Comment by Jemaclus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jemaclus | Hacker News Reader

My first professional rule is to try to be one of the dumbest people in the room. By that I mean, I want to surround myself with people who know more about things that I don't know much about. At my last job, there were five engineers. One was the best manager I've ever had and taught me a lot about being a professional. Another was a phenomenal software architect that taught me a lot about how to build large applications. Yet another really knew everything about the front-end, and the fourth was a terrible coder, but taught me a lot about how NOT to code.

My second professional rule is that when I stop learning, it's time to move on. I always want to challenge myself. If I'm not challenging myself, I'm not improving and, like you, I get bored.

I don't know a lot about your situation, nor do I have an inkling of your capabilities. That said, it sounds like your situation doesn't satisfy either of my two rules. If that's the case, I recommend you look around for something new, where you can find people that will push you to be better.

That said, there are other options. You may find that teaching others is a rewarding experience. Perhaps a more engaging social life will mitigate boredom at the day job. You may find that having some side projects can invigorate your interest. Or perhaps digging into another language or new technology can help keep you interested in your job.

You say you've got a lot of experience on the back-end. Maybe another step would be investigating more DevOps type roles. Implement containers and autoscale, automate deployments, build a CI server. Or look into starting a professional development group at work to teach or learn new skills. Ask directly for feedback. If nobody is offering, ask them. Offer to take on new responsibilities. Identify some pain point that the company has and solve it. It might lead to opportunities to grow the team.

If you're bored for too long, you're going to be miserable. The only way to fix boredom is to seek out change, whether that means a new job or a new skill or new friends. Unfortunately, this is a very, very common scenario out there. The good news is that it is entirely within your power to fix.

Good luck.

> My first professional rule is to try to be one of the dumbest people in the room.

I did that early in my career without much difficulty. As I've gotten older, I've found most companies don't want to pay a programmer with 5-15+ years experience to be the dumbest person in the room. They want to pay them to be the smartest person in the room for somebody with 0-5 years experience.

even so, if you're willing to play the long game, waiting as long as possible before optimizing income is optimal. For example 100k startup jobs into your 30s and one day bam, you're a technical fellow at a bank.

That's a superb attitude. Someone I know that ended up at Google was quite surprised that he indeed was the dumbest person in the room where up to that point he'd just about always been the smartest. then he started learning for real.

> then he started learning for real.

Why do I always feel like the dumbest person even though I'm the only person in the room? I have worked on multiple projects/products and successfully met & exceeded deadlines and have always understood/delivered on product decisions.

For some reason, I feel like a fraud, one who's one meeting/standup/pair-programming session away from being found out. I don't think this is imposter syndrome. My productivity has taken a nose dive, I've quit the company (it was a sabbatical that I've never returned from). Scouring HN is an experience in reinforcing my mediocrity.

> My second professional rule is that when I stop learning, it's time to move on.

Note that it is not always necessary to learn from other people. It is also possible to learn by yourself. Not just by reading books/papers, but also by doing research.

But also note that sometimes the corporate agenda involves limiting the opportunities for change and experimentation, resulting in a programmer that amounts to a sophisticated line worker. Its true that many programmers lose their mojo simply because new frontiers arent being handed to them, but many still get career-depressed when faced with hard blockages from the biz bros.

Best solution: be a freelancer ;-)

The OP isn't ready to be a freelancer - he needs to build up his confidence first.

The toughest problem I've had in employment is merely getting hired to be one of the weakest people overall on a team because it means the company hiring you must have one heck of a leap of faith or they've become desperate a little. As it stands, I've been mostly a mismatch or the person that gets burdened with the team workload and burn out repeatedly trying to keep disasters from happening constantly while trying to mentor and hire others to take over.

I am not sure but I doubt that most people would be able to find a job where you get to work with the most amazing people with skills you do not possess (or are not good at). I can certainly see how you can be the quietest but how does one get hired at a place where you know less then what they already do or are much better?

I don't wish to be snarky but is it really feasible for everyone to be "smartest person in the room"? For a of cities, tech scene is not as big as Bay Area and lots of people can't simply pack their bags and move there.

That's not what he said. You want to be the dumbest person in the room (and, often, the quietest.) That's a lot more achievable.

I think the person you're replying to meant to repeat dumbest, from context.

Brilliant. The idea of being the dumbest person in the room is especially good. Another good way to manifest this is never be afraid to be first to speak up with the dumb question. If you're wondering about something, odds are someone else is, too.

If you're willing/prepared to be the dumbest person in the room, you're probably one of the smartest in the room.

As a manager I always liked to think I hired people smarter than me. Can I point out that as a hiring strategy this is not necessarily ideal, because by induction it means the CEO is the dimmest bulb of all.

I'd argue that "smarter" is too 1-dimensional of a scale here. A good manager/CEO hires people smarter than them in certain skills - ie an engineer with lots of backend/software architecture experience may hire a frontend programmer/designer. You wouldn't say that either is really smarter than the other, but they each bring unique skillsets/viewpoints to the problem.

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