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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?

#461

Post by jajko »

I've been humbled since my childhood by many/most peers at school, and it continues till this day. Memorizing stuff was a nightmare, just repeating it many times eventually worked but it required significant tenacity. I felt I had some mild brain fog or similar. For some reason remembered numbers and dates very well, so at least history classes worked OK for me. Remembering names when introducing was and still is completely impossible. One of reasons I've never considered medical or law universities (plus very hard to get into). Archaic eastern European school system focused on raising obedient drones just memorizing stuff didn't help. It (+parents) taught me patience, tons of it, otherwise I would not finish even secondary school. Smart folks have it sometimes too easy early in life and lack mental resilience for hardships that is in all cases required later in life. Not sure if this puts me on some tiny low number on autistic spectrum or similar, never explored that but this forum gives me ideas. Always had emotions under control, all big decisions were rational first, emotional second (but when I want I let emotions free, but only those intense and positive ones), never understood why so many folks around me do stupid stuff they later regretted.

It continues till this day - a new framework is harder to learn, some advanced concepts are harder to grasp than everybody around me, older code is sometimes like somebody else's.

Yet, contrary to expectations of many including my parents, I wasn't afraid to move countries and was very open to new experiences positive or negative, seeked higher compensation which ended up me being put together with some smart capable folks, and eventually after decade and a half ended up in Switzerland, integrating banking packages for banks here. Salary from first 100% perm job I had went up maybe 30x (cost are sky high too especially with small kids but I still love the overall package of living here).

Bought a house for my parents who would otherwise spent rest of their lives in crammed little block apartment. Got into various intense and cca extreme sports like paragliding, climbing, alpinism, ski touring, diving etc where mistakes are paid dearly and strong focus and relatively high skill is a must. Backpacking in places like India for months taught me a lot about life and myself.

Don't want this to sound like a humblebrag, in contrary, I still feel very much subpar to most colleagues and folks here (and I can sometimes still see my mental deficiencies), rather to give folks who feel stupid and worthless all the time when growing up a glance that it can all end up much better. Just keep challenging yourself and don't be afraid of the change or some mild hardships especially when young and without too many responsibilities, stay away from 'comfort zone' as far and for as long as possible. Don't do stupid basic mistakes like getting addicted to stuff that will then destroy you, life goes fast, and don't get married / get kids with folks who don't have properly good heart for the lack of better words, you know when you meet them and observe a bit. Some of much smarter and capable folks got stuck in some weird (mental) place or job and when meeting them after 2 decades I clearly surpassed them in almost every aspect of life, although life ain't no race for me in any aspect.

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

#462

Post by whstl »

shafyy wrote: post #418
rcbdev wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not in the U.S. but in Europe, Software Engineering is often a field of engineering where one can get licensed. i.e. in Austria many IT techs and devs are called (at the doctor's office or in formal settings) "Mr. Engineer" ("Herr Ingenieur") if they fulfill some formal criteria and get licensed. A further qualification is becoming a federally certified civil technician for IT (Ziviltechniker or Ingenieurskonsu…

Here's a story for you: I was born and raised in Switzerland, but I live in Germany now. When I first moved here, I was working as a freelancer and needed to register as a sole entrepreneur (Einzelunternehmen, one of the legal entity forms here). Now, there are several types of taxes you pay in Germany based on your income. One of them is the income tax, the other is called Gewerbesteuer (maybe best translated as "co…

Bizarrely enough, I always had "Software Engineer" written on all my documents here in Germany: my old Residence Permit, tax documents, contracts, the speedy authorisation from Agentur für Arbeit when I moved here, etc. As far as BRD is concerned, I am a software engineer.

But I never really studied software engineering or anything related, only Electric Engineering.

But nobody in the government knows that. I don't have my diploma papers with me and have no time or interest in going to my country of origin and ask my university for it.

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

#463

Post by _han »

remoquete wrote: post #308
bloomingeek wrote: post #225

In 1993 I was interviewed for an operating job in a power plant for a major airline, assigned to their data center. At my current job, I was working in a high rise office building with sixty-six floors. The operating system computer was a JC8520, which was running a version of MS-DOS. All commands had to be typed in correctly or nothing would happen. While operating the plant, several commands had to be entered every…

> While operating the plant, several commands had to be entered every shift That reminds of the bunker from Lost.

4 8 15 16 23 42

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

#464

Post by jacknews »

rcbdev wrote: post #363
icelancer wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one wants to be a "programmer." They'd rather be called "engineers." With none of the licensure, mandatory education, and so forth. But the world needs programmers and technicians for most of the work we have to do. I do comparably little "engineering" and the little I have done that qualifies for such a statement I recall. Majority of the work is programming and technician work. Nothing wrong with that.

Maybe not in the U.S. but in Europe, Software Engineering is often a field of engineering where one can get licensed. i.e. in Austria many IT techs and devs are called (at the doctor's office or in formal settings) "Mr. Engineer" ("Herr Ingenieur") if they fulfill some formal criteria and get licensed. A further qualification is becoming a federally certified civil technician for IT (Ziviltechniker or Ingenieurskonsu…

"Software around the world is engineered - it just often isn't in California."

Can you explain the difference between 'engineered' software, and the rest? I mean other than being created by someone with an engineering certificate or whatever.

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

#465

Post by Vibgyor5 »

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 usually don't comment on HN but needed to ask you: How did you recover?

It's been 8 years since I graduated. I started working at a Bank in a Management Rotational Program with great manager but dropped it within 4 months because young me dreaded being pigeon-holed at 9-5. I joined a promising startup but... the co-founder unexpectedly passed away. Long story short, I have had 6 jobs (incl. internships) within last 8 years: I have lost jobs for one reason or the other (startup folded, directions changed etc).

In good times, I am able to appreciate diversity my experience but I feel undervalued; I am more of a "jack of all trades, master of none" and feel I've taken 2 steps forward, one step back in my career. This has also damaged my professional as well as personal interests.

How do I move forward from here?

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

#466

Post by Vibgyor5 »

rulalala wrote: post #145

Losing my job in my mid 30s, and changing career trajectories with 2 children. I learned my own limits. And importantly, that we are how we frame ourselves: a loser, a victim, a believer, or someone humbly exceptional. Thanks for asking.

I usually don't comment on HN but needed to ask you: How did your framing work? And can you elaborate "learning my own limits"?

It's been 8 years since I graduated. I started working at a Bank in a Management Rotational Program with great manager but dropped it within 4 months because young me dreaded being pigeon-holed at 9-5. I joined a promising startup but... the co-founder unexpectedly passed away. Long story short, I have had 6 jobs (incl. internships) within last 8 years: I have lost jobs for one reason or the other (startup folded, directions changed etc).

In good times, I am able to appreciate diversity my experience but I feel undervalued; I am more of a "jack of all trades, master of none" and feel I've taken 2 steps forward, one step back in my career. This has also damaged my professional as well as personal interests. In early 30s now, I crave moving to a more stable job/corporate but feel typecasted as someone who's worked at early-stage startups most of the time; this economy hasn't been kind when it comes to finding work either.

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

#467

Post by nedt »

deaddodo wrote: post #98
king_phil wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not in the German speaking countries, we have different blinds. You pull a cord down for the blinds to go up, and vice versa. Then the cord is tied to a hook or button.

No offense, but HN and Reddit are both American created, operated, and primarily trafficked sites. It's not unusual to assume an American audience. If OP came out assuming a Nairobi design that wasn't used anywhere else, or if they went to the heise.de forums and posted the above; now that would be odd/call-out worthy.

It looks like more than half the traffic is not coming from the US. So even with most traffic coming from the US many here aren't. Good news is that Ikea had a system like that. So there will be many households in Europe that's also fighting with blinds.

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

#468

Post by izacus »

blowski wrote: post #324
erhaetherth wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Always write the simplest thing you can, but no simpler. I don't think so. Time and time again the client will insist on stuff like "the customer only needs a single email address/phone number" but you're going to pay for that one later if you do the simple thing and add an "email" column. Same for addresses. And a whole bunch of other stuff...you need to normalize the heck out of your DB early on, even if you don'…

Go down the simple path to start, and refactor to a more complex solution when it makes sense to do so. If experience tells you the client is definitely going to ask for it later, add a “break condition” that tells you when you need to upgrade. You can put entry points into the code - comments, interfaces - to make it easier to do the upgrade.

In many many cases this doesn't work and it crashes and burns the whole project/startup company when its necessary.

Sometimes messing up your fundamental architecture means that you hit a refactoring your company won't survive (while your competition grabs all the customers who wanted that feature your architecture doesn't allow).

This is where experienced lead engineers earn their worth - they understand which parts cannot be fudged and fixed later and need to be there from the get go.

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

#469

Post by izacus »

lr4444lr wrote: post #104
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 think the other replies miss an important part of your comment: Some of these projects were so late in their deadlines that had to be canceled Speed is really important a lot more often than devs like to acknowledge when a company is small and fighting for its life to get revenue, let alone become profitable, and the code debt is often worth it. Fixing the code debt itself doesn't need to be any more thorough than…

And the other part is just the sheer amount of projects that can't deliver that "speed" after a year or two because shoddy, quick and poor decisions were made around code quality. Once you find out that your startup chose the wrong architecture because "we need to do it fast" and it needs to stop pivoting for 6 months to unfsck themselves, it's mostly too late.

Unfortunately people who create those monstrosities hide behind the same "keep it simple and quick" excuse than people who know how to prioritize.

It's interesting how many people here ignore that scenario - it's surprisingly common. Is it because most of developers jump ship at that point?

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

#470

Post by tictacttoe »

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.…

Having heard a variation of this comment many times, I keep waiting for an “aha” moment, where I see the light and abandon my obsession with minimalism and clean code.

But at least in science roles it hasn’t happened yet. Rather, I keep seeing instances of bogus scientific conclusions which waste money for years before they are corrected.

Being systematic, reproducible, and thorough is difficult, but it’s the only way to do science.

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