I’ll tackle this post in a few sections. First, I’ll talk about a given theme that I noticed while reading the book, then I’ll give a few words on how I projected them into my life.

Themes I noticed:

Ending the fight

In the book, there are two boys that ender accidentally kills in self defense. Bonzo and Stilson are two characters in the book that present themselves as bullies. They plot to kill ender or bully him. When ender discovers their malicious intent, the next conflict that he finds with both Stilson and Bonzo are their last moments.

In Ender’s mind, he wants to fight and end all future fights.

Suffering is the furnace

In Battle School, Ender faces a bunch of challenges that other commanders his age never did, and every challenge made him a better commander. Back to back fights, two fights in one day, fights where the enemy was already prepared, fights vs two armies.

Ender felt alone and isolated. He felt like no one would help him. This put him into a furnace where he would be molded into the perfect commander.

What I projected them to be in reality:

Ending the fight

I’ve noticed this with competition in the Valley. A few years ago, Facebook made an offer to Snapchat. It was an insane M and A, but it never went through because those idiots didn’t want to just sell everything to Facebook. This was Facebook’s attempt to end the fight.

If Facebook had made a successful purchase, they would have inherited a whole market. Instead, they had to claw their way and fight Snapchat out of existence. Instagram stories, Facebook stories, Messenger stories. They tried everything to fight Snapchat down, and look at what it took. Years of engineering work when they could have just bought something off the shelf.

Companies need to think about whether it’s cheaper to buy the competitor, or just build their own product. Like think about the overhead it would take to integrate an Uber into an Amazon infrastructure. How much easier and cheaper would it be to just spin up a team and Amazon to implement the same thing with a green field? The answer is different in every situation. When I think about this question, I think of the technical overhead; however in a recent CFO chat, the Lyft CEO mentioned that “You never sell at the bottom.” Honestly sounds like something that belongs on r/wsb, but that’s just me.

Suffering is the furnace

This one is a little more personal. When I find myself unhappy, I work the hardest. At E*Trade, I worked endlessly for a year to study for interviews and get into a big brand tech company.

Ender faced the same thing in Battle School. Teachers forced him into impossible situations and pitted the world against him. I don’t feel like anyone is doing that to me, but I do feel like I put myself under all the pressure. I’m my biggest critic and I expect more from myself than anyone else does.

I need to use this fire more often to grow into the engineer I want to be.