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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?

#301

Post by atmosx »

jstummbillig wrote: post #289
pryelluw wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You can say the right words to make a date happy.

If the partner doesn't like you, you can say all the right, do all the right things, etc and still be passed-over.

Then another partner comes in and does all the wrong things. Still he gets not passed-over.

There's chemistry involved in relationships as well. From smell to much more subtle things. It's a function with infinite variables. We can create models that help us understand society, economy, etc. But these are social sciences, the outcome is affected by the observer ;-)

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

#302

Post by lnsru »

__david__ wrote: post #179
lnsru wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I see everyday. Insider produce crap, I criticized it as a new guy and became enemy number one very quickly. Isolated organizations enter the Lord of the Flies state. For them everything is normal while outsider has experienced more possible solutions. So it hurts seeing how bad and primitive device is made from 6 separate printed circuit boards soldered with random wires. Every amateur can do better with…

I’m not saying this applies to your example, but the opposite happens too—the new guy comes in with all the answers but not knowing all the battles/design constraints that led to the current situation. It’s frustrating because the team gets to relive every design decision as the new guy brings up all the obvious stuff that surely none of the dummies on the original team thought of (but of course were the original des…

I am pretty sure, that “new guy” does not know all internals. But there some rules like not putting 2 screwdrivers into power outlet... It’s obviously should be done other way.

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

#303

Post by Chris2048 »

hans1729 wrote: post #299
tatar wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well put. What I noticed is that every discipline invents their own lingo to describe the systems in play at the ethos of their discipline and they often manifest as some sort of law, principle or concept. What I'm really curious about learning is to see if there's some sort of overarching discipline that focuses on these sort of systems as a meta and finds improvement points or market opportunities based on a g…

I've thought about this a lot, it's my goto "one day I'll write a book about this". I frame the problem slightly different (heh): Different disciplines, branching out, will (or so says my hypothesis) discover the same topologies, but express them differently due to different scopes (perspective, dimensionality, DSLs [...]). What I'm thinking about is: how can we parametrize the manifestations of these scopes, and, ub…

Systems thinking? Category theory?

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

#304

Post by GhostKnight »

shantly wrote: post #256
fxtentacle wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Almos…

your closing is absolutely true as the majority of all of us "fake it till we make it"

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

#306

Post by cambalache »

muzani wrote: post #165
Antoninus wrote: post #96

I'm a developer like many people here. One thing that people who don't program don't realize is that its a laborious job. It seems like its a fun job with lots of 'hanging out' but its more like 4-5 hours a day / 5 days week looking at a text editor and a terminal trying to focus and not be distracted. At the end of the day, I'm exhausted

I've done all kinds of jobs. I'd take a 14 hour physical labor job over a 8 hour mental labor job anytime. Mental labor is painful... in the form that stalling the main thread of something is. But that's data entry. Development is much less mental labor, and I'd agree with the 4-5 hours/day assessment. Most people can't actually do this, which is why a lot of people hate math. Math class is dealing with intense focus…

I have done all kinds of jobs too, and I will take a programming/middle management job (no matter how soulless) over a 14 h, or even 8, physical job, every single time. Most of the blue-collar workers will tell you the same. Your skin suffers, your knees suffer, your lower-back suffers, honestly I doubt you have done it for a long time, it is people in that category who naively fantasize about how cool is to work 14 h under the sun or in a plant/warehouse/construction site.

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

#307

Post by 52-6F-62 »

pryelluw wrote: post #268
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…

To a poet everything rhymes.

Yet rhyming poetry is a relatively modern form.

Who said that line?

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

#308

Post by BlueTemplar »

jaggederest wrote: post #31

People have a tremendously distorted view of reality due to their own biases. Myself definitely included. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair More concretely in the field of software engineering: Accurate, precise estimates are more expensive than the actual task itself. If someone asks you "how long until it is done", the onl…

Yeah, when we were taught (software) project management with GANTT, I smelled bullshit due to the lack of tolerance of uncertainty in the tool. Thankfully the exam "subverted our expectations" and strongly hinted that "no plan survives contact with the enemy".

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

#310

Post by lowercased »

pmiller2 wrote: post #231
lowercased wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

generally speaking, if you quit or were fired you would not be eligible for any unemployment assistance. it's different state to state, but quit is your decision, and 'fired' is usually for something negative/bad. I've been 'laid off' - terminated but it was reported as no fault of mine - and received unemployment assistance - this has happened to me twice. the 'ejector seat savings' the GP was referring to just mean…

I agree that unemployment benefits aren’t the metaphorical ejector seat here. But, regarding “fired” vs “laid off,” at least in California, you’re generally eligible for unemployment benefits even if you were fired, as long as you weren’t fired for illegal or malicious activity. In particular, if you didn’t care about losing a reference and burning bridges, you could get fired for poor performance and still collect u…

thinking about it again, that's possibly closer to the mark. I did let an employee go years back, and he then filed for unemployment and I had to answer some questions from the state - did I agree, or want to deny the claim or something like that. It was for poor performance, and I was probably at fault for the poor performance on his part (not as much as he was, but still partially).
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