These lessons summarize what Joe Lonsdale learned from working over many years with Peter Thiel, our chairman and one of our founders. These are very much worth reading for everyone at Palantir — they will change the way you think.
這些課程總結了喬・隆斯代爾多年來與我們的董事長彼得・蒂爾合作所學到的知識,他也是我們的創始人之一。對於所有在 Palantir 工作的人來說,這些內容都非常值得一讀,它們將改變你的思維方式。
The nine lessons: 九課:
1. Divide reasoning into separate parts and clearly identify the most important factor.
1. 將推理分為不同部分,並清楚地確定最重要的因素。
If there’s no single reason that can cause you to do something, you should think carefully about whether it’s important or not. Oftentimes we’ll want to do something, and we’ll give multiple reasons for it without thinking hard about them. If you can’t give a single reason that justifies doing something on its own, you should be very wary that you aren’t exercising sufficient intellectual discipline.
如果沒有一個單一的原因可以促使你做某事,你應該仔細考慮這是否重要。我們經常會想做某事,並且會給出多個原因,而沒有仔細思考。如果你無法給出一個單一的理由來證明做某事是正確的,你應該非常警惕自己是否缺乏足夠的智力紀律。
2. Don’t divide your attention: focusing on one thing yields increasing returns for each unit of effort.
2. 不要分散注意力:專注於一件事情會為每一個努力單位帶來成倍回報。
At a micro level, an extra hour of focus on the current project has a much higher return than an hour on something new, or worse, 5 minutes each on 12 new things. Before you ever do something new, you should understand the opportunity cost vs. existing things. Don’t rationalize that something you want to do is complementary when it’s not!
在微觀層面上,對目前專案多花一小時的專注比花在新事物上的一小時回報更高,或者更糟糕的是,每個新事物花 5 分鐘。在嘗試新事物之前,應該先了解機會成本與現有事物之間的差異。不要合理化你想做的事情是互補的,當事實上並非如此!
At a macro level, understanding that applied effort has a convex output curve is a very useful discipline when considering new market areas. This convexity means that the opportunity cost of transferring resources from existing projects to new ones is high. Unless the new area is incredibly valuable, anything we can do to extend an existing convex curve is worth so much more.
從宏觀的角度來看,了解應用努力具有凸出曲線的輸出是在考慮新市場領域時非常有用的學科。這種凸性意味著將資源從現有項目轉移到新項目的機會成本很高。除非新領域非常有價值,我們可以做的任何事情來延長現有的凸曲線都更有價值。
3. In hiring, value intelligence highly. Like focus, intelligence yields increasing returns.
3. 在招聘時,高度重視智慧價值。就像專注一樣,智慧會帶來不斷增長的回報。
Like focus, intelligence has a convex output curve — the smartest people can be an order of magnitude more productive than others who are only somewhat less smart. The key in hiring is to value potential skill rather than currently existing skill — and potential skill is based on intelligence rather than training.
就像焦點一樣,智慧也有一個凸出的輸出曲線 —— 最聰明的人可以比其他稍微不那麼聰明的人更有效率一個數量級。在招聘中的關鍵是要重視潛在技能而不是目前已有的技能 —— 潛在技能是基於智慧而不是訓練。
4. Obsess over perfection.
4. 迷戀完美。
If you are designing something that a customer is going to use or that will represent us in public, it’s not good enough unless it’s flawless and extraordinary.
如果您正在設計客戶將使用的產品,或者代表我們在公眾場合,除非它是無瑕且非凡的,否則是不夠好的。
Especially in software, many situations have winner-take-all dynamics due to network effects and switching costs. Being the winner means being in the 99.99-percentile. A winner at the top takes nearly everything, and only a pittance goes to the others — so being 99.99-percentile is worth an order of magnitude or two more than being just 98-percentile. If it’s 1am and you’ve already got something that is very good, this is why it’s worth spending the next couple of hours to make it amazing.
特別是在軟體領域,由於網絡效應和轉換成本,許多情況下存在著取勝者通吃的動態。成為贏家意味著處於 99.99 百分位。頂尖的贏家幾乎獨佔鰲頭,其他人只能得到微不足道的一點點,因此處於 99.99 百分位比處於 98 百分位要有一到兩個數量級的價值。如果現在是凌晨 1 點,而你已經有了一個非常好的東西,這就是為什麼值得再花幾個小時讓它變得更加出色。
5. Use small details as indicators to point to the larger truth — and be alert when they point to conclusions you don’t like.
5. 使用小細節作為指向更大真相的指標,並當它們指向你不喜歡的結論時要保持警覺。
Despite the danger in this approach — indicators are not always right — more often than not you can derive a lot of wisdom from subtle indicators. How competent a single person is or how hard one person is working, or what a couple smart people think, might tell you a lot about a group before deciding whether to work with them. It’s an important discipline to be open to any indicators that you find whether they confirm your biases or not. In fact, you should be open to them especially when they do not confirm your biases.Indicators can be about all sorts of things, such as about the importance of a contract, the effectiveness of our software in different scenarios, the opinions and biases of key decision makers, etc. Few people pay as close or as honest attention to them as they should.
儘管這種方法存在危險性 —— 指標並不總是正確的 —— 但往往您可以從微妙的指標中獲得許多智慧。在決定是否與一個團隊合作之前,了解單個人的能力如何,一個人工作有多努力,或者一對聰明人的想法,可能會告訴您很多。要對您找到的任何指標持開放態度是一種重要的紀律,無論它們是否證實您的偏見。事實上,當它們不證實您的偏見時,您應該尤其持開放態度。指標可以涉及各種事情,例如合同的重要性、我們軟體在不同情境下的效果、主要決策者的意見和偏見等。很少有人像他們應該的那樣密切或誠實地關注這些指標。
6. Don’t waste time talking about what you plan to think about; instead, work through it immediately.
6. 不要浪費時間談論你打算思考的事情;相反,立即著手處理。
Intellectual laziness can easily sneak up on you. If you are sitting there talking about problems you plan to solve later, there’s a good chance you are being inefficient. Similarly, in GTD, you don’t put off tasks that only take a couple minutes. In many cases, you can outline and solve or at least clarify any decision or problem you’re confronted with in just a few minutes.
智力懶惰很容易悄悄靠近你。如果你坐在那裡談論你打算稍後解決的問題,很可能你是在浪費時間。同樣地,在 GTD 中,你不應該拖延只需要幾分鐘的任務。在許多情況下,你可以在幾分鐘內概述、解決或至少澄清你所面臨的任何決定或問題。
7. Take the time to listen to smart people with whom you disagree.
7. 抽出時間聆聽與你意見不同但聰明的人。
This is not easy to do. Over time, any firm will find that certain methods and biases tend to work very well, and the more successful it is, the more it will develop its own unique mindset. We couldn’t succeed without the methods and principles that we learn over time, nor can we constantly re-articulate why they are the correct approach to everyone who comes along.
這並不容易。隨著時間的推移,任何公司都會發現某些方法和偏見往往非常有效,而且它越成功,就越會形成自己獨特的心態。我們無法在沒有隨著時間學習的方法和原則下取得成功,也無法不斷向每個人重新闡述為什麼這些是正確的方法。
A sort of pride rightly develops around the successful structure, but this mindset cannot be allowed to ossify into an orthodoxy. So we have to use our judgment to seek out intelligent people who disagree with us — or even intelligent people who have simply taken a different approach — and be open about what we might learn from them. Despite his very strongly developed and out-of-the-mainstream views, Peter does this constantly, and it makes him extremely effective.
一種驕傲的情感在成功的結構周圍正確地發展,但這種心態不能僵化為正統。因此,我們必須運用判斷力,尋找與我們意見不一致的聰明人,甚至只是採取不同方法的聰明人,並坦誠地討論我們可能從他們那裡學到的東西。儘管彼得的觀點非常強烈且與主流觀點不同,但他經常這樣做,這使他極其有效。
8. Be skeptical of any sort of external allies, and don’t trust the execution of anyone outside Palantir.
8. 對任何外部盟友保持懷疑態度,不要相信除了 Palantir 外的任何人的執行。
In the abstract, this is because the incentives of the other company will not line up with ours, and even if they do for the moment, they no longer will once the situation changes. In specific, other companies don’t have the same culture of execution that Palantir does, and we don’t have the power to instill that culture in them. Very early on, Peter saved Palantir from a partnership that would likely have destroyed the company.
總的來說,這是因為其他公司的激勵與我們的不一致,即使它們暫時一致,一旦情況改變,它們也不再一致。具體來說,其他公司沒有像 Palantir 一樣的執行文化,我們也沒有能力在他們身上灌輸這種文化。早期,Peter 拯救了 Palantir,避免了一個可能摧毀公司的合作夥伴關係。
In practice, that skepticism has led us to force others to pay upfront as one of the ways of proving value, which has worked well. Ultimately, only our own execution can make us win.
實際上,這種懷疑主義促使我們強迫他人提前支付作為證明價值的一種方式之一,這一方法效果很好。最終,只有我們自己的執行才能使我們取得勝利。
9. Return to first principles and act quickly on your new conclusions.
9. 返回第一原則,並迅速採取新結論。
It’s very easy to take the world as it is, as opposed to envisioning it as you want it to be. For example, when re-designing a feature, one approach is to take what you have, and imagine small changes that will solve the problems with the feature. Instead, it’s often instructive to imagine that you were working from a clean slate and design the feature from scratch. In either case, the right approach is almost always to re-use the existing codebase in your implementation — but starting from first principles frees your mind from your assumptions about implementation complexity and forces you to re-consider the assumptions that stand in the way of the best solution.
將世界看作現狀,而非按照自己想像的方式來看,這是非常容易的。例如,在重新設計一個功能時,一種方法是採用現有的內容,想像一些小的變化來解決該功能的問題。然而,更具啟發性的方法通常是想像自己從一張白紙開始設計功能。無論哪種情況,正確的方法幾乎總是在實現中重複使用現有的代碼庫,但從第一原則出發可以使您擺脫對實現複雜性的假設,並迫使您重新考慮阻礙最佳解決方案的假設。
Just like questioning our own assumptions, returning to first principles and building the argument up from scratch is a very powerful intellectual device that helps us to recreate our models as you receive new information, and to uncover options and opportunities you’d otherwise miss. It is not surprising to see that the largest hedge fund in the world, now one of our customers, also emphasized this as their key methodology.
就像質疑我們自己的假設一樣,回歸首要原則並從頭開始建立論點是一種非常強大的智力工具,幫助我們在接收新信息時重新創建我們的模型,並揭示您否則會錯過的選項和機會。毫不奇怪,世界上最大的對沖基金之一,現在是我們的客戶之一,也強調這是他們的關鍵方法論。