> Take the legend of Lake Lagunita Island. In the early 1990s, the Kappa Alpha fraternity decided to embark on an audacious plan. One fraternity brother rented a commercial bulldozer, another cleared sand from around the house, and a third charmed Stanford’s head groundskeeper to sneak the equipment across university land to reach the lake. A Cabo-themed island was constructed in the middle of the lake overnight. They later rigged a zipline from their roof to the sandbar.
This hits close for me. I have immense respect for the students who pulled this off. 2 years ago, a much (much) smaller stunt got me nearly fired at $FAANG, and all I could think was "where has the culture gone?"
I get the impression this is not at all confined to Stanford and is really just everywhere in the country at the moment. Not sure the word 'coward' is right though. Feels more like... people are far more interested in being 'normal' than ever before. Maybe a side effect of there being so much economic opportunity in regular jobs and career trajectories that nobody considers riskier paths?
This is a very strange article. The lament about how Stanford students "said things that made people mad and didn’t immediately apologize", but the example linked is a newspaper story about students screaming homophobic slurs at people and telling them they hope they die of AIDS. This is the supposed "courage" Stanford students used to have?
Both YC and Stanford have had their admissions process cracked for some time by resume maximalists. Those institutions are largely free to design their admissions process, yet I haven’t really heard of any innovation going on in that space. For example, Stanford could use their admissions data, correlated with college grades and starting salary, to figure out what is the cut-off for “good enough” and allocate 20% of the slots to a random lottery of good-enoughs. It’s akin to temperature in tuning a model
Key quote: "People misunderstand what built Silicon Valley. It wasn’t just intelligence. It was the stamina to endure embarrassment, the courage to diverge from the 'ideal path,' and the sheer will to keep going."
The article getting flagged should answer all one needs to know.
It's extremely concerning that the 'courage we've lost' refers to former Stanford students not being reprimanded for saying outwardly offensive things, but for someone who writes about cowards, it's a shame that he would rather write reactionary points about an arguably very courageous startup acceleration program than construct strong arguments. Part of the 3.7% of those accepted into Stanford, as he refers to, are sure, manicured, but many also simply just have their parents pay their way to get barely or unqualified students in. For context, Bassel is of the latter. Once he achieves something, anything, on his own merits, I will reconsider the material of the article.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 27.7 ms ] threadThis hits close for me. I have immense respect for the students who pulled this off. 2 years ago, a much (much) smaller stunt got me nearly fired at $FAANG, and all I could think was "where has the culture gone?"
Imagine being such an asshole that even Peter Thiel condemns you...
Oh and it also makes it very obvious that the author and I apparently don't share an understanding of what brave and daring is...
It's extremely concerning that the 'courage we've lost' refers to former Stanford students not being reprimanded for saying outwardly offensive things, but for someone who writes about cowards, it's a shame that he would rather write reactionary points about an arguably very courageous startup acceleration program than construct strong arguments. Part of the 3.7% of those accepted into Stanford, as he refers to, are sure, manicured, but many also simply just have their parents pay their way to get barely or unqualified students in. For context, Bassel is of the latter. Once he achieves something, anything, on his own merits, I will reconsider the material of the article.