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Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

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Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#281

Post by Maven911 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #242
existencebox wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was literally talking about this exact phenomena with the wife last night. It's almost impossible for me to be bored if I'm doing nothing. I could fill years of daydreaming, just in my own head. However, give me work tasks that I have no interest in, and I'll feel so bored/lethargic/unmotivated that just keeping my eyes on task and moving forward requires mental exertion. When I was young, apparently this meant I h…

Yeah, I feel the same way you do. Please, leave me with nothing to do; I'll manage. Left to my own devices, I have 20 ideas 5 trains of thought to explore per minute. > I see in a side comment you were concerned about undiagnosed ADD, I'll admit I'm somewhat concerned with _overdiagnosing_ ADD. I get it. Child AD(H)D seems definitely overdiagnosed in the west; from what I read, giving medication seems to be the easie…

Try listening to a police scanner on broadcastify. I like the nypd bronx ones, its the sufficient level of quiet dead time with some action too.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#282

Post by bsaul »

prevedmedved wrote: post #221
bsaul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just like you until a few months ago, when i got really interested in the technical aspect of DLT. Don’t let the digital currency scam blind you : there are some really really interesting things going on in that field.

A DLT is just a database. You can't build a business peddling an open source database in 2018.

i don’t know a lot of database that you can share between any number of parties with write priviledges and yet be sure none of them can destroy, alter, falsify data or even make them unavailable , and which you don’t even need to host yourself.

There are some very peculiar properties of a dlt, that makes them special.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#283

Post by rabidrat »

sulam wrote: post #128

His reason for why he’s a vi guy was funny! (He only had 60M free for his Linux partition and emacs wouldn’t fit). It did sound mildly apocryphal but so did most of it. My reason for vi is equally random. I learned Unix at college, but I wasn’t allowed on the systems because I wasn’t an engineering student. I had to resort to nefarious means to get online, so I needed to keep a really low profile. The easiest way to…

In college (90s) we had an ACM student chapter with an office that had several different workstations: Sun, AIX, even an SGI. Of course the beefiest computers with the best graphics were the most popular and first to be claimed on any day. But there was also a 9600-baud terminal that could be used to telnet into any remote host. So I got better at coding with vi and screen and I almost always had a place to code because that terminal was almost always available :)

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#284

Post by existencebox »

sjg007 wrote: post #276
TeMPOraL wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I feel the same way you do. Please, leave me with nothing to do; I'll manage. Left to my own devices, I have 20 ideas 5 trains of thought to explore per minute. > I see in a side comment you were concerned about undiagnosed ADD, I'll admit I'm somewhat concerned with _overdiagnosing_ ADD. I get it. Child AD(H)D seems definitely overdiagnosed in the west; from what I read, giving medication seems to be the easie…

ADD is not over diagnosed. It's probably more prevalent in the population than we think it is. The medications are not specifically harmful in a potential misdiagnosed case... they are just not effective. And there's multiple medications which have difference efficacies for different people. That being said 80% of people with ADHD find medication effective. Dr. Russell Barkley has a book on it and also several talks…

My behaviorist wife and mother (Freud would have something to say about me, wouldn't he) would tend to disagree with your first statement (overdiagnosis) with the caveat of "within certain populations." We focus a lot on kids, unfortunately often under the age within which the DSM actually supports these sorts of diagnoses.

I would personally disagree with your "medications are not specifically harmful in a misdiagnosed case." I'm not encouraging people to avoid seeking whatever help they see fit, but rather to not whitewash over the very tractable impact it had on a rather dark year or two of my childhood, and the lasting aftereffects. I honestly don't want to start a heated debate about whether or not to medicate, moreso call out to others who had a similar negative outcome that they're not alone and that it's not impossible to develop healthy coping mechanisms without pills.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#285

Post by simonebrunozzi »

bootsz wrote: post #102

> I didn't have to work that hard, and one day I had this realization while sitting in my gray cubicle (I was in a sea of gray cubicles surrounded by gray walls, listening to white noise and all alone): I'm like, “Man I am so tired. I need to go home and take a nap.” I went home, but as soon as I got there I realized, “I'm not tired anymore.” Is there a name for this type of fatigue (or perception thereof)? I'm curio…

I might be oversimplifying, but I have experienced it multiple times, and I simply call it "lack of purpose".

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#286

Post by urda »

mendelk wrote: post #168

Welp, now that my Imposter Syndrome has returned in full force, any concrete advice on leveling up in engineering skill (other than getting hired at Google circa 1999)? Edit: I now see that Paul coined the "Don't be Evil" slogan[0]. I'm curious what his thoughts on its removal and what that portends for Google today. u/paul? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540

Don't forget that "survivorship bias" is a very real thing. Don't let the rare success of engineers like Paul Buchheit make you think you're not as smart as you really are.

And that's how you start to beat Imposter Syndrome.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#287

Post by itronitron »

pm90 wrote: post #27
itronitron wrote: post #7

> Great engineers understand computers all the way from the silicon up through the different layers and protocols and systems. I find this a bit limiting, certainly they should think across multiple layers but some of those layers exist beyond the systems.

What is it limiting? What are you referring to as being existing beyond the systems? It was probably not made clear but he seems to be talking about systems engineering in particular.

Specifically, I am referring to the layers that describe how humans understand and use systems, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, etc.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#288

Post by candiodari »

Unfortunately it's really simple:

1) extreme luck in what you grow up with, the hobby you pick (linux)

2) extreme luck in getting a job offer with stock that would x10000 in value.

3) extreme luck in accepting said job offer (it was the only one he got)

That's right. He didn't even have a non-obvious decision to make. Seriously.

4) on top of that also being very smart and dedicated

I mean all due respect for this guy, but he is like a lottery winner explaining how to win the lottery. The path he's laying out existed at one point in the past, but it no longer exists. He even says that, that it was REALLY hard to see that path was a good path. In fact, most such choices lead to disaster (failed startups), not success. He "chose" by being obsessed with other things than the choice ...

Well, perhaps the path still exists but it's gotten downgraded from "guaranteed multimillionnaire" to "good job, good living, good pay". Like factory worker in the 70s good living.

That said, the guy is still incredibly smart and that was certainly a necessary condition for his success. So I guess you can't say it's 75% luck and 10% talent and 15% effort, it would be more accurate to say it was 100% luck and 100% talent and 100% effort. If any of those had been a mere 99%, it would not have happened.

But for his path. It's cheaper and certainly easier just to buy a $100 mil lottery ticket.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#289

Post by candiodari »

username3 wrote: post #42

Anyone have videos of someone programming fast or a video of a 10x engineer working or a comparison output of a 10x vs above average?

I love this busdriver's videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0OCwlaEZM

Yep, a busdriver. That's what he does. I find having these videos open during coding is pretty inspiring, too bad there's so few of them.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#290

Post by Aeolun »

vinhboy wrote: post #25

> Someone who can do that is ridiculous. Talk about 10x engineers. That's more like 1000x. And it's good, clean code too. Literally no number of median engineers can do that. You can give me a million median engineers and they would never be able to do that. They would just make a huge mess. This is probably one of the most truest thing I've read about our profession. Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak comes to mind, who…

I don’t think this is true so much as a programmer on his own works about 5-20x as fast as a team hindered by procedure, CYA and communication at every step.

The end result still depends on experience, but even the best programmers slow to a crawl when they work in an enterprise environment (obviously not always true, but as a general rule)

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