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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

#241

Post by devnullbrain »

brodouevencode wrote: post #236
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…

Wow, there is so much dissent in the replies here. Here are the top three recurring themes of those: > You'll make enemies poking your nose around. And? You make another worker in another department angry, so what? Managers in other departments are very inviting (unless they're up to no good, in which you'll be doing the company's owners even bigger favors by exposing them) because they want to be seen as having work…

>The people who will see you as an enemy are at a dead end anyway and not likely to ever have any influence over you.

That's more idealistic than my experience. I've seen team leads with a very strong sense of ownership. Also, if their mistake is responsible for a 6-figure overspend, it's better for them for it to remain hidden than to be revealed by someone else (especially a non-expert).

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

#242

Post by brodouevencode »

devnullbrain wrote: post #241
brodouevencode wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, there is so much dissent in the replies here. Here are the top three recurring themes of those: > You'll make enemies poking your nose around. And? You make another worker in another department angry, so what? Managers in other departments are very inviting (unless they're up to no good, in which you'll be doing the company's owners even bigger favors by exposing them) because they want to be seen as having work…

>The people who will see you as an enemy are at a dead end anyway and not likely to ever have any influence over you. That's more idealistic than my experience. I've seen team leads with a very strong sense of ownership. Also, if their mistake is responsible for a 6-figure overspend, it's better for them for it to remain hidden than to be revealed by someone else (especially a non-expert).

1. On a long enough time line those people will weed themselves out.

2. It's a good thing for team leads to own their work, but if they're not comfortable with people poking around then they seem to be hiding something, and in that case I'll default back to the first point.

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

#243

Post by ravagat »

idopmstuff wrote: post #63

This is a great article, and my only issue with it and my only issue with it is that I think it's too limited. This isn't just a tech thing - the world we live in is one where having more context in a professional environment is almost always useful. If you spend time learning about how HR functions, it'll help you understand how things like promotions work. Spend time with marketing, and you'll learn lessons about h…

Yes, what you say is true for sure. I think the emphasis on specialization has been net negative in terms of general life ROI but net positive in terms of career/job -at-scale ROI. There's far more positivity to come when you adopt a mindset/attitude like you mention, it bleeds towards everything else. There was societal shift with this and something more should learn.

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

#244

Post by inanutshellus »

feanaro wrote: post #102
inanutshellus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand but don't agree. 'customer' implies commerce happened, 'listener' implies listening happened. 'consumer' is a higher abstraction than either of those. It's the most abstract word someone could think of to say "X internalized Y". e.g. "X took Y and added it to itself... let's not get distracted with how. the important thing is, X took Y and internalized it." I guess we could, uh, go with "internalizer". I…

But you don't consume content, that's meaningless. When you consume something, it is used up and disappears entirely.

Your context is backwards. The context is me not the thing.

You're thinking "Book + Me = Book + Me" but in the context of me it's...

  Me + Food = Me with more nutrients.
  Me + Book = Me with more knowledge.
In that context, post-consumption, the state of the book becomes irrelevant (destroyed or not, it doesn't matter, I still got what I wanted from it). I absorbed the knowledge (or nutrients). Brought it into my body and made it part of me.

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

#245

Post by inanutshellus »

JohnFen wrote: post #95
inanutshellus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't worry about me. I'm fine. All that happens is that I think less of the work that talks that way. My reaction is of little impact to anyone in the end. I mention it here, though, because the number of people who find that language problematic seems to be on the rise, and that may inform how authors write.

I find debating about words to be fun! Thanks for the debate. :-)

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

#246

Post by inanutshellus »

JohnFen wrote: post #92
inanutshellus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think that analogy captures my problem with those words. My problem, really, is that they devalue what they refer to. "Consumer" devalues people, and "content" devalues creative effort. Saying "noodles" doesn't devalue spaghetti.

I think it would devalue the ragu Bolognese spaghetti from the context of the chef! "They called my beautiful creation 'noodles!' My life is a sham! quickly commits seppuku" :-)

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

#247

Post by 2b3a51 »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #226
2b3a51 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an observation: decades ago in industrial companies of some size it was the practice to move newly hired managers around systematically for (say) the first 5 years so they could see how the whole company worked.

That only makes sense when people expect employees to stick around though, in today's market you would expect the vast majority of people to not finish the 5 year program yet alone show any benefits from it.

Sadly you are probably correct.

Perhaps that is the problem (at least with some sectors: a close friend's partner's daughter has worked as a civil engineer with a couple of employers for a couple or three decades now - she can show you the roads she planned and managed the building of)?

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

#248

Post by solarmist »

Zetice wrote: post #194
giantg2 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because it requires dedication and to be extremely intelligent." I'm a dumb-dumb. Being a dumb-dumb in two domains isn't very helpful either. Everyone wants experts.

Totally disagree; if you can be a dumb-dumb in two domains, you're going to do a lot better, overall, than just being a dumb-dumb in one domain. Wanna know why? Cuz you're not actually a dumb-dumb. <3

I understand what you're attempting here, but invaliding someone's feelings, even if they aren't true, doesn't work and isn't helpful. All it does is make a person not trust their feelings (at best) instead of calibrating their feelings and understanding where they come from.

Instead, accept that they feel some way. And encourage them not to let those feelings hold them back (also, avoid "but"s those also minimize or invalidate feelings).

For example, even if someone is suicidal, psychologists are trained to listen and accept their feelings.

Then help them understand why they feel that way and if other interpretations or actions can make extreme thoughts and feelings more manageable or understandable.

Depressed/suicidal people have the most accurate grasp of reality. Self-delusion and protection from self-harm are built-in into the psyche, so it's not that their feelings are inaccurate, but that unrealistic optimism is the only way humans (and other animals) can cope with reality.

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

#249

Post by solarmist »

giantg2 wrote: post #195
Zetice wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally disagree; if you can be a dumb-dumb in two domains, you're going to do a lot better, overall, than just being a dumb-dumb in one domain. Wanna know why? Cuz you're not actually a dumb-dumb. <3

I'm pretty sure I am. I've even had a manager tell me in a 1-on-1 "not everyone has the potential to be more than a mid level". Here I am 10 years into my career and still a midlevel.

With what you've said, it makes sense to feel that way. I would encourage finding ways to think about it/express it, one that doesn't make it a character flaw.

Can you phrase it in a less absolute/intrinsic way, though? "I am a dumb dumb" isn't a solvable problem.

I encourage you not to personalize this (Using "I am"). You may not be a mediocre software engineer, but that does not equal YOU being a dumb dumb.

That's a false equivalence. I'm sure there are areas where you are not a dumb dumb.

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

#250

Post by doubleg72 »

dsq wrote: post #231
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a toxic workplace to me.

Unsurprising, as the standard workplace is toxic, otherwise WFH would not be so popular.

I doubt WFH is so popular solely because all workplaces are toxic. A toxic workplace is one like that at American Radium in first half of 20th century, or the building of transcontinental railroad, or Hoover Dam, or Mt Rushmore.
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