351–360 of 506 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's difficult to prove that IQ is relevant to the job... Maybe it's not. Also, I doubt that's the reason.
It’s not difficult to demonstrate that IQ is relevant to job performance (its the best predictor of performance for most jobs). The problem is to demonstrate that it doesn’t have a discriminatory effect (there are large, persistent differences in IQ between races).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try consulting or entrepreneurship. When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need. When you sell your ability to deliver results, nobody asks about your skillset.
You might have noticed that I said that I am a software consultant. And the pipeline is pretty good. But it's a different thing than actually having something consistently interesting to do. I don't enjoy entrepreneurship.
I keep wondering if I should take the rate cut for a year or just study mathematics at the local university (which is free here) ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job. It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations. I'm a competent, high performing generalist who…
> "I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money Which is it, "all" or "90%?" I went to a private liberal arts college so maybe that automatically puts me and my classmates in the 10% but I did not think the overwhelming majority of us were there to make money. The fact that lots of students still major in subjects that can be very worthwhile and val…
> the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money Which is it, "all" or "90%?" Ok come on man. I said 90%+. Don't quibble just to be a prick.
I also went to a good liberal arts college and had a similar experience. People studying subjects that probably wouldn't lead to financially lucrative careers were in the majority.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing wrong with making people rich in exchange for money they give you. That's how jobs work. Making someone else rich is something to be proud of and aspire to. Not as cool as making yourself rich, but still good.
I don't mind if my boss or the CEO of the company gets rich, I think they're good guys. I'm just worried they would sell out instead of keeping the company private. Take Tumblr for example - they sold to Yahoo. Verizon bought Yahoo. If I was an engineer at Tumblr I'd be pissed that an evil monopoly like Verizon that's fighting against net neutrality is suddenly using my code. I'm more humble now than I was in my 20s,…
But wouldn't you be happy that all your fellow coworkers also probably got to benefit from the sale? If you or your coworkers got rich enough then you could all just focus on doing things that you think matter or better the world!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, an engineering degree is also like a math degree.
No it is not. I studied math and the engineers only went as far as differential equations, basic (non proof based) complex analysis, and so on. There were zero engineers in theoretical classes.
What's that about? Does the lecturer just state theorems without proving them, or does it mean that the students aren't required to be able to prove them?
"Your idea is not valuable" ... no, maybe not some top level idea like "Social media, but more private." But, execution is just a bunch of smaller ideas.
It's not just about ideas. Coming up with ideas is easy. Turning an idea into a viable product involves a lot of work.
I think that depends on how stringent criteria you put on the ideas. An idea that maybe, with a lot of work, would be successful might be easy to come up with. An idea that is very likely to succeed, with little work and no investments, might not be that easy to find.
> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.
> Everyone in Silicon Valley uses equity, and not debt, to fuel their growth because debt is not available in sufficient quantities to poorly capitalized companies without a strong history of adequate cash flows to service debt. A corollary to this is that if you're fundraising and can get debt, you should take it over equity almost every time. Many founders are skeptical of debt because everyone takes equity, yet ev…
I assume you don't start up a company with your own money is that it can fail and personally bankrupt you in the process. Because of that, it would hinder your judgement? Not sure. Maybe someone can fill me in on that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.
I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track . I need to…
Yes, companies have complex problems to solve, that require more than a few days or weeks of work at a time. If you want to just wake up every day and decide that you need to work on a totally new project, you're not going to be very useful.
Lots of people have a wide range of interests, but you pick one of the many areas that seems interesting and that you can contribute to, and you work on that for a while and try to make a difference. "Adopting a role when necessary" is not that different from slotting in to a team, since you can often change teams every few months if you want to, or even work across teams.
What you describe is a hard role to define and hire for, but it's a role that many engineers create for themselves by being both great problem solvers and willing to do what is most valuable for the company. Consider that maybe you haven't gone in with the right mindset to make it happen for yourself.