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Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

matthewgrohman.substack.com

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Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#81

Post by inanutshellus »

kqr wrote: post #29
inanutshellus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will grant you that "consume" is awkward. I often say "I read -- well -- I listened to [The Sandlot]" and "consume" is too awkward to use colloquially as "I consumed [The Sandlot]". That said... Unless you've got an overtly superior alternative, time to move on and join the fray. It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.

"I learned from"?

I like to imagine some group of pedants sitting in a cliche smoky room ruminating on this, going through all these permutations and arguing why each word wasn't good enough (e.g. "you needn't have learned!") until they finally ended up with the eureka of 'consume' which was then hackneyed by business folk and thus led to irritating our buddy JohnFen here.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#83

Post by JustSomeNobody »

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of th…

You can also start by making sure you're in all the meetings with other teams where your project and their project meet. Ask pointed questions in those meetings to gain understanding. Be friendly and courteous and helpful and they'll make sure you are in those meetings from now on. From there you'll get invited to other meetings that may be only slightly adjacent to your project. Again, be friendly, courteous and helpful. You will eventually get known for being someone with understanding and you'll find yourself in some rather important meetings after that.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#84

Post by JohnFen »

throwaway280382 wrote: post #77
JohnFen wrote: post #15

I don't "consume content". I read, watch, and listen to a wide variety of things, though, and highly recommend that practice. My apologies. "Consume content" has become a pet peeve of mine. It's a dehumanizing and overly reductionist phrase, and isn't even technically correct (the best kind of correct).

"Read/Watch/Listen" are what you think you are doing. "Consume" is what the people who want to make money from you think (Entrepreneurs, Media executives, bloggers etc).

That's why "consume" is a red-flag word along with "content". They're both dehumanizing, and look to be intended to reduce people to economic units.

Their use signals to me that I'm being exposed to a particular type of source that disrespects their audience and tends to produce substandard work.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#85

Post by SassyGrapefruit »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #65
jrochkind1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, would you say any of your motivation and feeling of reward in your job comes from doing a good job, or helping your organization achieve it's goals? Or does your motivation and reward (what gets you out of bed, what makes your job tolerable or enjoyable) come mostly/only from maximizing your paycheck? Or other things?

Why would I help my organizatiom reach its goals of the organization is not interested in helping me achieve mine ?

For me I hate bosses, performance reviews, meetings, etc. I'm cantankerous and angry but I have always had a knack for finding and solving major problems on my own.

From my experience if you have a track record of doing a good job working autonomously and you can demonstrate that you contribute directly to the business's financial interests people just leave you alone and if they don't there is a good chance the boss's of those people will tell them "just leave him alone". Be someone's golden goose and in most organizations you can do whatever you want.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#86

Post by [deleted] »

inanutshellus wrote: post #80
JohnFen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter. It's barely tolerable when used in that sense, but typically it's not used in that sense. The problem is the widespread abuse of the term. When I first started hearing it used, it was weird but didn't irritate me because it was usually used in the sense you're saying here. But then it started being used all over…

You're letting something irritate you that's not wrong. It's like getting mad when someone says "I had noodles for lunch" when you know perfectly well they had /spaghetti/, and if they'd said /spaghetti/ you could get irate because they actually had /ragu/ spaghetti (meat in the spaghetti sauce). Using the abstract word it still "fine" if that's the level the speaker wants to give.

[deleted]

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#87

Post by archgoon »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #65
jrochkind1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, would you say any of your motivation and feeling of reward in your job comes from doing a good job, or helping your organization achieve it's goals? Or does your motivation and reward (what gets you out of bed, what makes your job tolerable or enjoyable) come mostly/only from maximizing your paycheck? Or other things?

Why would I help my organizatiom reach its goals of the organization is not interested in helping me achieve mine ?

[dead]

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#88

Post by AstixAndBelix »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #79
AstixAndBelix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I help my organizatiom reach its goals of the organization is not interested in helping me achieve mine ?

Hm, I'm not sure how that answered my question? Although I see you are not the GP poster, I'm interested in your answer too, sure. I figure people are motivated by different factors at work, in different proportions. I could guess what you meant by that sentence, but I might get it wrong, and then where would we be. But ok, are you meaning that sentance to suggest that what gets you going in the morning, what makes y…

My income is a reflection of the value I bring to a company. If I do something extremely valuable without getting a raise or a bonus or a promotion then the company is not valuing me enough and I should look elsewhere.

If I work for a for-profit company you can't expect me to do extra work for free. If I wanted that type of life I would have gotte a job in another kind kf venture

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#89

Post by nottorp »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #10
nottorp wrote: post #7

How about learning about other roles instead of consuming content? Seems faster and more efficient.

These things don’t seem orthogonal to me - to learn, one must consume some kind of content.

Content consumption means watching talking heads that are there for "engagement". Seems a waste of time and an insult to my remaining 2 neurons.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#90

Post by jrochkind1 »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #88
jrochkind1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I'm not sure how that answered my question? Although I see you are not the GP poster, I'm interested in your answer too, sure. I figure people are motivated by different factors at work, in different proportions. I could guess what you meant by that sentence, but I might get it wrong, and then where would we be. But ok, are you meaning that sentance to suggest that what gets you going in the morning, what makes y…

My income is a reflection of the value I bring to a company. If I do something extremely valuable without getting a raise or a bonus or a promotion then the company is not valuing me enough and I should look elsewhere. If I work for a for-profit company you can't expect me to do extra work for free. If I wanted that type of life I would have gotte a job in another kind kf venture

So, I'm curious, what aspects of your job would you say are what makes a job tolerable or pleasurable to you? Just maximizing your income, or are there other things? Getting along with coworkers? Enjoying solving programming puzzles? Anything?

Or is this a stupid question, because all jobs are equally intolerable to you, they all suck the same, there is nothing that makes one more tolerable or even pleasurable than another, at least not enough to matter, in your experience?

I'm just taking guesses.

I'm also curious how long you've been working in this field.

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