Book Byte #133 "Smart People Should Build Things" by Andrew Yang
How to Restore our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America
đŁ Curious Quotes from the Author
âI run Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that recruits dozens of our countryâs top graduates each year and places them in startups and growth companies in Detroit, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Providence, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and other cities around the country. Our goal is to help create 100,000 new US jobs by 2025. We supply talent to early-stage companies so that they can expand and hire more people. And we train a critical mass of our best and brightest graduates to build enterprises and create new opportunities for themselves and others.â
âIt wasnât until I got to the law firm that things started hitting me. First, the people around me seemed pretty unhappy. You can go to any corporate law firm and see dozens of people whose satisfaction with their jobs is below average. The work was entirely uninspiring. We were for the most part grease on a wheel, helping shepherd transactions along; it was detail-intensive and often quite dull. Only years later did I realize what our economic purpose was: if a transaction was large enough, you had to pay a team of people to pore over documents into the wee hours to make sure nothing went wrong. I had zero attachment to my clientsânot unusual, given that I was the last rung down on the ladder, and most of the time I only had a faint idea of who my clients were. Someone above me at the firm would give me a task, and Iâd do it.
âThis is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the âinstantâ success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide.
âWeâve let the market dictate what our smart kids do, and theyâre being systematically funneled into obvious, structured paths that donât serve them or the economy terribly well.â
âYouâll choose to do something for a few years, and youâll still be the same you. This isnât the case. Spending your twenties traveling four days a week, interviewing employees, and writing detailed reports on how to cut costs will change you,â
đ Cognition of the Bookâs Big Idea:
Top students at premier colleges in the United States primarily pursue careers in professional service companies, sometimes known as consultancies. However, start-ups, not large companies, are driving employment creation and innovation. To stimulate innovation and drive economic growth, we must inculcate a strong entrepreneurial spirit in our finest pupils.
It is never too early to start.
If you want to be successful in a start-up, get involved with a project before it gets extremely popular. This allows you to define the company's direction with your own ideas and increases your chances of being in a position of responsibility.
đ ď¸Fixing the Tech Industry
Is your position in your company a net positive experience? Are you gaining as much progress and fulfillment as the company is gaining value from your work? That is the ideal environment, but it hardly ever happens on both sides at the same time. That balance will ultimately fail the longer that equilibrium holds. Either youâll get sick of the job or the company will get sick of you.
Always prepare for that day whether you think it could happen or not, because it most likely will and its better to be prepared than not.
đ¤Collaborate with others with this Social Media Prompt:
What do you think would make a worker love his company for life? Is it possible in todayâs age?
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Try out the "Think and Grow Rich Challenge" by Russell Brunson and Learn more about the First Self Help Author Napoleon Hill