Well one, don't look up to people you personally don't know. Parasocial relationships are not healthy. Look into your local community for people to be mentors or help you.
replyThat said I like Bryan Cantrill as an engineer and leader, but I would never put him on a pedestal.
On the other hand, it's normal to have heroes, and to need to have them.
replyThis is a child mindset, people don't need heroes. They need leaders that care about them and want to better their communities; these leaders are found within your literal neighbors, friends, and family.
replyHeroes like Spiderman and Batman? Or strangers that put on a mask, and whose public image is maintained by PR firms?
replyNot really, that’s what leads to parasocial relationships.
replyNobody is flawless and part of becoming an adult is learning to admire specific qualities rather than obsess over individuals.
It's best to avoid idolizing folks. It can give you a skewed set of expectations and lead you to resent them when inevitably they cannot live up those those expectations (which is unfair to them), and possibly lower your own self esteem if you cannot meet those same standards yourself.
replyTip that will work forever, even when the ones you replace your old idols with get replaced: Don't have any idols.
replyListen to the words, don't follow "personalities", don't listen to specific individuals just because of their status. Not a single time have I been disappointed by an idol, because I've made the conscious choice of not having following any. Bunch of smart people say smart stuff all the time, until they don't. I read everything as if I don't know the author, I think more people should do this and less celebrity worship would make the entire ecosystem better. We need less of it, not more.
I've seen Bryan Cantrill present at a few conferences and his talks are always the best.
replyA recent one (2025q4) he gave at Jane Street, "Andreessen’s Folly - The False Dichotomy of Software and Hardware":
replyIs Jessie Frazelle still there? She is very impressive.
replyno, but still being super impressive. CEO of a company rebuilding a CAD rendering engine because they put an LLM on top of it. So you describe the mechanical specs of the part you want and it models it. Takes all the tedium out of modeling stuff. Super cool and many applications.
replyOh cool! That looks like a super interesting product.
replyThey had to do CAD while working on Oxide and realized that it sucked. So she went off to solve that.
replythat's taking yak shaving to another level!
replyBryan Cantrill
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