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Being OK with not being extraordinary

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Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#321

Post by ZainRiz »

mywittyname wrote: post #240
ZainRiz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 And as patio11 says, combining engineering with good writing skills makes it very easy to be one of the top with your combined skills I’ve been trying to lean more into that advice the past couple months by publishing on my blog :) Surprisingly enough, just this morning I woke up to realize someone had shared an article I wrote and it was on the HN front page! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251068#24262190

I'm not convinced that writing and engineering are a rare, yet sought-after combination. I'm a pretty good writer; good enough that I had several professors in college asked me to use my work as examples for future classes. It's been recognized by my peers and managers. Not much has ever really come from it. I've been given opportunities to draft "bad news" copy to be sent to clients, and I'm the point person for edi…

Ah, I see where you're coming from.

The benefits don't accrue as much when you're writing material you've been told to write, especially when it's not something the recipient will be happy to receive. Those can be valuable learning experiences, but it's not harvest season yet.

The value comes when you CHOOSE to compose messages meant to persuade YOUR peers and internal stake holders. Your skill with the pen gives you a voice, like a bard who can urge a crowd to action.

What words do we associate with those kinds of people?

Influence

Leadership

Writing can help get you there

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#322

Post by ZainRiz »

O_H_E wrote: post #150
KallDrexx wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the reason I started working towards getting better a note taking. Describing what I'm learning in my own words may help me retain the information better. I don't publish it because I don't know anyone cares but I feel like it helps myself regardless, and keeping them searchable seems like it should pay off at some point.

Any notes :) or resources on note-taking you can share? I am currently studying and have been struggling in that area.

I've written an article comparing a couple of the more popular note taking strategies. It was even on the HN front page 13 hours ago :)

https://www.zainrizvi.io/blog/remembering-what-you-read-zett...

HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251068#24262190

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#323

Post by fancyfish »

AQuantized wrote: post #224
taylorlunt wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem solving ability is basically just IQ.

Disagree totally with this. My psychometric IQ has been stable for a long time, yet my problem solving ability has increased significantly. Some ways to modulate it might be reading material such as George Polya's "How to Solve It," taking your own notes on heuristics and techniques you've found useful and continuously reapplying and iterating them, and simply delving deep into many hard problems (be they directly co…

Agreed. Problem solving is a skill separate from IQ and unlike IQ it can be developed over time. If you want to level up your problem solving skill, carry around a small notebook and pay attention to the problems you see in other people, or in the office, in public, or in yourself. Write down the problem and its cause, continually drilling down into root causes. Then make a graph of problems and root causes, with directed edges showing causation.

Within one or two years of doing this you will recognize patterns others do not see. I have improved my problem solving skill by at least 7-8% by doing this. The key is iteration.

My IQ has been stable like yours, around the 96th percentile, and despite being a Tier 1 top-talent engineer, I’ve had to actively improve my problem solving ability over time.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#324

Post by gloatyegret »

mywittyname wrote: post #245
phkahler wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you combine an average programmer with an average statistician, you get a profile that is not particularly attractive. Nobody said being average at both was enough. The parent post specifically said if you know more than average in both areas. You still need to be good, but the combination of good in multiple areas is claimed to be sort of like being extraordinary in one. I think there's some truth in that.

I still think the parent has a strong point though. Stats and CS are correlated skill sets. Almost all CS people learn a good bit of statistics as part of their education process, and I suspect that most statisticians are passable programmers. The fact that we have a term for the combination of both skills suggests that being great in both is not unique, it just makes you a great data scientist. The crux behind the i…

> Almost all CS people learn a good bit of statistics as part of their education

> The crux behind the idea of being better than average at two things makes you individually extraordinary is that the two skills are not correlated.

I don't know if "almost all CS people" come from better schools than mine, but I've never had a proper statistics course, and my degree has a "data science" stamp on it. Having good statistics skills, and not just good knowledge of some machine learning frameworks, is probably rarer than you think.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#325

Post by collyw »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #320
popinman322 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongest predictor taken from a pool of weak predictors is still a weak predictor.

I might be pulling things out of my ass here but IIRC the correlation is up there with that of your parents’ wealth. And in current political discussion lots of time is spent on how to deal with the latter. It may in fact still be a weak predictor, but that obviously doesn’t make it meaningless.

IQ is somewhat inheritable as well though. Is it IQ or inherited wealth that is the factor?

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#326

Post by barry-cotter »

taylorlunt wrote: post #201
dominotw wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m an excellent problem solver. Don't mean this to be a mean comment but how did you assess this? I think i am good problem solver but i don't know if i am better than anyone else.

Problem solving ability is basically just IQ.

This betrays a lack of familiarity with the literature on intelligence. Fluid intelligence doesn’t change much if at all between 14 and 27, when it starts its long slow decline. Crystallized intelligence can keep rising for decades after that. The number of fields where fluid is more important than crystallized is very small if very important. Having a vast knowledge base, built on a foundation of experience, is more important for most full time academics, never mind those of us not engaged in research. You can’t play at all if your fluid intelligence isn’t high enough but there are a lot of people out there who’re smart and vastly less successful than dumber people who worked consistently at something. At the top are the smart, hard working and lucky but intelligence is not the be all and end all.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#327

Post by m0zg »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #213
m0zg wrote: post #143

Just work in a couple of prominent research labs, like I did. You'll be quickly disabused of the notion that you're in any way "extraordinary". At best you can say that you know more than other people in your particular niche. But then you have to concede that other people know more than you do in their niche. There are, however, real freaks out there who know more than you in any niche they decide they need to know…

I know I’m not anywhere close to extraordinary, but it still makes my heart ache seeing someone with a Google or MIT hoodie or a RocksDB jacket on my evening walk. I’ll settle for being considered more than just a mental defective just because I work at Amazon.

You'd probably have a heart attack if you knew what I worked on. And yet, I know full well I'm just average, and it doesn't bother me anymore.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#328

Post by barry-cotter »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #299
MaximumYComb wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ is one of the strongest predictors we have for many life outcomes, such as career success, wealth, lower risk of death. This doesn't mean "everyone with a very high IQ will blah blah blah" but it does mean that those with high IQs are more likely to achieve certain things.

What should I do if I know i have a low IQ?

Please stop. Your self pity is annoying. You have an engineering degree. There’s no way you’re not in the top quintile of intelligence and you’re probably in the top decile. Enough of the pity party. If you hate yourself go join a boxing club or start running marathons or something else that will put the petty bullshit of work life in perspective besides the fact that you’re young and you have a beautiful, working body.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#329

Post by samplatt »

munificent wrote: post #109
umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

I can't find the quote now, but I recall Bill Bailey saying once that he's not a good enough musician to just play music and not funny enough to just be a comedian. But he's the funniest musician and the most musical comedian out there.

I think most of his fans would be willing to say that he's more than good enough at both, but that's looking at a career 35+ years in the making.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#330

Post by Cthulhu_ »

umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

I'm an OK developer, don't know anything but superficial about AI or parser combinators or compilers, and most of my work is building pages, forms, APIs and databases and has been for the past decade+.

However, my experience doing that trick is very varied by now; I can do the trick in a handful of back-end languages, front-end frameworks, even native iOS.

So yeah I'm nowhere near a rockstar developer, but I'm experienced, productive, pragmatic, etc.

It won't make me ridiculously rich but I get by. That said, I could increase my income by going self-employed I guess.

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