Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985) • Hacker News Board

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#241

Post by Viliam1234 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

scottLobster wrote: post #221

paledot wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I open my conversational interviews with, "There's an emergency, sales promised a customer a to-do list app yesterday. It's getting shipped out and forgotten, you're doing it on your own, only thing that matters is it's done fast. What do you use?". And then of course I spring the, "Okay, now it's becoming a flagship product. How do you onboard co-workers? How do you pivot to ongoing maintenance? What pr…

As a candidate that would be a hell of a red flag, particularly as an opener. After answering I would definitely follow up with "are situations like those an expected part of my day-to-day?" and minutely examine your response. Even if the rest of the interview went swimmingly that opener would give me pause after the fact. That question translates to me as "your sister teams/leadership/communication infrastructure ar…

Devil's Advocate: Interview questions are almost never related to the actual job. Why would the candidate assume otherwise in this case?

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#242

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

Netcob wrote: post #44

Goal-oriented work, creativity and motivation definitely have a difficult relationship. In programming, I learn the most things simply by experimenting at home on my own. I'm thinking about switching jobs, so I wanted to learn some new frameworks and concepts to help with that, and I decided to make my personal projects a bit more "professional". Use continuous integration, focus more on web stuff, build and automati…

[deleted]

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#243

Post by robocat » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

juancn wrote: post #223

I makes me think about how I approach really difficult problems. I use a strategy that I call: "obsess and let go" that has worked wonders for me. Essentially it has two parts: - obsession: look at the problem intently, poke it, prod it, think about experiments, talk to other people until you're completely blocked and making absolutely no progress. - letting go: forget about it, go do something else, exercise, take a…

Similar to “You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large, they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your 12 problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit and people will say “How did he do it. He must be a genius.” - Richard Feynman

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#244

Post by solipsism » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

bstar77 wrote: post #239

solipsism wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's advantageous to use those things you listed because that's what the market can provide talent-wise More silliness. Pay developers enough so that they'll stick around. If they stick around, then you don't need to hire for talent in a particular framework or language. You can hire for intelligence, creativity, passion, drive, whatever... and invest in training people when they get there. Jumping from framework to…

> Pay developers enough so that they'll stick around It's amazing FANG companies have any turnover based on that logic. Turnover happens for a variety of reasons... like global pandemics... you can't make a blanket statement like that and expect to be taken seriously.

Sorry, I was speaking in common parlance and assuming most readers would realize that I don't mean literally 0 turnover.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#245

Post by kkylin » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

For anyone interested: the physical phenomenon is spin-orbit coupling. Here's a somewhat technical discussion of the classical version:

https://mitpress-request.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/...

and the quantum analog:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin%E2%80%93orbit_interaction

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#246

Post by majewsky » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

jll29 wrote: post #64

Interesting how Feynman can be inspiring people long after his death. He sounds as if he likes to talk about himself rather too much, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fair amount of exaggeration in his prose. That said, if I made a list of dead people I'd like to spend a day with if I could, he'd sure be on it (as an aside, who [else] would you add to such a list?). And he could be serious, too: despite bein…

> despite being an outspoken atheist, he deeply loved his wife to the extent that he wrote a letter to her after she had passed away.

I honestly don't see how the first part of the sentence factors into the second part.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#247

Post by mclightning » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

weehoo wrote: post #214

lumost wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder if modern corporate culture has adopted soviet style newspeak. Why are we immigrating to the new thing? For the same reasons as we migrated to the old thing. Why is the new thing better? Because it’s just so much better.

If you can convince the higher ups that migrating tooling provides business value, you can do something that requires zero insight or creativity for a few months and at the end of it be promoted for organizing a successful migration despite delivering zero measurable business value. The effects of the migration are gonna be second and higher order effects that are impossible to separate from the rest of the business…

Holy cow. This! Exactly this! It happened in big corp., I am working at right now. As an engineer, I just watched it happen. When I tried to explain to other engineers, most didn't get it. Only a few got the trajectory we were put in by higher ups for credits they were aiming to get. But those few were onboard or powerless as me.

We just observed it happen. As the engineers, we did our job best we could regardless. Things broke, we fixed. Somethings rolled back, and even for those they claimed credit & celebrated for re-inventing the wheel.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#248

Post by robocat » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #154

marcosdumay wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you let the water fall far enough, it would hit terminal velocity Does it ever hit terminal velocity? There is no air in front of it, just more fast falling water. It's well known that water gains velocity until it vaporizes. I assume it vaporizes because some small flow turbulence gets strong enough to atomize it once it reaches enough speed.

The water will break apart into raindrops which fall at terminal velocity. Depending on relative humidity, they evaporate as they go, making them cool and get smaller, which lowers the weight/surface area ratio, and they get slightly slower.

Surely it depends on the diameter of the water column. For diameters much less than a rain drop, surface tension will dominate, and perhaps no column is produced (unless initially at high velocity, like water cutting?). For larger diameters air pressure will keep the column in shape at initiation. For very large diameters I am fairly sure the column would very easily exceed the terminal velocity of a rain drop. That would be a fun experiment to do from the top of a tall building!

Most of our intuition is with columns that have turbulent flow and standing waves (e.g. taps), which affect how quickly the column disperses.

A non-turbulent column of water acts very differently, see https://google.com/search?q=laminar+water+jet

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#249

Post by ip26 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #13

jacobmischka wrote: post #7

I read (listened to, technically) this book a few weeks ago because I've always been inspired by the idea of Feynman and didn't know much about him. Honestly, I actually like him less after having read it. As I guess I should have expected, because its subtitle is "Adventures of a Curious Character", it's unfortunately for me filled with many more random personal anecdotes, often involving naked women, prostitutes, g…

I like him more after reading it. All the stories had neat ideas, demonstrated his personality and showed what drove him. Of course it wasn't laid out directly in a boring technical book that no one is going to read. Also, what's up with people ignoring the fine line between crazy and genius, and thinking all these genius are supposed to be completely normal people?

I don’t think people expect them to be normal. But we hold these people up as our heroes. People aspire to be more like their heroes. So it comes as a shock when they learn their hero was a notorious philanderer, or terrible father, or chronically depressed, or self-aggrandizing.

Personally, I’m unsettled by how often the kids of our heroes seem to wind up unsuccessful, unhappy and poorly adjusted.

I’ve kind of lost interest in the unstable genius. I want to learn about the also-rans who made quiet but notable contributions while remaining happy & raising equally happy kids.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#250

Post by robocat » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

eigenket wrote: post #45

knolan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surface tension plays a role. Water wants to reduce its surface area because forces between molecules at the surface pull them together. So a droplet of water will want to form a sphere. A column of water will first form into a cylinder and then break up into spherical droplets. It’s called the Plateau–Rayleigh instability. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateau–Rayleigh_instability

The only role surface tension plays in the Feynman problem is to ensure that the cross section of the stream is a circle. The rest you can work out based on classical mechanics and the fact that the amount of water is conserved. You actually get exactly the same "thinning" behavior if somehow the stream is square shaped or anything else in cross-section.

Air pressure probably dominates over surface tension.

Imagine a water column large enough that surface tension is very weak, say a tap with an outlet 1 metre in diameter.

At the exit of the tap the pressure of the water is at air pressure ( = 1 bar: any less and the water would be pushed back into the tap).

As the column speeds up, the pressure inside the column "wants" to decrease, however the air pressure outside forces the column to be narrower to maintain 1 bar of pressure.

Also the forces within the column depend on the hydrogen bonds between the water molecules, which will "pull" the column together. Effects at the actual surface will have little overall influence (the term surface tension seems misleading to me).

Disclaimer: I have only done undergrad physics, and although I do try to think things through, I am regularly surprised at how wrong I am about basic physics!