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Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

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Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#481

Post by CapricornNoble »

mnsc wrote: post #463
solveit wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree w you mostly but you extended this form of systemic analysis to "making a date happy" which I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of relationships. To everyone reading this: please don't go around treating other people as systems to be optimized! I think people who say this kind of thing have a fundamental misunderstanding of how a certain type of people think. Of course people are systems to be optimiz…

> And why in the world would (...) people being systems to be optimized rule out treating people with respect, empathy, and kindness. Because seeing people as systems to be optimized is per definition dehumanizing which is an action that is not respectful or empathetic?

Have you ever told a woman, after coitus, how you ran the same Game on them that you've run dozens of times before? Did they get pissed and never talk to you again? I'm going to guess "no", at least neither I nor anyone I know has had that happen. They'll usually just laugh it off / not take it seriously. The empathy and connection has been built successfully, and no amount of ex post facto chastisement about "hey you were just dehumanized and disrespected" tends to register.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#482

Post by teucris »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #472
jpg_converter wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree w you mostly but you extended this form of systemic analysis to "making a date happy" which I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of relationships. To everyone reading this: please don't go around treating other people as systems to be optimized! If you wish to think about relationships as systems, you really need to understand that you are a partial component in social systems and therefore a flawed obse…

"Saying the right words" is one step in "fake it till you make it", when it comes to the practical application of charisma to relationships. And it works. It's why people develop their own personal repertoire of pick-up lines and flirtatious stories that they employ repeatedly. Re: systems optimization....I've found it often DOES help guys, mostly engineers, to think about their dating attempts as an equation. It put…

> Re: systems optimization....I've found it often DOES help guys, mostly engineers, to think about their dating attempts as an equation.

That’s great! I think there’s just concern that people tend to easily forget that a model is an approximation for reality, and in the case of people, that’s an objectifying mistake.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#484

Post by muzani »

jpg_converter wrote: post #442
muzani wrote: post #114

Everything is a system. The economy, society, relationships, nature, traffic. You don't need math to reverse engineer a system. You just need to pay attention to it. You can say the right words to make a date happy. You can figure out which lane is the fastest route, better than Google Maps can. You don't need an app or data - your brain is a wonderful data processing machine. Don't be angry at the people who are ben…

I agree w you mostly but you extended this form of systemic analysis to "making a date happy" which I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of relationships. To everyone reading this: please don't go around treating other people as systems to be optimized! If you wish to think about relationships as systems, you really need to understand that you are a partial component in social systems and therefore a flawed obse…

Yup, it was oversimplified. Relationships are incredibly complicated, but they are still systems.

I do believe you should optimize your relationships. Phone your parents. Praise your employees and your boss. Buy things for your spouse when it's not their birthday. Hug your kids and watch their favourite Saturday morning shows. Don't say things that trigger your uncle.

A big part of being good in relationships is the 'process' of consistently being a nice, honest, genuine person.

Systems are not a bad thing. They exist whether or not we want them to. You don't have to engineer everything. But if we don't pay attention... we'll fail to understand why some things happen. There are habits like how someone offers you a snack and gets annoyed when you accept. Sometimes you help someone and they resent you for it. Sometimes someone doesn't say anything and resents you for not helping.

The last point still stands - someone who tries to be manipulative, controlling, or forcing a structure suggests that they don't get it. You can't just treat someone like it's Stardew Valley.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#485

Post by curo »

tombert wrote: post #462

Companies are not your friends, no matter how much they try and pretend they are. When your employer says "we're a family here" or something like that, that's simply untrue. I don't think that the people that say that are "lying" exactly, since "lying" implies intent, and I think most of the time when your manager tells you that they do think it's true. If being a worker at a job were really "family", they wouldn't f…

I agree that some managers may be full of it, but there's the inverse danger of letting mistrust keep you from meaningful workplace bonds.

Our current startup might not be a family, but we are like a sports team. We spend most of our lives together, working toward mutual goals. Yes, if there's a persistent under-performer, we'll have to say goodbye, but there's certainly a bond here that makes you want to fight for your colleague's happiness and sense of meaning.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#486

Post by muzani »

Psyladine wrote: post #371
muzani wrote: post #114

Everything is a system. The economy, society, relationships, nature, traffic. You don't need math to reverse engineer a system. You just need to pay attention to it. You can say the right words to make a date happy. You can figure out which lane is the fastest route, better than Google Maps can. You don't need an app or data - your brain is a wonderful data processing machine. Don't be angry at the people who are ben…

>If you don't fix a system, few will. Most people are reactive to it and try to live with it as background noise. I'd add: If you want to know why a system remains broken, look to who profits by its brokenness.

If it profits them, it isn't entirely broken now, is it? ;)

It's a matter of perception. We profit from the cattle industry. Most of the world doesn't - the climate, the cows themselves, ecology. But we wouldn't 'fix' it, nor would the cows.

The cattle industry could be done so much better. But as it is, it works. Nobody will change it as long as it accomplishes everyone's goals.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#487

Post by solveit »

muzani wrote: post #165
Antoninus wrote: post #96

I'm a developer like many people here. One thing that people who don't program don't realize is that its a laborious job. It seems like its a fun job with lots of 'hanging out' but its more like 4-5 hours a day / 5 days week looking at a text editor and a terminal trying to focus and not be distracted. At the end of the day, I'm exhausted

I've done all kinds of jobs. I'd take a 14 hour physical labor job over a 8 hour mental labor job anytime. Mental labor is painful... in the form that stalling the main thread of something is. But that's data entry. Development is much less mental labor, and I'd agree with the 4-5 hours/day assessment. Most people can't actually do this, which is why a lot of people hate math. Math class is dealing with intense focus…

> Math class is dealing with intense focus on a poorly documented thing.

I like this and think it's accurate. Funnily enough, it gets better if you go on to major in maths. The quality of pre-university maths teaching is just unconscionably bad. (Then it gets bad again as you reach graduate-level maths, but this is because you're expected to be able to deal with that at that point.)

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#488

Post by hinkley »

nkrisc wrote: post #327

How important it is to be able to inhabit another person's viewpoint and see things from their perspective. So much time and effort is saved in doing so. Much of my job has become translating and mediating between stakeholders going around in circles, because each one believes their viewpoint represents the entirety of the issue. They can not understand one another because they assume the other understands everything…

I wrote a library that a bunch of teams in a larger company were to use to move lots of data around. At one point there was an argument of the form X must always be Y vs X must never be Y, and eventually I had to tell them both that they were getting something else.

Neither department had a job if the other didn’t exist and produce. You can’t go telling the guy upstream from you that they aren’t allowed to do their job or there’s no point. You’re cutting off your nose to spite your own face. It was so stupid. I just had to start repeating “‘compromise’ means ‘nobody gets everything they wanted’”. I walked them both (privately of course) through how to use it and they soon found something else to bicker about. Children in neck ties.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#489

Post by silveroriole »

kstenerud wrote: post #240

The most effective team member is the one who amplifies everyone's output. If you can improve a 5 member team's output by 20%, it's the same as if you'd added a 6th member for free. The least appreciated team member is the one who amplifies everyone's output.

> it's the same as if you'd added a 6th member for free.

Unfortunately usually literally. You did it for free... you ain’t getting paid any of that 6th guy’s salary.

Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?

#490

Post by jonwinstanley »

polyterative wrote: post #88
Gnarl wrote: post #44

How almost no one understands that simply trading your time as units for money is ridiculous.

Can you elaborate please?

On your own, you only have 1 person's time to trade for money, but once you employ others you have a multiplier.
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