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John Carmack: Career Advice

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Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#61

Post by jariel »

Do whatever it takes to get your foot in the door somewhere, because it's impossible to know what works otherwise. Internships are a great hope.

From there, it's a totally new story/path.

It helps a little bit if you like what you do, but you don't need to 'love' it - if you do, you may get taken advantage of, i.e.'gaming'.

Once on the inside, it should become clear the folks that are valued and some of them will be in accessible positions with a degree of focus.

Tech is a pretty good industry for talent exposition, almost like no other. Usually when people are good or where knowledge shines ... it stands out. At least more than in almost every other industry.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#62

Post by didizaja »

patrec wrote: post #20
st1x7 wrote: post #8

Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.

I think his argument is fairly simple: 1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great. 2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job. 3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a conc…

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation!

I also find it quite interesting that you mentioned git specifically, because I’ve been going back and forth for the last few days with myself about whether I should spend the rest of Winter Break and next semester (I’m an undergrad with one semester left) learning git internals deeply. So, this felt somewhat validating of the perspective that I should learn about git more deeply so I can have enhanced practical knowledge, which could translate into more economic value for the company I’m working with after graduation.

Once a decision is made in this regard, I then have to figure out the best way to actually learn it. I’ve considered trying to follow the mailing list[0] and contribute code to the git project, thinking that would force me to learn it very deeply. But at the same time, I feel like trying to go that deep might have diminishing returns and might stress me out. I like the idea of being an open source contributor to such a huge project and gaining more experience that way, but I also worry about the potentially high time cost.

I imagine I could alternatively read the Pro Git Book[1], the git documentation[2], and/or some other specific git internals resource someone has curated, but I haven’t decided what would be best yet.

[0]: https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitCommunity

[1]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

[2]: https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/Documentation

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#63

Post by throwaway2245 »

st1x7 wrote: post #8

Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.

> Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else?

I think he is overall suggesting that you should find your business value - your value as an employee to the business you work for. He seems to be specifically talking about "career advice", as advice for employment, so slightly outside of his own experience.

He is suggesting a shortcut to this business value is to know one tool deeply enough that you become the go-to person for that tool in your company (whether or not that is in your job description).

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#64

Post by st1x7 »

Frost1x wrote: post #55
simonh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This closely matches advice I've been giving to new hires and team members for years. When you join a new team look for the gaps, what isn't getting done or what will benefit the team most and fill that gap. You're not going to compete with the current guru of this or that, so learn from them for sure but that's not going to mark you out. The only down side is there are often reasons those gaps are there, but it's ju…

I'd be a bit weary of gaps in some environments. As you suggest, those gaps often exist for a reason. From my experience a lot of those gaps are essentially integration efforts between two systems where one person builds something independent of the other that were supposed to be integrated or are now desired to be integrated yet were never planned or designed appropriately to integrate. In the end, you end up needin…

> My suggestion is to find gaps that aren't integration efforts, if possible, that are instead extension efforts.

Yes! This can go even further and the technical integration work can easily slip into soft/people/team/project/management integration. Here is a talk which warns against doing this kind of glue work too early in your career:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KClAPipnKqw

Summary article: https://noidea.dog/glue

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#65

Post by st1x7 »

amitranade wrote: post #42
patrec wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his argument is fairly simple: 1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great. 2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job. 3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a conc…

Nice explanation. MIT’s “The Missing Semester of Your CS Education” attempts to address some of your points https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

The course is decent but I really don't get how it's relevant here.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#66

Post by loloquwowndueo »

kranner wrote: post #14

Slightly unrelated: I love that Carmack uses backslash (\) to escape 'EOL' and signify that this will be a thread and not a standalone tweet. Much more programmerly than "1/n" and "Thread".

Anyone who uses Twitter to post threads / long-form content is fundamentally misusing the platform - they should write a blog post (they’re free at Kmart) and link to it in a tweet. I don’t read Twitter threads because of this - how to trust the judgment and opinion of someone who misunderstands the medium they are using to such extent?

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#67

Post by soneca »

st1x7 wrote: post #8

Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.

My take: learning the fundamentals of the web and programming is essential to become a good senior software engineering some day, but knowing React is what gets me hired at junior positions.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#68

Post by soneca »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #66
kranner wrote: post #14

Slightly unrelated: I love that Carmack uses backslash (\) to escape 'EOL' and signify that this will be a thread and not a standalone tweet. Much more programmerly than "1/n" and "Thread".

Anyone who uses Twitter to post threads / long-form content is fundamentally misusing the platform - they should write a blog post (they’re free at Kmart) and link to it in a tweet. I don’t read Twitter threads because of this - how to trust the judgment and opinion of someone who misunderstands the medium they are using to such extent?

I think it is a different use, not a ”misuse”. I am ok with it

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#69

Post by criddell »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #66
kranner wrote: post #14

Slightly unrelated: I love that Carmack uses backslash (\) to escape 'EOL' and signify that this will be a thread and not a standalone tweet. Much more programmerly than "1/n" and "Thread".

Anyone who uses Twitter to post threads / long-form content is fundamentally misusing the platform - they should write a blog post (they’re free at Kmart) and link to it in a tweet. I don’t read Twitter threads because of this - how to trust the judgment and opinion of someone who misunderstands the medium they are using to such extent?

Doesn't the fact that it's John Carmack doing this somewhat disprove your theory?

There's something to be said for writing where your audience is. Carmack isn't a blogger and doesn't often write longer posts.

Re: John Carmack: Career Advice

#70

Post by lmilcin »

My advice:

1. Make sure you do what you love to do.

2. Make sure you constantly improve and try to do as good job as is possible.

3. Don't get distracted.

In almost any field, there is always need for people who have deep expertise and can do excellent job. It doesn't matter if you are developer or lawyer or a salesperson or actor. If you do world class job, your prospects are good.

It is hard enough to do something for entire lifetime. It is harder to do something you don't love.

It is hard to find strength to constantly improve in a field you just don't feel particularly interested in.

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