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Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

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Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#131

Post by kingboss »

serverholic wrote: post #111
insightcheck wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary, I think paulcole made a great point. It doesn’t need to be weapons. A programmer who makes a social media feed more addictive isn’t necessarily moral. But a salesperson/marketer can promote something generally seen as good, or at least far more good than the example programmer. Ad campaigns can remind people to vote, encourage people to quit smoking, or convince people to avoid drunken driving. A mar…

No it's not a great point. It's a point made to distract from the real issue. It's a debate tactic. If you read the conversation carefully I'm trying to discuss the fundamental nature of the professions, not the specific products they are building or selling. That was something paulcole brought up. The fundamental nature of sales and marketing is manipulating people for personal gain. You could be selling hugs or wha…

They are also the reason why you have a job. Without sales you have nothing. Without marketing you don't know what to build. Building stuff that no one wants is useless.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#132

Post by djmips »

jongjong wrote: post #113

This article makes an interesting point but IMO it highlights 2 phenomema, not 1. The first phenomenon is that some people seem to be more talented and useful than they are while they are present within the organization. The second phenomenon is that when people leave an organization, their talents may be immediately discarded; they often end up being used as a scapegoats for any problem which remaining employees may…

Perhaps a side note - but I know a case where someone whose code had a lot of bugs and design problems but when they were with the company they worked very hard and would address problems - often with band-aid solutions but at least they took care of their own messes so it didn't fall onto others. All of this hard work and long hours and diligence made them seem to management as if they were amazing. However after they have left, they are obviously no longer supporting their terrible code and the ones who had to take it over will certainly demonize the departed - it's a bit unfair but someone who isn't helping fix their own mess (even if they have a good reason - they moved on) is still a huge negative. You are right though, this is somewhat a biased perception and scapegoating is real.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#133

Post by djmips »

mberning wrote: post #35

Man the slackware clock thing is so common. “Is that in confluence?” burns me up regularly. Things like how to delete a file in git. Or revert a file. As the number of tools required to build software continues to grow there are more and more opportunities for people to play dumb and act dopey.

Sometimes it must be a personality trait. I have one dev I know that is extremely productive when he is working within his cocoon. But the minute you ask him to use a new tool or deploy to a new system - he needs major hand holding even though he's senior. I don't really understand it, but it is what it is.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#134

Post by maccard »

remoquete wrote: post #126

How is overcommunicating a bad thing in a remote work environment? That post was written in 2013, when most IT companies required to work on site. If you're several time zones away, you do need to overcommunicate. How is promoting your own achievements a bad thing in the context of overcoming obstacles? Why should teams endorse a culture where achievements are not celebrated nor announced? This comments nails it in t…

You're reading a lot into the headline and not the explanation. For overcommunicating, the real nugget IMO is:

> A lot of people mistake activity for productivity

I've worked with a few of these people, and they generally tend to be very active on slack/email, make their way into meetings and ensure they're involved in "the process", while derailing every single one of those conversations into tangents, and then slide off into the next cycle of meetings and talking.

> How is promoting your own achievements a bad thing in the context of overcoming obstacles?

I think you're taking the article to the extreme here a little bit. Again, these problematic people tend to be the ones who talk about how involved they were on system X at $PREV_JOB, and if we need to do something like it again we should talk to them about it. It's not about saying "hey I crushed it this year, here's N things i did really well", it's people who deflect their current lack of progress and work by pointing at their previous achievements.

I wish I didn't know this from past experience, but I do....

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#135

Post by djmips »

croes wrote: post #127
musingsole wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BTW were is the breakthrough in Teslas You're either uninformed or being pointedly obtuse. Tesla has a massive patent portfolio -- starting with the roadster's gearless transmission. It's a point of fact that building a massive car company within a crystallized industry was a breakthrough in its own right.

Patents != Breakthroughs

Gigapress? Seems pretty revolutionary for car making but what do I know.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#136

Post by remoquete »

maccard wrote: post #134
remoquete wrote: post #126

How is overcommunicating a bad thing in a remote work environment? That post was written in 2013, when most IT companies required to work on site. If you're several time zones away, you do need to overcommunicate. How is promoting your own achievements a bad thing in the context of overcoming obstacles? Why should teams endorse a culture where achievements are not celebrated nor announced? This comments nails it in t…

You're reading a lot into the headline and not the explanation. For overcommunicating, the real nugget IMO is: > A lot of people mistake activity for productivity I've worked with a few of these people, and they generally tend to be very active on slack/email, make their way into meetings and ensure they're involved in "the process", while derailing every single one of those conversations into tangents, and then slid…

I hear you; I also had similar experiences. At the same time, I've had bad experiences with people who never, ever, communicate, to the point that one starts wondering if they're alive. That doesn't help teamwork either.

I believe the whole post is more of a projective test than anything else: people read it how they want to read it, because it's vague and full of generalizations.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#137

Post by musingsole »

croes wrote: post #127
musingsole wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BTW were is the breakthrough in Teslas You're either uninformed or being pointedly obtuse. Tesla has a massive patent portfolio -- starting with the roadster's gearless transmission. It's a point of fact that building a massive car company within a crystallized industry was a breakthrough in its own right.

Patents != Breakthroughs

You === pointedly obtuse

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#138

Post by dickersnoodle »

paulcole wrote: post #28
q-big wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: there is of course an incentive not to admit this. Second: I do believe that many people on HN really deeply care about technology/hacking topics and have detest for office politics. On the other hand, the people that the article discuss are good at office politics/marketing themselves and often don't have such a deep knowledge about programming. Thus, I would indeed assume that the typical HN reader/writer le…

The average HN reader is highly overrated for other reasons. > have detest for office politics The problem is that many people on HN believe any interaction with someone with an MBA, marketing background, manager, etc. is “office politics.”

It pretty much is. See https://devhumor.com/content/uploads/images/April2016/how-de....

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#139

Post by lazyweb »

wruza wrote: post #125
LazyCroHacker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yo. Ask me anything. Edit : I'm actually serious. I don't do most of the things in the article, or at least definitely not with the intent and detail - but I've been moved over time from being a pretty good and certainly respected hands on techie, to a middle to upper manager with massive imposter syndrome, and certainly feel I contribute less for more credit. Client loves me. My boss loves me. My team loves me. But…

spend many hours each week fine tuning PowerPoint slides, reporting, over communicating, team building, teaching people to communicate differently I’m in a process of leaving a company where I work at for way too many years (cause I liked the job and its tech samurai format, not even the money), because there is no person like you and the “management” actively refuses to hire one, while steadily degrading into commun…

Holy crap that resonates 100%. And soon I'm supposed to step into a more management style role there. Have not signed the new contract yet, though.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#140

Post by serverholic »

kingboss wrote: post #131
serverholic wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not a great point. It's a point made to distract from the real issue. It's a debate tactic. If you read the conversation carefully I'm trying to discuss the fundamental nature of the professions, not the specific products they are building or selling. That was something paulcole brought up. The fundamental nature of sales and marketing is manipulating people for personal gain. You could be selling hugs or wha…

They are also the reason why you have a job. Without sales you have nothing. Without marketing you don't know what to build. Building stuff that no one wants is useless.

You’re free to justify it however you want.
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