Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

earthly.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 289 posts

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#211

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

goodpoint wrote: post #209
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #206

I enjoyed that read. I suspect that it probably pissed off a few folks. I'm a grizzled, scarred old codger that spent most of his career, saying "Are you sure that's a good idea?", only to be ignored, and then put in charge of mopping up the blood. I have learned that "I told you so." is absolutely, 1000% worthless. It doesn't even feel good, saying it. What I have learned, is that, when I see someone dancing along a…

> I have learned that "I told you so." is absolutely, 1000% worthless. This is proof of bad company culture. Doing post-mortems is important to learn what went wrong in the decision process and how to prevent it.

Different thing. "I told you so" is a smug, nasty statement. It wins no friends, and closes the ears of those most in need of it.

A postmortem is a clinical, reasoned, and scientific review. Everyone is on board, and agrees to abide by the results.

I worked for a Japanese company, for a long time. I made some colossal mistakes, during my tenure, and was told "That was, indeed, a mistake. We expect you to mitigate it, and not repeat it." Often, I would actually get more trust and responsibility, afterwards.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#212

Post by q-big »

methodsignature wrote: post #192
wnevets wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be a good X you must follow the rules. To be a great X you must have followed the rules so well as to learn why they’re there and when they should be broken. In my experience slavishly following the "rules" or "best practices" can actually be worse than never following them. Not understanding when it's good to deviate usually means of a lack of understanding of why the "rules" or "best practices" exist in the fi…

"Rules" often contradict each other. For example, in software development, "keep it simple" often directly conflicts with "dont repeat yourself" as it takes increased complexity to achieve reuse of code. I often see keeping it simple take a back seat in newer developers as they slavishly follow the don't repeat yourself trail. The end result is routinely a brittle, rigid, and overly complex solution.

> For example, in software development, "keep it simple" often directly conflicts with "dont repeat yourself" as it takes increased complexity to achieve reuse of code.

KISS and DRY are different paradigms, i.e. come from different schools of programming.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#213

Post by GlennS »

carlzukki wrote: post #165
bombcar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be a good X you must follow the rules. To be a great X you must have followed the rules so well as to learn why they’re there and when they should be broken. Works for almost any X - writer, programmer, driving, etc.

A lot of good ways of looking at this, and your phrasing @bombcar it's really nicely put. In my opinion, once you play a game for a while, it's easy to know exactly when and how to break ANY rule: you must understand what the rules are there for. Think of any agile framework, a ton of them are practiced like cults by the most. However, if you think that those are there for 2 simple purposes: 1. you want to ensure nob…

You have taken a completely different 2 key lessons from agile than I would have picked.

I think mine are closer to the agile manifesto, but perhaps yours are closer to how agile is actually practiced in most places.

Problem 1: you want to ensure that you build the right thing.

Solution 1: you should get feedback from end users as frequently as possible.

Problem 2: you want to be using work processes that are appropriate for your team and task.

Solution 2: teams should be able to modify their own work processes.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#214

Post by VoodooJuJu »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #206

I enjoyed that read. I suspect that it probably pissed off a few folks. I'm a grizzled, scarred old codger that spent most of his career, saying "Are you sure that's a good idea?", only to be ignored, and then put in charge of mopping up the blood. I have learned that "I told you so." is absolutely, 1000% worthless. It doesn't even feel good, saying it. What I have learned, is that, when I see someone dancing along a…

I'd rather be the guy that sells the mops. These people won't respect you until you take their money.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#215

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #214
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #206

I enjoyed that read. I suspect that it probably pissed off a few folks. I'm a grizzled, scarred old codger that spent most of his career, saying "Are you sure that's a good idea?", only to be ignored, and then put in charge of mopping up the blood. I have learned that "I told you so." is absolutely, 1000% worthless. It doesn't even feel good, saying it. What I have learned, is that, when I see someone dancing along a…

I'd rather be the guy that sells the mops. These people won't respect you until you take their money.

I believe those are called "Security Consultants."

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#216

Post by sn41 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #206

I enjoyed that read. I suspect that it probably pissed off a few folks. I'm a grizzled, scarred old codger that spent most of his career, saying "Are you sure that's a good idea?", only to be ignored, and then put in charge of mopping up the blood. I have learned that "I told you so." is absolutely, 1000% worthless. It doesn't even feel good, saying it. What I have learned, is that, when I see someone dancing along a…

I see myself in the same role in my organization, except that I think in terms of a different bodily (semi) fluid.

I even have had crises of confidence, thinking that "I told you syndrome" is a psychological issue with me. I do tend to be overcautious, and tend to underachieve because of it.

But I get a grim satisfaction in knowing that when the next time the bodily fluid hits the air circulator, my pail and mop will make it liveable again.

There was some dedication which I thought came from a John Le Carre novel, "For those who served and stayed silent". I can't find the source now, but that's my spirit.

(I am not in the IT area, I am in academia.)

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#217

Post by mtberatwork »

spyckie2 wrote: post #35

Being a hedgehog is useful on the journey to domain mastery because sticking to frameworks saves you time and headache compared to not having any frameworks at all. The 3 stages of domain mastery: Stage 1 - No knowledge or structure to approach a domain (everything is hard, pitfalls are everywhere) Stage 2 - Frameworks that are useful to approach the domain (Map to avoid pitfall areas) Stage 3 - Detailed understandin…

Great post, adding that the vast majority of hiring is based around stage 2 which creates a feedback loop of resume-driven development.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#218

Post by sn41 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #211
goodpoint wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have learned that "I told you so." is absolutely, 1000% worthless. This is proof of bad company culture. Doing post-mortems is important to learn what went wrong in the decision process and how to prevent it.

Different thing. "I told you so" is a smug, nasty statement. It wins no friends, and closes the ears of those most in need of it. A postmortem is a clinical, reasoned, and scientific review. Everyone is on board, and agrees to abide by the results. I worked for a Japanese company, for a long time. I made some colossal mistakes, during my tenure, and was told "That was, indeed, a mistake. We expect you to mitigate it,…

Yup, I tell my teammates, fix the error, not the blame. I refuse to find who did wrong. After an initial hesitation, suddenly everybody jumps to it and solves the issue.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#219

Post by GlennS »

anw wrote: post #31

It's cathartic to read other people who have to go through this. I'm fighting red tape for my team as we build out a dashboard. Outlook is packed with 1–2 hour meetings for the next 3 months where so far I'm: * being asked to load test our system to make sure it can handle the load (of 3 people?) * being asked to integrate with various analytics platforms so we can alert some poor schmuck at 3 AM in case the API goes…

Cathartic is certainly the word. The title in particular really hits the mark for me.

There are a lot of people talking about computer programs, and telling us we should do things this way or that way. Even telling us that their way is certainly the best or only correct way.

A great many of these people - perhaps the majority majority - are plain wrong. Some of them talk such nonsense that I suspect they don't have any actual ability to program at all!

How can they be so sure of themselves?

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#220

Post by asoneth »

bombcar wrote: post #57
spyckie2 wrote: post #35

Being a hedgehog is useful on the journey to domain mastery because sticking to frameworks saves you time and headache compared to not having any frameworks at all. The 3 stages of domain mastery: Stage 1 - No knowledge or structure to approach a domain (everything is hard, pitfalls are everywhere) Stage 2 - Frameworks that are useful to approach the domain (Map to avoid pitfall areas) Stage 3 - Detailed understandin…

To be a good X you must follow the rules. To be a great X you must have followed the rules so well as to learn why they’re there and when they should be broken. Works for almost any X - writer, programmer, driving, etc.

Reminds me of a quote from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting:

"Some consider it noble to have a method; others consider it noble not to have a method. Not to have a method is bad; to stop entirely at method is worse still. One should at first observe rules severely, then change them in an intelligent way. The aim of possessing method is to seem finally as if one had no method."

Post reply on HN