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Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

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Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#131

Post by MollyR »

Jemaclus wrote: post #122

My rule of thumb is that I always try to be the dumbest person in the room. If I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm not learning. I want to surround myself with people that know more than I do about things I know little about. My advice: 1) Shut up and listen 2) Ask them respectfully and professionally for advice when you need it 3) Shut up and listen some more If you're an engineer, I also recommend the followin…

I second this. It's basically what I did, when I was the dumbest person in the room.

I was also the dumbest person in the room for 4 years. I spent a ton of that time studying,asking questions,and playing catchup.

It eventually paid off though. Persistence!

Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#132

Post by fencepost »

sethetter wrote: post #51
sbjustin wrote: post #30

I'd go work somewhere else and here is why: You can learn anywhere, why work with a bunch of people who are not going to build you up and encourage you to improve yourself and by extension, the team/project. What are you really getting from these guys if it's "every man for himself" anyways? 1. Forget that, be confident. Just focus on improving yourself and on things that can make you better at your job. 2. No. I exp…

Couldn't have said it better myself. There is nothing to be gained from elitist attitudes. Sounds to me like they want to hoard their own job security. On top of all that, the "every man for themselves" mentality is a way to make sure that developers look out for themselves instead of the company as a whole. This is of no benefit to the company, and the leadership should recognize this and act accordingly. What good…

The rule of "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" applies just as much in work environments, and if you're working with a bunch of toxic/antisocial/whatever people it's bad all around - the company loses good people who don't want to put up with the toxic attitudes, coworkers don't benefit from working with the "experts," and of course the downside for the toxic folks: "Oh, yeah, I worked with him 2 companies ago. If you can put up with the prickish behavior he might do good things, but don't put him on my team."

Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#133

Post by dxbydt »

As someone who was in your shoes, lemme suggest the following - the enemy is not your coworkers with big egos, or the work days, or meetings or whatever.

The enemy is your own ignorance.

You are bothered because they know stuff and you don't. There is literally nothing they can do about this. You are not in a school where people will take the time to teach you how to do your stuff. This is work. Say you hire a carpenter and a painter to build some furniture & paint your roof. The carpenter feels very insecure that the painter is so good at painting. How exactly does this help the carpenter improve his skills ? So work on your studies. You say you are "very willing to work hard". So just do that. Ignore all this interpersonal he-sucks-self-esteem-rockstar-dignity etc. This is not some Lifetime drama. Ramp up fast. Focus on your skills & the rest of the issues will fade away in the background. Atleast, that's how I solved it when it happened to me.

Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#135

Post by rvdm »

I have been in both junior employee and senior managerial positions during my corporate career ( I consult now ). While it's your superior's job to keep stock of morale etc. it can be hard at time to read people, especially when dealing with naturally introverted people.

Have you considered simply bringing this issue up with your colleagues?

There has to be a reason they hired you in the first place. Somebody must have seen potential in you.

From my perspective it sounds like you're either just not a good fit ( unlikely ) or aren't getting the nurturing you need.

Nobody is perfect, nobody knows everything. Everyone has to start learning somewhere. Some straight up honest conversation with your colleagues could go a long way.

Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#136

Post by copperx »

dsfsdfd wrote: post #46
informatimago wrote: post #3

Basically, intelligence is a speed of processing. Assumedly every human being, given enough time, would be able to solve the same set of problems. The thing is that we only have 80 years to solve them! And also, there are more problems to be solved than anybody can in this small time frame, even with a IQ of 1000 (speed of processing). Now what does that mean for the slower minds, in a competitive environment? You ca…

What. I can't even... This is non sense. Intelligence is not speed of processing.

True: intelligence is speed of processing and the capacity of the person's working memory.

Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#137

Post by te0x »

dxbydt wrote: post #133

As someone who was in your shoes, lemme suggest the following - the enemy is not your coworkers with big egos, or the work days, or meetings or whatever. The enemy is your own ignorance. You are bothered because they know stuff and you don't. There is literally nothing they can do about this. You are not in a school where people will take the time to teach you how to do your stuff. This is work. Say you hire a carpen…

That may work, but there's something wrong with him not feeling comfortable communicating with coworkers. The problem sounds bigger than his own personal issues.

Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#138

Post by freyr »

A "quite desirable software company" is one that can attract people who are smart and socially competent, and can weed out employees who are toxic. Your current company clearly can't do that, and I'd question the basic premise that it's desirable.

I've worked with some brilliant and horrible people in the past. It doesn't get better, and my general opinion is that life's too short spend tethered to such people. Get out and don't look back.

Re: Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?

#140

Post by SubuSS »

A ton of interesting comments - let me add my opinion in there too:

- Intelligence IMO is two fold. Speed of processing and domain knowledge. Clearly one with a lot of the former, gathers the latter faster though. Right now - The only thing I know about your co workers is that they outweigh you greatly in latter. Considering you were hired and assuming your confidence had some reasonable foundation, the only solution here is time.

- I try not to allow the attitude of others to define my experience somewhere. If it gets unbearable, I just leave - but in general, our field does seem to attract a varied set of folks instead of an uniformly 'nice' group. I give some bandwidth for this.

- getting one of them assigned as your mentor by your manager and making your success an explicit winning condition for him is a good option. Get it done ASAP.

- there is a little bit of ramp up here. Even a rock star team is going to have a set of work items no one wants to do because they are 'manual' or 'easy' or 'boring' and so on. Take these up first, ace them then progress towards the core.

- finally, no one is going to remember your interview as much as you do. That's a red herring. I have done about 400-500 of them, I definitely don't remember any promises. I hired based on the amazon fit + smarts. Rest usually gets lost in the mess.

Good luck!

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