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Embrace the Grind

jacobian.org

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Re: Embrace the Grind

#11

Post by BossingAround »

123pie123 wrote: post #6

Thanks, I enjoyed that. I'd like to think this applies to a lot of professionals work, putting crazy amounts of effort in for a simple outcome, that just works. except the outcome is not as exciting as watching loads of cockroaches

> putting crazy amounts of effort in for a simple outcome, that just works

There's a fine line though. You want to put in the effort into a task where it makes sense, like in the article.

Personally, I see a lot of effort put into tasks where the person is comfortable with the effort, because they know they can do the task manually, the old way, and "don't have time for anything else".

Re: Embrace the Grind

#12

Post by kache_ »

BossingAround wrote: post #7
barbiturique wrote: post #4

That's my tactic to blend-in in a engineering team and gain some respect / credibility. I try to find the most boring, utterly broken part, that nobody wants to touch... and I sink time into it. Once I made it somewhat usable, I document it.

Same here. I like doing things nobody wants to do, especially when I'm new in the team. The problem I've identified is that you're then the go-to person for the task you did in the beginning. Example: You need to figure out how to deploy X. This is poorly documented and nobody knows how to do it. Action: You read the code, understand what needs to be done, deploy it. Then, you document it. Finally, you create fairly…

Pair with someone else and have them do it, and be explicit about your intention to share the knowledge.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#13

Post by kache_ »

arpyzo wrote: post #8

It's interesting that while this often produces stunning results, it usually doesn't lead to pay increases and promotions.

Doing a good job is important. Pay increases and promotions are obtained through way of leverage, but doing a good job and building a strong reputation pays dividends in the future.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#14

Post by mdpye »

barbiturique wrote: post #4

That's my tactic to blend-in in a engineering team and gain some respect / credibility. I try to find the most boring, utterly broken part, that nobody wants to touch... and I sink time into it. Once I made it somewhat usable, I document it.

I hadn't realised it til now, but I do the same. It's a really great way to get started, because it tends to coincide with not having yet gained a broad range of responsibilities pulling you in different directions. You become a domain expert in something (which was probably lacking across the team) and peers appreciate it.

After they've seen that, you organically start getting invited to all kinds of more interesting projects and discussions.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#15

Post by ptudan »

arpyzo wrote: post #8

It's interesting that while this often produces stunning results, it usually doesn't lead to pay increases and promotions.

Yep, learning to optimize for visibility is one of the things every corporate worker should do.

It's unfortunate, but the main way to actually see your compensation and respect increase.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#16

Post by dceddia »

This quote stuck out to me:

> More trouble than the trick was worth? To you, probably. But not to magicians.

It makes me realize how fundamentally different the values are between some fields. The amount of time magicians put into the craft is mind-boggling.

I see it also with how movies are made -- to think that sometimes they're spending days or months and tens of thousands of dollars, building sets, waiting for the right weather or lighting, braving subzero temperatures, or whatever it might be, just to get a single shot that might be on screen for a few seconds.

Maybe a similar sort of thing with software would be spending time on animations -- the result is a cool flourish, but it lasts 0.15 seconds and it took 3 days to get it just right, and it's impossible to quantify how worthwhile it was beyond a gut feeling. Even still, that's not even in the same ballpark in terms of time or effort.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#17

Post by bluquark »

My secret weapon for bug diagnosis is that when a regression is reported on a system without an automatic bisect tool, while everyone else is trying to reason about the problem with guesswork and code inspection, I sit down and spend 2 hours just bisecting manually (full sync, rebuild and install of old versions of the software). This provides a guaranteed culprit CL, often one that no one guessed, and also a potential bug assignee who's an expert on the problem in question (the author of that patch).

It's "one weird trick" to get bugs stuck in limbo for weeks suddenly making fast progress towards a fix, and all it takes is a willingness to do something so tedious and mindless that no other engineer volunteers to do it.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#18

Post by piva00 »

mdpye wrote: post #14
barbiturique wrote: post #4

That's my tactic to blend-in in a engineering team and gain some respect / credibility. I try to find the most boring, utterly broken part, that nobody wants to touch... and I sink time into it. Once I made it somewhat usable, I document it.

I hadn't realised it til now, but I do the same. It's a really great way to get started, because it tends to coincide with not having yet gained a broad range of responsibilities pulling you in different directions. You become a domain expert in something (which was probably lacking across the team) and peers appreciate it. After they've seen that, you organically start getting invited to all kinds of more interestin…

I don't like to chime in with "seconding" on HN but I had the same eureka moment about it. I have definitely always behaved like that and it was just a natural and organic way to start in any team or job.

I got a bit shocked because I realised this behaviour repeated this past year when I changed jobs. I became a domain expert in an obscure part of the codebase and have been documenting it and sharing the knowledge for a while now.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#19

Post by PragmaticPulp »

arpyzo wrote: post #8

It's interesting that while this often produces stunning results, it usually doesn't lead to pay increases and promotions.

> it usually doesn't lead to pay increases and promotions

Individual companies may or may not reward the grind over the course of a few years. Companies that don't tend to bleed employees.

These things do pay off over the course of a career, though. The Grind builds skills, builds reputation, and builds an ability to get work done when it matters. The company may not recognize the value of this, but your peers will. Your peers will form your future network as everyone diffuses into different companies.

It's a mistake when someone scales back their own effort and learning simply because they don't expect an immediate monetary reward. We're all building careers and networks over the course of decades. Don't let a lack of pay increases at a single company alter hamper the trajectory of your entire career.

And if you find yourself stuck at a company that isn't rewarding these things, move on. Some other company will gladly reward you for the accumulated experience. It only goes to waste if you stay put at companies that don't reciprocate.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#20

Post by awillen »

Really well written and so true... I think that far too often, people get intimidated by the size/scope/hairiness of a problem and try to reduce their intimidation by breaking it down.

Particularly if it's a one-off problem, you're often far better just doing something. Anything. Whatever comes to mind first. Just take some sort of step.

You may find that the problem isn't as hairy as you thought, and in fact just by continuing to do stuff, you solve it pretty quickly. When that's not the case, doing stuff often leads you to the kind of understanding that allows you to put in place a good plan, where just starting with planning forces you to make a bunch of incorrect assumptions that you then have to fix when actually implementing the plan you worked so hard on.

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