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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)

#201

Post by chillfox »

theshrike79 wrote: post #99
AlexC04 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a funny coincidence is that I've been thinking about almost exactly this for a little while. Just in the last two weeks I decided to create a podcast where I interview the exact types of developers who optimize SQL inside business apps. In fact, literally just last night I recorded and uploaded (to YouTube and the various podcast platforms) episode zero. Not an actual interview yet, but a statement of purpose…

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.

Not every format is for everyone.

I personally listen to podcasts or audio books every day when driving and in my lunch break.

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

#202

Post by chillfox »

danielscrubs wrote: post #198
judge2020 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have been doing it badly for a few years know yes, it’s not solved by any stretch of the imagination.

Sure, they keep getting some words wrong all the time, but it is likely good enough to get the general subject of what a podcast is about.

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

#203

Post by austhrow743 »

yongjik wrote: post #132
Swizec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

Counterpoint: when every developer is urged to build something with "measurable impact", you end up like Google, where people launch something visible, get promoted, and move on, leaving the service to wither away.

How is this a counterpoint? The above is advice to developers seeking to improve their career, not executives at large public companies making hiring policy decisions.

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

#204

Post by austhrow743 »

vbtemp wrote: post #171

I mean, what the hell is with all this 60-90 hours per week stuff going on? Am I an incredibly defective human being or something - I cannot even fathom working anything even CLOSE to that (in software/tech, maybe if you're in med school or work an an ER I can see it). There is no way in hell I could ever even be close to productive for that period of time for more than, say, one week a year or something (and even th…

>I mean, what the hell is with all this 60-90 hours per week stuff going on?

What do you mean "all this"? Has there been a trend of posts here with people talking about doing it that I missed?

Specifically with this author, he used to be a Japanese salaryman. Can learn a little more about that here:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...

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

#205

Post by laichzeit0 »

dzolob wrote: post #10
gwgundersen wrote: post #4

I like this framing. In graduate school, I worked for 2+ years before my first paper was published. In that time, I passed my PhD qualifying exam, took classes, wrote code, read papers, learned math, and so forth. Yet when I applied for internships, I received no interest from employers. I suspect this was because I had no concrete signal that I knew anything in my field. While working on my second paper, I started b…

This happened to me when I left academia. No “real credentials”. Math expert with strong computer background (phd, published papers, years of experience in research/teaching) didn’t said more than “one year data science ‘masters’ abroad”. It took me quite some time to translate my expertise into marketable skills. Before that, I got passed on even for entry level positions.

Well I had a “math expert” join my team recently and the problems were: they couldn’t work in a team, verbally expressed their intellectual superiority to everyone else, didn’t have the technical ability to get anything into production, could not follow instructions from superiors, thought most of the work they were given was “boring” and invented their own projects to work on, etc. I don’t know if that type of attitude is acceptable in academia, but it won’t work in industry. So now I’m extremely cautious about on boarding anyone without a proven track record at working outside academia. I simply don’t have the time to “manage” someone like that, shit had to get done.

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

#206

Post by theshrike79 »

garmaine wrote: post #193
AlexC04 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you're getting downvoted on this post. I found your data point useful. Even though I disagree that there are enough podcasts serving the senior developer / corporate programmer niche, being made aware of the existence of "podcast exhaustion" is valuable, and the discussion convinced me that a transcription service is worth it. I'd hate for negative attention to result in a chilling effect on your decision to vo…

Let me add another data point: I never listen to podcasts. Ever. I've tried it, and I hate the format. Even when I am forwarded something highly relevant to my interests, I still check for a transcript, and if there is none I move along. You can't search audio. You can't skim audio. You can't easily hyperlink to audio, copy-and-paste audio, or auto-summarize audio. Audio is not indexed or cached by the big search eng…

I only listen to podcasts that are well-produced and edited. Very few actually are. There are way too many people who think podcasting is just turning on a microphone and babbling away with a friend or guest for however long they can do it.

I only have a few hours a day I can spend on podcasts and I'm not going to waste it listening to some inane meandering chitchat.

"Put it on the background then" ...yea, that's when FOMO hits. What if I miss the good part? You know, the one thing that they said in the description they talk about, but can't keep on subject and keep getting sidetracked.

This is why most podcasts I listen to are from the BBC or NPR, they've got one subject for the episode, it has a clear narrative through-line and the actually get to a point. Exceptions to the rule being 20kHz (audio production professionals) and 99 Percent Invisible.

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

#207

Post by theshrike79 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #128
AlexC04 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! This is exactly the type of recommendation that I was hoping for. I'd have been happy with the mention even if it was an ad.

If you give it a try for audio editing make sure you record different podcast guests on separate audio tracks, makes the whole thing significantly better. I wrote a few thoughts on my blog about how I went about starting with the podcast including tools used, might be useful? https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/starting-a-podcast

Yes, a 100% this.

Even better if you can get the interviewee to record audio on their computer too, this way you can get proper audio without compression issues for editing.

Doesn't work for "video podcasts" because sound sync is a bitch, but for audio only it can enhance the quality immensely.

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

#208

Post by theshrike79 »

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.

This is why most of the stuff I listen to as a podcast are just random factoids and trivia. (No Such Thing as A Fish, Cautionary Tales, 99pi, etc)

If it's something I actually want to learn and retain, I prefer text so that I can go back, pause, skip etc as I please with an intuitive interface - my eyes =)

The same thing with interviews of interesting people I may want to store quotes from. With text it's just C-c C-v to copy stuff to my notes. With audio I need to transcribe it by hand, which is tedious work.

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

#209

Post by ryandrake »

dfcowell wrote: post #186
Klinky wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s a good example. The math doesn’t need to be precise, and you don’t need to track it down to lines of code. “Part of team of X developers who delivered product Y that produced $Z in revenue.” is enough for anyone to very roughly ballpark-estimate impact.

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

#210

Post by jasonkester »

cactus2093 wrote: post #158

I would love to see Patrick address the fact that he now works as an eng manager at Stripe, in the context of a lot of his previous writing like this piece. For all he has written about side projects and building sustainable lifestyle businesses, I bet he makes more in a single year now than he ever did from any of those projects. Not that that negates his previous advice at all, it’s great that people can figure out…

You’re definitely right that the path to, say, $300,000 total comp is more straightforward if you go the route of working toward a career at a top Bay Area firm.

But the route to a SaaS business that brings in something like $100,000 profit and can essentially run on autopilot most of the time is not a tremendous amount more work that all that leetcoding and FAANGing, over the 10 odd years you’ll need to put in to either one to make it happen.

Given that, which end lifestyle would you choose for yourself?

Personally, while I’m pretty happy with the road less taken, I did take a quick 5 year break from it to grab that brass ring, pay off a house and put my future kids through college, before returning to the slacking entrepreneur lifestyle. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the author is in a similar phase at the moment.

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