Comment by hugodan
Comment by hugodan 4 days ago
That’s an aggressive problematic gambler mentality.
Comment by hugodan 4 days ago
That’s an aggressive problematic gambler mentality.
I think none of those blanket statements here work.
Really it's just odds of finding success vs effort / time spent. And whether that's worth it.
Any of the blanket statements could be true depending on what the exact odds are.
There could be near 0% chance of finding success and it would be better idea to rethink and spend time elsewhere, or yes, there's 10% chance of finding success and it's significant enough that trying 20 times is enough.
If we are talking about e.g. finding a house, if you are not finding any it could very well be that your expectations vs budget is unlikely to find anything and you have to reconsider strategy.
Someone could be repeatedly trying to find work, and thinking it's just a matter of time, but really time would be better spent on improving their strategy, resume, or other means.
These statements to me seem like motivational non-sense which misrepresent how real world works or what the patterns really are like. At best they just give someone a false understanding of how the world works, at worst they make someone spend all their time in the wrong direction.
The difference is that if I apply for 10 jobs at once or put a bid in for 10 houses hoping one will succeed, I’ve lost nothing for trying 10 times.
If I gamble and try 10 times and win once - I have probably lost money.
Even if I interview 10 times and fail 9, I’ve learned something from each interview and I’ve gotten better. That’s also not true from rolling dice.
You lost something when every other person started doing the same thing. Now you have to write or review ten applications instead of one. Now you're going to get paid less because it cost $20k to hire you instead of $2k. Now your company is going to be filled with like-minded people, "hustlers", who do not know how to improve things themselves, just spray and pray until someone mistakenly rewards them.
When the outcome is positive, I see nothing wrong. Especially if you lose basically nothing in trying.
Your time, energy, etc are not nothing. If you think like that, you have already lost and are not making optimal decisions.
The way I read this is that there are many "games" in life (applying for schools, jobs, dating, etc) where the odds of "winning" each instance are not in your favor, but you only need to win once to win overall. If you treat every absence of a positive outcome as a failure, then you're inevitably going to lose hope and give up.
This is in contrast to gambling where you actually do need to win more often than not to win overall.
Seems like a momumental waste of energy being pushed as "hustling". Applying to college should be cooperative between you and the admissions office: asking, are we a good fit? Applying in the hope they mess up and admit you when they're really better off rejecting you is so antisocial.
Admissions are sort-of Pareto distributed, so most people admitted were on the edge of being rejected. Since there is a bit of noise in the process, this is why any one individual applying to 10x as many places of a similar tier will be more likely to get into one. But then when everyone does it, no one is more or less likely to get in except those that are actually cooperating with the admissions office. You're burning down the commons for a fleeting bit of warmth. Might I suggest installing a furnace in your house instead?
Interestingly I found my first job through a video game and I never went to uni. I got good at the game (to brag, top 0.1%) and met people in the game who referred me because of the "respect" from being good at that particular game got me. Might seem odd, but a lot of people in the industry played this game and ability to be good at the game did signal something.
I have never spam applied anywhere, and have hyperfocused on very specific positions, putting a lot of prep effort into what I have considered strong matches.
Indeed. "Just one more roll of the dice and I'll be ahead."
Worse, this guy isn't trying to get a job. He's just trying to get into grad school. Which is no longer a guarantee of a good career, but may be a guarantee of a big debt. Remember that "I did everything right" post on HN a few weeks ago? CS degree from a good school, but nobody wants junior CS people any more.
No it's not. Gambler's fallacy is "I just flipped tails so heads is more likely now". I read this article as "heads has a 50% chance of coming up so I'll get one eventually" (which is true - law of large numbers).