How to Do Great Work • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Do Great Work

#101

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #74

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so incredible how deep the rabbit-hole goes when you try to solve a real world problem and you have the capacity to understand and pull information from a vast number of seemingly unrelated works. I really believe that this is the best time to be a polymath, or at least have a broad spectrum of knowledge and references to look into and pull information from; and that being a true generalist that can dive as deep…

> It’s so incredible how deep the rabbit-hole goes when you try to solve a real world problem and you have the capacity to understand and pull information from a vast number of seemingly unrelated works. It's funny, I considered quoting this other part as well: > The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. You notice a crack in the surface of knowledge, pry it open, and there's a whole world inside. The nature of…

> The nature of fractals is that everything is a new fractal bud. There's really endless complexity everywhere. So I don't think that alone is the "big prize". There's some other dimension, like utility or interest.

Here's another dimension: try convincing others of this while they're discussing a specific object level problem and see how that goes.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#102

Post by hospitalJail » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

dmvdoug wrote: post #76

As usual, this is both interesting but also so generalizing as to get frustrating in places. But it’s clearly well-meaning and earnest, which makes it easier to tolerate some of its annoyingly breezy certainty. Then there’s this: > Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. So anything that can be described either literally or metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas in it…

>But it’s clearly well-meaning and earnest

When you are famous, people give you the benefit of the doubt.

When you are small fries, you are blogspam.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#103

Post by carabiner » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

dmvdoug wrote: post #76

As usual, this is both interesting but also so generalizing as to get frustrating in places. But it’s clearly well-meaning and earnest, which makes it easier to tolerate some of its annoyingly breezy certainty. Then there’s this: > Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. So anything that can be described either literally or metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas in it…

Traditionally, footnotes are straightforward explanations of terms or passages. Tech writers, in their grandiosity, have perverted them to contain randomass tangents that no one really cares about.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#104

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

zug_zug wrote: post #55

I haven't finished this yet, will take more than one sitting to digest, but I'm already 90% sure I'm going to disagree with this one a lot. I like to validate people's advice by playing it out in hypotheticals, so let's take some random fields people may think they want to be great at, and apply this advice: chess, piano, philosophy, quantum physics, soccer. I think it's self-evident that his algorithm isn't suited f…

Watch out for this during your analysis:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

Re: How to Do Great Work

#105

Post by GavinMcG » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

grrdotcloud wrote: post #60

_x5ft wrote: post #26

I can't help but feel this essay is literally 100x longer than it needs to be for the point it's trying to make. This sort of long-winded, redundant writing seems to have gone out of style a long time ago.

Maybe hard work has gone out of style? Yesterday I poured over two companies documentation. About 200 pages of their API docs only to find: Dozen of typos. Errors in versions. Conflicts in examples. Broken examples. I barely invest in this much reading but this time I did because I was trying to deliver and sure enough I'm able to benefit our entire product because of this effort.

By the way, and only because your comment suggests you care about detail and will find this valuable: it’s “pored over” unless there was a liquid you were dumping on them.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#106

Post by travisjungroth » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #101

travisjungroth wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s so incredible how deep the rabbit-hole goes when you try to solve a real world problem and you have the capacity to understand and pull information from a vast number of seemingly unrelated works. It's funny, I considered quoting this other part as well: > The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. You notice a crack in the surface of knowledge, pry it open, and there's a whole world inside. The nature of…

> The nature of fractals is that everything is a new fractal bud. There's really endless complexity everywhere. So I don't think that alone is the "big prize". There's some other dimension, like utility or interest. Here's another dimension: try convincing others of this while they're discussing a specific object level problem and see how that goes.

I don't really follow. You've quoted a few statements and I also don't know what you mean by a specific object level problem.

Is it that it would be hard to convince people there's endless complexity in this domain while they're deciding what to get for lunch? Yeah, probably. They're too hungry.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#107

Post by peteradio » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:31 PM UTC

cookie_monsta wrote: post #38

It feels like this takes a very narrow definition of greatness which is more aligned to innovation and "What will make you famous" or "What will be commercially successful". From plant life and human health all the way up to nation states, there are lots of people doing great work just making sure that things keep running smoothly.

Seems well aligned with the dictionary definition of great. If you are maintaining the status quo that is pretty much by definition not great.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#108

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

GavinMcG wrote: post #105

grrdotcloud wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe hard work has gone out of style? Yesterday I poured over two companies documentation. About 200 pages of their API docs only to find: Dozen of typos. Errors in versions. Conflicts in examples. Broken examples. I barely invest in this much reading but this time I did because I was trying to deliver and sure enough I'm able to benefit our entire product because of this effort.

By the way, and only because your comment suggests you care about detail and will find this valuable: it’s “pored over” unless there was a liquid you were dumping on them.

[deleted]

Re: How to Do Great Work

#109

Post by carlossouza » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

_x5ft wrote: post #26

I can't help but feel this essay is literally 100x longer than it needs to be for the point it's trying to make. This sort of long-winded, redundant writing seems to have gone out of style a long time ago.

Although I enjoy reading his essays, yes, they tend to be longer than usual.

I wonder whether he uses an editor to provide constructive feedback before publishing it or just writes and clicks "publish."

Interestingly, I found that point missing: people who do great work usually have editors/mentors/advisors to help them along the way.

Re: How to Do Great Work

#110

Post by leoc » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #103

dmvdoug wrote: post #76

As usual, this is both interesting but also so generalizing as to get frustrating in places. But it’s clearly well-meaning and earnest, which makes it easier to tolerate some of its annoyingly breezy certainty. Then there’s this: > Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. So anything that can be described either literally or metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas in it…

Traditionally, footnotes are straightforward explanations of terms or passages. Tech writers, in their grandiosity, have perverted them to contain randomass tangents that no one really cares about.

Footnotes are mainly straightforward-enough glosses and references, but there have always been digressions (and quite often sniping) in there too. The C19 has some real specimens.