Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio] • Hacker News Board

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#31

Post by mamon » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 11:08 AM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #23

cbd1984 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I think improved social safety nets (not necessarily any specific scheme such as mincome or negative income tax or similar, just guarantees that nobody lives worse than some minimum) will actually save capitalism: It will free businesses from the moral quandaries expressed in your post, and enable them to make pure business decisions without having to consider the well-being of anyone involved. The altern…

The instability you mention resolves itself in a purely "capitalist" system. For example, I currently pay X amount of money every month, privately to an insurance company. They, in turn, insure me against the risk of losing my job, becoming disabled and unable to work and a bunch of other things. They calculate the amount required based on how much I earn, and probably my age/risk profile. No need for a social safety…

Things like insurance work well as long and you are young, healthy and have a well paying job. I don't know when your current insurance expires, but good luck renewing it when you are 60 old and have serious heart condition. Then your risk profile may simply be unacceptable to any insurance company, and you end up being on your own.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#32

Post by douche » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 11:23 AM UTC

UK-AL wrote: post #27

enraged_camel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It's essentially salesman and confidence skills. They're generally no better than in house people. Sorry, but this is a very ignorant thing to say. The fact of the matter is that there's different types of consulting at different points along the problem-complexity spectrum. At the low end, a consultant is no different than a contractor, and the point is not to hire those who are better than in-house people, but mo…

I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc They essentially run dedicated tools against computers and report and summarize? The real technical skills are the people who wrote those tools. I was thinking of applying but the recruitment process says they look for social skills, and not hard core techies. That put me off. I.e they…

History graduates have social skills? This is news to me, as a history major turned software engineer. Doing history is almost as antisocial as coding.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#33

Post by UK-AL » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 11:33 AM UTC

douche wrote: post #32

UK-AL wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc They essentially run dedicated tools against computers and report and summarize? The real technical skills are the people who wrote those tools. I was thinking of applying but the recruitment process says they look for social skills, and not hard core techies. That put me off. I.e they…

History graduates have social skills? This is news to me, as a history major turned software engineer. Doing history is almost as antisocial as coding.

Or any other non related degree. Important part is that people skills trump technical knowledge.

Technical side is running premade tools and SQL. If you can present, sell and write good reports they'll teach you how to run the tools.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#34

Post by enraged_camel » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 11:39 AM UTC

UK-AL wrote: post #27

enraged_camel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It's essentially salesman and confidence skills. They're generally no better than in house people. Sorry, but this is a very ignorant thing to say. The fact of the matter is that there's different types of consulting at different points along the problem-complexity spectrum. At the low end, a consultant is no different than a contractor, and the point is not to hire those who are better than in-house people, but mo…

I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc They essentially run dedicated tools against computers and report and summarize? The real technical skills are the people who wrote those tools. I was thinking of applying but the recruitment process says they look for social skills, and not hard core techies. That put me off. I.e they…

>>I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc

The big 4 accounting firms work in the middle of the complexity spectrum, and sometimes even towards the lower end. There's two ways this is apparent:

1. They are able to use dedicated tools other people have written. Those tools exist because the problems they solve have been faced with many other companies before, and someone sat down and developed a product for it.

2. They employ a lot of juniors (which is why they are big), and are able to offload a lot of the routine tasks in a project to those juniors (called "leverage" in professional services). Unless you're very high up in your organization yourself (e.g. C-level), it's likely that those juniors are the "consultants" you see. The types of tasks you describe (writing simple scripts and creating PowerPoint presentations) are exactly the types of things a junior would be charged with.

In contrast, high-end consultancies tend to be small, and they consist almost entirely of highly skilled and experienced people, who are often times partners or equivalent. They often have to write their own tools and develop their own processes and best practices due to the relatively unique nature of the issues they tackle.

Don't get me wrong: all good consultants are also very good salespeople. They have to be, since consulting is a very people-oriented business. But to say that consulting is about sales and confidence is a gross oversimplification.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#35

Post by coldtea » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 11:50 AM UTC

SixSigma wrote: post #30

coldtea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like this karma thing.

Karma would also mean everyone she cut previously had also had it coming. Karma is a "blame the victim for their own problems" system of oppression.

>Karma would also mean everyone she cut previously had also had it coming

Only if everything that happens to everybody was just karma -- and whereas that might be the case in the original eastern theory about it, in the west we merely use it as a fancy way to say "payback time" and "she had it coming".

Or if you like another ancient fancy word that keeps the "she had it coming" vibe without implying that everyone she previously cut also had it coming: hybris/nemesis.

(Apparently Wikipedia is absolutely crap entry on the ancient Greek meaning of hubris -- where the term originated -- and its association with hateis and nemesis. This random blog entry does it better: http://wishthattheroadislong.blogspot.gr/2012/01/hubris-hate... ).

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#36

Post by UK-AL » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 11:51 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #34

UK-AL wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc They essentially run dedicated tools against computers and report and summarize? The real technical skills are the people who wrote those tools. I was thinking of applying but the recruitment process says they look for social skills, and not hard core techies. That put me off. I.e they…

>>I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc The big 4 accounting firms work in the middle of the complexity spectrum, and sometimes even towards the lower end. There's two ways this is apparent: 1. They are able to use dedicated tools other people have written. Those tools exist because the problems they solve have been faced w…

Boutique consultancies and the big consultancies tend be very different things.

Boutique consultancies tend to be a few skilled people who have known each other for years who decide start their own thing togother. They probably used to be in-house people who specialised in ERP, security, databases or whatever then started their own company. They have probably have doing it for years, and have geniune interest in the subject. I have respect for that.

In fact I've worked for companies like that. But as programmer writing those tools you talk about, and for deep technical problems the consultants can't solve. The consultants would then try sell and use those tools along with consutlancy services.

However when people think of consultancies they usually think of mckinseys, accentures, PWCs of the world.

They grab prestigious graduates, teach them how do routine work on training courses, then hire them out for a lot of money. I don't get that. I highly doubt these guys could compete with an in-house guy who has been doing that stuff for years.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#37

Post by 6d0debc071 » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 11:58 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29

6d0debc071 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that both groups are competent for their level of experience: If you can't make more profit out of someone with 15 years experience than you can out of someone who is fresh out of college, then I really question how good you are at running a team. Sure, they're more expensive, but they can get a lot more done a lot faster.

Many companies are inefficient at evaluating people right. Someone could be very experienced, but in very wrong ways (e.g. playing politics); not all, or maybe even most, ICs aspire to get better and better at their craft over time. There is plenty of dead weight. So in a sense you are right; it's just management is not very sure which experienced persons are worth it or not. Whereas that new grad is all potential: i…

I think we'd mostly agree. Though, I'd note that it's not just a consequence of some people having limited aspirations. If you're interested in working with good people, you should be coaching your staff to develop their skills. That process makes it fairly apparent to you who's a good performer and who isn't, and who wants to improve and who doesn't.

If someone's getting to fifteen years, for example, and only then discovering that they've got to make cuts and don't know who to keep. Jesus Christ. That almost implies that they've made no investment, beyond money, in that relationship whatsoever. Which, considering people are expensive, is a bit like saying they've spent fifteen years burning the company's money.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#38

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 12:30 PM UTC

6d0debc071 wrote: post #37

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies are inefficient at evaluating people right. Someone could be very experienced, but in very wrong ways (e.g. playing politics); not all, or maybe even most, ICs aspire to get better and better at their craft over time. There is plenty of dead weight. So in a sense you are right; it's just management is not very sure which experienced persons are worth it or not. Whereas that new grad is all potential: i…

I think we'd mostly agree. Though, I'd note that it's not just a consequence of some people having limited aspirations. If you're interested in working with good people, you should be coaching your staff to develop their skills. That process makes it fairly apparent to you who's a good performer and who isn't, and who wants to improve and who doesn't. If someone's getting to fifteen years, for example, and only then…

Most big corps are exactly like that though: they don't really invest in their people beyond the paycheck, they sort of go with the flow until something traumatic happens and they need to cut people. What is even worse is that the high performers get tired of the flow and will simply leave, leaving behind what is more likely to be dead weight. Much of the performance management regimes that come from HR are to avoid these problems, but it really takes good people managers with continuous clear goals from above...and good luck with that!

Frankly, it's amazing that the system works at all.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#39

Post by SixSigma » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 1:04 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #35

SixSigma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karma would also mean everyone she cut previously had also had it coming. Karma is a "blame the victim for their own problems" system of oppression.

> Karma would also mean everyone she cut previously had also had it coming Only if everything that happens to everybody was just karma -- and whereas that might be the case in the original eastern theory about it, in the west we merely use it as a fancy way to say "payback time" and "she had it coming". Or if you like another ancient fancy word that keeps the "she had it coming" vibe without implying that everyone sh…

They had it coming, in that case. She gave them their payback.

Re: Hard Work Is Irrelevant [audio]

#40

Post by dsfyu404ed » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 2:04 PM UTC

UK-AL wrote: post #27

enraged_camel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It's essentially salesman and confidence skills. They're generally no better than in house people. Sorry, but this is a very ignorant thing to say. The fact of the matter is that there's different types of consulting at different points along the problem-complexity spectrum. At the low end, a consultant is no different than a contractor, and the point is not to hire those who are better than in-house people, but mo…

I know people who work with e-discorvery, digital forensics from the consultancy departments of big 4 accountants(PWC, kpmg etc) etc They essentially run dedicated tools against computers and report and summarize? The real technical skills are the people who wrote those tools. I was thinking of applying but the recruitment process says they look for social skills, and not hard core techies. That put me off. I.e they…

That really depends on the job. If the job is primarily technical then people skills are a fringe benefit. Nobody cares if all your engineers are great at giving presentations as long as the engineering gets done and a great presentation gets given and if the guys writing code are bad at it but great at making it look good then they're on borrowed time.

If the job involves lots of working with people then social skills become more important. Even if your guys write great code, you need to be able to convince the people who write the check for it that it is great code.