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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?

#241

Post by vasco »

beaker52 wrote: post #141

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…

In the same vein as this, and shown to me by a dear colleague: http://thecodelesscode.com/contents

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

#242

Post by aliceryhl »

collyw wrote: post #74
Rerarom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this has become a cliché here (a true one, however). The interesting question is what sort of jobs contain a lot of challenges that are technical in nature.

The interview process is where the challenges are technical in nature. The only time I have been asked to implement a sort algorithm after university was for interviews.

Generally I find that many companies have a small amount of difficult problems. The trick is to become the person who gets to solve them when they come up.

At one of the places I worked, I got to implement a request batching algorithm using dynamic programming, at another place I got to implement a nurse rostering algorithm (this is not as easy as it sounds, and is an active research area), and at a third place I implemented the recursive tree algorithm that keeps a lookup table of user permissions up-to-date in a situation where roles inherit permissions from other roles.

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

#243

Post by muzani »

dmos62 wrote: post #202
webew wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what would now be termed a "blackpill".

What's a blackpill? Is this a twist on the Matrix's shtick with red and blue pills, but with a black one, signifying that this truth is somehow morbose or dark?

Redpill was a community of 'involuntary celibates', who were bad with women, and reacted to it with women hate, claiming that they were woke and saw women as manipulative. It took off, had a strong number of supporters.

Blackpill is a derogatory term for a similar pattern - people who are bad at something and respond by being 'woke' and dismissive.

I suppose the classic English term is "sour grapes".

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

#245

Post by C1sc0cat »

maxk42 wrote: post #213
turkthrower123 wrote: post #33

When a company uses the word "family" to describe themselves, run for the hills!

Corollary: Any company that holds "retreats" one or more times a year doesn't give two shits about you. They don't respect your personal time, your family, or your life outside of work. Every time I get a job candidate excitedly asking whether our multi-state company holds annual retreats or get-togethers, they're under 30 with no family. It's not a vacation, folks: It's an obligation. One that doesn't respect your l…

Depends on the type of company, Worker Coops tend to have retreats - then being co-operator is more of a commitment.

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

#246

Post by jerome-jh »

muzani wrote: post #114

Everything is a system. The economy, society, relationships, nature, traffic. You don't need math to reverse engineer a system. You just need to pay attention to it. You can say the right words to make a date happy. You can figure out which lane is the fastest route, better than Google Maps can. You don't need an app or data - your brain is a wonderful data processing machine. Don't be angry at the people who are ben…

"Order is very expensive, and only serves as better documentation to those who do not understand it. Very often, excessive order is a symptom of someone who does not understand or control it."

Pretty good description of my current management. Could also apply to a codebase that has grown organically but would be just prohibitively expensive to rewrite.

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

#247

Post by 9diov »

beaker52 wrote: post #141

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…

Looks like you discovered Taoism on you own

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

#248

Post by BlueTemplar »

dmos62 wrote: post #202
webew wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what would now be termed a "blackpill".

What's a blackpill? Is this a twist on the Matrix's shtick with red and blue pills, but with a black one, signifying that this truth is somehow morbose or dark?

It's what Schwarzenegger does when being offered a red pill in Total Recall (1990) : put a bullet in the guy's head. (The bullet being the "black pill".)

:P

(P.S.: Yes, I know that it is not what it means...)

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

#249

Post by jerome-jh »

joseph2342 wrote: post #97
timeattack wrote: post #67

Kind of obvious one, but I wish more people knew that — critical thinking. On the one side it helps to avoid bad/stupid things in life: quackery medicine, scammers, bad investments, etc. On the other side it allows to peep deeper into things and see more choices even in ordinary life. After some practice you gain nearly magical ability to peel couple of additional layers from reality and to see non-obvious things eve…

Any Book recommendations ?

"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas. There is a lovely passage exactly on this (hint: in jail).

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

#250

Post by schindlabua »

grecy wrote: post #220
beefield wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the "own money" in the bank is not technically his money in the bank, but money the bank has borrowed from your friend. So the bank is in debt to your friend. Now, in order for the bank to be able to be able to pay its debt to your friend one day, bank has assets. I.e. someone has borrowed money from the bank (e.g. mortgage), and those assets can be used/solde to pay your friend if your friend really wants the…

I guess I don't see it like that at all. I see it as the olden days where banks (or countries) actually had gold reserves for the amount of money that exists. (I know it doesn't work like that anymore) I also don't really agree that the bank owes my friend that $100k. They're just holding it for him. If you store your car at my house I'm not in debt to you. Your car is just sitting at my house for a while and you can…

Sure, you owe him a car for the duration, the fact that he can get it whenever he wants doesn't change much. If the car you stored goes missing (and you set up a contract) you'll find you now owe him money.

Another interesting thing is that you (a bank) will typically store not one but a hundred cars, and you will lend 90% of those to other people at any given point, in exchange for money. So everyone thinks their car is stored in a garage and they can get it whenever but they probably can't. The system only works because people don't need their cars that much.

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