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Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

kerrick.blog

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Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#71

Post by cedws »

I think the author is too hard on themselves for not knowing things, probably coming from shame. I can only speak for myself but learning to shrug that off just how to say "I don't know X" or "I forgot X" is very freeing. I say I don't know shit all the time at work, and so do people I work with. We aren't encyclopedias. Just chuckle about it and figure it out and learn.

I much prefer working with people who can just be honest about what they don't know, it's way better than pretending to know or trying to save face, and generally people in the former camp seem to have higher EQ.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#72

Post by LtWorf »

cogman10 wrote: post #65
Kerrick wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow we were better at using remote tools while literally in the same office than some teams are at using them now while fully remote. I couldn't agree more. I pushed to get the place I worked for to use Slack when it first launched, moving us off AIM (ha!). Our use of Slack when we shared an office in the twenty-teens was so much better than the use I've seen of Slack/competitors on fully-remote teams. I wonder…

I can't speak for everyone, but I'd say that I've noticed that younger devs simply do not chat. My team rooms are pretty dead. I'll send stuff there but by and large the team simply doesn't use chat functions.

It doesn't help that reporting people to HR is a way to career advancement.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#73

Post by LtWorf »

seneca wrote: post #42
_ea1k wrote: post #22

Every time that I read this about remote work, all I can think is how much I miss IRC and the culture that came from it. We were doing remote work effectively decades ago. Don't have hallway conversations to fix bugs? Easy, just post your problems on the team chat and someone (often one of several people) would love to drop by to help. I'm not sure exactly all of the forces that have led to this changing so much, but…

> Somehow we were better at using remote tools while literally in the same office than some teams are at using them now while fully remote. This is sort of the point. Remote tools work great when you have spent a lot of time building relationships and rapport with the people involved. That's hard to do in professional settings, and extremely hard to do in remote professional settings. Letting teams that know each oth…

Debian works like that but the startups can't manage… interesting.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#74

Post by TheRoque »

cedws wrote: post #71

I think the author is too hard on themselves for not knowing things, probably coming from shame. I can only speak for myself but learning to shrug that off just how to say "I don't know X" or "I forgot X" is very freeing. I say I don't know shit all the time at work, and so do people I work with. We aren't encyclopedias. Just chuckle about it and figure it out and learn. I much prefer working with people who can just…

My boss actually said that to me once. He said he really appreciated that I would say "I don't know" instead of bullshitting him. Of course I would also try to brainstorm with him or find the answer later on by searching.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#75

Post by taurath »

cogman10 wrote: post #65
Kerrick wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow we were better at using remote tools while literally in the same office than some teams are at using them now while fully remote. I couldn't agree more. I pushed to get the place I worked for to use Slack when it first launched, moving us off AIM (ha!). Our use of Slack when we shared an office in the twenty-teens was so much better than the use I've seen of Slack/competitors on fully-remote teams. I wonder…

I can't speak for everyone, but I'd say that I've noticed that younger devs simply do not chat. My team rooms are pretty dead. I'll send stuff there but by and large the team simply doesn't use chat functions.

Partially thats about teams and how most corps use it, which is built primarily around information siloing and management visibility.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#76

Post by stavros »

kens wrote: post #49
stavros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, `def main():`? Or do you mean the __name__ == "__main__" thing for distinguishing whether the code was imported?

I can successfully type "def main()" and not "function main()", unless I'm switching between JavaScript and Python and forget which language I'm in :-). It's the if statement with all the underscores that I need to check every time.

I actually made that a keyboard macro because, even though I remember the syntax, I can't be bothered with all the special characters all the time.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#77

Post by xpe »

deadbabe wrote: post #15

[flagged]

I don't know that it is necessarily sick ... I suppose it depends what you do, how the people respond, and if you are playing a useful role in the interview process for your organization.

Tell us more?

On the positive side... Seeing how people respond to pressure (done within some bounds) might be useful information. Watching people dig deeper into their problem-solving toolkit (and even their determination and resolve) might be informative. But I have not recently reviewed interviewing research, so I don't know how strong the causal connections are between observing these things in an interview and on-the-job performance.

On the negative side: If one is primarily interested in finding flaws as some sort of intrinsically valuable thing or to boost one's own ego, these are probably hints to look closely at oneself and reflect and make sense of what is going on inside.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#78

Post by makeitdouble »

Kerrick wrote: post #63
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Random example: I have better "ambient awareness" remotely because with slack I am in every hallway simultaneously, and can skim the conversations and set up highlight words

I wonder how much of that comes down to culture. Since going remote I have come to wonder if a direct-message-first chat culture is harmful to collaboration.

IMHO most companies encourage public-first conversation, but still end up with DM-first as their employees don't have enough trust in how their messages will be received.

It requires to be comfortable exposing lack of knowledge or saying weird things to peers, and be confident it will be taken in good faith. As you point out, that requires a whole level of culture building.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#79

Post by dboreham »

kens wrote: post #7

My knowledge-gap confession: even after many years with the languages, I can't write a main() in Python or Java without looking up the format.

LLMs are wonderful for this. I can't write hardly a line of shell script without looking something up. And then there are three different ways to do so I spend time beard-tugging as to which way to do it. Now I just tell the LLM what I want changed about this shell script and look at what it comes up with. 100% of the time it's fine.

Re: Confessions of a Software Developer: No More Self-Censorship

#80

Post by Kerrick »

cedws wrote: post #71

I think the author is too hard on themselves for not knowing things, probably coming from shame. I can only speak for myself but learning to shrug that off just how to say "I don't know X" or "I forgot X" is very freeing. I say I don't know shit all the time at work, and so do people I work with. We aren't encyclopedias. Just chuckle about it and figure it out and learn. I much prefer working with people who can just…

For some reason I'm able to say "I don't know" to coworkers and superiors at work with no problem, but I have a much harder time online where it may affect future employers' opinions of me.
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