So I ask once again: how do you get a job?
Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
361–370 of 553 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adding to that, even if you don't like negotiating, it's helpful to understand the tactics used by the other person so you can counter them (or at least be aware of it). For instance, my favorite tactic when someone is pushing hard to sell me something or negotiate is the "Appeal to the authority" (i.e. "Let me first talk about it to my wife (or co-founder) about it." Another popular negotiation tactic is to get aske…
>>For instance, my favorite tactic when someone is pushing hard to sell me something or negotiate is the "Appeal to the authority" (i.e. "Let me first talk about it to my wife (or co-founder) about it." In the UK, some sleazy sellers of things like double glazing won't even start discussing the sale unless both husband and wife are present to prevent this tactic.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#363The single best thing I did for professional development was see a therapist. In tech, our jobs are knowledge-based. You can't hammer a nail into a board while you're sitting on the couch with your child, but you can certainly think about software architecture. I've found that my job bleeds into my personal life, and vice versa, and I believe it is far more common than most people realize. Stress piles up and it affe…
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#364If your budget is a few hundred, an IntelliJ Ultimate license. For me it's a force multiplier. Built-in highlights of things that can be improved (e.g. linting) is a bonus. In the end, things like VS Code are just text editors. I mean, you can't get a warning that the `[]` syntax isn't available in your old codebase's flavor of PHP (5.2) in VS Code. I think. Alternatively: Take time off. If you have enough money to l…
At Automattic, the expectations were so much higher. They'd give me a 3000+ line, 20+ file codebase to review, for example. There was plenty of time to complete the task, but with so much code to deal with I needed to very quickly develop some skills and tools to keep it all straight.
I learned a lot of keyboard shortcuts for PHPStorm for quickly noting filenames and line numbers in my review sheet, and wrote several macros for quickly writing out repetitive text. These things were essential because it was so easy to get lost or distracted even by flipping between my notes and the code. I could end up going through the same file 4 times if I wasn't careful (on a first pass, that is - it was normal to take several passes through a code base).
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#365The single best thing I did for professional development was see a therapist. In tech, our jobs are knowledge-based. You can't hammer a nail into a board while you're sitting on the couch with your child, but you can certainly think about software architecture. I've found that my job bleeds into my personal life, and vice versa, and I believe it is far more common than most people realize. Stress piles up and it affe…
I've spent a lot of time with therapists but they've only had the effect of being a sort of guard rail to keep me from falling too deep when I fall; it doesn't seem like they have helped me make any lasting improvements. Based on what I've heard from friends and on this thread, it sounds like it's possible to get a lot more out of talk therapy? What's your range of experiences been like with better or worse therapist…
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#366Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#367The single best thing I did for professional development was see a therapist. In tech, our jobs are knowledge-based. You can't hammer a nail into a board while you're sitting on the couch with your child, but you can certainly think about software architecture. I've found that my job bleeds into my personal life, and vice versa, and I believe it is far more common than most people realize. Stress piles up and it affe…
I've spent a lot of time with therapists but they've only had the effect of being a sort of guard rail to keep me from falling too deep when I fall; it doesn't seem like they have helped me make any lasting improvements. Based on what I've heard from friends and on this thread, it sounds like it's possible to get a lot more out of talk therapy? What's your range of experiences been like with better or worse therapist…
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#368The single best thing I did for professional development was see a therapist. In tech, our jobs are knowledge-based. You can't hammer a nail into a board while you're sitting on the couch with your child, but you can certainly think about software architecture. I've found that my job bleeds into my personal life, and vice versa, and I believe it is far more common than most people realize. Stress piles up and it affe…
Meanwhile all my American friends get free therapy. Weird how that breaks the narrative about US healthcare.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here, AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with 64gb. I just realized I don't need that when I am seating in front of tv or while traveling, and as long as I can connect two external monitors to my laptop is enough. Something "similar" to this in MacBook world is 4k, and you end up with a portable device with worst battery performance and always suffering that you are about to loose your life. VS Code was definitely something that…
I've always wanted to do this but do you run IDE on laptop or XWindows/VNC/RDP? Also big screen laptops now are more expensive than smaller ones which is the opposite of 10 years ago.
- Pixelbook with 8Gb. Not cheap ($1000) but I think you can find similar options for half of that. I mostly wanted to try it but I am happy with it now. Important, I just use it for Chrome and VS Code, nothing else! Battery life is decent, you can run linux apps, it has touchscreen and is light. I personally don't care about the screen now, I actually prefer small laptops to carry them and I have two 27" screens on my desk
- I run the IDE on the laptop and lxc containers in the workstation for different projects
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#370I once did a two-day workshop on negotiation techniques, which covered not only methods but also helped me to become more comfortable dealing with the psychological stress that's induced in many negotiation situations. So far I'd say the course (which was free as I won it as a prize in a business plan competition) is directly responsible for at least 50-100.000 € of additional revenue that I made in the last years, s…
When I was purchasing a car this helped a lot too! Salesmen are much more experienced than me since they negotiate every day, but even accounting for that it is easy to see what they are doing with other customers and easy to see through the attempts they make on myself. The most common one of course is the "time limited" deal... As if I just happened to show up on the only day there is a sale...
How much is a day off work going to cost you? If you can save more than that by negotiating go ahead.
Let's say one day might shave you $1k off, but 2 days of effort might save you $1.5k, consider the diminishing returns. Or just consider it "education" or "entertainment"