Don't Ask Successful People for Advice
"how to use other people with more experience's opinions well"
14.10.24 8:50pm
> "I would say don't take advice from people like me who have gotten very lucky. We're very biased. You know, like Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, 'Liquidize your assets; buy Powerball tickets - it works!'"
- Bo Burnham
A lot of people, when confronted with someone extremely successful (not successful in their field, like researchers to professors, but just successful in general, like CEOs, musicians or founders) ask for "advice". "What's your advice to young people?", or perhaps "What's your advice to someone just starting out?". Often, they actually are young people or just starting out, and so you'd expect the advice to be meaningfully related to them: in reality it's the same platitudes of hard work, dedication and perseverance. Of course, hard work, dedication and perseverance are trivially required to be successful, but they don't do anything for the person who asked the question. In fact, they could have got the same advice from their parents, a middle school teacher or a self-help book.
What makes a successful person valuable, apart from their assets? If you strip away, let's say, Tim Cook's company and position, and house and car, what's valuable about him is that he understands Apple's operations and the modern tech supply chain better than anyone else. These sort of differentiating skills take forever to learn, and they're incompressible. No one-hour or two-hour talk can transfer the knowledge required to produce the M1 chip series. If you asked for one, you might get something interesting out, but it wouldn't be the best use of his time.
Instead of asking for advice, I suggest asking for criticism. Firstly, it's much easier for people to give criticism than advice in general, and so you're less likely to get a nonsense or prepared answer. Secondly, asking a successful person for criticism allows you temporary access to their battle-tested and incompressible knowledge to evaluate your specific thing. What they say to you is probably going to be much more actionable, direct and sensible than if you asked for generic advice.
I'm giving out advice criticism this semester at Prod, a student-led group at MIT/Harvard/Stanford that helps startups without taking equity. People keep asking me what credentials I have that allow me to advise other people's companies, given that I've never done one or worked at one myself. I agree with them - I don't know anything about anything, least of all startups. However, I can offer my criticism (which is perhaps less valuable than Tim Cook's), and if it makes sense, take it, and if it doesn't, don't. I can also offer the rest of Prod, our wonderful community, free hands for marketing, raising or coding. It's a good deal because you get it for nothing, so even if it's a little helpful it's worth every penny.