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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?

#701

Post by beefield »

Geee wrote: post #335
beefield wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, that's not true. Money can be either debt-based or non-debt-based. Well, you are right in that money _can_ in theory be non debt based. However, currently it is not , and I am quite confident that if you tried to come up with money that is non debt based, first, it would work horribly badly and second, there would emerge almost immediately a debt based money. You see, it is practically impossible to forbid a de…

Debt and credit are useful and necessary tools, I'm not against them. Tether and exchange deposits are obviously not cryptocurrency and I think lots of people understand that. They require trust, which has been breached many times already. There's a saying: 'not your keys, not your coins'. Cryptocurrency makes it possible to actually own your money when you hold the keys, and it's impossible to take it away from you.

> Tether and exchange deposits are obviously not cryptocurrency

As you say, that is obviously true. Almost as obviously true should be that they are (or at least very hard try to be) _money_. And that should roughly as obviously point to the conclusion that one of the central tenants of cryptofolks' philosophy, fixed money supply, is broken. Fairy tale. Utter crap. Or whatever is your favourite idiom for something that simply, completely, demonstrably and blatantly untrue.

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

#702

Post by speedplane »

Out of college, I worked at an engineering company and was an extremely fast programmer that built lots of cool things. I was quickly recognized by the leadership, and got an "engineer of the month" award at a company-wide meeting. Despite it being "of the month", they only did this twice a year.

I was happy about it, called my mom and told her the news.

What I didn't realize is that a large group of senior engineers were not to happy about it. The went through every one of my commits, identified every time I broke a validation, broke the build, or otherwise caused someone else a headache, and then took this information to management without me knowing about it.

I'm sure jealousy may have played a factor, but today, I largely think they were correct. I was a cowboy coder fast and loose with my code. When I broke the build, even if was for 10 minutes before I fixed it, I basically stopped a dozen or more engineers from being productive.

It took time, but I learned how to be more of a team player. I created my own build environment that would only commit changes if everything passed, and built a far more robust validation system. Quickly I changed from being the biggest cause of bugs, to the biggest reporter of bugs in the company.

Finding and reporting bugs in other people's code also did not help my standing.

The truth is that any organization is made up of humans, and simply being the most efficient at creating new features, building validation systems, or reporting bugs, is not going to be enough. You have to actually talk to your peers, build a relationship and a mutual respect and trust.

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

#704

Post by speedplane »

nkrisc wrote: post #327

How important it is to be able to inhabit another person's viewpoint and see things from their perspective. So much time and effort is saved in doing so. Much of my job has become translating and mediating between stakeholders going around in circles, because each one believes their viewpoint represents the entirety of the issue. They can not understand one another because they assume the other understands everything…

> shed your own views, listen very closely to what they're saying, and interpret what they're saying not through your own lens, but through theirs.

A good team manager can identify what motivates everyone on the team, align incentives, and then take a step back to get out of the way.

If an engineer likes to work with new technology and hates your legacy system, find the new tech they can work on. If the product manager is only interested in a particular feature, then make them the manager of that feature but hold them accountable to its success.

A good manager will line up the dominos, but not tell any one of them how to fall.

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

#705

Post by pure-awesome »

rjbwork wrote: post #410
pure-awesome wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah! I understand your comment now, by

> obsession with 9-5 and whatever else it takes

You mean an obsession with "working 9-5 ALONG WITH whatever else it takes", not an obsession with "9-5" and a separate obsession with "whatever it takes".

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

#706

Post by einpoklum »

> What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

That my country's supposed worst enemies are actually valued customers for arms and security services.

... and now I don't even feel like calling it "my country" anymore, I use "the state" instead.

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

#707

Post by einpoklum »

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…

The river meandering towards the sea may flood my home if we don't maintain dams and levies. So, disagree; I'll get very angry at the system and those heading it if they do this, or let it happen.

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

#708

Post by cryptica »

You need to choose a cartel and find a good position in that cartel.

Find a large community of people who has growing power and influence and try to make yourself relevant in that cartel. Pick a cartel that is growing in influence as opposed to a large one that is stagnating or closed to outsiders. If the cartel is not working for you, maybe it's too late and you need a different cartel. You can still keep some ties to the old cartel if you like aspects of it.

I was trying to join the Y Combinator cartel before and met some interesting founders and had interesting opportunities but ultimately I couldn't achieve what I wanted. So I became involved with cryptocurrency, which I think is going to be the next high growth cartel. I found a way to be somewhat relevant in my crypto community so now I'm just pushing and trying to help the cartel gain more power and influence.

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

#709

Post by tomp »

reroute1 wrote: post #661
tomp wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not porn and Kamasutra in particular, but yeah I’ve read books, blogs, Reddit, ... definitely experimented a bit (not at every opportunity though). Just because people cringe at some information doesn’t make the whole thing dehumanizing. You’re right though that most people don’t want to know how the sausage / burger is made...

I agree if someone goes about this approach and is respectful of everyone along the way it's not necessarily dehumanizing and there's nothing wrong with it, but regardless it may feel dehumanizing to the person to find out about since that's more about recognizing and optimizing patterns, and less about their individual uniqueness. For most people it's not really that extreme and to some extent this has to be allowed…

> That's the tricky part especially with sex, you want someone who is good at it, but that typically comes with experience.

My experience is different. Not very extensive, so I don't want to generalize it... but what I've learned is, that experimentation (i.e. systemic approach to exploration) trumps experience. It's true what they say, "every woman is different" (well, maybe not every, but there's a surprising (to me) amount of variance) so what works for one doesn't (necessarily) work for another. I don't think that experience (as in each additional partner) has really given me anything except maybe confidence.

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