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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?

#251

Post by tonyedgecombe »

galfarragem wrote: post #219
TrackerFF wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unfortunately it's difficult to scale your work. You get paid for the hours you put in, and there's only so many hours. Of course, if you're lightning fast you could increase volume, but that's about it. I know lots of people in trade jobs that make a good salary, not too far away from what their company engineers make - but the downside is that they work 12 hour days, 6 days a week to earn that kind of money. Wh…

> It's one of the few places where people have pissing matches over who's worked the most. Probably once the work is not intellectually challenging people need to create a challenge somehow. In my experience, when you are used to intellectual challenging work, trades feel like a downgrade and becomes unbearably boring. Conversations fall to high school level. However, if you can deal with it and the physical risk, th…

Trades are probably more measurable, if someone lays 400 bricks in a day you know they have built a wall and can quickly see whether it is straight.

If I write 400 lines of code in a day it's quite hard to evaluate the quality or even if it satisfies the requirements.

This is why intellectual work tends to create more political problems. People know good work can't necessarily be measured so they start engaging in games to get ahead.

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

#252

Post by mlvljr »

pgt wrote: post #236
pmiller2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bit about math homework reminds me of how I started getting better grades in grad school as immediately after I started doing homework in LaTeX. It’s not that I got any smarter, and I don’t think my work improved significantly as a result of using LaTeX. IMO, it was just that my papers literally looked more convincing when they were typeset like preprints rather than handwritten.

I spend a lot of time making my consulting invoices look good, because it seems to justify my rates and impresses the payroll department, who then pays me sooner.

This!

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

#253

Post by BlueTemplar »

fxtentacle wrote: post #149
jb1991 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heh, wasn't a 20-hours work week the American ideal of the future?

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

#254

Post by have_faith »

muzani wrote: post #243
dmos62 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Redpill is a much older concept than recent incel usage. It has been around online as idea of revealing the true nature of something for a long time.

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

#255

Post by justatdotin »

mkolodny wrote: post #132

When you talk about about a big company, you're really talking about thousands of individuals. Each with their own goals and values. When a big company does something wrong, often it's just one to five of those thousands of people who did something wrong. Hatred for a big company is very similar to racism. Some of the people who work at a big company may fit the profile you imagine. But many of them don't. Sometimes…

> Hatred for a big company is very similar to racism

you win this comment section (and that's not a good thing)

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

#256

Post by shantly »

fxtentacle wrote: post #177
fxtentacle wrote: post #146

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…

BTW, I just remembered another consultant story the other way around. I was trying to do a banking deal and they sent me a draft that had the requirements listed as checkboxes. [X] Form 123-AB has been signed [X] Project duration less than 2 years ... [ ] Company financials have been audited and confirmed And the offer was timed to expire within days. At first, I thought this was a joke in bad faith, as there would b…

> In other words, while I considered what the accountant guy did to be a rather low-effort incomplete job, he did exactly what was expected of him by the bank and what I needed to get my deal done.

The degree to which everything runs on this sort of system is kind of horrifying, once you're exposed to enough things like this for that to sink in.

Relatedly, I guess my contribution to the broader thread would be:

Almost no-one knows what they're doing, let alone is much good at it—so few, in fact, that society and the economy (and everything else) basically run on a massive and super-serious game of playing pretend. Yes, even that big important organization (public or private) where you expect everyone to be pretty damn competent. The difference between them and some normal place is that 5% of their people are impressively good at their jobs, rather than 2%.

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

#257

Post by mathgenius »

d--b wrote: post #76

Finance jobs teach you that you should always be ready to "cut your losses". Whatever time/money you invest in anything, you should always re-evaluate your position and see from where you are now if your project is worth pursuing.

Conversely, the value you place on some endeavor may be completely unrecognized by everyone else, ie. the market. That does not mean the endeavor is worthless.

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

#258

Post by neilkakkar »

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…

> "You can figure out which lane is the fastest route, better than Google Maps can."

Why do you think so?

Given Google Maps has real time information about cars on both routes, I'd think it does a better job of aggregating this data than my intuition.

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

#259

Post by pge »

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…

The bank doesn’t store your money, it turns around and lends it to someone else, hoping that the interest it receives on that debt (eg. a mortgage) is greater than the interest it pays you. While I don’t agree with the overall ‘money is debt’ statement, it is definitely true that you lend your money to the bank. You don’t park it like a car. This is why there can be times that you ask for your money and they don’t have it (the reason for FDIC insurance).

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

#260

Post by tamebadger »

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…

Reminds me of parts of 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, but still authentic! well said
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