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No-one knows what they are doing

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Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#131

Post by lettergram »

cupofpython wrote: post #123
lettergram wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Expertise” is often less and more valuable than perceived, depending on the situation. Give me a programming related question and I could have solved it a two decades ago on paper. The expertise allows me to solve it with more efficiency today. Similarly, there are things that lack of expertise help you with. You can see different perspectives. Have to research the topics fresh (find latest frameworks, etc). I also…

>expertise is far more transferable than ever Small nitpick on this statement that makes a significant difference to me. I think the spirit of what you are saying is that "Experts are far more accessible than ever" The youtube video that helped you, your neighbor, the instruction manual, are all sources of expert information. In earlier times people would have to find the right book in a library, or travel the world…

Fair enough! You’re correct

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#132

Post by shrikant »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #68
benjaminwootton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been fairly close to the digitalisation agenda in UK public sector, and apart from pockets, I find it hard to be so generous. Horrible outsourcing deals with the usual suspects and enormous failed programmes are still the default.

Reading the parent comment about Denmark made me sad. I feel that in the UK we have smart, dedicated, well intentioned people just like Denmark, but if the NHS RiO system and Track-and-Trace are anything to go by we are plagued by massive corruption in the IT sector. This is the country of Alan Turing, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Acorn RISC Machines. We need a new broom on public IT. I think we also need an outright ban…

FWIW, I've done some work in the UK public sector, including but not limited to the NHS.

In my experience, any time the tech folks were in-house, the "doer class" (i.e. the boots-on-the-ground engineers) were some of the smartest, most motivated individuals I've worked with, who pretty consistently gave great output (for e.g., shipping products, system design, software architecture, balancing tech debt with delivery velocity) in the face of almost uniformly painful obstacles, like the tooling they could work, or being jerked around by changing political priorities.

OTOH, any time the tech folks were a long-term outsourced arrangement, you could expect to find (WITHOUT EXCEPTION) ridiculous amounts of cruft, hacks and frankly unacceptable shortcuts in the tech systems and interfaces, and the few people of this ilk that I did deal with, were entirely focussed on Goodhart's Law-ing their way to their next gig. (TBH, I can't really blame the individuals as they're merely responding in the most rational manner to their incentives).

> I think we also need [...] a policy to rebuild skills and bring them back in.

Absolutely 100% agreed, but I suspect we lack the political will/vision, and the requisite leadership/management abilities to be able to do this in a manner that doesn't just result in the next round of useless bungs to politically connected mates.

P.S.: Entirely off-topic -- do you compose your replies in Emacs or something like that? Or at least resort to using semantic line breaks? (https://sembr.org/) I ask because your comment looks fine on the website, but shows line breaks after sentences in an HN reader app that I use.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#133

Post by vxNsr »

crispyambulance wrote: post #121
stef25 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrt to imposter syndrome - I often have this feeling, especially since I don't have any formal training in anything IT related. Recently a kid showed up at work to do an internship. He's studying computer science, all kinds of advanced algorithm stuff. He's utterly clueless at even beginning to find the cause of a simple bug in a php application. Incapable of interpreting a bug report, finding the class that serves a…

> ... studying computer science, all kinds of advanced algorithm stuff. He's utterly clueless at... One thing I notice in some rhetoric (not necessarily yours) is the idea that people are static. That if one is clueless now, they'll always be clueless. People continuously evolve personally and professionally. The road to mastery and understanding always begins with confusion and uncertainty. It's totally reasonable t…

I think the GP’s point is that, despite not having a formal education in CS/CE their self taught skills are pretty good and the formal education doesn’t appear to be teaching computer engineering in any case. So while this intern will probably have a better understanding of how to traverse a tree or w/e, they’re still starting in the same place the the GP did when it comes to actual CE.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#134

Post by rpmisms »

I know what I'm doing, I just don't always know how to do it. But I know how to find out, and I have the mental framework to pick it up quickly. That's what juniors should understand about how this works. You'll never know everything, but you should know how to know.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#135

Post by hermitcrab »

zcw100 wrote: post #130
louthy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better phrase is "everybody is winging it", because once you get good at something, then you tend to end up working on something that's at the edge of your current understanding, either through promotion or some sense of seniority in the industry. This isn't necessarily true for all jobs, but I think it's especially true in the software industry. I've been a CTO for 17 years, but I still feel like I'm wingi…

I'm going to go with "Not everything is designed, or planned. Sometimes the result is just the sum of a bunch of not necessarily coordinated decisions." Some people know a lot about what they are doing and are highly skilled. A concert pianist doesn't just walk up on stage and wing it. What I think you realize when you grow up is not every decision or outcome was deliberately thought out and coordinated. Sometimes th…

Ruuning a business is like playing a piano at a concert, except the keys sometimes change position and sometime disappear completely.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#138

Post by abakker »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #100
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #77

This is a very comforting fiction to tell yourself when you’re faced with new and unfamiliar challenges. However, it’s not really true. Plenty of people within an industry or field know enough of what they’re doing because they’ve gone through it before and/or done all of the heavy research to prepare for these situations. I see the “nobody knows what they’re doing” fiction brought out as an easy antidote for imposto…

I'm pretty junior in terms of YOE, but I hate when I see people say things like "don't worry, I have no idea what I'm doing and I have x YOE. You're fine!" to people on the internet. I have a decent understanding of what I'm doing, but I worked for it by doing exactly what you described in your last paragraph and then synthesizing that knowledge into an explicit process. If you don't know what you're doing you're eit…

Not to mention that people who say that they don't know what they're doing, but are earning 6 figure salaries are being extremely condescending to everyone else. The idea here is that you get paid for your expertise. If you don't have it, get it!

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#139

Post by zelos »

louthy wrote: post #116
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #77

This is a very comforting fiction to tell yourself when you’re faced with new and unfamiliar challenges. However, it’s not really true. Plenty of people within an industry or field know enough of what they’re doing because they’ve gone through it before and/or done all of the heavy research to prepare for these situations. I see the “nobody knows what they’re doing” fiction brought out as an easy antidote for imposto…

I think a better phrase is "everybody is winging it", because once you get good at something, then you tend to end up working on something that's at the edge of your current understanding, either through promotion or some sense of seniority in the industry. This isn't necessarily true for all jobs, but I think it's especially true in the software industry. I've been a CTO for 17 years, but I still feel like I'm wingi…

Could it be that the more you know, the more you realise how much more there is to know? That would explain the feeling of impostor syndrome in more senior people - they're judging by different standards.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#140

Post by hermitcrab »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #128
hermitcrab wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the UK government basically knew what they were doing may have been true 5 years ago. Today, not so much.

Do you think? They're starting to cut into our human rights, and workers rights, they've brought in measures to stop democratic protests, stripped public services, they've increased tax on the poor and removed tax from business/rich (cutting tax on Champagne whilst lecturing the populace on the need for austerity was a particularly evil-villain twist); they straight up funneled £Billions out of the Exchequer under th…

I don't disagree with any of the above. But it is probably at least as much down to incompetence as greed. Please don't try and tell me that Nadine Dorries is some sort of evil genius.
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