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If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

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Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#181

Post by QuantumGood »

jvanderbot wrote: post #135
agentultra wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hamming was also writing from a highly privileged position. He was able to work at Bell Labs for the majority of his career. That just doesn’t exist today. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is a great book but it needs context. The last edition was released in 1994. Programmers had a lot of labour power back then. Today though? The median house costs more than a third of the median income. Inflation has raised…

This is a framing issue. You can't control the times, but good advice is applicable in good and bad times. If Hamming was operating from a "good time", it should be true that his policies are also applicable in the "bad times". His advice to "work on the worlds hardest problems" was spoken to people who had worked their way past the initial difficulties. General advice to "Move towards important problems", which is p…

Personally, I find the advice useful. Most who provide a framing for causes of success either do not place it in relation to anything, or relate it primarily their own situation, and their argument becomes susceptible to interpretation as survivorship bias. Some try to extend their argument to cover more cases, but can be seen as overconfident based on limited experience. It's hard for one writer to "prove" what general success rules are.

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#182

Post by npodbielski »

I understand that and I agree. Though I think the real question is what you would do when you will achieve this goal. What then? Will you be happy? What you will do with the money? Will this amount be enough?

Can this ever be enough?

I am not sure. Is this even possible in current feudal corporate structures? I did spoke with some people from my work. One was afraid for his job because of another employee. Other was afraid of reorg and if there will be lay-offs. Another company and the merger there caused one guy to be afraid of loosing his job because system he build will be discontinued. Maybe their current position is not the career they really want and after the setback, they are afraid off, they will be able to advance it further in the direction they are actually aiming for... but what if not? What if they will never will be able to advance it further? What if they will never will be get back up?

At some point the only direction you can go is down. Is this all?

Even if you will be able to build your own company things may go wrong and you may loose it. Economy can change. Market can change. Your company may be bought or taken over. Nothing is truly sure.

Should you not invest in the carrier then? No, this is wrong. If you will not set course for you someone else will. And you may not like the place when you will end up. Setting up your own goals is very good practice.

But I am not sure if this should be your life goal because this is so dependent on so many variables. Variables you have absolutely no impact on. And with that uncertainty comes stress. I think that your life goals should be set to something that depends only, or almost only on you.

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#183

Post by thepryz »

npodbielski wrote: post #182

I understand that and I agree. Though I think the real question is what you would do when you will achieve this goal. What then? Will you be happy? What you will do with the money? Will this amount be enough? Can this ever be enough? I am not sure. Is this even possible in current feudal corporate structures? I did spoke with some people from my work. One was afraid for his job because of another employee. Other was…

Imagine Sisyphus happy seems like the appropriate response.

I don't think it's a matter of setting goals based on what you can do alone, life is lonely enough as it it. I think it's more a matter of accepting that life is a sequence of unpredictable events, and you have to just embrace the absurdity of it all.

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#184

Post by moffkalast »

Swizec wrote: post #6

My favorite lens on this comes from Hamming: > It is well known the drunken sailor whos taggers to the left or right n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about sqrt(n) steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a…

Tonight on Top Bit: I formally verify a theorem, James designs a dbms, and Richard writes a blog.

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#185

Post by BeetleB »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #161
aristofun wrote: post #118

The general sentiment of being aware about your career and decisions is true. But this reminds me of what I hate about modern corporate “culture” the most. And what is broken about it the most. Im speaking about the rat race. Tge fact, that you have to waste a noticeable part of your work time, effort and energy to sell your work instead of doing it. To the point where good salesmen make a “career” and become your bo…

How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? There is an entire theory called the “luck surface area” that says you need to do the work and tell people you did the work. https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/surface-area-of-luck There is another similar school of thought that the only thing that matters in your career are “results and relationships”. It took me way too long to figure all of this o…

> How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them?

They certainly seem to know when I'm not doing well, without me having to tell them.

Do you not see the asymmetry?

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#186

Post by BeetleB »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #172
aristofun wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not smarter than anyone else, I learned how to network, talk the talk and play the game. Congratulations that you learned how to game the system. Fair enough. That doesn't mean you should brag about it or celebrate that terrible "school of thought". > How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? That's a simple part: it's your manager's direct and one of the main job responsibilities. It's li…

Its a gravity problem. Gravity doesn’t care whether you like it or not when you land after jumping out of a 70 story building. You can either choose to accept gravity exists and not jump out of a 70 story building - or jump and die. My manager’s job is not to manage my career. The last time I was a “pull tickets off the board maintained by someone else” developer was over a decade ago. Even then my project manager wa…

> My manager’s job is not to manage my career.

But it is to promote and demote. In many (most?) companies, to get a promotion he needs to actively advocate for you in front of others. That is part of his job. Many of them simply optimize to "I'm not going to do that part of the job well, so you, as my report, need to give me the material I can sell to others." And not "you need to do well so I can sell to others".

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#187

Post by aristofun »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #172
aristofun wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not smarter than anyone else, I learned how to network, talk the talk and play the game. Congratulations that you learned how to game the system. Fair enough. That doesn't mean you should brag about it or celebrate that terrible "school of thought". > How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? That's a simple part: it's your manager's direct and one of the main job responsibilities. It's li…

Its a gravity problem. Gravity doesn’t care whether you like it or not when you land after jumping out of a 70 story building. You can either choose to accept gravity exists and not jump out of a 70 story building - or jump and die. My manager’s job is not to manage my career. The last time I was a “pull tickets off the board maintained by someone else” developer was over a decade ago. Even then my project manager wa…

> Gravity doesn’t care whether you like it or not when you land after jumping out of a 70 story building

With one key difference - it's not a gravity. It's just currently popular and dominating style in IT corporate culture. Mainly because it worked once for few successful companies and others cargo-culted it without much thought.

There will always be value and importance to networking, human relationships and communication. Because after all we're people, not robots.

But there will also be shift and evolution in management styles, just like we notice a shift in Leetcode interviews right now (less and less of this bullshit).

Change is the true "gravity" here.

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#188

Post by aristofun »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #172
aristofun wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not smarter than anyone else, I learned how to network, talk the talk and play the game. Congratulations that you learned how to game the system. Fair enough. That doesn't mean you should brag about it or celebrate that terrible "school of thought". > How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? That's a simple part: it's your manager's direct and one of the main job responsibilities. It's li…

Its a gravity problem. Gravity doesn’t care whether you like it or not when you land after jumping out of a 70 story building. You can either choose to accept gravity exists and not jump out of a 70 story building - or jump and die. My manager’s job is not to manage my career. The last time I was a “pull tickets off the board maintained by someone else” developer was over a decade ago. Even then my project manager wa…

> hop to another job if you want more money

I wonder on what planet are you working?

Virtually everyone I know in IT bumped their salary only after switching the companies, never I've seen anyone who raised their salary with comparable magnitude and/or pace by working hard at one place.

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#189

Post by aristofun »

BeetleB wrote: post #185
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? There is an entire theory called the “luck surface area” that says you need to do the work and tell people you did the work. https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/surface-area-of-luck There is another similar school of thought that the only thing that matters in your career are “results and relationships”. It took me way too long to figure all of this o…

> How will someone know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? They certainly seem to know when I'm not doing well, without me having to tell them. Do you not see the asymmetry?

yes, there are much more bad managers than good ones, also human brain is naturally wired to notice problems and warnings, rather than good news

Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)

#190

Post by BeetleB »

georgeburdell wrote: post #69
ramon156 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Juniors fall into this pitfall so quick. Our newest hire actually set boundaries early on and I was pleasantly surprised

Disagree. This kind of comment is furtively pulling up the ladder behind you. Do as I say not as I do. Junior is the time to learn as much as possible and take risky bets (and suffer accordingly). When I was in a junior in a factory, the night shift knew me well. Nowadays, I've pared it back to 50 or so hours per week, because I now have a family, which is fine but it came at the cost of basically zero time to learn…

> Junior is the time to learn as much as possible and take risky bets (and suffer accordingly). When I was in a junior in a factory, the night shift knew me well.

That would require a whole, separate article.

Many (most?) juniors grinding like that in a major company will work hard to get nowhere. Speaking from experience. Yes, I learned some lessons:

1. Get a different job. Deadend jobs definitely exist, and are quite common.

2. Ignore senior folks who say "You're whining. It's crappy everywhere. Just learn to take it."

Number 2 has been wrong every single time someone said it.

> Nowadays, I've pared it back to 50 or so hours per week, because I now have a family,

This is not the endorsement you think it is. I've done quite well by insisting on 40 hour weeks. I'm going to assume you're doing much better than I am, because otherwise it seems like a life wasted.

Don't get me wrong. If you want to go much farther than I have, you likely will have to grind and work hard and smart and be lucky. But I assure you - most of the people I know who worked hard are not in a better position than I am (or if they are, the difference is incremental).

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