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I'm addicted to being useful

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Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#241

Post by m463 »

tclancy wrote: post #7

> I don’t mind the ways in which my job is dysfunctional, because it matches the ways in which I myself am dysfunctional As a fellow traveller, I offer one caution: learn to turn this down in personal relationships as it can be counterproductive. It took decades for my wife to finally get through and explain not every problem she voices is something that needs a solution. Some times people just want to be heard. It b…

listen, don't problem solve.

advice for every engineer, ever, lol.

(also related - do you listen, or wait to talk?)

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#243

Post by didibus »

bradley13 wrote: post #17

I feel the same way. I retired last summer, but that only means that I found a place that needs me, where I can work part time without worrying too much about money. I remember, decades ago, reading an article about some African politician visiting the UK. He was given a tour, which included some of the social housing. The UK bragging about how they took care of their people. He saw people sitting around with with th…

I understand, but retired people rank highest on the happiness index, same as children, and the thing they have in common is nothing to do but play, relax, and have fun. Social housing probably doesn't allow for any form of play, and it's just scrapping by level of "surviving". I don't think it's a good example, and letting those people instead work 12h days, 7 day a week, at some repetitive, low pay, job, isn't gonna be all that better, and might be even more horrible.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#244

Post by tclancy »

opminion wrote: post #33
tclancy wrote: post #7

> I don’t mind the ways in which my job is dysfunctional, because it matches the ways in which I myself am dysfunctional As a fellow traveller, I offer one caution: learn to turn this down in personal relationships as it can be counterproductive. It took decades for my wife to finally get through and explain not every problem she voices is something that needs a solution. Some times people just want to be heard. It b…

I'm probably your wife. It could be related to the personality trait of how much of our world model is "in our mind" vs "out there": If I speak with you while working on the world model in my mind, it looks like I just "want to be heard". But your feedback is actually very important, it's just that it should only feed my mental world model. I am then surprised that my math coprocessor reaches for the GPIO.

We should probably talk then!

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#245

Post by giraffe_lady »

fsckboy wrote: post #208
giraffe_lady wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every good engineer is an excellent communicator. Everyone who is not an excellent communicator is not a good engineer. Everyone hates that this is true but it remains true. A lot of people are very good programmers who have mistaken that for being good engineers, however.

people who do not understand orthogonality also take poor measurements.

I'm not sure what you're implying.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#246

Post by WalterBright »

spicyusername wrote: post #198

Nothing wrong on the surface with this, and the author explicitly acknowledges this risk, but it bears repeating: Corporate environments are almost always toxic places to fulfill your emotional needs. It is true that finding a job that "resonates" with your personality is key to living a fulfilling life, and that software engineering is the kind of profession that is really going to fit certain personality types extr…

Old Soviet joke:

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, it's the other way around!

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#247

Post by therealdrag0 »

choonway wrote: post #72

I was like the author of the article, then I realized that I was solving problems that were created by other peoples' incompetence. Sure they were challenging, fun but they didn't bring anything postive overall. The incompetent people are still there - causing more problems. So I decided to find a worthwhile problem that deserved my talent. And I did. And I am now even more happy than before.

Are the incompetent people your coworkers? Ideally you can be solving your customers problems, which is a nice terminating lens of “always useful”, tho you may still want to pick and choose.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#248

Post by [deleted] »

spicyusername wrote: post #198

Nothing wrong on the surface with this, and the author explicitly acknowledges this risk, but it bears repeating: Corporate environments are almost always toxic places to fulfill your emotional needs. It is true that finding a job that "resonates" with your personality is key to living a fulfilling life, and that software engineering is the kind of profession that is really going to fit certain personality types extr…

[deleted]

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#249

Post by WalterBright »

spicyusername wrote: post #198

Nothing wrong on the surface with this, and the author explicitly acknowledges this risk, but it bears repeating: Corporate environments are almost always toxic places to fulfill your emotional needs. It is true that finding a job that "resonates" with your personality is key to living a fulfilling life, and that software engineering is the kind of profession that is really going to fit certain personality types extr…

> Corporate environments are almost always toxic places to fulfill your emotional needs.

A job (corporate or government) is exchanging labor for money.

Generally, people tend to be good at jobs they enjoy doing. The idea is to get educated in something you enjoy, and make that your career.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#250

Post by maroonblazer »

Aurornis wrote: post #233
perfmode wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re making a reasonable point, but I think you’re arguing against a somewhat strawmanned version of emotional validation. You’re treating “validation” as synonymous with “agreeing the emotional response was proportionate and correct.” But that’s not really what validation means in a therapeutic or even colloquial sense. Validating someone’s emotions typically means acknowledging that the emotion is real and unders…

I disagree. I think the overly academic isolation of "validating emotions" into something that happens without endorsing the response isn't how real people communicate. Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid. The idea of "validating emotions" being synonymous with saying "I agree that you feel that way" is rather in…

My partner and I have been through this cycle. Something happens, she interprets it a certain, very specific, way and then has an adverse emotional reaction.

In the early days of our relationship I would try to explain to her why her emotion doesn't 'make sense'. That just made things worse. Much worse. When she helped me understand that she needed me to validate that what she was feeling was legitimate - based on her interpretation of the events - she was able to let go and consider other interpretations.

Note that this "letting go" almost never happened in the moment, but only after the emotions abated and she had time to process the entire situation. We're talking hours, not minutes.

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