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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?

#401

Post by tehwalrus »

goatinaboat wrote: post #130
tehwalrus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree more with the parent than with you, particularly in engineering. Lying in engineering means saying anything that's not true with any certainty. I wouldn't hold it against someone, but I would ask them to think carefully before speaking, to make sure what they said is true, as it can lead meetings to decide the wrong actions if nobody present happens to be able to contradict it. Outside of engineering,…

Lying in engineering means saying anything that's not true with any certainty. It’s funny because that’s exactly an example of what I mean. Real engineering is about compromises and those are highly subjective. What’s the feature we should work on next? What tools should we use? What’s the priority of this bug? Should we refactor this today or take on more tech debt? Ask 10 people and you will get 10 answers, all of…

Those are all things that fall into the second category (subjective stuff I wouldn't call lying). But saying that something works in X case when it doesn't (or even when you don't know for sure), and everyone estimating four stories based on that assumption, is a big problem.

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

#402

Post by winternett »

1. In climbing the corporate ladder, don't focus on where you need to ultimately need to land, focus on not overshooting it.

2. Under promise and over deliver, actions are more valuable than words.

3. Sometimes even when you're right, never forget the value of keeping quiet when big egos are busy speaking.

4. Eventually after years of others coming and going, you end up being the smartest one in the room that others look to for answers, then it's your turn to do it all right, instead of being like those you had to fight against during your climb.

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

#403

Post by Psyladine »

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?

Disenchantment. The adult version of finding out life isn't fair, santa isn't real, and no-one really cares about your problems.

Real talk it's more like narcissistic injury.

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

#404

Post by muzani »

have_faith wrote: post #254
muzani wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but a quick internet search will highlight only the incel community. Much like how "meme" has evolved in meaning.

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

#405

Post by shantly »

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'd put the desirability hierarchy something like this, best to worst:

1) mixed labor (mental, physical)

2) moderate, varied physical labor

3) jobs that are mostly just being present and don't make you pretend to work most of the time

4) mental labor

5) jobs that are mostly just being present but do make you pretend to work most of the time

6) repetitive moderate physical labor

7) repetitive sedentary labor

8) hard physical labor

With 8 being at the bottom mostly due to typically being high-risk and coming with major mid-term harm to health.

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

#406

Post by mannykannot »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #375
mannykannot wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works right up until it doesn't: see 737 Max, mortgage crisis... Perhaps the best thing that can be said for pro-forma processes is that they usually put people on notice that they may be held accountable for their actions -- though, of course, that is not always the case.

And look at all the planes that don't fall out of the sky and all the financial products that don't cause crisis. The "even rare failures are unacceptable" line of reasoning is simply too conservative to permit our modern society to exist. The resources we would have to dedicate to preventing these kinds of things (don't forget the 90/10 rule) in every case would be astronomical. Imagine if every bit of software had…

Presenting the issue as "even rare failures are unacceptable" is a straw-manning / false-dichotomizing of the matter.

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

#407

Post by agentultra »

Our software wouldn't be as good if our developers didn't meet people who work in the factory and use it.

Factory operations still rely heavily on paper. It's reliable, the infrastructure to support it is reliable, and people are willing to deal with inefficiency for reliability. A maintenance manager on the floor doesn't want to be dealing with a crashing app or network connectivity issues while they're filling out a part requisition form or maintenance report. And an operator doesn't want to hit save in the app and see a bunch of red boxes when they have a spill to attend to.

However the inefficiency of paper leads to inaccurate results, slow lead times, and altogether missed opportunities. People invariably copy yesterdays form into the new one and get on with their day. Digging up all that paper work and manually entering the data into a spreadsheet can result in more errors in the data. And doing any kind of large-scale analysis on components with maintenance reports involving those components is time consuming and laborious... and doing it across an entire conglomerate is basically impossible this way.

We have to make affordances to our interface that take the operating environment and the people interacting with it into account.

Reliability is really important.

Software isn't the solution to everything. Always have a plan B.

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

#408

Post by hans1729 »

yazanobeidi wrote: post #354
hans1729 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your comment made me think of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_graph “Multi modal” system representation in graph format. You can represent an electric, hydraulic and mechanical system in one graph. Anything really by relating them to the substituent energy and power. Its representation allows you to easily extract the differential equation. Neat stuff.

>Anything really by relating them to the substituent energy and power.

My brain is tickling, thank's a lot for the reference!

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

#409

Post by moretai »

Pigo wrote: post #386
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…

So much this. Our time on this Earth is so short. I used to love video games, but now I'm trying to make up for the time I wasted playing Everquest. There's so many experiences out there waiting to be had.

What are some experiences that you've experienced since stopping Everquest?

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

#410

Post by rjbwork »

pure-awesome wrote: post #94
rjbwork wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like a great manager/team lead. I think the obsession with 9-5 and whatever else it takes to get the job done is absurd in today's world.

Maybe I misunderstand your comment, but aren't "9-5" and "doing what it takes to get the job done" contradictory? The one is having fixed working hours and, as in the parent comment, compensating with extra leave if those hours are overstepped. The other is working overtime whenever there is extra work that has to get done.

I mean, ALWAYS 9-5, in addition to whatever it takes to get the work done. One or the other can be totally fine but it leaves little room for wiggling with comp time.
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