It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated • Hacker News Board

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#221

Post by deterministic » Wed, Oct 06, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #123

Avicebron wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm tired of people signaling themselves as "weird" kids, it wasn't that weird to like computers, there's this fetishization of being "weird", "aspergy", "autistic", that's so tired and sad. no it doesn't make you better or smarter, it's just normal, no no one is a superstar because they were that "hacker" kid, times change, money changes focus and boom, success, it's not smarts, it's timing. and for all the kids out…

Dunno mate, when I was one of only 5 people I knew in the world who really like this programming thing, it felt pretty weird.

Agree. My experience as well.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#222

Post by maximus-decimus » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

refenestrator wrote: post #159

maximus-decimus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, When it takes 5 minutes minimum to deploy my code changes to my vms to test, I lose all motivation. Momentum is really the right word and a workflow is just soul sucking.

Spend that time figuring out how to change it to unit tests in your IDE, or making the deployment lighter weight. Work on the meta-problem that makes your problem easier. After all, you've got time if the baseline is low-productivity. And the lessons learned are portable.

You're overestimating how much control I've got over the company-wide infrastructure.

Unit tests don't really fix the problem either. I'll have integration tests that run automatically during builds either way because I want to make sure other people are not breaking my stuff and there's no real difference in time between setting it up for 1 test or 1000.

The only solution I've found so far is try to bypass as much of the company-specific infrastructure as I can during development, but that requires learning a lot of docker/k8s/helm on top of knowing the company-specific stuff well enough to know what I can ignore on top of rake libraries that ~~abstracts~~ obfuscates the infrastructure.

Learning the k8s stuff I don't mind that much because as you say it's portable, but the company specific stuff... I doubt it's even portable across the company.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#223

Post by xvedejas » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #122

xvedejas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to feel weird as a kid with less perspective over the world. I have empathy for anyone who felt they weren't like the other kids around them for good, productive reasons. Sure, thinking interest in computers = Asperger's is an immature way to convey this. But otherwise I think it's worth celebrating whenever anyone has two-sigmas-above-average nerdy interests, why not?

that's silly, I didn't equate interest in computers with Asperger's, that would be ridiculous, it's just that people like to flaunt some amount of being on a spectrum as a badge of pride, true or not. I'm not saying it's not fun to flaunt it, but, remember, if your two sigma's below average on the physical list your out of luck, times change, power/money changes EDIT: most human beings feel weird as a kid. That's nat…

I didn't say you did, I was agreeing with you. I recommend reading comments' tone on HN as more neutral than the average internet comment.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#224

Post by kamanjak » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:15 AM UTC

aroundtown wrote: post #89

This completely ignores the why somebody is unmotivated. I remember being beat down very early in my career. I took advanced math classes, could build compilers, loved embedded device work, wanted to work on more advanced things (operating system level, backend, devices, etc). The only people that would even talk to me were people that wanted web pages built. All because I wasn't fortunate enough to go to a big name…

I'm sorry to hear that. Sounds pretty bad, I assume this is in the US?

My journey has been the opposite, from doing a PhD in a totally different field to full stack web development. Quitting my PhD for coding felt like a breath of fresh air and I haven't felt this motivated before in my life. There are good places out there for software development, and even if you want to change careers for whatever reason there are options available. I wish the best for you!

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#225

Post by fatninja » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

zeroxfe wrote: post #107

I really think that action changes attitude faster than attitude changes action. Learning this the hard way in my 40s, it's been really life changing for me. Particularly when you're depressed, demotivated, find yourself procrastinating, etc. You can try this yourself -- the next time you're feeling demotivated, start with the smallest amount of tiny measurable action. If you can't get out of bed, move your fingers,…

I have trouble getting consistency. I tried several methods, like you mentioned starting small, completibg small actions etc.. But I'm not able to consistently do it. It breaks when you are stuck at some problem. And in my job(legacy code base (~13yearrs), me with < 2 years experience, i find it harder to get that momentum.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#226

Post by bsanr2 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:53 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #207

bsanr2 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If that answers your question. It really doesn't, considering the proposed metric was "perspective of people left in your wake" and not "ratings from colleagues, as related by you." A hypothetical aimed less at considering what people think of you and more of what people think of themselves after having encountered you, it's a matter of who is being centered in such a meditation. You sound like a great self-marketer…

You’re welcome to talk to them if you run across them, somehow. I tend to be overly honest, and pretty much the opposite of self marketing. The only reason I replied here was because I felt it important that folks know where Carmack might be coming from. The only legal trouble I’ve ever been in, the other side filed to settle and dismiss (which I was ok with, despite having a strong claim for civil damages into the 6…

Replying defensively was a surefire way to prove that you'd missed the point. I'll give that you truly embody the salesman ethos, at least. Unfortunately, that includes a tendency to try to spin potential negatives into positives. What that means is that anyone aware that you are attempting to "sell" cannot trust your characterization of events. And so, I do not.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#227

Post by lazide » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:32 AM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #226

lazide wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re welcome to talk to them if you run across them, somehow. I tend to be overly honest, and pretty much the opposite of self marketing. The only reason I replied here was because I felt it important that folks know where Carmack might be coming from. The only legal trouble I’ve ever been in, the other side filed to settle and dismiss (which I was ok with, despite having a strong claim for civil damages into the 6…

Replying defensively was a surefire way to prove that you'd missed the point. I'll give that you truly embody the salesman ethos, at least. Unfortunately, that includes a tendency to try to spin potential negatives into positives. What that means is that anyone aware that you are attempting to "sell" cannot trust your characterization of events. And so, I do not.

You know the beauty of not actually selling? That’s ok if you don’t believe or care or whatever.

The only reason I even bother is I guess a version of the whole ‘what if you could go back in time and tell yourself something when you were a kid’.

I honestly had no clue of what was even possible, or what it even meant to be congruent with ones values, and it took a lot of pain, mistakes, and learning to figure it out.

Enjoy, and I wish you luck with your adventures.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#228

Post by rektide » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #163

lazide wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there are people who are do-ers. Not everyone is wired the same. Personally I can’t NOT do things. Regardless of if I get paid, it works out, or I even get yelled at for doing it - I fix things, pull things apart and make them better, clean things up, learn, and solve problems regardless of the discipline. If I’m not doing those things, I feel terrible. If I do those things (and the more the merrier), I feel…

I'd be interested to hear the perspective of the people left in your wake. The cost of engaging with a strong-willed "do-er" is what happens when someone, by the do-er's measure, fails to keep up (or, god forbid, gets in the way). At that point, the do-er's productive ability has to be weighed against their capacity (or track record) for coercion or abuse. Steve Jobs comes to mind. If you've personally received pushb…

I for one would really like to see more action-bias in the world about me, & less zen / uninvested / amotivated.

Computers are fascinating as heck & we have so much to do. Abiding by the non-weird people who don't see this as the most interesting, fascinating, richly-interesting field, playing by their rules, giving them endless comfort space & grace, being zen about it all... it's boring. It's less than I want to see for humankind.

I find it hard to figure out how the two sides tolerate each other better. Your own phrasing of "I'd be interested to hear the perspective of the people left in your wake" is how I think the overwhelming amount of people feel & see motivated individuals, is what gets thought about them. I try to be sympathetic & helpful & meet people where they want, but I feel like the "normal" behavior to deal with weird people is to be silently pissy & angry & unhelpful & isolate them, to hold them in contempt of normality for their urges to be a bit extra. I don't see a lot of bidirectional sympathy, a lot of recognition that mismatched motivations are a two way street, are a bidirectional issue. And I see a lot of assumptions that the extra behavior is almost always problematic & troublesome.

Re: It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated

#229

Post by chmsky00 » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 11:50 PM UTC

Isn’t that just a nice way of saying “less educated people are more easily manipulated”?

If industrialist feedback loops are destroying the planet, are more doers engaging grand scale industrialism doing an ideal objective?

Maybe we should educate people so they’re less inclined to chase the coin of mere mortals RP’ing grandads emotional memes