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Embrace the Grind

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Re: Embrace the Grind

#261

Post by williamdclt »

dorkwood wrote: post #213

I experienced this when I first started learning the piano. When I played the first song I had learned for my sister, she was amazed. "Wow, I could never play like that", she said, "my fingers don't work that way". But when I broke down for her exactly how I'd learned it -- by breaking the song down into manageable chunks of just a few notes each, practicing each chunk with each hand separately many times until profi…

Very well put down, I learnt an "intermediate-level" piano piece just like that (a very jazzy "fly me to the moon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW3w8kV-Xmo) without having ever played piano (I do play another instrument, which helps). It took weeks and weeks of grind, note-by-note, repeating hundreds of times to get your finger to synchronise and memorise, but you get there! Great to show off, people think you're a fairly good pianist, but I can play almost literally nothing else haha :)

Re: Embrace the Grind

#262

Post by peterb »

Animats wrote: post #220
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…

I did that when I first came to Silicon Valley. I went to work for a company which operated a large, for its day, mainframe data center. (Not IBM, UNIVAC). Each time the operating system crashed, which it did several times a day, a "panic dump" was produced, a stack of paper about an inch thick, with a summary and stack backtrace at the top, and a full listing of the contents of memory. There were two stacks of these…

Respect!

Re: Embrace the Grind

#263

Post by Too »

mdpye wrote: post #9
BossingAround wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It happens at first. But point to the docs you wrote. Politely, but firmly, every time. People actually prefer being empowered to do it themselves, so they will pick it up, it just not our default when we're unsure.

Except redeploying is something that always must be done last minute in a hurry because the last version deployed has a bug that will explode any moment and launch-demo is approaching, so managements blood hounds are pushing for someone who really knows how to do it to make sure it's done swift and proper!

15 minutes earlier corporate sent out an email about their values and how important knowledge sharing is! Right after deployment is done the work on documenting or automating the process is put at the bottom of the backlog since it's highly unlikely we have to do this in a such a rush again!

Make sure you have some kind of handover agreement in writing that you can point to when this happens. It sucks to be the "i told you so" guy but in situations like this you really need to protect your own back and as you say be very firm on not doing the job next time.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#264

Post by Too »

m_a_g wrote: post #253

I'm a junior SWE and doing maintenance or working with legacy software is a big no for me. I realized this is mainly because I can't see the value these jobs would bring to me so I can't motivate myself. I wonder, what is the motivation for working with these kinds of systems career-wise?

Working with a big legacy code base is an infinite source of teaching and knowledge, especially around system architecture; what works, what doesn't work, how the craziest workarounds can make something impossible possible, how APIs with the best intention got abused over time, value of tests and where to test, how to read code rather than just write code, and so on. Simply it gives you wisdom, rather than you reinventing the wheel to find things out along the way.

I wouldn't want to do it forever but for a junior to try it out at least once is an important life lesson.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#265

Post by jeffrallen »

Here's a tip: if you can put a number on some part of your grind, and you have some colleagues who are competitive, with each other or with the metric itself (i.e. "can't stop, the warning count is not ZERO!!1!) then you can get help grinding.

I joined a team with 2000 compiler warnings, then set up CI. The "compiled, but with warnings" orange box stayed orange, even as I started killing warnings a few at a time. Then I put a "grep warn | wc" in the CI and another colleague got into the game and drove the warning count to zero a few days later.

I immediately checked in -Werr and we never had a compiler warning problem again.

Grind, but have a plan to stop grinding.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#266

Post by mattm »

developer93 wrote: post #217
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gonna disagree but I want to add a couple things. 1. Kids with ADHD probably can't develop executive function as fast or as far as other kids. I'm pretty sure I have it, it explains the repeated performance reports of "You're good when you apply yourself and useless when you don't." Unfortunately I struggle to _choose_ to apply myself. Willpower doesn't seem to come naturally to me, even after 10 years as a p…

I always had problems sticking to anything, I'd get enthusiastic for a month or two and then I'd get bored. Never could tidy my room etc. Not saying I've anything as severe as adhd but I had trouble with self discipline. At the start of the year I decided to try to develop a good habit, any habit, to persuade myself I could do it. I decided to exercise. I spent the first 6 weeks just with the principal of do 1 situp,…

There's a book called "Tiny Habits" which goes into this more.

I've also tried to use this when building my own habits and it's been fairly successful. When most people want to start something they get all excited about it and jump in with both feet. And then they burnout and stop. It's the New Years Resolution gym effect. After New Years, gyms are full of people who set a goal to exercise 5 days per week. After 3 weeks the gym is back to normal as all those people burnt out and realized they couldn't keep it up.

The brain needs time to adjust to change. I'll start out with something really simple like exercising one day per week for 15 minutes. Then after a few weeks when it starts to feel routine, I'll add another day and wait a few weeks. Eventually I find that I reach this equilibrium point where the time I'm putting in is enough and it's easy to maintain that habit.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#267

Post by infinitezest »

emodendroket wrote: post #124
datavirtue wrote: post #106

One of the best pieces of advice I ever learned was to volunteer for the jobs no one else wants to do. Shitiest job imaginable rears its head? Jump up and wave your hand like a happy idiot. Managers' sigh of relief. Who can compete with that?

This is a great way to end up being the "expert" in PHP, Rails, frontend dev, and other stuff you actually don't really enjoy doing, and have everyone just keep assigning you those tickets instead of lifting a finger to do it themselves. Ask me how I know.

This has been my experience and it has left me feeling kind of rudderless. I want to do a good job, accomplish things, and build a solid reputation (and hopefully make more money) but it ends up feeling like getting punished for doing well.

Of course, it's easy enough to say that hard work is its own reward or that it'll pay off in the long run but it sure doesn't feel that way sometimes.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#268

Post by whimsicalism »

nullsense wrote: post #136
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is a difficult topic to discuss on HN. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not doubting your situation, or any other commenter's particular situation. This [section of my] comment is meant to be general: In the context of this mentoring group, we go through phases where almost everyone suspects they have ADHD for various reasons. This is usually triggered by one of two things: Either someone shares an online "D…

As someone diagnosed with ADHD a year ago now, the GPs description of their life experiences are pretty textbook ADHD. And things like this: "Some times the things we have to do in life aren't immediately enjoyable. It's on us to find ways to make them more enjoyable (e.g. find a sport you like, or take up walking), and some times we just have to do the unenjoyable thing for the sake of progress." Are just insanely t…

If that is enough to be "textbook ADHD" then the definition is even broader than I thought. Being performant when you're focused but having trouble getting there, having difficulty getting basic chores done, etc.? That's just many people in life.

Ultimately, I don't really trust the psychology field to determine what is a mental illness and what isn't. It wasn't that long ago that being gay was in the DSM.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#269

Post by mdip »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #207
mdip wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Well, for what it's worth, if you haven't been thanked, you deserve it.

I've avoided many mistakes due to my friend's sobering assessment of things and I've done the same--though arguably much less so--for him.

At the same time, he serves the opposite purpose, too. He'd build up an idea that he saw value in, which others missed, and would go all-in on it. He frequently referred to the biblical idea that "iron sharpens iron". It's not really the way people operate, but if you're willing to sign on, it'll change your life. :)

Re: Embrace the Grind

#270

Post by datavirtue »

fctorial wrote: post #250
datavirtue wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm....it landed me as the tech lead for all of IT and development.

Survivorship bias?

Yes. But it is common advice from CEO s and it fits with what my grandmother used to tell me: the boss gets all the shit jobs.
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