41–50 of 55 posts
TL;DR: more talented people tend to move on to more lucrative gigs, leaving less talented people behind. The title draws an analogy to the Dead Sea, where water evaporates and leaves salt behind. Really, that's all the article has to say. You're welcome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Novell primarily used IPX and gained support for TCP/IP very late, and then that still wasn't widely used even around 2003-5. Many networks used both: IPX for Novell, and TCP/IP for everything else. Novell NetWare was most commonly used on a single, flat network with no routers or firewalls. The networks of the era were smaller, and the setup and routing of IPX is more automatic and simpler than IP. It didn't scale "…
One of the humorous tells of a novice is they haven't yet had to deal with all their tool knowledge being obsoleted and haven't had to understand that competent people might not know said novice's favoured tools. The amount of random trivia in tech is a vast ocean. Nobody knows all of it. Specific cultures swim in specific waters, but out of habit more than anything else.
While you present a plausible sounding explanation for his lack of knowledge about TCP tooling, networking duties were under his purview as well. He spent a lot of time on the clock not hungrily learning technology, but sneaking off to smoke weed. I watched him once pack a bowl and smoke it while driving on the highway with his knees, coming back from a remote campus. He was very skilled at smoking weed.
It's thinkpieces like this that make me believe that IT professionals specifically and white collar workers generally would benefit greatly from a mandatory 24 month stint on a construction crew. One of the most important lessons any job foreman can learn is that every crew needs at least one lame duck. A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled helper can accomplish more in a shift…
Fuckin’ A man… fuckin’ A. I actually have no idea what working construction is like, but I imagine it’s hell. I hear about jackhammering causing permanent damage to people’s nerves and all sorts of random accidents.
It's thinkpieces like this that make me believe that IT professionals specifically and white collar workers generally would benefit greatly from a mandatory 24 month stint on a construction crew. One of the most important lessons any job foreman can learn is that every crew needs at least one lame duck. A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled helper can accomplish more in a shift…
I manage electricians, and this is highly dependent on the task. In most cases I’d rather send two JWs vs a JW and apprentice.
I’d send two JW to pipe a new feeder, but I’d send an apprentice and JW if they’re just pulling wire and the pipe is installed already. An apprentice can easily feed wire while the JW pulls, but a JW is going to be much better at piping than an apprentice.
It's thinkpieces like this that make me believe that IT professionals specifically and white collar workers generally would benefit greatly from a mandatory 24 month stint on a construction crew. One of the most important lessons any job foreman can learn is that every crew needs at least one lame duck. A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled helper can accomplish more in a shift…
I grew up working construction on the side with my father, became an appprentice lineman, moved to aftermarket electrical installations in CNC machines, then ended up writing software products for over a decade. I've worked on a wide variety of software: Embedded projects requiring 2000 line assembly ISRs for legacy RS232 protocols, reverse engineering binary network protocols, implementing network server protocols f…
Absolutely, (in particular) MEP (sheetmetal workers, pipefitters, electricians, plumbers) tradespeople and project managers are highly skilled/knowledgeable and the work requires a lot of coordination. You basically have to understand how an entire building/space is constructed from start to finish to properly plan and schedule a project.
For the record, plenty of other trades are highly skilled, but their trade/craft is more specialized/focused and doesn’t require labor from start to finish.
It's thinkpieces like this that make me believe that IT professionals specifically and white collar workers generally would benefit greatly from a mandatory 24 month stint on a construction crew. One of the most important lessons any job foreman can learn is that every crew needs at least one lame duck. A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled helper can accomplish more in a shift…
It's thinkpieces like this that make me believe that IT professionals specifically and white collar workers generally would benefit greatly from a mandatory 24 month stint on a construction crew. One of the most important lessons any job foreman can learn is that every crew needs at least one lame duck. A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled helper can accomplish more in a shift…
> A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled > helper can accomplish more in a shift than two talented carpenters together. > If you don't have someone to run to the truck for nails, hold shit, move > ladders, etc. productivity suffers because your talent is wasting time on > menial tasks. But you are mistaken -- each of us (the software engineers) already has numerous helpers who f…
E.g. they won't do anything productive until CI and dev setup are "idiot-proof" - which is a feature! Noone wants to need arcane, private knowledge about how to fix that one problem with that one container in dev.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hold on! The construction analogy doesn’t apply because in a lot of code bases, probably most there are very few menial tasks. Some code bases need IQ 120 + to do anything non trivial in and maybe even higher. So there are menial tasks, but menial like “yeah just redraft this architectural drawing for me mate, to take account of the new 2021 fire regs, I got actual brainy stuff to get on with”. Pairing senior and jun…
I disagree with your point that this analogy does not apply. You say there are some codebases that need over 9000 IQ to do anything. While that might be true, it is not the norm and a small fraction, so it’s not relevant to the broader argument. You say it’s completely different in programming. Sure it doesn’t help if one of your workers is a complete idiot — but that was not the premise - it was unskilled but energe…
It's thinkpieces like this that make me believe that IT professionals specifically and white collar workers generally would benefit greatly from a mandatory 24 month stint on a construction crew. One of the most important lessons any job foreman can learn is that every crew needs at least one lame duck. A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled helper can accomplish more in a shift…
> A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled > helper can accomplish more in a shift than two talented carpenters together. > If you don't have someone to run to the truck for nails, hold shit, move > ladders, etc. productivity suffers because your talent is wasting time on > menial tasks. But you are mistaken -- each of us (the software engineers) already has numerous helpers who f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A single talented carpenter with an energetic but otherwise totally unskilled > helper can accomplish more in a shift than two talented carpenters together. > If you don't have someone to run to the truck for nails, hold shit, move > ladders, etc. productivity suffers because your talent is wasting time on > menial tasks. But you are mistaken -- each of us (the software engineers) already has numerous helpers who f…
Alright, so how can I automate away daily standups, timecards, semi-regular random corporate/legal paperwork, and everything about dealing with devops team?