Being good at your job is rewarded by others shoveling ever more work for you to do.
oh, and don't even try to bring important issues to light, some people will perceive that as you creating new problems out of nowhere
Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
281–290 of 757 posts
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#282Being good at your job is rewarded by others shoveling ever more work for you to do.
...and never being promoted.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#283How almost no one understands that simply trading your time as units for money is ridiculous.
but running things yourself means networking and financial risk. not everyone is good at that or can afford it
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#284You will come to forks in your career path more than once. Do not underestimate the importance of choosing what makes you happy. Do not overestimate the benefits of choosing what brings in more money. In short: choose happiness over money, most of the time.
I thought they were the same thing.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#285You will come to forks in your career path more than once. Do not underestimate the importance of choosing what makes you happy. Do not overestimate the benefits of choosing what brings in more money. In short: choose happiness over money, most of the time.
Money has diminishing returns. The more you make the more you'll get taxed, the nice things you buy stop bringing joy once they become too easy to acquire has been my experience.
Were wired to be happy when surrounded by loving family and a few really good friends.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#286The most important part of executive management is building the system, which consusts of hiring, firing, solving problems, and setting policies. There's an old joke: Can you make a better burger than McDonald's? Sure. Can you build a better burger-making system, though?
Most executives are incompetent, having little to no training in management. Rather than solving problems, they shift them to employees, vendors, even customers. This is why unions are such a disaster for most execs.
The skill of hiring is evident from the top down, be it good or bad. And it will affect an organization for decades after.
An organization will come to reflect the leadership, from the top. The people and policies will shape it into the image of its leadership. Mostly that leadership can't see itself reflected in the group.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#287Earlier 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 the overall uselessness of life, being lied to about rules of society while brutal, cruel natural law is in effect, like people getting ahead by lying, bullying, kissing up, schmoozing, murdering, having sex with etc. and one's competence doesn't matter at all, unless it's for increase in work/punishment. It leads to nihilism, suicides and murders as "nothing really matters" and is quite common in 50+ and lower-strata society folks "that have seen it all".
From a quick research:
Blue pill - believe what society says, have okaysh life and ordinary dreams driven by collective narrative, zeitgeist, then burn to the ground later when somebody catches you off-guard and takes advantage of you
Red pill - be a selfish bastard you are supposed to be, use other blue pill people because they allow you to, argue using other people is what they truly want (mainly related to women, i.e. assuming women are attracted to emotionless men that are using them then throwing them away once no longer attractive), have a firm and rational grip with actual technical aspects of reality around you with good behavior prediction rate, often practicing stoicism/Zen Buddhism
Purple pill - mix of blue and red pill, having some societally-injected ideals while adhering to solipsistic consequentialism in using other people, but still being driven by societal rewards and the need of approval by others
Black pill - nothing matters, you or other people could be already dead, it won't change a thing, universe is random/pointless or created by an evil demiurge in order to torture conscious beings; whatever you do, whether good or evil, is pointless; people use each other all the time, given large enough reward there is no moral rule that couldn't be bent, there is no point in generosity and ideals, just in interests, and they are pointless anyway
White pill - universe was created for a reason that is good and everybody wants to get into a meaningful state/end, assuming overcoming obstacles by practicing virtues is necessary in order to reach some noble goal, likely maximizing utility/happiness of everybody, often associated with religion
Honestly, I am not sure how one could fight either of those pills as all historical civilizations had their own share of unrealistic myths and there were always groups of people seeing through their facade and taking advantage of better information, validating many of these perspectives and making them common meta-strategies of life.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#288Everything 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…
how do you think about politics and capitalism than? can the system still be simplified enough to grasp it well enough to change it? where would an individual who has grasped it find the power to change anything? capitalism seems super stable for now one of the most sad thoughts I heard: if you try to change the system to the better you might keep it from hitting the wall and actually stabilize it
No one claimed that every system can be changed; traffic will be traffic. The same applies for the rules of politics [0].
Not sure how you get the idea that "capitalism" is a bad thing, the majority of educated people (and not just Americans) would strongly disagree; there is a reason why all credible attempts at non-market-driven growth failed, see China and Russia.
You may look at the struggle in the world and link it to the perceived epxloitation of the poor, but if you'd ask the people who e.g. work in the textile-industry in "3rd world countries" wether they'd prefer not to have any job (because that's the sole alternative within our system) or keep on working under current conditions, they would prefer to keep feeding their family.
The riches we enjoy through what you call capitalism aren't merely the number in your bank account: wealth includes the services we provide for another: being able to get a haircut at any time, etc. -- see what "being rich" without a functioning economy did to Venezuela, which was flowing in oil-money, distributed it among its people, and, in consequence, failed to keep up with the rest of the world.
The system isn't what it is because of money and greed, but because it's the best we came up with, the implications of political workings notwithstanding.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#289Everything 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…
To a poet everything rhymes.
I don't know. Seems sound enough. Unless you put forward more specific criticism – and I'd be happy to hear your thoughts – I'll be a poet today.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#290Earlier 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.
How do you make an invoice look good? Fancy letter head?