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Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

theguardian.com

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Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#71

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #24
johnjohnsmith wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to offer a few decades of perspective on your claim. I've been programming for 30+ years. When I sit down to code, most of the time I've thought through it before even typing and am ~99% confident I won't hit a roadblock. I've spent half my life mastering my programming skills. BUT: I'm a high-level technical lead / product lead, so I only get to write code a few times a month and it is more for stress-relea…

Great perspective. My takeaway is that people today are still overall undereducated. Business skills and corporate strategy should be taught earlier, at the highschool levels, instead of requiring a dedicated MBA.

If I were exposed to corporate strategy without having any business experience whatsoever that usually accompanies an MBA, the subject would go in one ear and out the other without registering one bit.

What really ought to be taught is personal finance and basic investing - those subjects can be molded into information for any age group.

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#72

Post by CM30 »

seem_2211 wrote: post #25
antonvs wrote: post #9

This is projection by people who are untrained in what they do. Competent people with good training in some discipline are able to apply that training to competently achieve goals. This allows them to apply knowledge that they didn't develop themselves by trial and error, and is much more efficient, with better outcomes than the alternatives. Unfortunately, this often seems to be the exception rather than the rule. A…

Agreed. I think there's a combination of things here - STEM type subjects for example seem to lend themselves to well defined processes and training, whereas things that are a bit more ambiguous (law, journalism, management, politics) leave a lot more space to make things up as you go along. I think there are benefits to both, but whenever I see someone complain about everyone winging it, I think they show their inco…

This is true, though I suspect success also comes from knowing which lessons to take from other companies and when to apply them to your project/business. A lot of design decisions that work for Amazon won't work for a company with about 1000 times less customers, resources and manpower. An awful lot of startups also fail because they copy the big guys without realising that they're nowhere near as successful just yet and that what works for a large site/business and what works for a small one aren't necessarily the same thing.

It's certainly the cause for a lot of overengineering and early complexity.

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#73

Post by derangedHorse »

derefr wrote: post #36
yelloweyes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the classic Gates/Jobs/Zuckerberg etc, is not actually what they did but that they had the sheer temerity to do it at that age without first building their confidence in industry for a few years. They are/were all known for being very arrogant people. Just because some of them become billionaires doesn't mean everyone should be like that. > How did they have the confidence to hold their own when confronted with suc…

> Have you ever met a 12 year old know-it-all? Same thing. Not at all. Words versus deeds. There are tons of inexperienced people who talk like they know everything; but of those, very few of them actually set out to do the things that "require experience." Say that there's a person who thinks they have an awesome idea for a game, but knows nothing about game development. It's the difference between them talking abou…

I sometimes like to call that actionable arrogance rather than inexhaustible self-confidence. I knew a lot of people who had the initiative you're referring to, but most of them ended up failing at miserably at their ventures (which makes sense if you look at the number of startups that turn into successful businesses). There's also the aspect of luck which I hear commonly defined as "where preparation meets opportunity."

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#74

Post by thoughtexplorer »

B0btheBuilder wrote: post #38
davnicwil wrote: post #26

I'm always really impressed by young people, early in their careers or without any career experience at all, who intuit this and are confident in their convictions and get stuff done despite their inexperience. When I was young I was convinced that life beyond academia in all fields would be this super serious, mega competitive space where most everyone has everything figured out. That everyone who was there, in any…

Zuckerberg's mom's a psychiatrist and his dad's a dentist. His dad taught him BASIC programming as a kid and then hired a software engineer as his tutor. Gates' dad's a prominent lawyer and his mom was a prominent businesswoman on the board of directors on several different organizations. Not only did Gates learn programming as a kid, but Microsoft only got on IBM computers because his mom knew IBM executives. When y…

Make no mistake, anyone born into an advanced country is privileged. We are very privileged and lucky compared to someone born in the Congo.

Beyond that it seems rather meaningless to attribute success to privilege over a multitude of other factors. It helps, but it's not the main component. Indeed those with the most privilege tend not to do so well. Consider rich kids who turn into generally unsuccessful adults. Clogs to clogs in 3 generations. The opposite of success.

Meanwhile you have people like JayZ who started among the least privileged (relative to the country) becoming one of the most privileged.

As for Gates, he had the drive and interest to spend his time learning how to program and explore business while he was a kid. While most of his peers were likely using that time to watch TV or party. That's an essential difference and no amount of privilege is going to bridge that.

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#75

Post by derangedHorse »

Applejinx wrote: post #61
empath75 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet John Carmack is just winging it in a lot of aspects of his life, too.

Hearing Jonathan Blow talk about John Carmack is fascinating. It's in some video or other, as it's a story Blow tells on himself when giving talks. He'd gone over the Doom source code when Carmack had open-sourced it, and Blow was appalled, because it was loaded with inefficient, crude, not-optimized stuff. Essentially, Doom source code was dumb and primitive. Jonathan Blow's initial reaction was horror and contempt,…

There's a concept I learned in an Ethics class years ago that basically outlined a thought experiment where some thinkers had to decide the solution to a problem with immediacy but because they were too busy thinking about their decision, they were no longer able to decide. I feel like it describes these types of scenarios perfectly.

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#77

Post by zachd1_618 »

I rarely comment on articles but this resonates so strongly with me. It goes beyond the pervasive “imposter syndrome”, and I think the point here ought to be emphasized. Nobody knows what they’re doing, so throw out the perceived deference and join them with full confidence and determination.

Anecdotal self promotion: I grew up doing manual labor (digging holes) and whatnot thinking that the AP kids had their shit together. Same once I started AP thinking about college. Then grad school in Aero engineering. Then real aero engineers. Then real software engineers once I transitioned into true software in ad tech. TLDR even when surrounded by ridiculously smart people and out of your depth, I find that holding back because “they must know what they’re talking about” is an unproductive mindset. It must be universal, and I actually find that to be an encouraging fact. People aren’t predestined to their task and even as a noob to a field or discipline, you may have valid insight.

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#78

Post by zorga »

thoughtexplorer wrote: post #74
B0btheBuilder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg's mom's a psychiatrist and his dad's a dentist. His dad taught him BASIC programming as a kid and then hired a software engineer as his tutor. Gates' dad's a prominent lawyer and his mom was a prominent businesswoman on the board of directors on several different organizations. Not only did Gates learn programming as a kid, but Microsoft only got on IBM computers because his mom knew IBM executives. When y…

Make no mistake, anyone born into an advanced country is privileged. We are very privileged and lucky compared to someone born in the Congo. Beyond that it seems rather meaningless to attribute success to privilege over a multitude of other factors. It helps, but it's not the main component. Indeed those with the most privilege tend not to do so well. Consider rich kids who turn into generally unsuccessful adults. Cl…

> Make no mistake, anyone born into an advanced country is privileged.

Privilege is not binary, being born into a rich family gives you a massive amount of privilege that being born into the lower class doesn't regardless of how we compare with other countries. So your point here, is rather missing the point entirely.

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#79

Post by zorga »

derangedHorse wrote: post #70
akhilcacharya wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, went to a normal magnet school like I did.

Bezos was still fairly well off considering his parents were able to give him a 100k+ loan for Amazon. I'm not saying that it diminishes any of his accomplishments, just that I think it's pretty pointless to try and normalize privilege since everyone has had some "privilege" in their life dependent on perspective.

> I'm not saying that it diminishes any of his accomplishments

It does, very few parents can afford to give a 100k loan, that's a massive leg up most have no access to.

Re: Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time (2014)

#80

Post by ummonk »

When you're a kid you think adults know what they're doing and that for any issue there are people in charge who can and do make sure everything works out. The biggest thing you learn by growing up is that this is most definitely not the case.

Sometimes the person at the wheel is just winging it, and often there really isn't even anyone at the wheel steering things.

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