There is learning for fun and learning for optimization, and if you're lucky there is overlap! There probably no shortage of things one could learn to optimize for handling +ev situations better in the future, but learning for long periods of time is difficult if you don't enjoy the actual subject. I recently got into learning about hydroponics and tennis coaching and I don't feel the pressure to make those things a part of my career development.
What to Learn
101–110 of 113 posts
Re: What to Learn
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I wonder about this a lot. If I have a developer on my team who needs to learn X, or get better at Y, I can always offer that feedback and it is construed as constructive feedback. But if I tell a developer who can't speak well or communicate lucidly that they need to work on their communication skills, that comes across as offensive. There was a horrible architect at my previous organization who was universally l…
One day I saw a colleague-to-be with their bare feet on the the desk, I looked at them and I said, "that's a no". He apologized and we moved on. But I also told the guy sitting next to them, "why didn't you say anything to them?".
When you left, they turned to each other and said "his answer to solving problems is to immediately demand you change to do what he wants. No asking, no discussion, not even a 'please'."
Re: What to Learn
#103"I don't have a large enough sample nor have I polled enough people to have high confidence that this works as a general algorithm but, for finding groups of world-class experts, what's worked for me is finding excellent managers. The two teams I worked on with the highest density of world-class experts have been teams under really great management. I have a higher bar for excellent management than most people and, from having talked to many people about this, almost no one I've talked to has worked for or even knows a manager as good as one I would consider to be excellent (and, general, both the person I'm talking to agrees with me on this, indicating that it's not the case that they have a manager who's excellent in dimensions I don't care about and vice versa); from discussions about this, I would guess that a manager I think of as excellent is at least 99.9%-ile. How to find such a manager is a long discussion that I might turn into another post.
@luu-- I'm sure a lot of people on here besides me would be very curious to read your thoughts on what distinguished these managers from the others, and how you would identify one (nevermind find one).
Re: What to Learn
#104Author should learn some modern css (I say this in jest)
Re: What to Learn
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just for the sake of example, I consider solving partial differential equations challenging. Listening is not challenging. One may not do it for a variety of reason, but we call can do it no exception, the act is as easy as it gets. A bit like walking.
> A bit like walking. Walking is extremely challenging for a lot of people so that argument would contradict your point. But it is a good analogy, a lot of people who have problems talking to people and listening also have problems walking properly. So just as you say walking is trivial to some but others just can't get it right.
Walking is easy for the vast majority of people who work, let's try not to complicate things for the sake of it. Listening is easy too, what is more complicate is, "listen and do exactly as I say", which one may or may not do for a variety of reasons.
Re: What to Learn
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
One day I saw a colleague-to-be with their bare feet on the the desk, I looked at them and I said, "that's a no". He apologized and we moved on. But I also told the guy sitting next to them, "why didn't you say anything to them?".
Maybe it didn't bother that guy.
The nervous smile indicated that was the case, but him being a younger fellow, it was harder for him than for me to tell the other guy to be polite.
Re: What to Learn
#107This wouldn't be Hacker News if someone didn't comment that ACTUALLY a random walk of n steps will get you sqrt(n) in some direction, which is much better than log(n). I guess my special skill is being pedantic.
Just curious, how did you arrive at sqrt(n)? I spent all morning thinking about this in 2 dimensions and I came up with sqrt(n^2 + d^2) where d is the displacement from the original position on the y axis. (Pythagorean theorem)
Central limit theorem. You get to √(n² + d²) if you take n steps to the right and d steps up. But if you take n steps randomly to the left or right, you end up at about α√n steps in one direction or the other, on average, because the distribution of your final position is a Gaussian around your original position whose standard deviation grows as √n.
Try it:
>>> n=1000; sorted(abs(sum(random.randrange(2) for i in range(n)) - n/2) for j in range(128))
As it happens, in two dimensions the distribution is radially symmetric, and its radius is still proportional to the square root of the number of steps. This accounts for the astounding isotropy of lattice-gas automata, whose particles are doing such random walks simultaneously, and for the depressing popularity of Gaussian filtering in image processing, because the Gaussian convolution kernel is the only anisotropic separable kernel, and can be closely approximated in each dimension very cheaply with a different application of the central limit theorem.
Re: What to Learn
#108The best thing to learn right now is how to code. There's a lot of things you'll improve on. You can develop anything that you want, and it will help you think logically.
Re: What to Learn
#109In recent years I've started to apply this idea more and more in my own career and life. I'm focusing much less on adding new skills and instead finding much higher ROI doubling down on improving the "top three things I'm uniquely good at" in meaningful ways.
Agree with the idea. I'm also trying to apply this model in my life. If I don't understand something or just don't have the time or interest in doing smth, I just don't do / learn it or delegate it to someone else. As a great example, was my last essay. I just couldn't finish it myself. So I delegated it to professionals from https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/grabmyessay, who already have the needed knowledges to write it for me.
Re: What to Learn
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A bit like walking. Walking is extremely challenging for a lot of people so that argument would contradict your point. But it is a good analogy, a lot of people who have problems talking to people and listening also have problems walking properly. So just as you say walking is trivial to some but others just can't get it right.
Walking is easy for the vast majority of people who work, let's try not to complicate things for the sake of it. Listening is easy too, what is more complicate is, "listen and do exactly as I say", which one may or may not do for a variety of reasons.
Listening is not "just sit there and let the sound wash over you". That part is easy.
Active listening is much more involved. It involves, among other things, developing empathy for the person talking, trying to understand their emotions and deeper reasons. Not just taking in what they say, but trying to understand what it means, and why they say it.
It is very much a skill you are not exercising in this thread.