111–120 of 239 posts
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I like building stuff. I don't care about the code. I convinced myself over 20 years that I liked coding to get myself through the drudgery of corporate work but the reality is the building was the important thing to me. I'm able to build things quickly with AI.
> I like building stuff. I don't care about the code. Sounds like you like having stuff, not building stuff.
> Barnum’s first rule: pick the work you’re built for, then aim to be the best at it. Edsger Dijkstra, in one of his letters, giving advice (IIRC) to a PhD student: "Do only what only you can do." Kind of funny to see one of the greatest computer scientists and one of the greatest public entertainers giving the same advice, but I guess that speaks strongly in its favor.
I am paraphrasing but I think it was W. Buffett who said: "Work at the job that you do not hate" In other words, not all vocations that you are great at and talented and want to pursue are valued by current world. I love playing chess way more and actually am reasonably good at it, but programming and teaching are valued more and I like those too. As Jimmy O. Yang's father reportedly said: "Pursuing your dreams is ho…
But taking just the first one, the Buffet one. I think maybe that's how we get willing people in the bad companies? Bad companies doesn't even have to mean evil and morally wrong, it can mean bad decision making and poorly run. Companies can still be plenty lucky though and that accounts for a lot. But if the people who hate morally bad jobs or irrational decision making leave and the ones who don't hate them stay that's going to lead somewhere.
Maybe individually a "good" person will be happier (and perhaps poorer, if you have the belief that lower morals is an advantage in business). As a society, you'd probably really like that naysayers remain at companies. As a company leader, I don't know which one you'd like. It depends on your goals I guess. Overall, it strikes me as not capturing enough. The "job you don't hate" is broad. If you have a belief in something that should exist in the world and that company has a way of producing it, it doesn't seem to be wrong to work there trying to make that happen even against a tide of coworkers you hate, existing products you hate, social implications you hate. It's a lot of stress and work though with a low success rate. That's enough for a lot of people to say no, but more curiously it's enough for a lot of people to just change what they hate.
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> and that's pretty important to me The older I get, the more I realize what a critical component of personal and social relationships it is, and how deeply it reinforces virtually everything good in society. There's never a good reason to forgo it, and never a good reason to accept spending time with people who don't have it. It only leads to trouble. I started my career in ad tech and it was often such abject miser…
Integrity is important and missing. I think there's a contradiction in what you're writing though. Recognizing the importance of personal and social relationships is what's keeping the no integrity people around and/or getting them promoted. It's the networking for networking sake as well as the more mundane social lubricating they do in contradiction to integrity. It's disagreeing with discussions, projects, compani…
I worked for a Japanese company, for a long time, and the Japanese were really big on personal relationships.
They weren't necessarily "warm and fuzzy" ones, but they were based on mutual respect and shared interests. I worked with many folks for decades, and we got to know each other well. We didn't always like each other, but we respected and supported each other.
Personal Integrity isn't something that can be faked. If you are in the kind of relationship I just described, fake integrity will be exposed fairly soon.
One of my thoughts is that it's not easy for people to discover what they're truly good at. The reason is that if you're truly good at something, if you have a real talent for it, then it's easy for you to do it well from the start, so you rarely judge it or realize how good you are. Just as no one thinks they're good at their heartbeat and breathing. Because you have the talent to be good at them from the beginning,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Integrity is important and missing. I think there's a contradiction in what you're writing though. Recognizing the importance of personal and social relationships is what's keeping the no integrity people around and/or getting them promoted. It's the networking for networking sake as well as the more mundane social lubricating they do in contradiction to integrity. It's disagreeing with discussions, projects, compani…
There's a difference between "networking," and "having a relationship." I worked for a Japanese company, for a long time, and the Japanese were really big on personal relationships. They weren't necessarily "warm and fuzzy" ones, but they were based on mutual respect and shared interests. I worked with many folks for decades, and we got to know each other well. We didn't always like each other, but we respected and s…
> " 2. Avoid Debt Like the Plague" Does anyone else feel like they overindex on this principle? I have on multiple occasions found myself too conservative to take advantage of the leverage available to me. (Example: doing a refinance in 2020 I could have taken out a 30-year mortgage at the rock-bottom rate, but chose to do 15. This is irrational given that I could have taken all the money I didn't have to pay toward…
Imagine you are good at programming. Great, now get a programming career. Oops, it's the 19th century and computers aren't a thing. Tough luck.
The hardest thing is to know what's your best fit. Any advice?