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Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
41–50 of 424 posts
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#42Employ a virtual worker that schedules meetings and replies to low-level emails. Disconnect yourself from real-time communications during those hours and allow your VA to contact you in cases of urgently needed replies. I employ a lady 20 hours a week for this, so I get core time about 4 hours a day to do whatever I want. Even if it's pc gaming. Costs me $15,000 a year and is well worth it.
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#43I think the true 10x multiplier is not a technical skill at all. It is the ability to quickly cut through irrelevant tasks and actions to focus on the thing that will move the business goal forward fastest. It is enshrined in the concept of the MVP and the short iteration cycle. Quicky building something that does not solve a business problem is not productive. Work=force*displacement. No movement, no work. A closely…
This is the right answer.
The proof is that a good coder spends about 10x as long thinking about it before actually committing any code. In a sentence: Be able to visualize the problem in your head first. The actual code, if it's elegant and succinct, is incidental.
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#44Before you start optimizing runtime performance: measure, trace, inspect, or whatever is appropriate to understand current performance.
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#45Understanding the system of work in which you exist. Your company, your industry, your society. W. Edwards Deming said over and over again that the system in which an employee works puts a ceiling on how much output they can produce. But you should take it a step further than just trying to maximize your output, and instead understand how your work creates value for your boss, your company, for society. Productivity…
Isn't the measure of that how much you get paid?
If we assume you get paid $100 to make a button, I think OP's question is how to do that in 1 minute instead of 10 minutes. You know, so you have 9 extra minutes to watch youtube.
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#46I think the true 10x multiplier is not a technical skill at all. It is the ability to quickly cut through irrelevant tasks and actions to focus on the thing that will move the business goal forward fastest. It is enshrined in the concept of the MVP and the short iteration cycle. Quicky building something that does not solve a business problem is not productive. Work=force*displacement. No movement, no work. A closely…
This is the right answer. The proof is that a good coder spends about 10x as long thinking about it before actually committing any code. In a sentence: Be able to visualize the problem in your head first. The actual code, if it's elegant and succinct, is incidental.
> The proof is that a good coder spends about 10x as long thinking about it before actually committing any code.
This seems antithetical to the post above yours. Or at least how I'm reading it. In bigger tech co's this looks a lot like massive design documents with a dozen reviewers, all giving enormous amounts of time and thought to the idea in the pursuit of "building it right". Design processes that can take weeks or months for what is otherwise an MVP.
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#47Knowledge growth is exponential. Rather than focusing on specific topics/tools, focus on trying to gain some form of knowledge, insight, or skill from whatever task you are working on.
For example, if you are working on implementing a regex expression for your job, spend the additional time and effort (if you can spare it) to learn a little more about regular expressions and/or the tools associated with them. These small incremental improvements to your knowledge base over time will have a significant impact on your overall trajectory.
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#48Most of these aren't really productivity multipliers, they just enable you to do the thing you need to do. It's unlikely that someone is doing task A without any calculus but another person who uses calculus is 10x more productive on the same task.
I think it's also possible that some of these lead to a I've-got-my-hammer-and-everything-is-a-nail approach to problem solving. You may then find yourself parsing HTML with regexps ( https://web.archive.org/web/20111009133402/http://stackoverf... ), which is never a good idea.
I'm a big fan of `for (x of y)`, skip the functional version, manipulate variables in and out of scope, hell, use globals. Sometimes you show up wearing a tux, other times you just have to rock the party in a hoodie.
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#49I mean, this sounds narrow, but going off of what you think are 10x multipliers, in terms of getting more bang for your hour/buck: * Fully understanding how SQL prepares queries; optimization strategies * Embracing garbage collection in JITted runtimes, mainly JS for now * Being able to diagnose and replace a squeaky belt in your car * Know what a cat is saying when it meows at you and indicates something in the vici…
> Fully understanding how SQL prepares queries; optimization strategies
That might be very useful for me, but my career has taken a different track, and I have never needed that. I almost never touch SQL, and never in a situation where performance matters. However I know that I can look that up if I need it (or more likely find someone else - I expect looking it up will take months)
Re: Ask HN: What bits of fundamental knowledge are productivity multipliers?
#50Understanding the system of work in which you exist. Your company, your industry, your society. W. Edwards Deming said over and over again that the system in which an employee works puts a ceiling on how much output they can produce. But you should take it a step further than just trying to maximize your output, and instead understand how your work creates value for your boss, your company, for society. Productivity…
Isn't the measure of that how much you get paid? If we assume you get paid $100 to make a button, I think OP's question is how to do that in 1 minute instead of 10 minutes. You know, so you have 9 extra minutes to watch youtube.
The measure of how much value YOU generate for YOURSELF is how much you get paid.
But generally, if you can generate a lot of value for the company, and demonstrate it, you will go far, and you will make much more money, especially if you can do it consistently and threaten to leave.
Doing a jira ticket in 20 minutes instead of 2 hours, then spending the extra time watching youtube is fine, but how about becoming a manager, making 3x as much money, and spending 100% of your time watching youtube? Or better yet, watching movies in first class on the plane to the "strategic conference" in Hawaii.