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

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

#271

Post by paledot »

scottLobster wrote: post #230
paledot wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make a note of that response and count it in your favour. But if you get sidetracked enough that you never end up answering the question, that's also not a good sign. IMO your counterexample is wildly implausible, and is likely to sidetrack the candidate. "Is nothing salvageable? What was the flaw? What automated testing? Do I have to use that testing in my alternative fix? How does that reflect on the rest of my…

True, just came up with it off the top of my head. I suppose it is possible to be too detailed in such questions. Point being it at least makes it sound like the company was doing the right things and got hit out of left field, vs stepping in a pile of their own making and making you responsible for fixing it. Perhaps a more innocent miscommunication like the customer failed to clearly communicate requirements, and i…

Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be along the lines of, "You propose a to-do list app at a team meeting, and you want to demonstrate that it's a feasible product. However, you have a limited time box to ship it in. What do you reach for?" It lacks a bit of the urgency of the original question, but still comes with time constraints.

My original example is born of a decade of cynicism, and you're right that it could reflect poorly on the company. Thank you for the feedback, though in fact I'm happily unemployed right now.

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

#272

Post by Iv »

MattRix wrote: post #192
Iv wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7. Yes I know, it gets better. That's still going to be 10 years off my already too short life. And how I envy the idea that living close to family would save you time instead of draining some.

As a parent of two kids who are both past that age, I feel like your perspective on this is all wrong. You’ve given 70+ years to someone else. And you haven’t lost those years at all, since presumably you also have a meaningful day job (and if not, that’s not your child’s fault). It sounds like you and your partner should work on splitting the load more. You don’t need both parents to look after the kid constantly, y…

> since presumably you also have a meaningful day job (and if not, that’s not your child’s fault).

Turns out that you need 3x the money when you need to feed 3x the people, so no, my job is not as meaningful as it could be and while you can't say it is my child's fault, that certainly caused my family status.

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

#273

Post by stefandesu »

schindlabua wrote: post #66
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…

Hah sounds like you described me perfectly. But I do have to say, ever since I'm programming full-time I seem not to be able to just code for fun anymore. I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up. (I can't imagine how it is for…

Ever since I started a "real" job in programming a few years ago, I've had such a hard time doing anything programming-related on the side. Which is such a shame since I have so many ideas. That's why I've been thinking of switching to a different field of work, even if it pays less. Ideally something where I don't really use computers at all. Not sure what that could be though.

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

#274

Post by seer »

CalRobert wrote: post #98
schindlabua wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah sounds like you described me perfectly. But I do have to say, ever since I'm programming full-time I seem not to be able to just code for fun anymore. I used to program all day long.. and I guess I still do, but now it's for work, and after 8h of work I'm just done, you know? The "stuff I want to look at" list is growing longer and longer and there's no hope of me ever catching up. (I can't imagine how it is for…

Dad of two - we basically don't, if I'm honest. I've had to give up on an immense number of things and while lots of people tell you "having kids is expensive" very few will tell you that the most expensive part is the opportunity cost. I have so many things I want to do and it hurts, almost physically, to watch other people doing them because they could hack on stuff after work while I had to deal with making sure a…

Having your own time to try out whatever you like is immensely helpful for a developer, thats why at the companies I work for I campaign (successfully for now) to have “learning days”. You do whatever coding / learning you want, but you are obligated to share your discoveries with your colleagues. Companies benefit with more motivated, engaged and loyal employees, and you get to progress as a dev.

Sometimes managed to convince people to do this once a week, sometimes once a month, or somewhere in between. For example now I’m doing it once a fortnight.

Everyone recognizes that learning is an integral part of the profession, so I think companies should really accommodate that, rather than expect people to carve out personal time for it.

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

#275

Post by knolan »

robocat wrote: post #266
knolan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). Water is a polar molecule with positive and negative charges corresponding to the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This makes it a very ‘sticky’ molecule and so water coalesces…

Thanks. "For the water droplets of 1 micron and 4 mm, the capillary pressures are of the order of 10e5 Pa and 10² Pa, respectively (σ=0.072 N/m for water)."[∆] Atmospheric pressure is approximately 10e5 Pa at ground level. Capillary pressure is another name for Laplace pressure from a quick Google. So as your water column increases diameter, air pressure matters more and. For my example of 1m diameter, I would expect…

The Laplace pressure is in addition to the static pressure. Working in gauge pressure you can ignore the air pressure and the pressure within the droplet.

Don’t confuse gauge and absolute pressure.

A 1m column of water is going to be a turbulent waterfall.

Remove surface tension and the liquid will form more complex shapes as it is less constrained to form a sphere. Instead of forming a droplet the stream will simply fall and break up as other influences dominate.

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

#276

Post by Oras »

rapind wrote: post #267
Oras wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you have agreed with me in your points especially regarding talent and turnover. The shiny tech today will be a legacy 6 months later or a year if you’re lucky. Then the talent pool will change and you can’t attract the devs who religiously follow new trends. You’ll end up hiring people to deal with your {legacy} system or as you pointed out .. substantial changing it.

That’s not a universal truth. Java was shiny once upon a time. Rails was shiny once, even C was shiny once. This stuff is still being used (not legacy). I’m sure when rails first showed up, people were calling it a fad. In JS land there’s a ton of churn though for sure if that’s what you were thinking about. Not all of it though.

Being used does not mean it is not legacy. Do you consider a system running in Java 6 up to date? But if it is stable, serving customers requirements then there is no need to replace it.

The point I am making is, using the current {shiny} tools might not be the correct answer (it could be though depending on the use case). Just use whatever gets the job done faster and then iterate. Some developers will start solutionising based on technology instead of focusing what is the purpose of the system and how it will help users. AKA: CV driven development :)

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

#277

Post by ppsreejith »

bvsrinivasan wrote: post #11

The meta-principle is that in complex domains there is no straight line, well worn, "plannable" path to greatness. Kenneth Stanley calls it "The Myth of the objective" and has spent the last several years trying to formalize this idea (within AI as well) and get it more traction. Book -- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25670869-why-greatness-c... Talk -- https://youtu.be/dXQPL9GooyI

Thank you! This was a very interesting watch. I've also started reading the book.

For some reason, this reminds me of the debate between Peter Thiel and David Graeber on the topic "Where did the future go?" where Graeber points out the lost potential of people as one major reason.

Relevant youtube video and section: https://youtu.be/eF0cz9OmCGw?t=2373

The video is interesting in its own right.

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

#278

Post by cryptonector »

jmfldn wrote: post #109
mmcnl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody is Feynman ofcourse. You have to accept the risk that giving freedom for creativity won't end up with anything useful.

True. I think most people can benefit from a bit of this at least. Ie. Speaking of software engineering, at work our 10% time is for us to do as we please. A lot of good things come from that. Maybe 50% time would be too much for most though. Google's 20% is probably the maximum I'd opt for if I were a CEO.

These percentages are purely aspirational. Managing software developers' time down to the single digit percentages is impossible. In reality if you're doing something in your 20% (or whatever) that turns out to be valuable, and in particular you make your management see that it's valuable, your 20% will become 80%, and if not, then your 20% will be whatever you manage to make it.

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

#279

Post by cutemonster »

scottLobster wrote: post #255
Viliam1234 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fair point. I'd say it's sensible for the candidate to assume that context added to any hypothetical is there to inform their answer. Why add the context if it's not meant to inform? At that point it becomes fluff at best and misleading at worst. It would make no sense for an interviewer to provide meaningless context unless they were deliberately attempting to distract from the the question, or are otherwise simply…

> Even if the candidate were to successfully discern the gas-lighting, all it would do is prevent trust from being formed. At that point every interaction would be subject to question.

Good point I think

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

#280

Post by karolist »

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #178
yowlingcat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking because I feel this way a lot too -- is this the kind of thing that was avoidable (IE if you built it on Rails/Django + Heroku would that have cut down the maintenance), or was there intrinsic complexity to the project that made it unavoidable? More and more, I want to build things that are in the former category if I build them at all outside of work.

In my particular case, I opened the CI/CD can of worms using Docker (which obviously has great use cases). My use case could have fit into a Rails/Django + Heroku model that would have saved me a bunch of time. I thought by investing in the infra early it would save me time later, however later will likely never come. So basically I spent more time debugging issues due to adding infrastructure complexity than develop…

This tech is great when someone working full time at your company sets up all the scaffolding and you just code your microservice with magic happening around it. Not so great when devs trying to spice up their resume start implementing these ideas to their own personal projects during their free time. I've spent so many hours fighting Basel, gRCP, API gateways, tracing etc etc, just because it's nice at work. But took too much time to replicate something own my own, and it is of course, fragile.
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