6 ms·

Hey Developer, Are You Focusing On the Right Thing?

24 points by housecor 13y ago

ruttiger 13y ago
Nope, I'm stuck on Hacker News.
ambiate 13y ago
Does anyone correlate the 'luck surface area' with that recent discussion on being a sociopath in the workplace. Something along the lines of convincing your coworkers that you're doing more work than you're actually doing. No one can really pinpoint what you do. You just communicate so much that it seems that you're 'in everything'. Just subtract the doing and exponentiate the telling to result in more luck.
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  I really liked the 7 habits of highly overrated people [1] article that you mention, but I would also encourage people to not ascribe all of those activities to overrated people, by default. If you read in the article he even concedes that very effective people do many of these things, which is why it is an effective cover for incompetence. Now, I know what you’re thinking — that might actually be productive. And, well, it might be, nominally so. But do you notice that you’ve got a very tangible plan of action here and there’s been no mention of what the project actually involves? A great way to appear useful without being useful is engage heavily in an activity completely orthogonal to the actual goal. So if the goal aligns with the plan of action and there is "overcommunication" there could well be value added. [1] http://www.daedtech.com/the-7-habits-of-highly-overrated-people http://www.daedtech.com/the-7-habits-of-highly-overrated-peo...
igvadaimon 13y ago
That's a great advice actually. I'd also suggest reading something about business and finances, at least that's what I'm planning to do.
mynames 13y ago
I always find frustrating when there is so little content on a link. Although it's linking to other articles, the author could have elaborated more...
- pdwetz 13y ago
  Agreed, it was nothing more than a glorified tweet. While I generally agree with his points, some more depth and thought would have been much more preferable.
taybin 13y ago
I'm reading hackernews, aren't I? Clearly not.
msoad 13y ago
We had a discussion about this. What is the right thing to focus on to be safe in future? Everybody knows software is eating the world and as a consequence it's eating jobs. Sooner or later, your software hand crafting job will be replaced with a software that does it better and of course cheaper. Where should we go to be on bleeding edge that software can't reach yet? One of suggestions was Machine Learning and meta programming. Other one was robotics. Problem with both of these is that entry barrier is pretty huge. You have to go to university to do it well and not everyone can go to university. Specially if you are already a software engineer that makes a lot of money for hand coding things that seems obvious to not be a hard problem to solve. I personally believe that the state wr are in right now is temporary. Nobody can make a living in future by coding simple web pages or CRUD backends. It's gonna get automated way more that what we can imagine today.
- tbrownaw 13y ago
  One of suggestions was Machine Learning and meta programming. Other one was robotics. Problem with both of these is that entry barrier is pretty huge. You have to go to university to do it well and not everyone can go to university. Why? You need to put in significant time to do well, but are the needed resources (books, people to talk to, etc) really not available outside of a university?
  - analyst74 13y ago
    I am curious how one can break into robitics as a web developer. The two obvious paths I can see are: a) quit job and get masters or even PHD in robotics; b) become rich and found a company like Elon Musk.
    - derefr 13y ago
      My own plan, from a similar starting position, is to buy one of these[1], and start tinkering with it until I have a good set of "hard problems" I've run into. Then, read the textbooks, with a motivated eye to solving those problems. I won't necessarily solve any of the Hard Problems, but I'll hopefully get a journeyman-level ability to converse with others in the field about those problems--and from there, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to making friends in the field and being tossed pithy journal articles to read. [1] http://www.irobot.com/us/learn/Educators/Create.aspx http://www.irobot.com/us/learn/Educators/Create.aspx
triangleman 13y ago
How in the world is a Dale Carnegie book going to make you into a good human?

24 points by housecor 13y ago

Nope, I'm stuck on Hacker News.

Does anyone correlate the 'luck surface area' with that recent discussion on being a sociopath in the workplace. Something along the lines of convincing your coworkers that you're doing more work than you're actually doing. No one can really pinpoint what you do. You just communicate so much that it seems that you're 'in everything'. Just subtract the doing and exponentiate the telling to result in more luck.

AndrewKemendo 13y ago
I really liked the 7 habits of highly overrated people [1] article that you mention, but I would also encourage people to not ascribe all of those activities to overrated people, by default. If you read in the article he even concedes that very effective people do many of these things, which is why it is an effective cover for incompetence. Now, I know what you’re thinking — that might actually be productive. And, well, it might be, nominally so. But do you notice that you’ve got a very tangible plan of action here and there’s been no mention of what the project actually involves? A great way to appear useful without being useful is engage heavily in an activity completely orthogonal to the actual goal. So if the goal aligns with the plan of action and there is "overcommunication" there could well be value added. [1] http://www.daedtech.com/the-7-habits-of-highly-overrated-people http://www.daedtech.com/the-7-habits-of-highly-overrated-peo...

igvadaimon 13y ago

That's a great advice actually. I'd also suggest reading something about business and finances, at least that's what I'm planning to do.

mynames 13y ago

I always find frustrating when there is so little content on a link. Although it's linking to other articles, the author could have elaborated more...

pdwetz 13y ago
Agreed, it was nothing more than a glorified tweet. While I generally agree with his points, some more depth and thought would have been much more preferable.

taybin 13y ago

I'm reading hackernews, aren't I? Clearly not.

msoad 13y ago

We had a discussion about this. What is the right thing to focus on to be safe in future? Everybody knows software is eating the world and as a consequence it's eating jobs. Sooner or later, your software hand crafting job will be replaced with a software that does it better and of course cheaper. Where should we go to be on bleeding edge that software can't reach yet? One of suggestions was Machine Learning and meta programming. Other one was robotics. Problem with both of these is that entry barrier is pretty huge. You have to go to university to do it well and not everyone can go to university. Specially if you are already a software engineer that makes a lot of money for hand coding things that seems obvious to not be a hard problem to solve. I personally believe that the state wr are in right now is temporary. Nobody can make a living in future by coding simple web pages or CRUD backends. It's gonna get automated way more that what we can imagine today.

tbrownaw 13y ago
One of suggestions was Machine Learning and meta programming. Other one was robotics. Problem with both of these is that entry barrier is pretty huge. You have to go to university to do it well and not everyone can go to university. Why? You need to put in significant time to do well, but are the needed resources (books, people to talk to, etc) really not available outside of a university?
- analyst74 13y ago
  I am curious how one can break into robitics as a web developer. The two obvious paths I can see are: a) quit job and get masters or even PHD in robotics; b) become rich and found a company like Elon Musk.
  - derefr 13y ago
    My own plan, from a similar starting position, is to buy one of these[1], and start tinkering with it until I have a good set of "hard problems" I've run into. Then, read the textbooks, with a motivated eye to solving those problems. I won't necessarily solve any of the Hard Problems, but I'll hopefully get a journeyman-level ability to converse with others in the field about those problems--and from there, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to making friends in the field and being tossed pithy journal articles to read. [1] http://www.irobot.com/us/learn/Educators/Create.aspx http://www.irobot.com/us/learn/Educators/Create.aspx

triangleman 13y ago

How in the world is a Dale Carnegie book going to make you into a good human?