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No-one knows what they are doing

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Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#151

Post by taylodl »

Actually people do know what they're doing. They're simply making decisions with incomplete and/or probabilistic data. They want to make decisions maximizing the most likely scenarios while minimizing the most negative outcomes. That's why it's called a balancing act and there's various techniques one can utilize for making decisions in such an environment.

This is a reason why many businesses fail. Sure, just about everybody can make good decisions if you have accurate and complete data with which to make those decisions. That just doesn't typically happen too often when running a business. It's a far cry though from saying "nobody knows what they are doing." That's just simply not true.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#152

Post by frostwarrior »

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…

"Real impostors don't have impostor syndrome"

To me, that is even better.

It means that you care and you are in an uncomfortable zone, which means you are probably growing.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#153

Post by mr_gibbins »

Of course, it depends on the context. As a casual chess player, it's fine that I don't really know what I'm doing, and that I'm apt to be roundly beaten 7 times out of 10. There are no consequences to being bad at chess, except for feeling a bit sad if I lose too many games in a row.

As a senior DBA, it is absolutely unacceptable if I do not know what I am doing. I look after software which runs a fairly important part of the machinery of government. There is not much tolerance for incompetence in my little niche, although granted that no-one dies if I get it wrong, the consequences for the end-consumers of my little bit of the world can be life-changing.

Same applies (in a more important sense than just DBA work) for e.g. paediatric heart surgeons, rail drivers, airline pilots, people whose incompetence can kill. Skill and professionalism are very much key, and cannot be hand-waved away with platitudes to make people feel better about their own inabilities.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#154

Post by darepublic »

Good advice. A moral oft repeated in stories. They said it well in Kung-Fu Panda: there is no secret ingredient.

I remember as a junior developer caring a ton about programming but constantly feeling like my skills weren't up to par. I read some quote from Ray Bradbury about how he wrote for 10 years before he created anything he himself liked. I mulled over that idea and it gave me hope. Years later I am now writing code that I think is good. Hopefully more than the senility kicking in.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#155

Post by grujicd »

tacon wrote: post #149
zcw100 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>A concert pianist doesn't just walk up on stage and wing it. Well, sometimes they have to. There is the famous example where a professional concert pianist realizes when the orchestra starts that she practiced the wrong piece. They happen to have been making a documentary, so we get to see her face as she realizes what is happening. And then she "wings it", and manages to play very well anyway. [0] https://www.youtu…

This is trully amazing!

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#156

Post by lowercased »

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…

> The dark side of this mentality is that it creates the same situations whereby people believe their own intuitions are equal to professional scientific research. If you believe no one knows what they’re doing and all adults are just making it up as they go, why would you listen to experts instead of inserting your own opinions based on your Facebook research or some quip you saw online?

Or folks on your own team?

I've got a colleague with over 20 years of software/web/dev experience, working as a contractor on a poorly run team. Routinely there are questions about "how should we do X?".

My colleague has done much of these X situations for 10+ years, and says "we need to do it like Z. I've done Z for 8 years and this is the normal pattern for this scenario".

There's always regular pushback from others on the team with "well, I read $foo which says Z can't scale!" and similar things. These are typically coming from people with ... 1-2 years experience. One guy just graduated high school last year, but the PM gives everyone's views equal weight because "well, no one can know everything, and everyone's got a right to their opinion!"

Just because the 20 year old doesn't know how to do X, or read that Z is 'slow' does not mean their views are equally as valid as someone who has actually done X multiple times over years, and in some cases has already implemented the X on a project.

He's likely not going to be there much longer - he's already splitting time with other projects, and will ramp down if there's not some bigger changes on that team.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#157

Post by BarryMilo »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #153

Of course, it depends on the context. As a casual chess player, it's fine that I don't really know what I'm doing, and that I'm apt to be roundly beaten 7 times out of 10. There are no consequences to being bad at chess, except for feeling a bit sad if I lose too many games in a row. As a senior DBA, it is absolutely unacceptable if I do not know what I am doing. I look after software which runs a fairly important pa…

A valid point, I think the sentiment is more common in the development world because things change so fast you can't really master the entirety of even a very specific domain for very long.

However, it seems IT over time has grown to be (or aim to be) "incompetence proof". That is, even if you mess up, there should be mechanisms in place to prevent a catastrophe, so that at least two people must be majorly incompetent to create a disaster. I guess we call it redundancy.

Compare with medecine, if your doctor is bad you can die. And people frequently do. I tend to prefer our base assumption that everyone is incompetent, that way we're prepared when someone makes a mistake.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#158

Post by sdwr »

stef25 wrote: post #102
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…

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…

I was that kid not too long ago. All the classes I took started from first principles, most of my assignments began with an empty file. I had very little experience working with existing code or navigating w an IDE. It was humiliating taking hours to make a one-character change, or getting lost looking for a server endpoint, especially when I expected I should already know what I was doing!

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#159

Post by [deleted] »

lostcolony wrote: post #144
zcw100 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> Not everything is designed, or planned. Sometimes the result is just the sum of a bunch of not necessarily coordinated decisions. I'll go one further. Almost always. Organizations are basically distributed systems; you theoretically could have fully coordinated decisions with an elegant and efficient network topology (i.e., the decisions involve only those people with relevant information, and don't pass through u…

[deleted]

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#160

Post by systemvoltage »

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…

On the contrary, I've been inside of institutions that appear to be a bastion of knowledge and expertise, a castle of wisdom and englightment; only to see the stilts that the whole thing is sitting on after entering inside. Having worked in extremely large corporations and government institutions, leading teams and people, auditing suppliers and vendors; it is humbling to see the contrast between external appearance and internal construction.

I like Peter Thiel's take on this:

Between excessive dogmatism and excessive skepticism, therein lies human progress.

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