Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Being OK with not being extraordinary

tiffanymatthe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 396 posts

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#51

Post by eggsbenedict »

louwrentius wrote: post #43
lloyddobbler wrote: post #24

See also: The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. Great read (based on a previous work, Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse) on the need to play on a different playing field than the one that supposedly has a 'winner' and a 'loser.' Applies to companies, individuals, organizations, relationships...you get the idea. To beat a dead analogy, if you're climbing to reach the top 'ledge' you started out looking for, you mig…

I don’t think people should take anything from Simon Sinek. His presentation skills are great I must admit.

So, as of this comment, all I know is that Simon Sinek has a book called The Infinite Game. This book has an interesting premise, about which I just read a short writeup and analysis. I have also been told that Sinek has excellent presentation skills.

Strangely, in the middle of these two comments, I was told that people should not take anything from Simon Sinek. Why?

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#52

Post by cyberpunk »

ErikAugust wrote: post #13

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society does…

Eh, I mean.. Okay. Maybe this is true for the first steps into your profession, but after so many years in tech the amount of things I have to do that are, compared to my initial 'love' for tech, really horrible tasks vs the things I would like to be doing definately isn't in balance...

It's a nice idea, but this "do what you love" doesn't scale.

I mean, did it too, there was a day where I was super excited to be working as a developer or a sysadmin with tech I loved but after a while if you want to actually get anywhere that thing that you loved doing turns out to be a very small subset of what it takes to be great at something, or be senior enough to have responsability enough to steer things towards your interests..

So yeah. Do what you love at first; but what you love won't be enough in the long term and you're going to have to spend months of 12 hour shifts to migrate some horrible app or other at some point, or many points, and without doing some things that go against 'what you want to do' you'll never be able to do more of what you actually want to do...

Not sure if that makes sense..

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#53

Post by Noos »

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…

No, the problem is that what is defined as top tier keeps rising, and raises the bar just to be average. You also now have to compete with a huge cohort of people due to the net now.

Going with the videogame focus, if you ever play competitive games you actually see how brutal it can be. In Overwatch for example you have an absolute mountain to climb in ranked because you can't just improve, you have to improve above average to increase your rank. This means a lot of people are getting better at the game over time but are going down in ranking simply because everyone else is getting better faster.

Essentially the internconnectedness of everything is making it hard to find the niches you speak of. There's always someone who loves his job so much and works at it so much that he defines the meta, so to say. This is a problem in computer science, even.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#55

Post by [deleted] »

NewEntryHN wrote: post #30
tcskeptic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are conflating being extraordinary with excellence -- the opposite of extraordinary is not mediocrity. We can all achieve excellence -- by definition being extraordinary is rare.

Except extraordinary is correlated with excellent because this premise: > We can all achieve excellence is false in practice.

[deleted]

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#56

Post by non-entity »

cyberpunk wrote: post #52
ErikAugust wrote: post #13

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society does…

Eh, I mean.. Okay. Maybe this is true for the first steps into your profession, but after so many years in tech the amount of things I have to do that are, compared to my initial 'love' for tech, really horrible tasks vs the things I would like to be doing definately isn't in balance... It's a nice idea, but this "do what you love" doesn't scale. I mean, did it too, there was a day where I was super excited to be wor…

I really wish I didn't go into software development as a profession, and instead went to school for something that still pays ok but could still enjoy programming on the side.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#57

Post by cyberpunk »

heleninboodler wrote: post #22
ARandomerDude wrote: post #6

> Extraordinary also comes in many forms, and its value does not have to be measured in terms of money. Great point though underdeveloped in the article. Clocking out at 5 so you can spend time with a healthy, happy, well-adjusted, loving family is pretty extraordinary these days.

For what it's worth, you may have a heavily skewed view of what's extraordinary "these days." There are lots of tech companies that are mature enough to not flog their people to death. Companies with strong engineering cultures that also highly value seasoned developers tend to be this way. Where I work, the office is (well, was pre-covid) pretty empty by 5:30.

There are two sides to this coin; sometimes some late hours are unavoidable -- I don't blame my employer for it, they're not forcing me to work these hours at all, but I think if you're a professional you can't avoid such circumstances sometimes and that's why we get $megabucks right?

The right mix for me is working like a daemon about 9 months a year then having 3 months off, but YMMV..

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#59

Post by infermore »

non-entity wrote: post #41
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

But does being in the top of those combined skills command top pay?

I'm pretty sure it does, but I'm also pretty sure it's okay if it doesn't.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#60

Post by gvurrdon »

rjsw wrote: post #21
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…

There are not very many people with defined Erdős–Bacon numbers [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_numbe...

Apparently there are sufficient (even I have one - 7 IIRC) that an even more exclusive club as been formed: https://rosschurchley.com/blog/who-else-has-an-erdos-bacon-s...
Post reply on HN