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Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

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Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#191

Post by blurbleblurble »

eightysixfour wrote: post #103
rhaps0dy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them. Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply.

The hard part is giving in to a job. I think my hesitancy in this area straight up reeks to the point H.R. people/recruiters can pretty much smell it. It's just not about the money for me. If I was doing something I enjoyed and had time to work on creative projects (a.k.a. "my life's work"), I'd be fine on ~ $1000/mo (say at ~20-40 hrs/mo). But this presents difficult hiring/management challenges, the main one being the challenge of using my time effectively. When someone is always on call, management doesn't have to worry about this as much.

Honestly, I think companies could get a lot more bang for their buck if they put more money into hiring people to maintain and improve on open source projects that they use. And I know that there are jobs like this out there. I just need to keep looking for one that fits me :)

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#192

Post by monktastic1 »

taejo wrote: post #173
Domenic_S wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/which-vs-that/ http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/which-ver... http://www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/grinker/LwtaThat_Versus...

Those are exactly the "grammar checkers" and "pedantic pamphlets" that I referred to (Grammarly is literally a grammar checker). Why should we consider them right and Brontë, Dickens and Melville, and their editors, wrong? That is not purely a rhetorical question. While I do think that Brontë, Dickens and Melville are right and the authors of your links are wrong, I also would like to know why you and many others thi…

Not OP, but I wonder if his/her brain is similar to mine: I get a small kick of dopamine from knowing that I do something "technically right" that others (especially famous people) do "wrong."

It's been a long, slow road to recovery.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#193

Post by blurbleblurble »

csours wrote: post #111
rhaps0dy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

There is a massive gulf between hiring and work. There's another massive gulf between what a manager asks for and what HR or recruiters ask for. > "If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions" The process of hiring for this is hard. Finding people like this is also hard.

exactly! and even if you do find them, convincing them to work for you is also hard... lots of these people are don't respond to money in predictable ways.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#194

Post by akgerber »

auxym wrote: post #97
Danihan wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For fuck's sake, cut out the middle man and just request SAT / ACT scores.

I'm canadian so have never taken these tests, but I was under the impression that a large component of scoring well on them is cramming?

I did very well on both tests in high school without much cramming (I skimmed one study book from the library), and scored something like 90th percentile when I took the ACT in middle school.

Whether this is correlated to anything important in real life is an entirely separate question.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#195

Post by wrs »

md224 wrote: post #104

> Charge more. Charge more still. Go on. This might sound stupid, and maybe it's my inner hippie talking, but did this make anyone else slightly uncomfortable? I get that it's "good business", but something feels kinda gross about saying "extract as much money from other people as you possibly can." Like... shouldn't you just charge whatever you think something (a product, your time) is worth? I realize that "what so…

How much it's worth to whom? Presumably the customer? (If you're doing it based on how much it's worth to you, that's more like a hobby than a business.) How can you know how much it's worth to the customer? One very simple way is to increase the price until they no longer want to buy it.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#196

Post by ysleepy »

jpm_sd wrote: post #27

>Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. I'm not sure if he's saying these hard-working generalists are hard to find, or undesirable to employ?

Could someone elaborate what specifically is meant with having high risk tolerances?

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#197

Post by trentmb »

auxym wrote: post #97
Danihan wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For fuck's sake, cut out the middle man and just request SAT / ACT scores.

I'm canadian so have never taken these tests, but I was under the impression that a large component of scoring well on them is cramming?

Maybe.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/...

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#198

Post by dsnuh »

shostack wrote: post #126
dsnuh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>often generalists have lots of historic operational knowledge and strong opinions *citation needed Edit: to be clear, in my experience the specialists that aren't also generalists on some level are the least productive on the team because they have trouble participating outside their knowledge domain. Maybe I have worked at the wrong places though...

To clarify, when a company is young, you have a lot of people wearing a lot of hats. They may in fact be quite good at wearing some of those hats. Likewise, having visibility and exposure to multiple domains aspects of the same company gives a perspective that is hard to have if you live in a super specialized silo. However specialists don't need to be generalists to be productive as long as they come in with the min…

I get where you are coming from. For me, being a long-term employee having gone through a few transitions from smallish to biggish, and when your storage guy you hired doesn't really know networking basics, or the database administrator has no clue about Linux, etc. it tends to slow everyone down.

"Scale" often seems to equate with SF hotshots from one of the big names that will come in and airdrop a brand new architecture. These things take years and you need those generalists that have the tribal knowledge and the ability to jump in (almost) as deeply as a specialized developer, DBA, Network Admin, etc. I think the SRE movement is good evidence of the type of breadth and depth needed to operate a complicated system at scale.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#199

Post by badpun »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
legitster wrote: post #69

This one had me stop >The explosive growth of the tech sector keeps average age down and depresses average wages. Compared to industries which existed in materially the same form in 1970, we have a stupidly compressed experience spectrum: 5+ years rounds to "senior." This is not a joke. I agree that it compresses the experience spectrum, but has the opposite effect on wages. It's tough to find any industry that pays…

Tech does not pay for experience. A new grad's compensation is often equal and some times greater than someone who's been in the trenches for 20 years. I don't know any other profession with this absurd inversion. And with a few notable exceptions, the idea that someone with 5 years of experience is Senior-anything is ridiculous. I remember myself at 5 years out, I didn't know shit compared to today. Yet, adjusted fo…

My impression is that coding requires more energy and enthusiasm (so, in other words, internal motivation) to do a good job than many other professions. Hence 5 year exp "senior" can do a better job than a jaded and complacent 15 year exp one.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#200

Post by gajomi »

>The amount of money flowing through capitalism would astound you

I really like this one. During my biology days, there was a fellow PhD student in the lab who had spent 15+ years in corporate IT before joining academia, and he always had great stories of the incredible amounts of cash we should expect to see flow around us should we embark on careers outside of academia (he was not wrong).

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