my wealth of knowledge to become a successful entrepreneur?
82 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadThere are many people with entrepreneurial attitudes who fail because they don’t have the necessary skills to execute and they can’t (or won’t) hire and lead people who can execute.
There are many smart people who fail in their careers because their attitude gets in the way of working with others or delivering results. This can be anything from deep cynicism about the workplace to being combative with others or even simply being an unpleasant person to be around.
We like to glorify the idea of lone wolf programmers using their extensive knowledge to deliver everything by themselves, but the reality is that businesses are all about people and teams. Knowledge is part of the foundation, but interpersonal skills and leadership abilities are necessary to actually leverage those skills. People who have a lot of knowledge but who can’t execute or work well with others are really just critics operating from the sidelines.
And being furious is not really a replacement for luck.
The important thing is, in the face of failure, do you give up? Or do you persevere?
You need both to succeed, but it's much easier to teach the knowledge.
Success is dependent on so many factors, the most important being your connections. I've seen many smart developers fail in their businesses, while a well-connected sales guy sold an app via powerpoint slides until he got enough money to hire a couple developers. The sales guy is now worth millions.
In my opinion for success, you need a good network, money to burn, knowledge, and then attitude. The variables affect each other a bit though.
If you have a good network, ALOT of money to burn, and a little knowledge you will probably be successful.
If you have a good attitude, good knowledge, no money, no network, then you will probably fail. At least the knowledge will help you get 9-5 job.
I'd start there, because if such a simple statement makes you furious, I can only imagine what your reaction (attitude) is in scenarios an entrepreneur might find themselves in.
Each one of us gets dealt a hand in life for most things, and we can't usually ask for another hand. It's up to us to make the best plays possible.
Being born in this era, in an English speaking country, with access to internet, etc, it's hard for me to feel like I'm owed anything.
You want to stack as many unfair advantages as you can. Attitude and knowledge are among those. Some folks have other unfair advantages over you, and you’ll have to work harder to compete than they would. That’s why they’re called unfair.
Grit, creativity, and int stats are what matter the most
Never. Never. Never give up
Anything is possible. We sent a man to the moon with kbit computers
Attitude plus zero will to work to learn and no prior experience is a total disaster.
Most “know-how” technical knowledge—what I assume you’re referring to—is like having a set of solid well-known tools in a toolbox. Useful, but you still need to figure out what to use those tools to do.
Many highly-educated people believe they can think their way into a business, in the style of “build it and they will come” — not a useful attitude.
Instead, try “how can I figure out what people’s real problems are, problems they’re willing to pay to have solved” — a more useful attitude. It requires you to talk to people, find problems, and only then bring your existing technical toolbox to bear in prototyping, etc.
Credentials and a network can get you in the door, to reach those people with problems and enough money to pay someone to solve them. Having your own money gives you more retries.
Money and a network also let you hire people with their own toolboxes, changing what tools your personal toolbox needs to contain.
A toolbox alone, without the knowledge of what to build, is just a box full of junk — or worse, full of shiny toys that distract you from creating value.
Attitude and knowledge are complementary.
I was a good programmer, but my core computer science competency was weak. Really weak. However, I was able to land a gig at a very technical company with lots of computer science problems because I had the attitude I can learn anything.
You can learn anything, but you can't learn everything. And you need the right knowledge base to learn effectively. After that, attitude can take you a long way.
Entrepreneurship is really the full stack of trying to find a problem and solving it along with all the details of running a business.
(Please note I’m about to make some generalizations and simplify some complicated things. Please read the following in good faith, grain of salt, etc.)
Having also grown-up poor with parents who only finished high school, and one barely at that, my worldview was one of scarcity and viewing education and success with suspicion. I’ve since changed that. But you can see how that worldview would hobble someone who’s trying to create a successful business.
If someone’s worldview was that there’s always enough, and success is inevitable given enough effort, luck, and help, they would never give up. They would happily gain whatever knowledge and skills were necessary because they knew they would succeed.
Is it possible that your worldview is hobbling you? Or, success includes luck and maybe you’ve just been unlucky.
They overthink by planning everything when in reality you need to be like a roach (keep going) with a touch of naïveté.
Find the balance. Not out there. Find it… In there.
The good news is if you put enough time into something, those key components emerge.
In a way you also need to listen to people but not listen, and know when to do that. New ideas will be pushed back against, following the existing successes will always be encouraged, but the latter is a form of survivorship bias, FOMO and buying in at the top. If you know something is there and others say it isn't, you might have something. Additionally, if it is already done, doing it better is another way to create value.
So yeah, attitude in pushing through against headwinds is key. Don't always listen to the critics, but take it in, it is a balance and one that everyone battles in most things. Grounding down the fluff/hype into a good plan with results takes all those things.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
This is a particular class of fallacy that I sort of disagree with.
"the world is a meritocracy" is only a fallacy in a very strongly worded version of that statement.
Saying something like, "talent is a factor in career trajectory" or "education is correlated to income" should be non-controversial.
The "fallacy" here is people assuming that the trend true in the broad case will also be true in all cases.
Yes of course, it's not true that more education will guarantee more income. That doesn't mean you should invest in education.
Based on my experience I would feel comfortable standing by the statement, "the world has a trend towards meritocracy" with the important caveat that merit can be particularly difficult to define, as OP is pointing out. It would be reductivist to assume the 'merit' of a tech entrepreneur is based solely on programming ability for instance.
In nearly all cases, merely performing ones work well, will not gain the employee anything but more work. Sometimes there are promotions or meaningful raises, but this is the exception, not the norm. It is not in a businesses interest to pay employees more than absolutely necessary. It's a true-ism in software development that to see meaningful increases in salary one must "job hop". This reality has given rise to aphorisms such as "I pretend to work they pretend to pay me" and Johnsons "Who Moved my Cheese?".
Of course merit can be hard to define, but if it's defined in a way other than performing a job well, well that's something else isn't it?
knowledge is the reason why asia is rising again
a good entrepreneur is a good manipulator, a good liar and a good seducer
are you willing to trade your knowledge to become someone like that?
use your wealth of knowledge to find people like you and build nice things for your surroundings
but more importantly, do what you like, don't chase people for their attitude, look, they are already trying to sell you something and you fell for it