HN Explorer

Ask PG: What Changed?

115 points by switz ↗ HN
Two years ago, you referred to the question, "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage" as "one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications."[1]

But, as recently as a few months ago you said, "How you hacked some real-world system to your advantage is not a super important question. Probably not even in the top 10."[2]

So, why is the question not as evocative as you once thought?

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693870

40 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 91.6 ms ] thread
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jevans
That's not true. The article's claim was that an example of hacking a non-computer system was the "2nd most important question."
cesarsalazar12
I went back and read both the thread and the original article and I think the OP is right.
pg
There are 35 questions on the application. A question can be one we consistently pay attention to without being in the top 10.

Also, we added at least 2 new questions we care about more since we added that one. (The field names of one or both of those may be those of previously existing questions, but we changed the question itself in a way that made the answer more important.)

noibl
> A question can be one we consistently pay attention to without being in the top 10.

Sure, but the query was about "pay most attention to".

I wonder if hacking the YC app process via PR stunt became too obvious an answer to the question over time.

rxs
> Sure, but the query was about "pay most attention to".

If you interpret that as "pay most attention to (when questions are ranked by the amount of attention we've paid them over all rounds)", nobody gets killed and we can all go home.

noibl
Right, right. Or! We could stop redefining common words and agree that 'pay' is a verb in the present tense.

(Please don't kill me.)

rxs
I have suggested no redefinition. Technical accuracy is one of the aspects of my communication I pay most attention to.
doctorpangloss
I love how the details captivate people. I think it's because your 'admissions technology' is so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic.

And people love learning magic tricks.

robryan
I think one issue might be that everyone knows about this question and primed by the earlier comments on the importance might end up over optimising this. There might end up being lots of really impressive answers to this question that didn't correlate well with results.

In earlier rounds when less people that were applying knew the question it might have been a better indicator.

JohnsonB
Nothing changed, it was never a good question. There are many ways to be productive, entrepreneurial, and creative while working "within the system", so the question was intrinsically discriminatory to those who did so.
stephengillie
I never really understood the question that well. I was considering applying on a couple of occasions, but this question always made me reconsider.
amackera
It's possible that it's there for precisely this reason. I've also filled out a few mock applications and get stumped on this one too.
raverbashing
Exactly

If you can't fill the application form, you're already out

I guess it makes sense, if you can hack (in the traditional meaning of the word) something outside of 'tech' this shows that you understand something about entrepreneurs sometimes having to play with the rules or thinking outside of the box (which does not mean doing something illegal)

droithomme
I've assumed it means cases like you were faced with some bureaucratic wall that was an impediment to getting things done, and you figured a way around them. It doesn't necessarily imply unethical behavior, though I'm sure if the example someone gave was of illegal or unethical behavior that would be important information for the questioner to consider. Sometimes this sort of practice is called social engineering, knowing how to work the system, or being street smart. It could even refer to starting a grass roots campaign to get a bad law changed. To succeed in business you need to be able to solve difficult non-technical problems as well as technical. Rather than based on logic, the answer may be based on insights into human behavior, loopholes, or just understanding practical matters of dealing with red tape. This question gives the person an opportunity to discuss cases where they did so successfully.
paul
It's generally not possible to do anything "revolutionary" without encountering some very severe obstacles. The status-quo guards itself.
JohnsonB
Necessarily? Powerful incumbents can put up artificial barriers, but many times these players can be blindsided by the innovative competition anyway. So is America's economic system, and the full business environment for internet startups inherently caustic to new business ideas such that you have to work outside the system?

And are most YC applicants significantly revolutionary? How many systemic barriers would you expect to hit if you have some insight on how to build the next popular photo sharing app, for example? And if they are applying for YC and answering that question, it's not a safe assumption to make that the founders would have hit up against those barriers yet. A lot of YC founders are barely out of college and just turning their idea into reality.

waterlesscloud
It doesn't really matter how many of the applicants are revolutionary. But I can see that some of their biggest hits so far don't pay a lot of attention to following existing rules systems. And as pg has said numerous times now, it's the big hits that matter. The rest is noise.
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biot
If someone loses 30 pounds of body fat and you ask them how they did it, would it be considered hacking the system if they told you that they worked out and ate healthy meals while restricting their caloric intake? To me, that's the expected normal way to go about losing weight and for the majority of people is guaranteed to work.

So it is possible to get extraordinary results through the application of discipline to boring, traditional approaches.

bmelton
Regardless of whether it is or isn't "hacking the system", that answer tells you something about the someone in question. From that, I learn that they are able to exert focused discipline and flex willpower where others might not be able to.

I've flown a kite once in my life, as part of a competition, that I won. My kite flew more than twice as high as the next highest kite. After the competition, people asked how I got my kite so high, and my answer was just that I brought more string than they did. Some might attribute that to dumb luck, but I have a history of winning silly little competitions like this by being prepared.

shrig94
I lost 40 pounds of body fat in 3 months by not eating carbohydrates, and eating an over 2000 calorie high fat diet. I think that losing 30 lbs of body fat the normal way isn't that extraordinary. I think what I did by hacking the system was more so extraordinary.
ghshephard
You've identified a task that 98% of motivated persons can accomplish. Building a billion dollar company is something that less than 2% of the YC companies have done.
chrito
Gmail was pretty revolutionary. Just out of curiosity... were the biggest obstacles more technology/product related or "human" (eg. making it an official Google product)?
ghshephard
I suspect, and I could be wrong here, that the reason YC associated so much value to those questions was that Power Law function which describes the ROI on their companies (so far) indicates that only 1 to 2 out of the 50 startups they fund (if that many) will be the ones worth investing in, the others can be written off.

So, PG and the rest of the crew probably looked at the limited supply of "Hits" that they had, and tried to identify, in their minds, what characteristics they associated with successful founders.

For whatever reason, the ability to overcome obstacles, sometimes "creatively", (aka "hacking the system") was one such characteristic.

They may also have had a few successful startups as well that worked "within the system", but I suspect those made up small percentage of their hits, and therefore would be much harder to predict.

From my limited exposure to very successful founders (Those who exit with an IPO or acquisition of > $1B), they are all mavericks willings to do almost anything to be successful. Many (most?) of them come very close to the line of what a reasonable person would consider generally acceptable , and they all have vast number of detractors, and quite often casualties and lawsuits on their path to success.

Think about the various legal issues associated with AirBNB - the AirBNB founders were funded, in no small measure, based on their unwillingness to let anything get in the way of success, and certainly weren't going to let some status quo/system which said what they were doing was wrong slow them down.

I'm sure it's possible to be a breakout hit, and create a $1B+ company while working within the system, but the large majority of times it's done (80%+), it's done by those who don't completely work within the system - ergo a demonstrated ability to work outside, increases your chance of falling into that 2-4% of very successful companies.

ceejayoz
I'd guess it's the same reason no one asks "what's your greatest weakness" to job applicants any more. Everyone's been trained to come up with an answer like "oh, I guess it's that I just work so damned hard all the time!"
[dead] xugle
"My passion for software often leads me to ignore work-life balance. I'm making a conscious effort to take time out to exercise and eat right so my all night hacking sessions are even more productive."
sherm8n
This reminds me of the way people answer how you know people need what you're making. Everyone says they've validated the idea with users or talked to users. When you start getting deeper in the conversation you can tell they've only scratched the surface level. They don't know users all that much. I guess people are starting to be trained how to answer the question. The only person they're fooling is themselves though.
rdl
It must be weird having everything you say picked apart -- it's like being the Pope or Alan Greenspan.

Interesting with Greenspan we ended up with sort of a reaction to the previous tea-leaves reading by Bernanke -- he's vastly more transparent and communicates really boring things.

pyalot2
Being famous, successful and surrounded by padawans does that to you.
redler
It's not a terrible question, but it's really not that different from more common corporate-speak interview questions like, "We like 'out of the box' thinkers here. Does that describe you, and if so, how?"

If anything, it's an easier version of that question, since it primes the applicant with the hint of considering responses outside the standard domain. It makes sense to me that pg doesn't consider this a top ten question.

codex
Stop turning over PG's every word like some soon-to-be unemployed English major. It is pathetic. You need experience with the real world through use, and not by the cool reflected glow of the Internet on your monitor.
jacques_chester
The analogy I'd make is with theologians: carefully teasing apart the meaning of every. single. word. because the payoff is eternal bliss/admission to YC.
siglesias
1) The hit against English majors was entirely unnecessary.

2) I don't see how experiencing the real world would have gotten him any closer to the answer. HN seems to be a perfectly reasonable forum to ask. There might have been something interesting there.

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[dead] amorphid
There are days when I think majoring in English would have been more valuable than majoring in business.
sgentle
I think you're being unnecessarily confrontational. The question is a valid one. If you're hoping to apply to a fund led by someone, and that someone says "we pay the most attention to how you can hack stuff", then it'd be pretty silly not to try to demonstrate that ability. Even in the real world where there is no Internet or computer monitors, knowing the goals of the people you're applying to is pretty fundamental.
RegEx
Look everyone... It's a STEM guy!

I agree that the pg worship is weird, but there's no need to be so hostile.

JimWillTri
How about the possibility that every batch of new admissions is a learning experience. No one has all the answers to what makes a great startup. You live and learn every day.