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Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#111

Post by massysett »

nicbou wrote: post #78

In college, meeting someone that was better than me by every conceivable metric. You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. Perfect grades, involved in many communities, and generally pleasant to be around. There was no caveat, no excuse. Dude just straight up rocked. I have met more people like that while travelling. I felt badass riding my moto…

> You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category.

This is literally impossible. A person cannot be Einstein and Picasso at the same time. A person cannot be Steve Jobs and Pope Francis at the same time. We all have limited time in life, and it is only possible to excel in one thing by focusing on it and, as a result, not focusing on something else.

This is a beautiful thing. I watch the teachers in my kids' schools and they do a great job and I think "that's why they're teachers and I'm a lawyer." I watch a great play and I think "that's why they're actors and I'm a lawyer." I hope I'm as good at my work as they are at theirs. But I can't excel at what they do. I don't have time.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#112

Post by AndrewKemendo »

formerly_proven wrote: post #59
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #24

From 2011-2012 was Senior intelligence officer for Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, which is one of the most strategic bases in the United States department of Defense. As SIO you are statutorily responsible for the joint worldwide intelligence, communication system (JWICS), maintenance, security, growth, interruptibility, etc… in addition to managing all Perssec for SCI holders, and maintaining control, security and f…

While it's an interesting story, I don't think this Ask HN was meant as a "what's your greatest weakness" job interview question.

Hey if you consider that my greatest weakness then I’m doing great!

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#113

Post by selimthegrim »

circlefavshape wrote: post #21

Not my own story, but my mother's, told to me on the occasion of my 50th birthday ... My parents met in their early 20s through another couple, Des (flatmate of my father's) and Mary (schoolmate of my mother's). Des had a sore hip, and Mary's mother was a "bonesetter" (a kind of folk healer) so came to the men's flat to see him. "Seeing him" involved Des getting some kind of vigorous massage in the bedroom, and then…

What if she had said mandrake?

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#115

Post by malkosta »

When I was working in a queue feature (for example to buy tailor swift ticket), and was proud of my complicated real-time solution using websockets and CRDTs...then a more experienced guy came, rearchitected in a much simpler way using just the DB with long-polling, not real real-time (but who cares), and it ended up simpler to deal with network splits or crashes. Learned the hard way you can never rely on the network if you require consistency, and it's also often simpler code-wise.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#117

Post by mindwok »

massysett wrote: post #111
nicbou wrote: post #78

In college, meeting someone that was better than me by every conceivable metric. You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. Perfect grades, involved in many communities, and generally pleasant to be around. There was no caveat, no excuse. Dude just straight up rocked. I have met more people like that while travelling. I felt badass riding my moto…

> You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. This is literally impossible. A person cannot be Einstein and Picasso at the same time. A person cannot be Steve Jobs and Pope Francis at the same time. We all have limited time in life, and it is only possible to excel in one thing by focusing on it and, as a result, not focusing on something else. Th…

OP isn't saying the person they were referring to is a world-class figure in everything (or even two things), just that they seemed to be producing better results in the categories OP cared about, which is very achievable.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#118

Post by jnsie »

nicbou wrote: post #78

In college, meeting someone that was better than me by every conceivable metric. You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. Perfect grades, involved in many communities, and generally pleasant to be around. There was no caveat, no excuse. Dude just straight up rocked. I have met more people like that while travelling. I felt badass riding my moto…

> In a way, meeting those people was liberating. I will never be a world champion at anything, so I might as well play for the love of the sport.

Beautiful!

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#119

Post by pedalpete »

meristohm wrote: post #46

Learning that the world doesn't revolve around me, and that other people (and other animals) have rich and complex inner lives worthy of curiosity, dignity, and love (I can't be sure, but it feels like a healthy perspective). I'm in my 40s and this lesson, started in youth, is still sinking in. Having a child, and the commensurate second childhood, is a major impetus.

I was going to write something very similar to this. Not only does the world not revolve around me, but looking back on my sadly somewhat recent behavior in early-mid 40s, and feeling ashamed and embarrassed at my behaviour and how I've treated people in the past.

This is still a learning experience, probably always will be one, and an opportunity to always grow.

My impetus wasn't a child, but a break-up and almost lost business. I saved the business in the end, but it didn't grow to what I had expected, and then I realized how much I had given up, just to try to make that work, and how much I had taken for granted the people around me.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#120

Post by bee_rider »

koeng wrote: post #79

I’m learning swing dancing. It’s been humbling. It’s humbling because all my life, I’ve been really good at technology - I specialize in biotechnology and manipulating DNA, but am also fluent in programming (mainly python, go, lua) and am able to build hardware - even helped run a robotics startup for a while. Anything related to technology and science comes easily and naturally to me. This isn’t to brag, but just a…

I tried to learn to dance (hated it). It is a bit of a weird thing though, there as social events where people feel like it is OK to really try and pressure people into dancing. It is really annoying.
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