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Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

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Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#41

Post by rjbwork »

enraged_camel wrote: post #36
makach wrote: post #12

Work never ends. No matter how much you get done there will always be more. I see a lot of colleagues burn out because they think their extra effort will be noticed. Most managers appriciate it but do not promote their employees.

I manage a team. The reason I don’t promote or give raises to people who overwork is because I don’t want to encourage behavior that inevitably results in burnout. What I instead do when people overwork is I give them extra paid time off. Stayed in the office for a couple of extra hours yesterday helping a customer? Great, please make sure to take Friday afternoon off. You had to work extra last week to meet a deadli…

You sound like a great manager/team lead. I think the obsession with 9-5 and whatever else it takes to get the job done is absurd in today's world.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#42

Post by jakobegger »

cdoxsey wrote: post #26

That almost all software is unreliable and SaaS products only work because there are engineers behind the scenes fixing it all the time. The Wizard of Oz nails it: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" https://youtu.be/YWyCCJ6B2WE

On the contrary, my job taught me that desktop software can be extremely reliable and does not actually break all the time. Many of my customers use versions of my app that are a few years old without any troubles. When the user is in control of their environment, software doesn't suddenly break.

That's not to say software doesn't have bugs. Only that bugs don't appear suddenly.

Most bugs are caused by two things:

(1) Changes to the code that accidentally break unrelated stuff

(2) Changes to the environment (eg. OS vendor releases a new version which changes how some API behaves)

I think (1) is more common.

So I think that the reason why SaaS have problems all the time is that typically devs are changing stuff all the time and accidentally breaking things left and right, not that software is inherently unreliable. And since users can't keep using an old version that works for them, they'll stumble across every bug eventually.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#43

Post by mattnewport »

Working in VR, the state of the art is closer to Pong than to the Holodeck or the Matrix. That doesn't mean there aren't useful applications for the technology but we won't see anything that passes for reality in my lifetime, or perhaps ever.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#45

Post by joshschreuder »

enraged_camel wrote: post #36
makach wrote: post #12

Work never ends. No matter how much you get done there will always be more. I see a lot of colleagues burn out because they think their extra effort will be noticed. Most managers appriciate it but do not promote their employees.

I manage a team. The reason I don’t promote or give raises to people who overwork is because I don’t want to encourage behavior that inevitably results in burnout. What I instead do when people overwork is I give them extra paid time off. Stayed in the office for a couple of extra hours yesterday helping a customer? Great, please make sure to take Friday afternoon off. You had to work extra last week to meet a deadli…

I think that's a great approach but I think the people predisposed to working longer and doing overtime are often the sort of people who won't willingly take that time off. Do you have to encourage it or it's welcomed?

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#47

Post by TrackerFF »

(preface: I worked a string of manual labor jobs before and during college)

A lot of the (now) coveted trade jobs can seem like a very tempting alternative to crushing college debt and volatile job security, but truth be told, many of these trades are plagued with physical injuries, sudden unemployment, and what not.

Furthermore, you deal with A LOT more shady people (employers, customers / clients, suppliers, you name it) than you do in white-collar sectors.

I say this because for the past few years, I've seen an increase in people advocating for people to choose trade jobs over college-educated jobs, like it's the most obvious and risk-free thing in the world.

It's not, and I'd even go as far as arguing that the downsides of trade jobs can be worse than the downsides of a cushy white-collar job.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#48

Post by jaynetics »

enraged_camel wrote: post #36
makach wrote: post #12

Work never ends. No matter how much you get done there will always be more. I see a lot of colleagues burn out because they think their extra effort will be noticed. Most managers appriciate it but do not promote their employees.

I manage a team. The reason I don’t promote or give raises to people who overwork is because I don’t want to encourage behavior that inevitably results in burnout. What I instead do when people overwork is I give them extra paid time off. Stayed in the office for a couple of extra hours yesterday helping a customer? Great, please make sure to take Friday afternoon off. You had to work extra last week to meet a deadli…

A rare but cool approach. Surely tracking extra time in such a way is a bit of extra effort?

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#49

Post by goto11 »

jfim wrote: post #27
makach wrote: post #19

You can always be replaced.

I'd both agree and disagree with that statement. There are people who simply cannot be effectively replaced. That does not mean that the powers that be will not replace them. For example, a startup might have a critical engineer who happens to know how everything works or holds everything together. They can be replaced, although this may have a severe impact on the startup, including the failure of the startup. To yo…

That would not necessarily be poor management though. If a single person is irreplaceable, it is a major risk for any organization.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#50

Post by bjoli »

How little my personal variance in performance actually matters. The only ones that can tell a good day from a bad day by looking at or listening to (I am an orchestra musician) the result is me. The only time it really matters is for big orchestra solos.

I am a much worse programmer than bassoon player, and for programming amount of work put in matters a lot more. I still churn out mostly bad code, but the spectrum is a lot broader.

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