Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 704 posts

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

#151

Post by brailsafe »

smeej wrote: post #53
brailsafe wrote: post #36

Idk what my most humbling moment would be, but there's been a few. I've spent the majority of my career looking for wook rather than doing work, and have lost at least 7 jobs in the first 12 years for one reason or another. This is going on the 3rd time I've spent more than a year without working at all in any job. It never gets easier, and each time I get to spend a ton of time reflecting on how things went and what…

I think you need to try working in tiny startups, if any of your skills would make that work. There, gaps in resumes and random ends to employment are expected. Nobody asks about mine, and I end up taking a full year off every 4-5 years whether I want to or not (but I usually do want to). No, my normie friends don't get it at all, and everyone ALWAYS asks me "how the job search is going" even when I've told them ever…

Ya that would be my ideal next place, unfortunately it's also an economic downtown in Canada, so I'm sort of doing the latter part of your comment and throwing DMs and my resume out whenever something comes up. Honestly I'm thankful that I've had the time off, and because I expect any given job won't last long, I save my money quite aggressively.

Eventually something turns up.

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

#152

Post by motoxpro »

deadbabe wrote: post #146
hu3 wrote: post #83

Learning that some folks can produce so much value with crappy code. I've seen entire teams burn so much money by overcomplicating projects. Bikesheding about how to implement DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, design patterns, complex queues that would maybe one day be required if the company scaled 1000x, unnecessary eventual consistency that required so much machinery and man hours to keep data integrity under control.…

I wonder if you’ll still admire them when they leave and the burden of maintaining the mess they left behind falls on you.

Nothing to maintain because all the overengineered projects got canceled.

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

#153

Post by motoxpro »

massysett wrote: post #144
mablopoule wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just need to meet someone like that, they are rare but they exists. It doesn't means that they are good at everything , just that they are better than you in every way. I had a colleague like that. She was super nice, super smart, very good looking, was well-balanced emotionally, and dated a professional athlete. The kind of person who has a very good career, and then train for the marathon on the weekend. Even h…

> just that they are better than you in every way. Nope, I have never once met a person like that and am confident I never will. OK, so John Urschel plays football and is great at math. Are you telling me he is also a particle physicist, a statesman, a mountain man, a mob boss, and an astronaut? If not how is he good at “everything”?

Wait so you are a particle physicist, a statesman, a mountain man, a mob boss, and an astronaut?

Stop thinking global maxima (everyone in the world) and start thinking local maxima (you) and I promise there is someone that beats every local (you) metric you have.

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

#154

Post by brailsafe »

daymanstep wrote: post #38
brailsafe wrote: post #36

Idk what my most humbling moment would be, but there's been a few. I've spent the majority of my career looking for wook rather than doing work, and have lost at least 7 jobs in the first 12 years for one reason or another. This is going on the 3rd time I've spent more than a year without working at all in any job. It never gets easier, and each time I get to spend a ton of time reflecting on how things went and what…

Honest question and genuinely curious: what is difficult about showing up on time?

Looks like riehwvfbk (below) hit the nail on the head. I don't know that I can add anything to their explanation, except that the blackouts are an analogy for what is basically object/obligation permanence issues.

For example, I might get in the shower with enough time to make it to my zoom call or an actual in-person job, and then start thinking about something or realize the hair has grown in on my shoulder, and literally forget that I had somewhere to be, or wildly misjudge how long I've been in there, and it can kick off a series of additional delays, like I might then miss the bus.

In one-off or irregular situations, this rarely happens, but given enough time, I'm bound to do something like this that doesn't fit into what my manager considers suitable conduct, and once they get this in their head, it's tough to recover from.

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

#156

Post by jimt1234 »

Sophomore year of high school, riding the bus to school, I realized I was weak, too weak to stand up for what I knew what right, but didn't because of peer pressure. I hated myself for it; the realization fuucked me up for weeks.

During my sophomore year, a girl moved into my neighborhood. She was from Vietnam, presumably part of some refugee relocation program. She seemed nice, and she was very pretty, but in St. Louis County (Missouri) during the early 80's, she stood out. A lot. None of the kids in the neighborhood, including myself, had ever met an Asian person before - just Bruce Lee movies, that was it. Also, there was still bitterness left-over from the Vietnam War. But like I said, she seemed nice. Heck, I kinda had a crush on her. Anyway, one day riding the bus to school, a couple of dudes starting yelling racial insults at her - you know the word I'm talking about. And they were throwing stuff at her, pretending they were bombs, like dropping bombs from an airplane. This went on for a few minutes, and no one did anything about it. People just laughed, including the bus driver. I was sitting close to her and I could see it affected her, like she wanted to start crying, but she was holding it in. I wanted to do something. I wanted to stand up to the instigators and tell them to knock it off. I knew these guys; we all grew up together. I knew I should do something. But I didn't. My body - everything, was frozen. I did nothing.

Afterwords, I initially told myself that I wasn't one of the instigators, I didn't actively participate, so I shouldn't feel bad. But I quickly came to realize that was bullshiit. It actually made me feel worse. I just sat there. I knew it was wrong. But I did nothing.

I moved to California just a few weeks after this incident, so I don't know what ever happened to the girl. I hope she went on to live a happy, successful life. If so, it had nothing to do with me, because I was too weak to help her when she needed it.

Anyway, that realization - that I was a weak person, provoked a lot of self-reflection. It's one of my most vivid memories, and I hope it made me a better person. But, even if I did become a better person from it, it still haunts me that a poor girl had to suffer just so I could, maybe, become a better person.

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

#157

Post by projectileboy »

hu3 wrote: post #83

Learning that some folks can produce so much value with crappy code. I've seen entire teams burn so much money by overcomplicating projects. Bikesheding about how to implement DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, design patterns, complex queues that would maybe one day be required if the company scaled 1000x, unnecessary eventual consistency that required so much machinery and man hours to keep data integrity under control.…

As a good friend of mine often says: We work in a field of people who envision themselves as artists, when all that is wanted are painters.

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

#158

Post by greenie_beans »

i'm always getting humbled, but most recently, i read the intro to an important academic book in the field that i studied in undergrad and i realized that didn't know much in the field, and don't fully understand the book's argument.

or whenever i plant trees or vegetables and they die or get a pest.

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

#159

Post by mablopoule »

steven_noble wrote: post #106

Mostly politics, where I have learned to stop predicting anything that can't be directly seen -- especially the future. For example: 1. Trump wins. I firmly predicted the opposite. To be fair, most polls predicted the same. But the lesson is to be less certain about the future. 2. No chemical weapon found in Iraq. I firmly predicted the opposite. To be fair, when that event unfolded, it was not that long since the wo…

My "favorite" example about this is the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, because it's so easy to jump to conclusions (especially when it seem to fit the ambiant discourse) and be completely wrong about the whole situation.

It's a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida that was in 2016 the theater of a mass shooting (49 killed + 58 injured) during a "Latin night".

I still remember hearing about it on social media at the time, that it was another attack on LGBT, and especially an attack on minorities... turns out that the perpetrator didn't even knew it was a gay nightclub, he was an ISIS sympathizer whose ire was directed towards the US at large.

Of course, it doesn't diminish the tragedy of the event, or the fact that the LGBT community of Orlando was the most heavily hit, but it does illustrate that we should be mindful on when we are jumping to conclusions and assuming stuff without all the elements.

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

#160

Post by canadiantim »

chx wrote: post #142

I have been living for 12 years in Canada in an apartment with a baseboard heater. Came an unusually cold winter -- for Vancouver at least -- and I have acknowledged the heater just can't cope with this much cold. Old windows, not much insulation, the works. I bought three three 1500W ceramic heaters and AWG 12 extension cords and it was OK. Then a visitor told me the baseboard heater had a cover which you could remo…

Why'd you leave Canada, if I may ask?
Post reply on HN