Paul Graham's essays have this weird Rorschach quality whereby people see wildly different things in them. Some readers even get infuriated and seek relief in the judgment that Paul Graham is an arrogant asshole. But I don't buy that. (For one thing, if he were, then this site would be more of a personality cult than it is, and many of us would be long gone.) So I'm curious as to why his essays have this effect on people. It is the essays, by the way. You don't hear people saying, "He sold Viaweb to Yahoo? What an asshole!" or "He started a new kind of investment fund, the arrogant prick!"

I've got a little theory. It seems to me that the provocative thing about the essays is their aesthetic. They're governed by a particular style. One principle in it is minimalism: compress the writing until everything extraneous is gone. Another is vividness: whatever is being said, seek the phrase or image that throws the point into the sharpest relief.

The dominant quality of the essays is that they pursue this aesthetic ruthlessly. Anything that would use a few extra words to reassure the reader is thrown out. Anything that would tone down an idea a little bit to make it more palatable is thrown out. There isn't any room for these things because the author is optimizing for something else - say, meaning per word count. In fact, an entire dimension of language, the phatic dimension, is thrown out.

So, Paul Graham's writing is radically aphatic. That's disorienting. People are used to writing that includes, among its threads, one whose purpose is to reassure you that the author is a nice guy, that he might be wrong, you can still get along even if you disagree, and so on. This is not only absent from the essays, it's deliberately excised. On top of that, what is there has been distilled for maximum impact and often touches subjects that people have strong emotions about, such as programming languages and what we're doing with our lives :). Not surprisingly, some readers feel punched in the gut. For them, an obvious explanation is ready at hand: Paul Graham's writing is like this because he is like this. He must be someone who doesn't care how others feel and wants only to magnify his own grandiose ideas.

I think this explains why people project so much emotion into what they read in those essays. "Oh... you haven't founded a company? You suck." But the essays never say anything like that. People don't read them this way because they say such things. They read them this way because they lack the kinds of things writers are expected to put in to stave off provocation. They lack these things not because the author is an asshole but because he cares about a certain style of writing. Enough, in fact, to pursue it ruthlessly... in his writing. To naively map that back to the personality of the writer is an obvious error, a reverse ad hominem. But it's an understandable one. There aren't many people who care that much about an aesthetic. (I mean "aesthetic" in a broad sense, by the way. As much a way of thinking as a cosmetic thing.)

No doubt there is a connection between an author's personality and his style, but it's hardly an isomorphism. I don't know Paul Graham, but I know he doesn't talk the way he writes. For one thing, one can point to examples (like the interview in Founders At Work). For another, nobody talks like that.

I've worked in Silicon Valley as an ER nurse for the past 2 years, and I've seen a lot of Software Engineers come and go through my department. And, I'll have to say, at the nurses station, when the patients aren't around, there is a stereotype that we have about Software Engineers, and often snicker at.

If a man in his 20's and 30's comes in to triage looking haunted and complaining of chest pain, problems sleeping, or weird psycho-somatic complaints, one of the first questions we ask is, "Are you a software engineer?" The answer is invariably, "Yes." And, around the nurses station, we all share a chuckle and a "tsk, tsk" at this poor, overworked, overstressed man.

There is a stereotype, and like all generalizations, it has it's exceptions. But, it's enough of a stereotype that the nurses I work with have been very concerned about my going back to school for Computer Science. Most of the nurses that haven worked in the Valley for years thought that being a software engineer was a crap job compared to being an ER nurse. And, that's saying something since a substantial portion of our job involves actual crap. It's wasn't until I explained that I want to start a company that my coworkers became a bit more supportive of the idea. I even had doctors talk to me in concerned tones about the unhealthy levels of stress that engineers work with in the Valley, to try and talk me out of my second career. In the ER, we see the same haunted, caged look that Paul refers to in this article.

I think that what PG was referring to was the idea of a powerful animal who's behavior and demeanor changes markedly in different environments. I don't really think that he was trying to put people down who work at a 9-5 for whatever reason. Paul didn't refer to the 9 to 5'ers as caged monkeys, or caged rats, he called them caged lions for a reason.

I don't think that it just applies to Software engineers, either. I saw the same change in my father when he left his job at 60 to pursue managing his investments 10 years ago. There was a very marked change in the man. A great metaphor for that would be describing as the difference as that of a caged lion vs lion roaming free on the savanna.

I normally like Jeff's writing. I have to disagree with him this time. Perhaps the problem is that maybe Jeff hasn't been on safari. Perhaps he hasn't seen enough men change like lions set free once they don't have to work a 9-5 that they hate. Paul says that he's seen similar changes in a number of founder's they've funded over the past couple of years. As someone who feels rather caged in their day job, I hope I get to see those same changes in myself this fall as I start my first business.

This, judging from the fact that it's in bold, appears to be his main gripe:

  "The problem with this particular essay is the way Mr. Graham
  implies the only path to true happiness as a young programmer
  lies in founding a startup."

whereas the essay actually contains the sentence:

  "Working for yourself doesn't have to mean starting a startup,
   of course.

I mean, how much clearer can I be?

As for this point about "participatory narcissism," you can make the same attack on practically every nonfiction writer. Every (good) essayist writes from experience. Most people who have the freedom to work on what they want, work on things they admire. Every book on robotics or carpentry or surfing has woven through it the sinister subtext that robotics or carpentry or surfing is an admirable activity. But to accuse the writer of "participatory narcissism" is to confuse cause and effect: the writer of the robotics book isn't claiming robotics is admirable to make himself look good; it was because he thought it was admirable that he chose to work on it.

A claim you could make with equal justification about any essayist isn't much of a claim. But people will still believe it means something if they disagree with him.

While I realize that YCombinator is trying to change this, here's my startup experience.

1. Inspired by PG's rhetoric, go into partnership with semi-famous TV talk show host to build site.

2. Work ass off for 9 months. Site grows like gangbusters, VCs banging on the doors.

3. VCs/Partner bring in new CEO. Partner/CEO fill every position above entry level with new hires.

4. My job is now 9-5, cubicle, no chance of advancement.

5. CEO and partner now described as "founders" in the press.

So I mostly followed PG's advice, only to end up in the exact same mind-numbing job he's saying to avoid.

"Participatory Narcissism"

Never have so many syllables been used to incite so many about so little.

Wow; I think this is exactly right.

I'm always surprised by how offended people get by things I write. It seems totally unpredictable. I didn't expect people to be so offended by this one. In fact, I thought I was saying something rather smarmily ingratiating, if anything: that the famous startup founders you keep reading about in the press are not that different from you, but that they just have, in effect, a healthier work environment. See the last paragraph.

And yet somehow that message has gotten completely twisted around. It's as if people wanted to misunderstand this essay.

I've been mulling over why this happens, and one reason is certainly the one you suggest. I try to cut every unnecessary word, and I don't say things unless I'm pretty sure of them. The result sounds arrogant, because it doesn't have any of the hedging people usually surround ideas with to make them palatable.

But there's no alternative. People won't read essays if they're too long. If you want to get a lot of ideas into an essay short enough to read, you have to be so curt you sound arrogant.

I don't really agree with Mr. Horror, but sometimes I do wonder what PG does to, shall we say, "stay challenged". Surrounding yourself with younger, less experienced people (albeit very smart ones) who owe you is not an environment I would think of as one likely to create a lot of pushback. Maybe it shouldn't, either, as that's not what YC is for, but you do need that kind of thing from somewhere in your life if you wish to continue your intellectual growth.

I've got a couple friends that've tried that. It's apparently not all it's cracked up to be. It's great when you launch, but then you have these multiple users all asking you for support...

Jeff Atwood blogging about another writer's narcissism is the epitome of irony.

Jeff Atwood could certainly have made his case in a better way, but I think he has a point here.

There are many perfectly legitimate reasons for working at a large company; family responsibilities (yes, there are mid-twenties and early-thirties programmers with a spouse and children), a chronic medical condition (if I were living in the US, my medical bills would be upwards of $20k/year, and I know I'm not alone), or being dedicated to a non-economically-profitable pursuit (if you want to spend 2 months a year volunteering in sub-Saharan Africa, many employers will let you have the time off -- a startup won't) are a few possibilities. Comparing people who decide to work for a large company to caged animals, and suggesting that they are "ten times [less] alive" is condescending, and ignores the fact that they might seem far more lively when they are with their families or pursuing whatever activities they enjoy -- or that if they worked for a startup, they might not be able to afford the medicine which keeps them alive.

I consider myself fortunate that I can do something I enjoy and have a reasonable chance of making money doing it; but not everybody is so lucky, and we should not insult such unfortunates by suggesting that they made poor choices or are somehow behaving unnaturally.

Back then I thought that Stoll had a point, though he went a bit too far. But he turned out to be very, very wrong.

The problem is the assumed dichotomy. Nobody substitutes network chat for meeting friends or attending live concerts. We augment these experiences.

We use network chat to meet new friends, arrange our meetings with old friends, keep track of distant friends, shop for mail-order coffee, learn about exotic coffees and coffeeshops, and swap hints on the home-roasting of coffee. We figure out which live concerts to go to by watching Youtube and keep track of where and when those concerts are using mailing lists and Myspace.

I'm a classical music idiot, but I own a couple of Vladimir Horowitz CDs. Vladimir is, of course, dead, but I found some video of him on Youtube, and in the comments was a mention of Martha Argerich, an awesome pianist who is still very much alive and is giving a concert not too far from here in August. If it weren't for Youtube I might never have known this woman existed.

I won't say much about sex -- that's what the entire rest of the web is for -- but it seems to me that the web is the most important innovation in the history of sex since birth control.

We actively encourage startups to stay as small as possible for as long as possible. And like all investors we would prefer the startups we fund to go public rather than get acquired. I bet if you outsourced all the inessential stuff you could grow a company to that stage without needing more than 150 people, which you could do with only two layers.

When I was a kid, the documentary series Connections. It was the first time I'd ever seen someone follow vectors through history instead of recounting it one period at a time, like most books and classes do.

Discovering Lisp was a big one. This was in 1983, when the default programming language was Pascal. Lisp seemed (and in retrospect was) startlingly better. There was no one single book or quotation, but I remember how excited I was to get my hands on a photocopy of the InterLisp manual.

Kenneth Clark's documentary series Civilisation (and the accompanying book) impressed me a lot. In fact, it was clearly the model for Connections. I've never read anything else better about art. His ideas are extremely subversive, but few get it because he usually speaks in code. And he had access to stuff like no one else ever will again.

I also learned a lot from his book The Nude.

One of the biggest influences on my ideas about startups was an essay by TJ Rogers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor. I don't remember the title, but it cut through the usual corporate bullshit like a knife. For me the important thing was not just what he said, but that one could even be that candid.

Of all the books I've read in the last 5 years or so, Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology is probably the one that stuck most in my head.

The options are endless... My wife and I both work, I do 99% of the cooking, often late at night with a less-than-stocked selection of ingredients.

A couple of ideas... soak a cedar plank for 3 minutes. Heat on grill on one side for 2 minutes, flip over and pour a good amount of rum on the now warmed side, salmon fillet on top of that, more rum on the salmon, season to taste. Cook for another 5-6 minutes. Grill some asparagus alongside the salmon directly on the grill, seasoned with oil and balsamic vinegar.

Thin porks chops cook quickly, and can be flavored with a mixture of apple cider vinegar, sugar and peppercorns for a sweet/peppery sauce. Cook the sauce along with the 'chops.

Chop up some raw chicken breasts and saute light butter. Cook batch of egg noodles at the same time, and heat some french-cut green beans in the micro. Make a sauce of sourcream, onion soup mix and herbs. Once the chicken and noodles are done, combine all the ingredients as an impromptu casserole. If you're not limited to 10 minutes, add some bread crumbs on top and bake in the oven for a bit to heat everything all the way through and let the flavors combine.

Ev's Improv: Heat olive oil, throw in a can of white beans, a small can of green chiles, half a can of chopped tomatoes (minus the liquid), a vegetable bouillon cube, curry powder, and black pepper.

(So named because I had to whip this up for Evan Williams when he spoke at YC and we discovered at the last minute he was a vegan. It was better than the official vegetarian dish I'd spent all afternoon cooking. http://www.paulmckellar.com/things/1684-?context=album_42)

That's one way of looking at it, yes -- except that the comparison to caged animals has misleading connotations. A lion doesn't weigh its options and choose to live in a cage; so to compare someone to a caged lion carries with it the suggestion that they lack agency.

near-total bs with a moderate grounding in fact