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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?

#141

Post by beaker52 »

That people sometimes do shitty things, make mistakes or let me down, and no matter what, if I squint - I can see myself.

That I'm not always right, or always better than Joe. And that: I'm not always wrong, and Bob is not always better than me.

That we might hit our deadline. And the world will still be there if we don't.

That people do things I don't understand, for reasons I will never see or be able to anticipate. And that's simply the way it is.

Dark corners are found in, or emerge from all positives. Great things are found in, or emerge from all negatives. Nothing is black and white, despite it's appearance. Everything is wishy-washy gray. What was right yesterday may be wrong tomorrow and vice versa.

Or, in summary: things are easier when I'm easier going

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

#142

Post by jb1991 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #137

Life is fleeting. Most of us here are 1/3 or more of the way done. Divest yourself as much as possible from your job. Find other sources of identity. You don't need that fancy car or to buy a boat as much as you need that ejector seat savings account. And when you realise that conditions have evolved to a point where you're not having fun anymore (and they always eventually do), eject yourself and go spend far more t…

Definitely agree, and this is even more of a problem in the United States than most other western nations. Work life balance should be a priority for all human beings, and Americans have much to learn to catch up in this area.

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

#144

Post by pbhjpbhj »

collyw wrote: post #65
badtuple wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but the incredible depth of pretty much every field. Not every practitioner dives deep, but the masters of any job leave me speechless.

Having worked filling shelves in a supermarket, I disagree that it applies to every field.

Supermarket logistics, which (or seems to me) system is built to put things on shelves in the way that creates most profit, is surely one of the essential defining advances in the last few decades of retail? I'm thinking short logistics chains and JIT?

Not my field, but perhaps you need to widen your view a little.

I'll bet there was someone at your store who was the Shiva of Stacking too?

I only worked checkouts (pre barcode scanning, other stores had it).

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

#145

Post by ipnon »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #29

You can get burned out in any kind no matter how great it seemed when you started. People grow and their priorities change. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with the job or your boss or your colleagues or with you. Sometimes you just need a change of scenery and a breath of fresh air, sometimes literally.

There's some amount of money that's worth a burnout or total meltdown, but I doubt it's less than your salary.

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

#146

Post by fxtentacle »

How much feel good and drinking relationships matter in upper management. And on the downside, how little facts weight in when compared to a manager's gut feeling.

Enthusiastically presenting a (factually wrong) solution can be a winning strategy. In high school, I thought I was a math genius because all of my solutions were judged as correct. Turns out, I was just a good presenter and nobody made any effort to check my results.

Managers in big companies will be happy to buy your product if it helps themselves save face, even if it is a net negative for the company. That's how they end up with so many useless initiatives that get canceled after a year of burning money.

Consultants are paid to be a straw man parrot. You tell their coworkers what your contact wants them to hear, so that they can blame it on you if their idea goes wrong.

The same source code given to different product and marketing teams can be a 100x difference in revenue. If the sales team is not rich, run. They either cannot sell the product, or they could not sell themselves to get commission.

Customer support matters a lot less than people think. A buggy 10-year-old software without support can still sell like candy if it solves a real and valuable business problem.

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

#147

Post by austinjp »

From a startup perspective: Getting new combinations of stuff to work, even "enterprise" grade stuff, can be a messy horror-show, at least initially.

There's no point-and-click, no slick GUI, no whizzy installer. Instead there are bugs, blog posts, mailing lists, snowflake configs, and a fair amount of frustration.

If you're lucky and given enough time, you get to understand it, tidy things up, and document it.

Development isn't like installing an app on your shiny wafer-thin Mac that "just works". It's complex. If you want to do something new, you can expect complexity.

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

#149

Post by fxtentacle »

jb1991 wrote: post #142
Waterluvian wrote: post #137

Life is fleeting. Most of us here are 1/3 or more of the way done. Divest yourself as much as possible from your job. Find other sources of identity. You don't need that fancy car or to buy a boat as much as you need that ejector seat savings account. And when you realise that conditions have evolved to a point where you're not having fun anymore (and they always eventually do), eject yourself and go spend far more t…

Definitely agree, and this is even more of a problem in the United States than most other western nations. Work life balance should be a priority for all human beings, and Americans have much to learn to catch up in this area.

I agree. Americans get almost religious if you propose to only work a day per week. Much better to claim that the rest of your week was already fully booked, even though in reality you just don't need the additional money.

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

#150

Post by petrocrat »

agsilvio wrote: post #70
jraedisch wrote: post #66

Public budget is a big part of private companies earnings.

Interesting. Care to elaborate?

It actually extends to the entire economy: The public sector debt is exactly equal to the private sector savings, because they are literally the same entity. Check out MMT Economics for the balance sheet math that demonstrates this.
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