If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

Behind Linus Torvalds: Five Cruel Truths about Success

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

Behind Linus Torvalds: Five Cruel Truths about Success

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

Behind Linus Torvalds: Five Cruel Truths about Success

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

Behind Linus Torvalds: Five Cruel Truths about Success

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

Behind Linus Torvalds: Five Cruel Truths about Success

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

Behind Linus Torvalds: Five Cruel Truths about Success

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

Behind Linus Torvalds: Five Cruel Truths about Success

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.

If you don’t know who Linus Torvalds is, I’ll give a brief introduction; if you’re a software engineer, you should know what Linux is, and I’m almost sure you’ve used Get at least once. Torvalds can be said to be the hero behind these two projects.

Back in 1991, the 22-year-old Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds released the operating system Linux. He released the code, allowing enthusiasts to contribute to making it powerful. At that time, no one could glimpse the opening of an open source era, nor could they foresee the current situation where Linux is blooming all over the world.

Linus Torvalds himself is undoubtedly legendary, if you want to know more about him, you can search online, I do not want to go into more details in this article. What is going to be discussed here is his success and the less inspirational reality behind it.

Before I get started, I want to tell you one thing: I can’t guarantee that you’ll like these ideas, I’m just telling the truth, the brutal and painful truth.

1. No one is special

Motivational videos and books share a common theme: You are not ordinary; if you work in the right direction and put all your energy into it, you will get what you want, and you will become someone very special. They should be right, because if you look at history, many of the billions survive. We know them because of their great achievements. A common thread is that we can achieve the same if we press the right buttons.

I believed in these ideas a long time ago, but they are complete lies. No one is special, and there is very little one can achieve on their own. One commonality that we often fail to notice is that successful people achieve their goals not by working hard, but by using other people’s ability to work to achieve what they want to achieve. Humans have been doing this for a long time. Good commanders use the state to achieve what they want to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same by creating companies. These companies discovered that by paying their employees and leveraging their abilities, great things could be achieved.

Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, all of them got rich using the same strategy, even Warren Buffett. Generally speaking, we believe that Buffett made his fortune by investing his own money for a long time. He was successful because of his long-term investing. However, once he found that his personal funds were not enough, he began to use other people’s money, and later invented new ways to use other people’s money.

And what about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new method to achieve the same goal. He gave it a go and decided to open source his kernel to everyone, and then he noticed people contributing good ideas. He later created Git to speed up the process by allowing people to implement ideas. By doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he did not do it alone. Today, if you look at the Linux GitHub page, there are more than 13,000 contributors to the project, and more than 13,000 people have volunteered to work on the project he created. Plus, we’re not even counting the folks at the many companies that are using Linux to create new business models. Millions of people worked hard to make Linux what it is today.

In short, no one is unique. We are all part of a larger system. Like ants and bees, we achieve great things together. The Internet was not created by one person, there were many workers laying cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. So, if you want to be successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use their power for your projects. If you think you can do a lot and think you are unique, then you are another Buzz Lightyear.

2. It’s not good to be friendly

I’m a software engineer like everyone else, and at the company I work for, it’s important to be nice because one of the main metrics when evaluating your year-end bonus is your personality. In fact, if HR fires people, one of the metrics that is as important as performance is behavior. We force people to be nice or weed them out.

I think we do it because we don’t want to hear the hard truth. We want it to sound like it wasn’t our fault, even if it was our fault. However, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing. Of course, in some ways, being nice is a must. For example, if you care for an elderly person, being nice should be a requirement. However, I don’t think this applies to the tech industry.

Several researchers tried this theory: They set up two control groups consisting of random people. One group was forced to be friendly, and the other was free to defend its ideas more aggressively. Throw the same problem to both groups and evaluate the results. After many repetitions, they found that the group that actively defended the idea repeatedly found better ideas and solutions. Technological improvements focus on the same thing: finding the best solution to a problem. Therefore, I think we should be able to stick to our respective ideas until we find the best solution by using mathematical proofs or conducting experiments.

At this point, I want to make one thing clear: Active defense does not mean vigorously defending ideas even when you are wrong. If you are wrong, and there is evidence or a reasonable explanation, you should accept it and let others correct and improve. While defending ideas, one should remain rational.

Torvalds did the same with Linux. He has been very aggressive in defending his ideas, both in the face of code commits and in the news media. I don’t support that, and he broke a lot of hearts too. However, it’s a good strategy to find the best solution. Because of this practice, Linux becomes different. macOS focuses on specific hardware, Windows suffers from frequent fatal blue screens due to memory leaks and inefficient implementations, while Linux works on all devices, requires only a little professional operation, and is reasonably optimized, so the call trace of the kernel is farther than Windows outperformed.

3. Goals, ideas… are all lies

Do you know what survivorship bias is? During World War II, researchers at the U.S. Naval Analysis Center studied damage to aircraft returning from missions. They then suggested thickening the armor in the most damaged areas to minimize the bomber’s losses to enemy fire. However, Abraham Wald expressed a different view. Wald was a Hungarian mathematician and member of a statistical research group who applied statistical skills to various wartime problems. He noticed something very simple: the plane they were analyzing was a returning plane. That means the planes made it back even when they were hit in those parts, which means they couldn’t make it back if they got hit in other parts.

In my view, goals, ideas, and visions are products of the same philosophy, survivor bias. A lot of people only study successful people, they think successful people have vision and goals. However, I don’t think that’s the difference. Consider the college entrance examination. Do you think the 1,000,000 people are fighting for entrance exams? Chances are, this person is fighting for a higher rank, but is not doing other things right. If the goals and vision of both winners and losers are the same, then it is not the difference between them.

Linus Torvalds admitted in a TED Talk interview that he has no vision or 5-year plan. He basically solves problems as he encounters them; on the other hand, he tries to find better solutions to problems that have already been solved. He has a system, a system for solving problems and finding better ways. Using this system for 25 years, this is the successful concept behind Linux.

4. There is no such thing as intelligent design

I’m one of those people who just think about it and can’t start doing what they want to do. I do some research to find the best way to do it before actually doing it. At the end of the day, I never get started because I’m lost in the process of finding the best way and learning to get the best way.

Then I noticed one thing. Humans learn everything by making mistakes. We have discovered a lot through trial, trial and error. I would like to give an example: If you know the geography of Japan, you probably know that there are a lot of earthquakes there. In Japanese history, the houses they built were not too long and generally wider, because if they built a long house, it would be destroyed in an earthquake. Today they fixed the problem, but how? They created a small model of Earth, implemented different ideas, and then tested the model by creating artificial earthquakes. Only by testing ideas, uncovering new problems, and solving each problem one by one, did Japan come up with brilliant designs for building foundations. Now, Japan is one of the countries where the buildings are very strong and durable.

Torvalds said in an interview that there is no intelligent design in Linux. Basically, he tries out ideas, and by making mistakes and solving problems, he makes discoveries. In this regard, you could say “there is no such thing as intelligent design, but there are many books on intelligent design”, and it is true. One of my favorite books of this type is Clean Code by Robert Martin. He gives a good design basis in the book. Yet if you’ve read the book, it’s easy to understand that he distilled all of these principles by learning from his mistakes, not only from his own, but from the mistakes of other engineers and bankrupt companies.

All in all, the idea is to learn by making mistakes. However, do not repeat the same mistakes that have been made. Try new ones and learn something new by solving every problem you encounter. Don’t try to figure out what’s the best way to do it, start doing it, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

5. Distraction is a potential killer

Silicon Valley culture is based on those software engineers who change jobs frequently. What is the purpose of doing this? I think there are two: In this way, technical ideas and improvements are dispersed among many companies. Second, it sets off a competition to hire the most experienced engineers, which makes hiring these people increasingly expensive. In the beautiful YouTube videos of software engineers (and I love watching them), we can see free food in a beautiful office, and the salary is not to mention high. With all these enticing things, many people want to be a part of it.

Like everything else, this comes with a cost that we don’t usually notice. Every company has its own system, its own style of implementation, and different technologies. Before we knew every detail of it and worked on a project long enough, we left the company. Today, at most large companies, the average stay of an engineer is less than 2 years.

What’s wrong with that? I want to show you a different perspective. Linus Torvalds started at a company in Silicon Valley (Transmeta), and instead of bouncing around among companies, he stayed with the company for almost 7 years until laying the groundwork for the Linux Foundation. Why did he do that? Why doesn’t he hop between companies like everyone else? He said in a TED Talk interview that he is very stubborn and does not give up projects easily. In fact, he was so stubborn that he had been working on the same project for over 25 years.

Warren Buffett applied the same concept to the investment world, using the same simple but effective strategy for a long time, and perfecting it, eventually he became the richest man. The point here is that success belongs to those who focus on something, not to those who jump from one project to another.

This advice is not for everyone, as some of us do software engineering just for the money, and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. However, there are a lot of people out there who want to build great products; sadly, the only way to do that is with dedication. Because a lot of people are trying to achieve different goals at the same time, if you want to be successful and create products that other people want to use, then you really need to focus on the problem you want to solve and the project you want to complete, and stick to it.