Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

kk.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 286 posts

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#71

Post by jstanley »

> Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.

This is very true.

Last year I saw a motorcycle stunt display in the Isle of Man. It was all very impressive, and the chap had extremely good control of the bike, but the time that his skill was most apparent was when he had the rear wheel of the bike on a car bonnet and it started sliding off to one side. I thought he was for sure going to crash because there's no possible way to save it when his feet are so far from the ground. Somehow he managed to wriggle around and force the wheel back to the centre. I still don't know how. But that was the bit that showed me how skilled he was: not the amazing bike control that he wanted to display, but the way he recovered from a seemingly-unrecoverable mistake.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#72

Post by projektfu »

"Hire for aptitude, train for skills" is a very software development oriented view. Training on its own is difficult and most available employees outside of engineering don't have a habit of self teaching. I've done a lot better with experienced people in my hires in my profession.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#73

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

jstanley wrote: post #71

> Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes. This is very true. Last year I saw a motorcycle stunt display in the Isle of Man. It was all very impressive, and the chap had extremely good control of the bike, but the time that his skill was most apparent was when he had the rear wheel of the bike on a car bonnet and it started sliding off to one side. I thought he was for sure going…

This is true in many fields, including IT. Anybody can install a piece of software by repeatedly clicking OK, and most of the time it'll go fine, but you'll need the expert when the install/upgrade goes horribly wrong with a slew of incomprehensible error messages.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#74

Post by onion2k »

fergonco wrote: post #32
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

> Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment I've found the lockdown great for trying this - a run, lunch then 15 minutes on the sofa. It's like rebooting the day.

Another unsolicited advice, from a 40yo this time: do not use alarm clocks to wake up. The pressure shifts to the evening because you have to go to sleep early if you want to wake up early. And then it magically happens that you sleep as much as you need. Being a long time supporter of naps I find myself not doing them at all. Of course this applies only if you have flexible hours to work, don't have appointments, et…

This is good advice, but there's a caveat - it will ruin your weekends because you'll be awake for your 'normal hours' then too.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#76

Post by ashtonkem »

projektfu wrote: post #72

"Hire for aptitude, train for skills" is a very software development oriented view. Training on its own is difficult and most available employees outside of engineering don't have a habit of self teaching. I've done a lot better with experienced people in my hires in my profession.

Software is also weird when it comes to skills. While the total domain knowledge possible in software is absolutely massive, the set of baseline skills required to rapidly learn new domains and perform is surprisingly small. Any good programmer can learn a new language and a new portion of the stack within at least year, probably less, because the core skills of the profession are very very small.

It’s not clear to me how common this is in human endeavors.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#78

Post by Leace »

ValentineC wrote: post #77

Would anyone mind sharing their take on this? > • Trust me: There is no “them”.

There is no separation of "us" vs "them" and if for your own benefit everyone should be satisfied. See also "Think win-win" from 7 habits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effecti...

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#79

Post by jacquesm »

ashtonkem wrote: post #76
projektfu wrote: post #72

"Hire for aptitude, train for skills" is a very software development oriented view. Training on its own is difficult and most available employees outside of engineering don't have a habit of self teaching. I've done a lot better with experienced people in my hires in my profession.

Software is also weird when it comes to skills. While the total domain knowledge possible in software is absolutely massive, the set of baseline skills required to rapidly learn new domains and perform is surprisingly small. Any good programmer can learn a new language and a new portion of the stack within at least year, probably less, because the core skills of the profession are very very small. It’s not clear to m…

That's dated. This used to be true, absolutely. But the size of various eco-systems is such that if you want to really master something now you have to invest a lot of time and if you bet on the wrong horse then you can lose a lot of time and effort for little return. Front end is especially brutal in this sense.

Re: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

#80

Post by Igelau »

icelancer wrote: post #11
saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only doing the same at work was this easy…

> If only doing the same at work was this easy… Never understood employers who had a problem with this. I have people scheduling a small conference room we have to take 30 minute naps, or going to their car, or sleeping under their desk. Why should anyone care about that as long as they are generally productive and get the work done? (probably should note I don't overwork my employees, make them keep 80 hour schedule…

No one really has a problem with it unless they themselves are sleep-deprived and expecting everyone else to "tough it out".

It's also an easy arrow to grab in the event that you're working in a place with sick/corrupted incentives and someone more established can save face by firing you before someone else finds out what you dug up while trying to solve a seemingly innocent bug in invoice generation.

Post reply on HN