Hacker News surfaces essay to broader readership
2 Oct 31 4:02 PM · 12d ago · 1 article · 3 posts · 3 sources · development 2 of 2
The essay gains traction on Hacker News, where it reaches 104 points and generates 31 comments, making it one of the platform's top culture posts for the day.
Dustin Hoffman Lead actor in 'The Graduate'Mike Nichols Director of 'The Graduate'
The whole story articlesposts the bright band is this development · numbered dots are the others · click one to jump
Reported in the same hours no headline names this development itself — these 1 claim were published in its stretch
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2 outlets Surviving "The Graduate"
first by HN Frontpage, 12d ago · also New Yorker
What people said 16 voices · best of 17 · verbatim
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As an aside, I admire Mike Nichols' ability to make gorgeous _looking_ movies. Many scenes from The Graduate, the State Island Ferry opening scene in The Working Girl, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. And even the 2003 movie Closer. That is almost a 40-year span.Atypically, he worked with 13 different cinematographers across his 19 movies…
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Surviving "The Graduate" L: https://www. newyorker.com/culture/the-week end-essay/dustin-hoffman-on-surviving-the-graduate C: https:// news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5 0319563 posted on 2026.10.31 at 16:02:06 (c=0, p=3)
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I'm 45 and ~21 years into my post grad-school career. I'm finally accepting that I will probably _always_ feel like i'm failing and doing things badly and that's OK. The evidence suggests that I have in fact been doing at least a good enough job in my employers eyes to sustain a career and progress. When I look back on this evidence I don't…
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Surviving "The Graduate" Link: https://www. newyorker.com/culture/the-week end-essay/dustin-hoffman-on-surviving-the-graduate Discussion: https:// news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5 0319563
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Here is my hot take. His belief that he was failing, helped him succeed.I don't mean this in a trite way. The character portrayed is supposed to be awkward and anxious. Feeling awkward and anxious in real life, left him in the right frame of mind when he walked on set. He looked awkward and anxious, because he actually was.Actually feeling what…
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I don’t understand some of the things he’s writing in this article.Why does it matter if the author is Jewish? He mentions it multiple times as if that fact would make himself unfitting to be the lead in the movie…Like there’s this sentence which is confusing to me:”I remember thinking, They’re trying to take the Jew off my face, and it ain’t…
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Something that I was mulling on just the other day. As I grow in my career, on a day to day basis I feel like I'm failing or doing things badly. Maybe because I have no comparison frame for it, because of the growth. Maybe because it's never possible, while you're in the thick of a project, to provide that post-hoc history. The open-endedness…
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I wonder if it's just me, or if the movie did not age well. I saw it for the first time around 10 years ago, and I was really expecting great things since I was a fan of hoffman and of simon and garfunkel. i found it a very lacklustre movie, nothing I had read about hoffman's iconic performance really landed for me, and the movie as a whole seemed…
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> As I grow in my career, on a day to day basis I feel like I'm failing or doing things badly.This is one thing that we should lament about AI generating all the code. You never get to look back at your own "hand crafted" work with the distance of time. Progress or perspective, it does not matter, one would probably find something they could have…
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> Or maybe because I'm growing beyond my limit of capability.That boundary tends to become more and more fuzzy as you grow in your career. I think that’s where the feeling comes from. When you’re a software engineer it’s easy to know if you’ve failed or not. When you’re a CTO it’s often a matter of perspective and depends on what will happen in…
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For anyone not familiar with "The Graduate" or wants a refreshed, this analysis by Steven Benedict is as good as anyway:https://www.stevenbenedict.ie/2012/12/the-graduate/(9 minute audio essay.)
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How do you learn if not by making mistakes? If you weren't ever failing, wouldn't that mean you also were not learning?As tough as it is, I think it's best for your development to be in a space where you're screwing up regularly.
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This is why engineers (including devs) need mentors at all stages in their careers, not just when they're junior. And managers, who assign tasks and determine compensation, mostly can't be mentors.
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Maybe the movie was successful because we could relate to Hoffman, while Redford (probably the handsomest actor ever) being rejected was not relatable.
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People posting here are perhaps missing that it is a comedy - with a bit of tragedy right at the end.
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Wow, gorgeous writing, Ariel Levy was the perfect choice for helping write this.
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