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

Why T-shaped people? (2018)

jchyip.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 125 posts

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#111

Post by satvikpendem »

scarface74 wrote: post #108
satvikpendem wrote: post #45

I heard about T shaped people before, and several years ago, I thought, why stop at T? I wanted to become a block shaped person. I wanted to be like the autodidacts and polymaths of old, Newton, da Vinci, Franklin, and I wanted to know as much as I could about as many things as I could, at least in the software world. Since then, I started teaching myself concepts from the ground up in any software field you could im…

I also thought I was very good at a lot of different areas. And then I started working at a company where there are actually people who are considered some of the best in the world in every conceivable area that I thought I was good at. Every week there is an announcement about a new service or feature at AWS. For instance, my specialty is supposedly “serverless”. I didn’t know that Fargate (serverless Docker) suppor…

Well, I'm talking more about the fundamentals, like implementing an OS or database from the ground up, which most people don't necessarily learn, rather than using the latest library.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#112

Post by satvikpendem »

Sharlin wrote: post #56
satvikpendem wrote: post #45

I heard about T shaped people before, and several years ago, I thought, why stop at T? I wanted to become a block shaped person. I wanted to be like the autodidacts and polymaths of old, Newton, da Vinci, Franklin, and I wanted to know as much as I could about as many things as I could, at least in the software world. Since then, I started teaching myself concepts from the ground up in any software field you could im…

TBH, familiarizing oneself with several subfields of a single field is still not very polymath-y though. Of course, all fields are just much bigger than they were in the 15th or 18th century, so this is more difficult if you want to be actually useful, but IMO being a real polymath still entails being knowledgeable of various disjoint subjects. Like poetry, marine biology, and systems programming. And, of course, sin…

> TBH, familiarizing oneself with several subfields of a single field is still not very polymath-y though. Of course, all fields are just much bigger than they were in the 15th or 18th century, so this is more difficult if you want to be actually useful, but IMO being a real polymath still entails being knowledgeable of various disjoint subjects. Like poetry, marine biology, and systems programming.

Agreed, which is why I tried to limit it to CS only. If I were to do it for many subjects, that'd be impossible.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#113

Post by satvikpendem »

Twisell wrote: post #48
satvikpendem wrote: post #45

I heard about T shaped people before, and several years ago, I thought, why stop at T? I wanted to become a block shaped person. I wanted to be like the autodidacts and polymaths of old, Newton, da Vinci, Franklin, and I wanted to know as much as I could about as many things as I could, at least in the software world. Since then, I started teaching myself concepts from the ground up in any software field you could im…

I think it's important to note that the OP totally agree with you and even provided a link to a better suited metaphor in the last section of his post. > Dave Rooney uses a metaphor of “icicle-shaped”, that is, people who pick up whatever skills they need when faced with a problem to solve. This matches more closely to how I actually operate. https://medium.com/@daverooneyca/icicle-shaped-people-45f364...

Hm, this is not exactly how I went about it. I didn't actually have a problem I needed to solve, I just followed the topics due to an innate curiosity, so I'm not sure that Rooney's definition fits mine.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#114

Post by scarface74 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #111
scarface74 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also thought I was very good at a lot of different areas. And then I started working at a company where there are actually people who are considered some of the best in the world in every conceivable area that I thought I was good at. Every week there is an announcement about a new service or feature at AWS. For instance, my specialty is supposedly “serverless”. I didn’t know that Fargate (serverless Docker) suppor…

Well, I'm talking more about the fundamentals, like implementing an OS or database from the ground up, which most people don't necessarily learn, rather than using the latest library.

Even more fundamentally there are people who at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft who are

- creating their own languages that are used by millions

- writing and optimizing databases used by millions

- writing a custom micro VM (the open source Firecracker project that is the basis of Lambda)

No matter how good you get at any of these areas, unless you focus on one, you will never be as good as someone who eats, drinks, and breathes those things everyday and have to make sure they scale to millions of transactions

Sure, I can optimize a database for a small to medium size company. But when I reached the limit of my knowledge and skills, it’s nice to be able to reach out to the team that makes sure that the databases underlying Amazon retail are running smoothly.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#115

Post by hef19898 »

switchbak wrote: post #107
hef19898 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

V shaped, or U shaped, people get mistaken for I shapes (man, how I love those management-sized oversimplified concepts, especially those putting people in boxes) when only one side of the U/V is used. Has all kinds of funny side effects, my personal favorite is when people realize, after having classified you as a I, that there is more to you. And then, using the biggest about faces possible, to recognize it, becaus…

I've got a background in Agile consulting (yeah, sorry), frontend work from way back in the day, and low-level systems and optimization work. None of this is factored into my current job, and I've lately been labeled the "database guy" ... when that's one of my newest and not particularly impressive competencies. I still have yet to find a way to manage external perception of my abilities to even a minimal degree. Ve…

In my current job, I just gave up on it. I am the "process guy", and lately, due to pressure from IT (of all people, since I am in Supply Chain Operations), the "ERP guy". The latter I did last 10 odd years ago, the former is a side effect of thinking about why things in my domain are the way they are, some lean training and, mainly, being good at operations. Operations being, I'd say, my true core competency from which everything else is fed.

No chance to sell that where I am now... I'll see what I do about it come Jan.

100% agree on the draining part.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#116

Post by [deleted] »

oersted wrote: post #70
FlyingSnake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is a classic example of misreading the philosophy behind T-Shape people. T-Shape or 'paint drip' people is a term used for generalists who have acquired a diverse skillset during their career and how these generalists have an upper hand over a specialist in certain domains. The book Range by David Epstein also goes deep into this philosophy. A single anecdote of a misguided manager ruining it for their t…

But T-Shaped people are specialists aren't they? That's the | part of the T. Specialists with enough curiosity and flexibility not to be afraid to go beyond their expertise and get a surface understanding of many other things that might indirectly enrich their core competency. At least that's how I understand it. Unlike generalists, they have gone through the tough process of going very deep into something. They unde…

[deleted]

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#117

Post by laserlight »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #98

In my career I often found myself thrown into a situation where I have no expertise whatsoever. That was always a little anxiety inducing. How is this white midwesterner who knows only English going to handle displaying Japanese ruby text in epubs? Or implement the epub table of contents (TOC) for vertical Japanese? I didn't even know Japanese ruby existed before the task of implementing it landed in my lap. Thanks t…

Just like you, I was once thrown into color science without knowing anything about it. ColorSync helped me a lot in understanding how gamut mapping worked. Thanks for your work.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#118

Post by klyrs »

kypro wrote: post #25

I was working a corporate job a few years back and I guess our boss heard about the benefits of "T-shaped" people / teams. Anyway to improve productivity it was decided the whole dev team would participate in a half day training course about "T-shaped" people. It was your typical corporate training nonsense, a hour of watching videos, weird team activities including making animal noises with blindfolds on, playing wi…

> We had backend devs doing frontend development with jQuery when we were using Vue. Frontend devs started doing UX design and things looked like trash. QA was done by basically anyone so as you can imagine bugs started appearing everywhere.

Yikes, what a terrible take. To me, "T-shaped" people have at-least-minimal competence across a broad spectrum of the business. They don't do the work of other specialties, but they use their knowledge to avoid making excess work for those other specialties -- for instance, they make better-informed suggestions in brainstorming. Your backend devs know how the frontend stuff works, so they don't make tortuous APIs; they know how QA operates, so they plan for testability; they know the pitfalls of UX so they don't make rigid state-machines that punish users. And, if a disaster strikes and a team needs a helping hand in a pinch, maybe somebody with some depth outside of their role can pitch in. Making everybody do everything always is not T-shaped, it's, I dunno, #-shaped.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#119

Post by evanwise »

switchbak wrote: post #106
evanwise wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on both sides of the divide, I can say it's sadly common for back-end devs to underestimate the complexity of front-end development and discount the advice and opinions of their front-end colleagues. I've even seen scenarios where back-end devs were allowed to dictate standards to their front-end peers just because they had more seniority in the company.

I just had the same in the opposite direction (to an extreme degree, hand waving away an enormous amount of complexity). The blade of Dunning Kruger cuts both ways. Though what you describe sounds awful too. Hopefully with the recent era of tooling and discipline on the frontend side, we'll see less of that.

Yes, that kind of arrogance can definitely come from the front-end side as well. I've just noticed a pattern with a certain type of back-end developer. Similar to the old XKCD physicist comic, there is a personality type that seems to think they can spitball an ad hoc solution to a problem that is better than the work of specialists in the field.

Re: Why T-shaped people? (2018)

#120

Post by JKCalhoun »

laserlight wrote: post #117
JKCalhoun wrote: post #98

In my career I often found myself thrown into a situation where I have no expertise whatsoever. That was always a little anxiety inducing. How is this white midwesterner who knows only English going to handle displaying Japanese ruby text in epubs? Or implement the epub table of contents (TOC) for vertical Japanese? I didn't even know Japanese ruby existed before the task of implementing it landed in my lap. Thanks t…

Just like you, I was once thrown into color science without knowing anything about it. ColorSync helped me a lot in understanding how gamut mapping worked. Thanks for your work.

You and me both. It turned out ColorSync was pretty cool.
Post reply on HN