201–210 of 505 posts
Tying my identity to the company I worked for. Tech-corporate culture incentivizes you strongly couple your sense of self with your company, which was frankly disastrous for me and for anyone else I've known to fall into the trap. I could see my company struggle and fall behind, and I desperately wanted to help turn things around (after all, this company was part of who I was). I overextended myself, made bad enginee…
My biggest mistake was to discount and ignore the importance of management as a skill. As a good technician, I moved up to being a junior officer in the Navy and completely missed the point that I was to work through the enlisted sailors, not join them. I found myself staring East all night wondering why I was struggling. Suddenly, it dawned on me.
My biggest mistake, that I made again and again, was not leaving a job when it was time. I thought I had something to prove, but there was never any point to it. You don't owe anything to an employer. You can't prove anything to an employer. They have absolutely no loyalty to you, and care less than nothing about what is right or wrong, wise or foolish. So: If you ever think things might not turn out as well as you h…
I chose the wrong school because they accepted me, and my high school counselor thought I had zero chance. I couldn't afford it, and dropped out. I would have gone much farther studying computer science at Purdue Calumet, and could have had it all paid for.
Once I had the Windows NT 3.51 server drive mapped as D:, and got confused thinking it was a local drive. Had to drive 25 miles and rebuild things in the middle of the night, sweating bullets. We were a small ISP with 200 customers, I was the tech staff.
My next to last big mistake was staying at a system administrator job far longer than I should have.... they really didn't need someone full time, and it zapped my drive to get things done.
Then I took a job making gears... the pay and commute sucked, but I liked doing it. 5 years away from technology, then Covid hit, I got sick... and I've been tired ever since.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last I checked, nearly everyone in tech hops jobs frequently. In fact that’s common advice for comp advancement. In my personal experience that advice holds true, even though I change jobs much less frequently than most of my peers (which means my comp tends to lag behind theirs).
What is "frequently"? I'd like to see a minimum of three years ahead of a transition, and a decent story why. Often the contract ends, the company is sold and the new policies are draconian, etc. Fine. Given the level of effort involved in bringing someone on, my outfit cannot afford to be staffed like a fast food joint.
Working for a company that exploits [mostly] kids/teens' attention while being aware of the long term negative psychological effects of such.
We all hate it, but it pays the bills. It's ultimately better to be in this position as a thoughtful person aware of the consequences of your work, since they would just replace you with someone less conscionable otherwise.
If you do the same work, what does it matter?
Working for a company that exploits [mostly] kids/teens' attention while being aware of the long term negative psychological effects of such.
We all hate it, but it pays the bills. It's ultimately better to be in this position as a thoughtful person aware of the consequences of your work, since they would just replace you with someone less conscionable otherwise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because maybe they’re just looking for the right environment, and maybe you’re it. Hiring is like dating, after all. This reads instead like an egregious case of the fundamental attribution error, and one that’d I’d view as quite the blunder by my management team, since the real consequence is limiting our access to the talent pool. Even aside from the FAE, this kind of attitude also systematically reinforces structu…
> Hiring is like dating, after all. Past behavior is a pretty good predictor of future behavior. If you're dating someone whose previous 3 spouses died in mysterious kiln explosions, I'd stay away from the ceramics factory.
How about this analogy instead, being more in the realm of the applicable and commonplace: I broke up with many girlfriends, and had many short- and medium-term partners, before meeting my wife of over a decade now, who continues to knock my socks off to this day.
In practice, past performance is not a guide to future outcomes. How many times have we heard this caveat applied, in far more predictable markets than hiring and/or dating? Past performance of employment candidates is a subjective and observational assessment; relying upon it (especially in a negative framing) is to invite not only ones own biases to take center stage, but also those of others; see earlier point re. reinforcement of structural discrimination.
At most, someone’s past successes qualify them for my interview shortlist, but there are many other green flags besides, and I’ll save my type 2 errors for the back half of the hiring funnel, after assessing someone’s potential.
My biggest mistake, that I made again and again, was not leaving a job when it was time. I thought I had something to prove, but there was never any point to it. You don't owe anything to an employer. You can't prove anything to an employer. They have absolutely no loyalty to you, and care less than nothing about what is right or wrong, wise or foolish. So: If you ever think things might not turn out as well as you h…
I was at IBM, fixing a critical mainframe that had brought the entire check clearance system for the country down. An angry customer was breathing down my neck, making idiotic suggestions. I was rattled. He wanted me to try swapping out some component. I said no, I was 100% sure that was not the problem. I was laser focused on fixing this problem. Turned out I was wrong. Customer complained to my management and I got…
I dunno; I agree you should always remember that you might be wrong, but under those conditions I wouldn't make that change unless they signed something saying that we did it on their say-so over my objections. Way too many red flags.