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Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

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Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#181

Post by ianai »

piokoch wrote: post #60

"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…

I would suspect the company that designed the software for your local power plant is either a huge mega corporation or their name is on the front of the building or both. It’s not like their work is niche to the point of being esoteric. It’s just not FAANG. Also not targeted to consumers.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#182

Post by concreteblock »

peruvian wrote: post #135
Klinky wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even know the actual impact you had on revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.

This should be part of the product spec or even tech spec. If you cannot measure the impact, why're you working on it?

Some things can't be measured.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#183

Post by [deleted] »

jspash wrote: post #109
theshrike79 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't start another podcast. Or if you absolutely must, please provide a text version of the content. Podcasts aren't searchable, they aren't skimmable and their content isn't indexed in search engines. Text is.

Naively I would think that there must be a service out there that auto-generates transcriptions from podcasts. Youtube already do this for (some) videos. The output isn't perfect, but it gets about 99% of the words correct. So my suggestion to OP wouldn't be "don't do the podcast". Instead I would say "do the podcast, but consider that it might not be searchable without a bit of extra effort".

[deleted]

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#184

Post by dilyevsky »

AlexC04 wrote: post #122
jspash wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naively I would think that there must be a service out there that auto-generates transcriptions from podcasts. Youtube already do this for (some) videos. The output isn't perfect, but it gets about 99% of the words correct. So my suggestion to OP wouldn't be "don't do the podcast". Instead I would say "do the podcast, but consider that it might not be searchable without a bit of extra effort".

100% there are services! I believe that Azure ML/AI has a natural text transcription service. In theory I could try and tweet at Seth Juarez@microsoft to see if I can get a sweetheart deal. But the more I think about the previous poster's position on the text, the more I convince myself that it might be worth a few bucks an episode for me to pay out-of-pocket if it means improved accessibility for users with disabili…

I haven’t personally used it but heard good things about Descript (also their demo vids are hilarious)

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#185

Post by bumby »

ianai wrote: post #181
piokoch wrote: post #60

"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…

I would suspect the company that designed the software for your local power plant is either a huge mega corporation or their name is on the front of the building or both. It’s not like their work is niche to the point of being esoteric. It’s just not FAANG. Also not targeted to consumers.

You’d be surprised how much industrial automation is not built by relatively small contractors. To your point, they tend to use “mega-corp” systems (e.g., Rockwell Automation hardware) but the actual logic is often written by small companies that bid out the project (or are subcontracted to for various reasons not necessarily related to technical acumen).

I haven’t personally worked o power plants but have been involved in various safety critical automation builds related to factories, hospitals, high energetic test stands etc. often, the code is maintained by a technician who isn’t either an engineer or classically trained computer scientist. Not to say those credentials are a must, but it makes more sense why the code I witnessed had so many bad practices in it

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#186

Post by dfcowell »

Klinky wrote: post #146
Swizec wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not vague guesswork at all. If you can’t measure the success of your project, why are you doing it? It’s okay, even expected, if the answer is probabilistic. What’s not okay is doing stuff for no reason. Bonus points if you’re able to tell a story like: We did X to achieve Y, but it didn’t work because Z. So we tried ...

This goes back to the tying of a SQL query directly to profits. That would be an interesting story if it were true, but such a story is probably an extreme rarity. We're talking about calculating the impact of your weekly or daily work directly to profit generation. There is a level of granularity and detail to your claim that is likely impossible to realistically calculate, so it would be very hard to accept such cl…

"I made the query for X, an operation that is performed Y times per day, Z% faster resulting in N% increase in Xs performed daily. This meant we could (defer hiring additional headcount|do more per day)."

Many teams don't invest in the tooling required to measure this kind of impact, but it's possible to ballpark it.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#187

Post by dfcowell »

concreteblock wrote: post #182
peruvian wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be part of the product spec or even tech spec. If you cannot measure the impact, why're you working on it?

Some things can't be measured.

Challenge accepted. Do you have an example?

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#188

Post by crvdgc »

Working for a company and working for visibility only differ in the capital gain (in the broad sense of the word). Your goal is still external to yourself and towards the need of the capitalist system.

An analogy would be, if you want to write an article, you can write a soft sell (work for a company), an article of a popular topic (work for visibility), or something you think is valuable (work for interest). Which will you choose?

Sometimes, the latter two coincide, but more often than not, they don't. The result of working for visibility depends more on your marketing skill rather than your technical skill. (What would be the most popular framework in two years?) And the value you create will fluctuate as the fashion changes.

Changing from working for a company to working for visibility is definitely an improvement, but I'm skeptical of its effect on ameliorating capitalist problems the author talked about in the beginning.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#189

Post by kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj »

beforeolives wrote: post #72

I was hoping that we were moving in the opposite direction where people aren't expected to show off side projects, ship something every week or work for a famous company in order to be successful. If this article is good advice, that makes me a bit sad about the state and direction of the industry.

I mean this is like saying models don't need to be beautiful, or "beauty" doesn't mean being attractive. Those things are ridiculous, of course.

If you don't have anything cool to show or talk about, and other people do, obviously they will get more attention and money. How are people supposed to know how valuable you are?

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#190

Post by judge2020 »

ddulaney wrote: post #107
theshrike79 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't start another podcast. Or if you absolutely must, please provide a text version of the content. Podcasts aren't searchable, they aren't skimmable and their content isn't indexed in search engines. Text is.

On the other hand, podcasts can be listened to in the background, while text must be actively read. There are pros and cons to each format as a consumer, not to mention differences in production workflow.

To add, I think we should leave it to the machines to start indexing podcasts automatically. They're some of the easiest mediums for speech recognition and Google has been indexing YouTube transcripts for a few years now.
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