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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?

#601

Post by HenryBemis »

HenryBemis wrote: post #91
jcbrand wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine the depth there is in determining what goes where on the shelf. You as shelf-filler probably didn't get to make this decision though.

There is a "science" behind shelf placement decisions and it has to do with height, location on the aisle, colors, lights, and of course the "fee" that the outlet asks for the premium spots. Someone who just fills shelfs (I've done that for a toystore a few decades ago, for a a couple of months). Depends whether someone gets to just fill the shelf as per plan or has the curiosity to ask "WHY", noticing why X things f…

too late to edit "studio" = study phone's autocorrect, sleepiness, and fat fingers is a nasty combination :)

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

#602

Post by the_cat_kittles »

jl6 wrote: post #6

The taxonomy of jobs that most people have in their minds is extremely simple (doctor, lawyer, teacher, builder, engineer, window cleaner, garbage collector, astronaut, ...) and is mostly based on a grade-school understanding of what kind of jobs people do. But the reality is that there are millions of types of jobs, with incredible variety and specialisms, and the real content of a job is rarely captured in a job ti…

while i agree the content is never in the title, i think there lots of jobs are basically the same, and there are only a handful of genres of job. and two people with the same job title can be doing different jobs

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

#603

Post by i_haz_rabies »

slumdev wrote: post #598
i_haz_rabies wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're being pedantic: analogies aren't reality. Saying that a healthy lifestyle could improve your longevity doesn't in any way support the argument that a CS degree makes one more likely to understand big O.

> the argument that a CS degree makes one more likely to understand big O This is 101-level content at most institutions. If you manage to graduate without understanding it, you are a magician or some kind of con man savant.

I'm not saying you're wrong.

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

#604

Post by bo1024 »

dengsauve wrote: post #599

I learned at my first web dev job that no one outside the dev/marketing sphere knows just how much of their visit to e-commerce sites is tracked. From technologies like Hotjar that record your mouse movements on a given webpage, to simple IP address logging (who visited this page on our site, from what referrer, etc.), people really have no clue how closely their actions are being monitored. However, as with lots of…

Thanks for your comments, just want to discuss one piece:

> However, as with lots of data analysis, their personal information alone means almost nothing.

I think this is not true because of fingerprinting -- sites and services want to track who is the same visitor across multiple visits and locations. In other words, the situation is even worse than you've described because it's not just used in aggregate, but really to track you personally as well.

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

#605

Post by stygiansonic »

dengsauve wrote: post #599

I learned at my first web dev job that no one outside the dev/marketing sphere knows just how much of their visit to e-commerce sites is tracked. From technologies like Hotjar that record your mouse movements on a given webpage, to simple IP address logging (who visited this page on our site, from what referrer, etc.), people really have no clue how closely their actions are being monitored. However, as with lots of…

Physical stores can track you as well: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/how-retailers-can-track-your...

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

#606

Post by AceJohnny2 »

The insane amount of work that goes into QA of consumer electronics.

I also now viscerally understand how China has a stranglehold on world manufacture of electronics. The concentration of skill, infrastructure, and related industries in Shenzhen or other Chinese industrial cities is unequaled in the USA. We have utterly given that up to Asia.

Back to QA: I learned what "DPPM" means: Defective Parts Per Million. A modern, large-scale production pipeline measures failure rates at the per-million level. Also, the amount of iterations in developing a product for mass-production. From that perspective, a well-produced thing on Hackaday barely qualifies as a proof-of-concept, from a production perspective.

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

#607

Post by AceJohnny2 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #606

The insane amount of work that goes into QA of consumer electronics. I also now viscerally understand how China has a stranglehold on world manufacture of electronics. The concentration of skill, infrastructure, and related industries in Shenzhen or other Chinese industrial cities is unequaled in the USA. We have utterly given that up to Asia. Back to QA: I learned what "DPPM" means: Defective Parts Per Million. A mo…

> We have utterly given that up to Asia.

It's now obvious to me that recovering this capability in the US would require decades of focused investment and trade policy. The Foxconn debacle in Wisconsin is just that, a debacle. Scott Walker is an even bigger fool than I thought. I've lost hope for the US political class to have the concerted will to enact the required policies and incentives.

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

#608

Post by totaldude87 »

dengsauve wrote: post #599

I learned at my first web dev job that no one outside the dev/marketing sphere knows just how much of their visit to e-commerce sites is tracked. From technologies like Hotjar that record your mouse movements on a given webpage, to simple IP address logging (who visited this page on our site, from what referrer, etc.), people really have no clue how closely their actions are being monitored. However, as with lots of…

The level of tracking on internet is reaching all time highs (just like stock market).. Right from big guns from FANG to the site that was just launched.

I've seen presentations where the user's mouse journey were captured and decisions like making page faster(so they dont wander around while it gets loaded) and putting important stuff on top left corner since most of the users click or point there first..

The future looks only terrifying, esp when when a new "pied piper" level internet consortium gets formed by/between FANG(wildest dream) and they share the data among themselves (this is nutso level dream) ... but only future can tell

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

#609

Post by beernutz »

That the only thing you can really control is yourself and your reaction to the world. To me, this manifests most in how I "talk" to myself about things.

This quote is one that has been on my mind a lot lately.

"Let's think of the positives as personal, general, and permanent. Let's think of the negatives as impersonal, specific, and temporary. Let's actually go out of our way to inject these things into our discussions."

TLDR: We are what we think.

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

#610

Post by kccqzy »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #606

The insane amount of work that goes into QA of consumer electronics. I also now viscerally understand how China has a stranglehold on world manufacture of electronics. The concentration of skill, infrastructure, and related industries in Shenzhen or other Chinese industrial cities is unequaled in the USA. We have utterly given that up to Asia. Back to QA: I learned what "DPPM" means: Defective Parts Per Million. A mo…

The insane amount of work that goes into just manufacturing.

The United States prides itself by having high-value functions like design, while offshoring manufacturing. But manufacturing consumer electronics is no longer simple. We have given up on manufacturing these electronics completely.

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