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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)

#271

Post by AlexC04 »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #223
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…

OK, you got me, as I've been in those trenches myself. Subscribed.

Thank you!

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

#272

Post by gitgud »

killtimeatwork wrote: post #239
gitgud wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "i think this is why search results are cluttered with a proliferation of largely useless "awesome X" GitHub repositories, repetitive bad Medium articles on basic ML topics, and so on." This is such a sad way to view blogging and Github contributions... There's nothing wrong with people writing bad articles. In fact everyone writes badly to begin with. The same goes for Github contributions, everyone starts off wit…

> There's nothing wrong with people writing bad articles. In fact everyone writes badly to begin with. It's ok to write badly in the beginning. It's less ok (to say the least) to publish the bad writing in the Internet and decrease it's mean quality level in result. Of course, by now the cat's way out of the bad and Internet is mostly low-effort, low-value crap. Arguably, it's been this way since the very beginning.…

> "It's less ok (to say the least) to publish the bad writing in the Internet and decrease it's mean quality level in result"

This presumes that the "mean quality level" of the internet is actually important. With the scale of the internet now, it literally doesn't matter how many bad articles are uploaded, as search engines filter what is good/bad for you (whether or not search engines are good is another story). 1,000 results or 10 billion results you'll only look at the top 15 anyway...

> "In terms of quality and curation it's basically the digital equivalent of a wall in a public restroom"

This analogy assumes that there is limited physical space and people will be subjected to reading it, the internet is much different and a lot of content will never get advertised or even read.

So my question for anyone with this line of thinking is, how would you know when your writing has improved and ready to be published? I think the best way is to write and publish often and look for feedback.

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

#273

Post by hedberg10 »

nicbou wrote: post #215
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'm young, single and without children, and even 40 hours a week feels like a tad much, even when I realistically worked 5-6 hours a day. I can't imagine a life of 60-90 hour weeks be worth whatever carrot they dangle in front of those poor sods.

People lie.

Drug addicts claim to spent 1000s a day on their habit. They don't, but it makes their loss and frowned upon habit seem less so, "I'd be a rich, upstanding citizen if it weren't for this one thing!", with perhaps the added causality chain of -> "this isn't a big hurdle to overcome" and -> "I can stop whenever I want to".

Same with work. Working is likely a negative experience for a lot of people, so anything that frames it to be less so, is memed. "Well this was exhausting, but I was so productive! I worked like what 80? 90? hours this week?", when in reality much of that time was typing long winded comments like this one.

The real magic of the "4 hour workweek" and similar books isn't finding the one idea that makes it possible, but to make working enjoyable. That seems to happen automatically with a shorter workweek (Kelloggs, Microsoft Japan) but you can get there with a regular job and being honest about productivity and I say that as somebody who thought it was impossible with a 40 hour workweek. I now do that and have a lot of energy to spare in the evenings.

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

#274

Post by chillfox »

AlexC04 wrote: post #270
chillfox wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually tried searching "Ship It" on a podcast platform? There is absolutely zero chance that I can find the correct one without knowing what the thumbnail looks like. Search results in order: - I Ship It - Ship It Show - We Ship It Podcast - The Ship-it Show - Print It and Ship It - Ship It or Skip It - I Can Ship It! - ... edit: I realized the above might sound a bit harsh. Sorry. Please do some branding…

Note: I wanted to thank you again for these data points. I appreciate that you didn't have to put that effort in and I have now officially decided to go with "lgtm: shipit" And I even made an issue in the github repo to thank you for this effort. https://github.com/AlexChesser/lgtm-shipit/issues/15 I expect this repo to be a really good place to write readmes, articles in the wiki, put the transcripts, if at some poi…

Cool, I have subscribed.

You should probably also add it to Apple podcasts. (edit: I added it as an issue on github)

About using the Github wiki for articles, I think you would be better off having the actual content on your own domain. It will give you more flexibility down the line for monetization or just moving things around.

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

#275

Post by bckr »

cmauniada wrote: post #166
bckr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend this book. It is literally Woo ("winning over others") but in the best way. It's advice for the softest, least-scientific domain I can think of, namely navigating the social dynamics of life, including the poetics of other people's egos. Each "law" is illustrated vividly with examples from history and given caveats/inversions, so that it could be called "48 dynamics that you should think about if you want…

I have mixed feelings about the book. On one had, I can see the value in all of the laws but on the other hand it seems that the author tries to force laws around past events and just make the laws "fit" the narrative. It got a little boring after like 20 or something, so I just stopped reading it.

I was reading it through Audible, and the narrator had a great voice that brought the stories to life. I probably wouldn't have finished it either if I'd been eyeball-reading it.

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

#276

Post by bckr »

ImaCake wrote: post #108
bckr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend this book. It is literally Woo ("winning over others") but in the best way. It's advice for the softest, least-scientific domain I can think of, namely navigating the social dynamics of life, including the poetics of other people's egos. Each "law" is illustrated vividly with examples from history and given caveats/inversions, so that it could be called "48 dynamics that you should think about if you want…

Frankly, this looks like the playbook of sociopaths. I would use this book to figure out what bad actors would use to manipulate me. If you want a book that teaches you how to get what you want while also not being a shit person I would recommend "How to win friends and influence people". The thrust of that book is that people helping each other results in mutual benefit that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Yeah, it does look like that. But it's really not. It's really just about acknowledging and engaging authentically with power dynamics, which are unavoidable.

The darkest one I remember off the top of my head is something like "don't just beat your enemies, destroy them", where destroy = remove their ability to get back at you. This sounds sociopathic. But if you're doing something like fighting a war for survival or trying make sure that your firm is the one that survives the next filter, thinking this way will help you achieve your goals. Is it sociopathic to really try to win? Eh, I would say that someone who tells you not to try to win is playing a power game with you ;)

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

#277

Post by krageon »

the_only_law wrote: post #71
jimmaswell wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil engineers don't have to build bridges in their back yards or write blog posts about I beams; their education is presumed sufficient for an entry level job. Why can't tech work like this? Do students need to form some kind of union and agree not to talk about extracurricular programming to interviewers for their first job?

You also can’t become a civil engineer through a 6 month boot camp or from studying and building things on your own time.

You can surely become a very poor civil engineer that way. Perhaps nobody wants one, because the average quality is so much higher, but nothing stops you from calling yourself that.

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

#278

Post by Breza »

vbtemp wrote: post #235
GordonS wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to occasionally worked 80+ hours at a time in my younger days, during a period where I was working for an oil services company, building tooling for migrating different business systems to SAP. The company has several locations across the globe, and each was using something different to be migrated to SAP. One time I flew to Brazil to build SAP integration tooling for the local division of the company - 3 flig…

> it was a false economy - if we'd just worked normal hours ... we could have achieved the same result, without all the mess along the way. Nearly 100% of the time I was on teams that grinded down to the bone, things turned out poorly. Nearly 100% of the time I was on teams that have tons of slack time, we absolutely crush it. If you're "busy" all the time you can't reflect, put things in perspective, consider altern…

Well said. The biggest products I've designed for my employer came from times when I could sit around and think. Being a little bored means having time to try things and build some MVPs. Having every minute of my day scheduled means I don't do anything creative.
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