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What “work” looks like

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: What “work” looks like

#81

Post by jayde2767 »

lqet wrote: post #77
Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which o…

I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and shift in priority is imminent.

Re: What “work” looks like

#82

Post by lqet »

jayde2767 wrote: post #81
lqet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which o…

I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and shift in priority is imminent.

This is exactly how my working days looked like in the last 12 months before I quit. Sitting in front of the screen waiting for the next emergency ticket. Why even bother to start some deep work? It will be interrupted, possibly for days, in the next hour anyhow. It was corporately-enforced procrastination, non-stop, for 2 years. At the same time, the technical debt grew and grew, until it towered above everything. It felt like torture. A miserable experience. At some point, my partner mentioned something like "I sure hope you will smile again some time"; around the same time I noticed that I took immense risks in traffic, especially as a pedestrian. Getting up in the morning was extremely difficult. 2 weeks after I left, the ideas came flowing again (ironically for problems we struggled with for months and months at the company).

Re: What “work” looks like

#83

Post by virtualritz »

This is exactly how I 'work' and always have. Sometimes the process of distilling a solution in my mind for some more difficult problem can even take days.

But the common denominator is that it happens away from the keyboard and is not visible to an outside observer.

At the keyboard I work on different, easier stuff in the meantime and regular go back to the difficult problem in my mind when doing mundane things.

Walking is a favorite. Forests/nature works best, parks are fine. City is kinda ok.

Re: What “work” looks like

#84

Post by FriedrichN »

leobg wrote: post #37
FriedrichN wrote: post #33

Because humans are social beings, we need to signal to the others that we belong to the group and are doing our part. Our loyalty is prized more than our effectiveness or efficiency. It doesn't matter how productive you are, the feelings of the group are more important. You can see this in many places in our society. The security theater in airports don't make air travel that much safer, but it does send a signal to…

FriedrichN? Is that an allusion to Nietzsche? It would certainly be fitting the sharpness of your observation. Wouldn’t be surprised to find the thought you expressed here in “Human, All Too Human”.

I guess this would comport with his concept of slave morality that states that the collective is more important than the individual and tends to trend towards the lowest common denominator.

Re: What “work” looks like

#86

Post by rpastuszak »

hef19898 wrote: post #75
rpastuszak wrote: post #73

I agree with the sentiment, but brainstorming is a difficult skill and most teams are not really good at it. Some things can be coached or solved with tools but 99% of the problems I experienced boil down to the people involved, team dynamics. Some problems can be surprisingly easy to solve with a decent facilitator, e.g. the loudest voices can be balanced a little bit. The hardest problem (imho): sacrificing creativ…

Having worked at two start-ups, I agree. I think the "we are all one happy family" is directly driving the "we cannot come to decissions". Both are driving me crazy at the moment.

What I've learned is that having a team of passionate, driven people has nothing to do with treating it "like a family" which is both sinister and creepy.

Another reason it's a red flag: it's a signal that the company has a somewhat dated approach to hiring.

The current generation seems much better at noticing this kind of bullshit than mine.

Re: What “work” looks like

#87

Post by nottorp »

gernb wrote: post #59

I find I'm way more productive when I can discuss solutions with coworkers often. Run ideas buy them, etc. My thinking gets clearified and they often suggest things that lead to better designs. With that, I get a clearer mental picture and implementation goes much much faster than when I'm alone. Further, I can't think everything through so being able to bounce ideas off coworkers as I'm implementing is invaluable If…

> so being able to bounce ideas off coworkers

After those ideas come up when solo though?

Re: What “work” looks like

#89

Post by bradlys »

I think this really depends on the type of work you're doing. I've found that often the work I'm paid to do at many jobs is one step away from pure code monkey - even if that job is pulling me $1m+/yr. It seems like the author here is more on the design side and isn't working as an IC anymore. So they probably are making big decisions rather than having to implement others decisions. (I loathe implementing others but they pay me the big bucks to shut up and do it)

I've given up trying to innovate or give new ideas. They're obviously not valued at all. How often does management actually listen to ICs and give credit? Next to never unless they're a puppet. Your peers and team lead might like what you propose but management is incredibly risk averse and wants "innovations" to come from their puppets. You're not one of their puppets and start proposing things? You're just putting your job at risk because it undermines their leadership decisions. ("Why is X in charge when Y is proposing better ideas?" is a statement that starts getting thrown around a lot - it happens very fast)

SV is incredibly political. Maybe some parts of the world aren't and you can get some freetime in where you work "creatively". Maybe when you're not working in engineering anymore you can get more freedom in these realms but for eng ICs - the motto is shut up.

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