I feel personally attacked
Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
281–290 of 596 posts
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing in the article said Arthur lived in the Bay Area.
It’s not just the Bay Area experiencing this.
Maybe Arthur lived in Springfield, MO and worked at Bass Pro or O'Reilly Auto Corporate offices and lives here.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8057-W-Farm-Road-100-Will...
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#283There are talented people everywhere, the probability of somehow being ground breaking and world impactful is ridiculously small. Anyone pegging their self-worth on that goal is setting themselves up for a lot of mental health struggles. My levels of ambition and relentlessness absolutely shifted after having kids, I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. Now I am very much "fuck you pay me" and my prior…
You're just going to off load your lost potential and lack of ambition on to your kids, and so on and so forth. It's the main reason why people have them.
The opposite is no good. I had 1 or 2 opportunities which a lot of people of my age were looking at with envy. I was not super gifted but they came out of passion: by working on the things I loved relentlessy, I ended up being noticed. I was good because I worked a lot. It was not hard work since it was stuff I enjoyed a lot to do, but I spent countless hours on it (about 25-30 hours a week in addition to my studies or day time job).
Problem with the kids is that when I tell them about that, they feel they don't have enough passion to succeed. So you see, eventhough I was on the right side of success for a while, it scares the hell out of them...
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No there aren’t. You underestimate the odds of talent in a population of 8 billion humans. > If you think you’re all that, don’t blame your company for “not getting the opportunity”. Please. You already have all the tools you need to code. Make something cool! There are neurosurgery robots operating with my code running in the background for several years now. I am now working on ophthalmic surgery software for sub…
Surgery bots are cool. My software just keeps track of drugs
There are a lot more drug infusions than there are surgeries so you win!
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently put a little modal on my phone that just says "Compete against yourself" every 30 minutes, and I'm finding it remarkably helpful at focusing my efforts back to what I want to see in the world. I like the mindset of trying to be just a little better than you were, every day. It feels... correctly scaled, somehow.
What does it mean in this context to compete against yourself? Anything at immediately at hand or on the todo list? Or is it just a reminder to get something done you thought of doing but normally wouldn't otherwise?
It means "It doesn't matter what other people do, are doing, or have achieved". In other words, do not compare yourself to others.
Do what you're doing, a little better this time, then GOTO 10.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working on the hardware directly is more than half of the fun.
> Working on the hardware directly is more than half of the fun. It never really worked until you gave blood to the computing gods on a sharp edge of a metal case.
Looks to hands and fingers intently
Hmm, yes, true.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#287There are talented people everywhere, the probability of somehow being ground breaking and world impactful is ridiculously small. Anyone pegging their self-worth on that goal is setting themselves up for a lot of mental health struggles. My levels of ambition and relentlessness absolutely shifted after having kids, I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. Now I am very much "fuck you pay me" and my prior…
Agree with you. I don't understand the point of this article other than some sort of tongue and cheek snobbery. Hope it maybe made the OP feel better about themselves.
This level of reaction tells me more about you than the author. Referring to it as 'snobbery' shows that you interpret satire as a personal attack on someone, probably yourself. I clicked to their home page and immediately figured out that they dabble in tech and like to joke around.
This is as much a tip for myself as for you: take a deep breath before reacting.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently put a little modal on my phone that just says "Compete against yourself" every 30 minutes, and I'm finding it remarkably helpful at focusing my efforts back to what I want to see in the world. I like the mindset of trying to be just a little better than you were, every day. It feels... correctly scaled, somehow.
What does it mean in this context to compete against yourself? Anything at immediately at hand or on the todo list? Or is it just a reminder to get something done you thought of doing but normally wouldn't otherwise?
I've become very fond of the phrase "comparison is the thief of joy" lately. This seems like a version of that. Keep your scope local only.
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I used to be absolutely furious about being the best. I found out that just being better than yourself takes you a long long way. I have never competed, but just did my thing. Then found out that I've already know more and ahead of many people I'm inspired by. Yet, this was not my aim, and still is not. I'm just one of the so-called dark developers. I just do my thing, try to do it better every time, and don't care…
I recently put a little modal on my phone that just says "Compete against yourself" every 30 minutes, and I'm finding it remarkably helpful at focusing my efforts back to what I want to see in the world. I like the mindset of trying to be just a little better than you were, every day. It feels... correctly scaled, somehow.
Great for the upside of growth - how do you change it for when you start to age and skills erode a little bit. That would be deeply frustrating. Need to change the model at that point! What to though?
Re: Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know it's not all about the money, but over the course of your entire career, do you think that move was financially positive or negative? I'm very roughly estimating that you could probably have worked in the HFT job for around two-thirds the time you're going to have spent working on generic web tech, and still been better off.
Absolutely 100% positive. I was largely an individual contributor all that time, and only did some unstructured, untrained, unguided people & project management. Perhaps because it was such a niche, engineer-dominated environment. Several years after leaving that company, I quickly learned to effectively manage people and projects, architect systems using more mainstream/open source tech and eventually reached exec l…
Ah, that's the missing punchline: you had ambitions to be something else other than an engineer, and you (quite correctly) recognised that you were never going to grow your wider skills at such a place.
For someone who had wanted to stay an IC, I don't think the move would have been quite as wise. Being in a niche, engineer-dominated environment, and being paid extremely well for it, is nirvana for many lifelong ICs. It certainly feels very different from the experience of Arthur from the linked article.