Embrace the Grind • Hacker News Board

Re: Embrace the Grind

#201

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:53 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #197

dragonwriter wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the meeting is on a calendar ahead of time it's not really an interruption. Knowing about it doesn’t make it interrupt flow any less, unless you just avoid the kind of work that would require flow around it, which still imposes the same kind of productivity impact on intellectual “making” workers. [0] [0] related: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t really keep a sustained bust going for 8 hours anyway. Even if I had no meetings at all, I have to stop for the restroom, tea, food, or even just to give my body a break.

IME, non-intellectual breaks don't break flow the same way as meetings where you need to use, but shift, intellectual focus. Bathroom, short-walk, and coffee/tea/snack breaks, aside from filling important bodily functions that don’t get filled by meetings, provide a pause that seems somewhat akin to a rest between sets in physical exercise.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#202

Post by howtowin » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #30

When I joined a mentoring program targeted at recent college grads, I expected to be teaching things like interview prep, resume writing, negotiation skills, communication skills, and how to deliver results in a workplace. For about half of the mentees, that's roughly true. However, for the other half much of my mentoring ends up being about time management, following through on commitments, and putting in the effort…

Where can I join / look into such an initiative? I’d love to give back to those following us, just as many before us did.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#203

Post by zuhayeer » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

Having now hand-curated and updated 100s of level mappings for different companies by using a combination of research, leveling rubrics, and crowdsourced submissions on Levels.fyi, this article speaks to me

Re: Embrace the Grind

#204

Post by mds » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

Reminds me of this Penn and Teller trick with a similar method but the opposite effect -- see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnEGedfTrzc (skip to 2 minutes in). Freely think of any card, then miraculously reveal the card in an improbable location. It's "easy", just hide all 52 cards and memorize where they're hidden.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#205

Post by charrondev » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #152

heterodoxxed wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why software architect isn't a position in any of the new startup culture tech businesses. The advantage of having an older, very wise and very experienced engineer whose job it is to document, plan and understand all the moving parts of your project would have been invaluable instead of expecting all the engineers who are stressed about hitting deadlines and chasing down memory leaks to do that wo…

The people who do this job at large companies are called Staff or Principal engineers. One reason startups might be less likely to have them is that they are extraordinarily expensive.

And you can’t cheap out on the role. It’s also really hard to recognize the right kind of person for this without a somewhat Mature engineering team.

The wrong person in this type of role at a smaller company can things back significantly.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#206

Post by farrarstan » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

Ive simplified it but it still requires me to tell you about a lot of tea? Dont fukken hoist me! Stop!

Re: Embrace the Grind

#207

Post by simonbarker87 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

mdip wrote: post #196

titanomachy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This resonates with me deeply. I can barely get work done most of the time. My "solution" is to leave a company before people get too frustrated with me. Changing companies frequently nets me better pay and more promotions than my harder-working peers, but I haven't felt fulfilled by work in a long time. What do you tell these mentees? What would you tell someone a bit further along in their career who still has the…

> what would you tell someone a bit further along in their career who still has the same problems? If it's been going on for a while but you are otherwise successful at the work you're doing, the best advice I can give you is to ask a trusted third-party (friend[0], therapist/mentor that you've worked with for a while) and ask them "why, do you think, I have these problems?" Obviously, this has to be someone who won'…

I’m that friend for all of my friends and I wonder how I have any friends left from the number of people I’ve had to say “you’re being a pillock, and this is how you fix it”

Good to know I’m providing a valuable service

Re: Embrace the Grind

#208

Post by ttiurani » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

This article is very on point and every team benefits tremendously from people who do just spend the time and sleigh the monsters.

In a bigger team, a big second reason why these kinds of very uncomfortable tasks aren't done is that they also often don't produce immediate business value. You then have double resistance: the PO wants features from you and grinding is boring.

The people who first get to a position where they can spend the time and then do spend the time (instead of doing the even more fun tasks), are worth their weight in gold.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#209

Post by vmladenov » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

lolthishuman wrote: post #194

jldugger wrote: post #45

> For example, I once joined a team maintaining a system that was drowning in bugs. There were something like two thousand open bug reports. Nothing was tagged, categorized, or prioritized. The team couldn’t agree on which issues to tackle > I spent almost three weeks in that room, and emerged with every bug report reviewed, tagged, categorized, and prioritized. Honestly, this is one of those traps a team can fall in…

Imagine how the kernel and operating system feels...

I just recently walked past a hotel advertisement display that had blue-screened, so not well

Re: Embrace the Grind

#210

Post by marsven_422 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #113

pbourke wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why it's so utterly toxic that corporate America runs on an interrupt driven system, with meetings sprinkled carelessly across engineer calendars. I agree with this statement and your other points. I’ve noticed a more insidious variant of this behavior: the expectation of interruptions. Some groups have such frequent priority shifts and/or a culture of fire fighting or door knocking such that even with a r…

I think you can blame "agile thinking" for that and the general laziness in product planning which is so typical of the last 10 years. We went from recognising that requirements may change after planning to zero planning and telling developers what's the next priority for the day, day by day. This lack of planning and product definition is also what drives the lack of documentation, which is another big problem in 20…

What you describe is the traditional project managers failure to understand that there role is no longer to draw gant charts but to facilitate the creation and ongoing work with the product backlog.

This is a separate higher level of abstraction backlog where the possible work for the next 1-X sprints are planned and defined ready for the team take "tickets" into their backlog.