It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated
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You can try this yourself -- the next time you're feeling demotivated, start with the smallest amount of tiny measurable action. If you can't get out of bed, move your fingers, shake your head, work your way up to standing up, walking, leaving your house, and very slowly building momentum.
If you're procrastinating about work, start with opening up a terminal, launch your editor, write one tiny snippet of code that just compiles, add another snippet, build momentum.
You'll find yourself making excuses, telling yourself that none of this matters, or that you're too tired, or that you're not in the mood. Accept the thoughts and push through the actions.
Very quickly, as the dopamine hits from these tiny successes arrive, you'll find your attitude changing, and this turns into a feedback loop where you end up performing more actions, further improving your mood and attitude.
Emotions are sometimes helpful, but in the case of starting things they're usually wrong.
The ones we label as positive come up if we do something that aids the survival of our species. Examples would be pleasure derived from food or sex.
The ones we label as negative are very important IMHO. To prevent harm to ourselves we need Fear, it is a good friend. My theory is that anxiety disorders are like an allergy of the mind. In our super safe world our Amygdala has not much to do, very few (if any) predators around. But it stays on the lookout and reactions to small (or imagined) threats are totally out of proportion.
The rise in depression for me is a symptom of feeling lost/uprooted. If we take the theory that we evolved to live in groups of 100-150 individuals, that we all knew and worked with to ensure survival of the group, as basis and compare our modern lifestyle to it, we come out as extremely alienated from our nature. Even animals commit suicide if they see no way out. Put a scorpion in a ring of glowing embers and it will kill itself.
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The root of anger is fear IMHO. Anger is there to ready us to fight in case of a real threat to our life. Nowadays anger rises in situations challenging our worldview, questioning our distorted view of ourselves or our status within the group. My favourite one is getting angry when observing behaviours in others, which we dislike in ourselves. It happens even if we are unconscious it. When i get angry about behaviour of others, i sometimes remember to ask myself if i act the same way.
The fight or flight situation leaves a third and fourth option. Freezing like a deer in the headlights, experienced it once myself. Read somewhere, that some predators only detect motion.
Anger might be expressed as (physical/verbal) violence against others. If it does not, it can turn against yourself and lead to depression.
The most healthy option i think is to accept your emotions and use your anger as motivation to change something for the better.
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Following Proverb helped me to accept my emotions:
"Treat your feelings like a guest.
Open up, attend to their needs and say goodbye when they leave."
"What you fight gets stronger." - Siddhartha Gautama
But sometimes, emotions are also just learned reactions, with little of value underneath. Feelings like 'I want to stay in bed' or 'I don't want to start this report' can be useful to short-circuit through habit and counter-programming with things like this mantra. Practicing these these short-circuiting habits over time can lessen future emotional reactions.
In other words, mastery over emotions and building better habits can happen in multiple ways. The body & mind are a big homeostatic machine and if you update your physical state (e.g. having written a few paragraphs, or gotten up and started a walk), the mind will realize it's somewhere else and change its reaction.
[1]: https://www.mindful.org/tara-brach-rain-mindfulness-practice...
Like you said, emotions are messages - but they're not very contentful messages. The value of most emotional messages is little more than a "mindfulness check" that should cue you engage your thinking skills to determine what to do. Very rarely is "acting on the emotion" the right thing to do - if you're angry, the correct course of action is almost never to cuss out or punch someone.
In many cases, the emotional signals shouldn't have been sent in the first place (e.g. there's no reason for you to get angry because your best friend likes vanilla ice cream (modulo contrived edge cases, of course)), and the correct course of action is to do nothing, other than figure out why the incorrect signal got sent at all.
> Anger might be expressed as (physical/verbal) violence against others. If it does not, it can turn against yourself and lead to depression.
Can you clarify what you're saying here?
Work on the meta-problem that makes your problem easier. After all, you've got time if the baseline is low-productivity. And the lessons learned are portable.
Unit tests don't really fix the problem either. I'll have integration tests that run automatically during builds either way because I want to make sure other people are not breaking my stuff and there's no real difference in time between setting it up for 1 test or 1000.
The only solution I've found so far is try to bypass as much of the company-specific infrastructure as I can during development, but that requires learning a lot of docker/k8s/helm on top of knowing the company-specific stuff well enough to know what I can ignore on top of rake libraries that ~~abstracts~~ obfuscates the infrastructure.
Learning the k8s stuff I don't mind that much because as you say it's portable, but the company specific stuff... I doubt it's even portable across the company.
Some point along the way, I'll care. Whether it's the dumb name I picked, or some specific thing in the config/makefile I want a certain way--I've been tricked.
Yes! cadence also works.
A 'Do-er' is at least at present motivated, and educating them will get them to the desired combination of education+motivation in the present, even if that education is going to be by necessity a very narrow one (typically: job specific).
Being hungry for money and creature comforts also tends to be conflated with being motivated ('ambitious'), but it doesn't really align well because once financial success (for some very modest success) is attained the motivation will vanish. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it tends to confuse people who were not aware of the driving power being the outwardly visible motivation.
The movie 'Rush' has a nice bit about that, James Hunt just wants to be WDC, once. He doesn't care about anything past that point because it will give him what he wants. But until he's got it he will be super motivated.
If you take the set of all applicants with education and the set of all applicants without, would you claim there is no difference in the distributions of 'do-er'-ness?
So the really smart people are the high end of the educated ones and the high end of the non-educated people (and with educated I mean university degree and onwards), and between those the gap isn't all that large, it's just that there are many more of those than that there are university educated ones (at least, around me).
Now, obviously if your circle is exclusively composed of well educated people then you will come to a different conclusion, and once you go outside of tech/IT the distribution will likely be a completely different one again.
So that 'set' has many subsets with very different distributions between the subsets.
I started the process thinking education would be quite independent of performance. Our data from the process showed exactly the opposite.
Quality of education, especially at entry level, made a large difference in the process and also in the long term performance of the hires.
EDIT: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...
on the other hand, here was the quote on choosing officers, which might be a different position altogther:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
>You should always try to have at least six people interview each candidate that gets hired
Eh. I think this mindset gets taken too literally. That is not something that most companies should be putting candidates through unless they are actually willing to pay for top end talent, and are a tech company who absolutely requires it. Especially paired with:
>Each interview should consist of one interviewer and one interviewee, in a room with a door that closes and a whiteboard. I can tell you from extensive experience that if you spend less than one hour on an interview you’re not going to be able to make a decision.
Yea, no. I am not going to spend 6 hours of my time just because your company is so indecisive, especially with this current job search environment where companies will drop you like a fucking brick and ghost you even after having used hours of your time. I can't help but think a lot of the general shittiness around the hiring process is people taking parts of this article and internalizing them religiously.
When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation, curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show me those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you. I meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they applied, what they want in life for themselves but are just randomly sending their Resume hoping it sticks.
> When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation, curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show me those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you.
Yet you just explained that you hired this person just because they had a Top Ivy on their resume. You might not repeat that mistake but you did do it once.
Yeah, well, while I'm working on that I still need to put food on the table, so I'll apologize ahead of time for faking like I give a rats ass about a career long enough to get through the interview process.
I suspect those candidates know very well why they applied. It just is a socially demanded requirement that they don’t give that particular reason.
Sorry, literally 99% of people who are seen as "do-ers" or motivated are only putting up a show to be hired and to keep their jobs. Being hungry and homeless is a great motivator. None is genuinely excited about your business as much as you are, and if you require them to be, then pay them a CEO salary.
And not just in the tech industry. Look at all the volunteer opportunities, unpajd city boards, etc that people get themselves involved in. People can be motivated by wanting to make a difference. And yes, some software companies do in fact make products and services that make a difference in people's lives.
Positions such as these often pay in increased social status. Just because the compensation is intangible doesn’t mean it’s not real. Working at an animal shelter may well raise your status with potential partners. Working on a city advisory board will definitely get you noticed and can be a stepping board toward political office. And even an unpaid senior position at a well-funded and prestigious foundation results in a great deal of clout.
I do agree there are other intangibles, though (sense of community with fellow volunteers, sense of freedom by doing something exceptional, work experience). These intangibles are good things (mutual benefit).
Some people also benefit without expectation of reward. There could be an argument of self-interest (e.g. to feel good or alleviate some past wrong), but in practice, it makes sense to just thank these people for their actions without worrying about their motivations (which they might not even definitively know).
This sounds like an unhealthily cynical view to hold. I certainly hope it does not come as a surprise to hear that some people just genuinely do love animals. Not everything in life boils down to running laps on a hedonic treadmill.
I personally don't get it. It actually frustrates me a little, they are talented and could achieve real wealth if they'd cared for that. But I accept that people who just work 100% no matter what exist.
It is often the problem that employers equate "caring for your career" to "caring for my company's profits".
As a secondary effect, applicants of course notice that they are more likely to be hired if they just pretend like they care. And if everyone pretends, the one person who says they are just there for the money is at a disadvantage to everyone else.
I've seen people motivate this by saying that not faking it shows you lack social skills. In the end the customer is never wrong, and when you are selling your time the customer is your manager so keep that smile up! (I hate this culture, but I adapted just like everyone else)
There two major reasons this matters:
1. In many cases no amount of enthusiasm for your business is more valuable than the hard skills you need. If it were, why can't you, the founder, with enough enthusiasm to start the business in the first place, simply do everything?
2. Genuine enthusiasm is *volatile*. If someone who isn't making business decisions cares deeply about the business' stated goals, they may well take a minor pivot or a strategic choice they disagree with as a slight or even a betrayal, and that enthusiasm quickly disappears or goes negative. In contrast, your indifferent professional has transparent and predictable motivations and you can stay aligned merely by continuing to pay them enough.
Personally, I think people select for enthusiasm about the business for the same reason they might select friends who tell them how cool or attractive or smart they are, and it's a not an amazing strategy for similar reasons.
It's impossible, unless he holds a large portion of the shares of the company. One of the goals of the company is to replace the guy with someone cheaper or find a way to no need him at all.
I've had a few glimpses of what it's like to hate your job and just be there because you need or want the money, and personally, I'm motivated by never wanting to be in that position.
The problem is that finding something isn't optional, so when your dream doesn't work out, it is just a matter of finding what else might accept you.
So many people, when asked about what they want from life, are essentially asking back, "what are my options?"
"On the whole, American workers are generally satisfied with their jobs. Even so, a significant share (30%) view the work they do as “just a job to get them by,” rather than a career or a steppingstone to a career. Views about work are sharply divided along socio-economic lines, and the sense of vulnerability is most acute among workers with no college education and lower-than-average household incomes."
"In addition to job satisfaction, the survey explored what American workers’ jobs mean to them – are their jobs central to who they are, or are they mainly just a source of income? About half (51%) of employed Americans say they get a sense of identity from their job, while the other half (47%) say their job is just what they do for a living. And about half (51%) of all U.S. workers say they view their job as a career, while 18% see it as a steppingstone to a career and 30% say it’s just a job to get them by."
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/3-how-a... (Pew Research: How Americans view their jobs)
Can you live with spending 70% of your life in front of a computer? You can be a dev.
Can you live with your wrong decision costing someone's life? (And all other downsides of being a doctor). I probably couldn't.
Does reading about law bore you out of your mind? If yes, maybe you can't be a lawyer no matter how talented
Personally I find understanding how software and technology works really interesting (I enjoy understanding how 'things' work in general). I also find programming tasks reasonable engaging, if very frustrating at times. They're not my favourite type of problem solving but it's fun. So Software is a reasonably interesting profession and it comes with good money, plenty of opportunity and lot of flexibility.
That said if I had enough money to retire I'd happily leave it and stop programming. My curiosity is largely satisfied and there are other things I'd rather spend my time doing, such as acting, running or studying one of the countless other subjects that interests me. But it's hard to impossible to make a good living doing those things so I keep working as a software engineer and do those things in my spare time. And that's fine. As I say it's moderately interesting and definitely better than most of the alternatives. And I do take pride and interest in my work. But I don't love it and while my career is up there on my priority list it's never going to be top.
I care about the goal, not the means - if the project is gonna save pandas/explore space, I am happy to dig for hours if that's what it takes.
Most startups know this, thats why they are claiming to be 'changing the world', I've seen how that sausage is made, 95% of that is pure marketing BS.
I find most work is just keeping the wheels of society spinning, taxes filed, tickboxes checked. Thats okay, someone has to do that, but not exciting.
I don't hate programming. They money is good. Everything else I could do, would come with a serious slash to my salary. And that's just something else. Jobs that might be interesting require additional years of degrees. It's too late for that.
What remains? It is hard to keep the motivation going. I wish it wouldn't be like this. I want to give 100%, each day. But I can't force myself to care. I tried. Let's see how long I can go on like this.
Once I accepted that after 3-4 hours (well realistically about 6 when you factor in breaks) I'm effectively done for the day my stress levels went way down.
I feel that in this discussion we are conflating being lost and being unmotivated - they could be highly motivated and trying every opportunity, but have no clue what they are doing.
And since (according to you) the educated person was motivated too at one point, there's no guarantee that a 'do-er' will remain motivated. We also know that at one point (s)he wasn't motivated.
Furthermore, how do you even tell who is a "do-er"? How do you know that that person has the capabilities of learning the task? How much are you willing to invest in education vs. "losing" on hiring the educated person?
None of this makes sense, nor is it backed up.
Update: I want to add that I think I recall being aware of figures like Carmack in my teenage years. Knowing of people like him, who were making lives for themselves by actively pursuing their interests, is I think a huge part of why I got involved in software early on in high school. It was a way for weird kids like me to have a sense of self-worth and accomplishment even if we were getting bad grades in more traditional subjects like "World History" or "Social Studies" on account of just not fitting in. And it was also at a time (in the 90s) when the economy highly valued such people going into the dot com bubble. So this tweet doesn't surprise me at all. I think the historical context I've given here probably describes Carmack's life as well and is really relevant in understanding his statement.
EDIT: most human beings feel weird as a kid. That's natural, whether you hit someone with a lacrosse stick or finally learn how to use a terminal, doesn't make you any cooler. money just moves my dude.
> Not all people want a deeply personal relationship with their co-workers, many would even find being forced to engage in that intrusive. Unfortunately once those bonds are formed between some members of a team, often the team dynamic is shifted weirdly as some people feel forced into the "buddy buddy system"...it's classic now and forcing it into remote work seems like a nightmare — Avicebron (14 days ago)
I had to argue with my parents when purchasing a modem. They didn't understand it. Using their phone line to call other computers felt like a step not far from trouble.
Computers themselves were not discouraged. In my experience, the average adult in the early 90s saw computers as a glorified typewriter. A job would be advertised looking for 'typing skills'.
Not wanting to go outside and socialise was frowned upon.
Around 1992, it was totally normal to ask for a C64 or Amiga 500 for Christmas, if one was interested in such a thing and by 1995/96, there were only a handful of people left at school who had no access at all to a personal computer at home. By 2000, basically everyone between the age of 16 and 30 had internet at home.
I remember being beat down very early in my career. I took advanced math classes, could build compilers, loved embedded device work, wanted to work on more advanced things (operating system level, backend, devices, etc). The only people that would even talk to me were people that wanted web pages built. All because I wasn't fortunate enough to go to a big name school or any education beyond a BS.
Often the only motivation I had at that point was to not starve. But after working for an abusive boss and 2.5 bad companies. I was burned out, used up, and left with nearly zero motivation.
I spent the better part of the 7 years: moving for my spouse (they have a phd with limited regions to work in), helped various family members through health issues, then had a health scare of my own. Now waiting on a partner to have a surgery. After their recovered, I'll finally be getting back out there.
I'd still like to do software work on anything that isn't related to web pages. At this point, I'm not sure how to make that happen.
Got some therapy, journaled a bunch. I eventually realized having an abusive boss or working for an abusive company is the same as having an abusive partner. Recovery is similar.
As for the burnout, that takes time. You have to learn when to work and when to walk away at the end of the day.
In my experience, I realized I could spend a lifetime processing it and feeling bitter, or do my best to forget and let it go. It was helpful for me to change my environment and social circle, disconnect from past colleagues on social media, and change industries for a bit.
Things haven't been perfect for me, but I'm most back to where I used to be with effort and belief in myself (like 90% there, though I'm still more fragile if I make mistakes; though my current boss is particularly kind). It took a year to get mostly over it, though still unmotivated, and about a year and a half to feel recovered. To prevent it in the future, I also balance multiple projects, so my performance at work isn't as big of a deal to my identity anymore (which counterintuitively makes me better at my job).
1. I consciously decided to stop processing the past and let go. Instead, I moved on to the opportunities I currently have. I adjusted social media to remove reminders of my past workplace (including muting old colleagues). The questionable professional networking benefits wasn't worth the toll to my mindset.
2. Valuing myself a lot more wa helpful. I don't perpetuate the environment by by treating others unfairly for self-gain, but I avoid straining myself to help out others (where there's often no actual award or appreciation) unless it's mutual beneficial. I've found that a lot of people don't appreciate favours, and may even feel entitled to them from you.
3. Boundary-setting was important. This includes revealing less personal information at work (it can be used against me, though I'm trying not to take it too far) and declining overwork when I can (in a tactful, graceful way). This led to cutting off a one-sided friendship (where I was constantly asked for favours and support without receiving it back), because boundary-setting was challenged and not respected. It was painful, but ultimately helpful.
4. A shift in identity from my job to myself as a professional not tied to a workplace helped massively. I also started doing multiple projects, so negative problems at work don't affect my identity.
5. I kept up healthy habits. This includes a consistent sleep schedule, avoiding simple carbs when I can for diet, exercise, and avoiding outrage-producing information sources, like low-quality news websites and especially Reddit.
Due to additional time and focus, I started seeing someone in a fulfilling romantic relationship. I don't intend to reveal that past (I want to move on, as I'm a different person now). She's genuinely nice, too; she really enriches my life, though I'm avoiding repeating the mistake of tying my self-worth to anything external, including her. So, while perhaps I was the ideal, dedicated worker before, I'm still pretty good now, and happier with parts outside of my life.
In short: I committed to moving on and letting go of my negative past experience to reduce distractions. I then fixed personality flaws that tied my self-worth to others (by consequence, I learned boundary-setting, which counterintuitively improved my relationships). I also earned a belief in myself again, by sticking to hard but healthy habits and making good, consistent progress in developing skills I always wanted to have.
Last quick note: I got a lot of mileage from referring to "Feeling Good" by David Burns for self-treatment with CBT whenever I felt trapped by negative thoughts. "Intimate Connections" also by Burns helped me for relationship advice, which helps with enjoying the present.
It's great to share your personal experience, that's not worthless, but you gotta understand and accept the limitations of that.
Some people's brains are just wired from the beginning to be more of a Do-er. Some people gain that skill through practice or drugs, and some people learn to Do in spite of a brain that seems to be constantly fighting against that.
It's easier to educate the motivated than motivate the educated.
Many people are motivated by the satisfaction of getting things done and working together with others toward accomplishing something.
There are many people who are motivating more or less by doing. The people who would still be coding in their spare time if programming jobs paid minimum wage simply because they enjoy doing it.
Counterintuitively, you usually have to pay those people more because they're usually in the highest demand.
Surely you can grant some people are consistently motivated than some others.
Personally I can’t NOT do things. Regardless of if I get paid, it works out, or I even get yelled at for doing it - I fix things, pull things apart and make them better, clean things up, learn, and solve problems regardless of the discipline. If I’m not doing those things, I feel terrible. If I do those things (and the more the merrier), I feel good. I’ve built large scale engineering teams at FAANG’s and laid (inspected) foundations for buildings I’ve made myself without error - concurrently.
It pays well, if I’m smart enough to do things that provide value and most people can’t. But even if it doesn’t, I can’t help myself.
So far that includes networking, electrical (permitted, household and commercial), coding, welding, machining, commercial contracts, logging, real estate investment, piloting small aircraft, rock climbing, concrete work (inspected, residential and commercial), fathering 2 healthy strong and well adjusted boys, framing, hydraulic engineering and water delivery design, teaching and mentoring many strong leaders, bespoke financial instruments, and many more. All at a level equivalent or exceeding highly rated professionals or successful folks I’ve worked with or partnered with. It’s weird, but it is what it is. I can’t help myself, and it feels almost like a disease sometimes. I did El Capitan (Mescalito) solo aid in my early 20’s for my first big wall, ‘off the couch’.
It causes friction because either people don’t believe it, or once they do they can’t understand it - sometimes they even get angry or resentful. I don’t do it because I’m trying to show off. It just is who I am.
Is your name James Bond by any chance?
But that may just be my own trauma speaking.
In any case, I think a zen approach is often undervalued, especially per productivity and creativity. "Do" is, after all, a verb, not a noun; a performance, not a crafted object. It's one thing to be proud of one's manifest accomplishments, but to define oneself as a "do-er"...? One can "do" a great many things, including "damage" and "harm."
And I work hard to ensure what is done is the best that can be, and others don’t get hurt. Which, interesting enough, does involve a lot of meditation.
It really doesn't, considering the proposed metric was "perspective of people left in your wake" and not "ratings from colleagues, as related by you." A hypothetical aimed less at considering what people think of you and more of what people think of themselves after having encountered you, it's a matter of who is being centered in such a meditation.
You sound like a great self-marketer. What I've learned is that great self-marketers are fun to be around and work with as long as the reality distortion field is up; however, the risk one takes is in someday finding oneself outside the field, which is a life-altering and frequently psyche-shattering experience. The do-er generally does not care, if they even notice at all; convinced of the virtuousness of their ethos, they're too busy "doing." (Though, to be frank, there is some schadenfreude-tinged consolation in that that often includes "doing" themselves into legal or ethical trouble, or a divorce.)
I'm sorry if that's harsh. I've seen careers destroyed and dreams deferred by people who speak like you speak. Maybe you're different.
The only reason I replied here was because I felt it important that folks know where Carmack might be coming from.
The only legal trouble I’ve ever been in, the other side filed to settle and dismiss (which I was ok with, despite having a strong claim for civil damages into the 6 figures on them), because once I pulled my records for the court it was clear they had committed at least one crime of felony perjury - hard to prove, but what I had certainly seemed to show they had met the bar - and likely 4-5 other identifiable crimes while doing this including potentially criminal conspiracy - for which evidence would be visible in discovery.
Never had a complaint at work filed against me, never even been questioned by the police or detained except for some speeding tickets a decade ago.
I have had to file criminal complaints against a few people over the years when they persisted in clearly criminal acts despite being confronted about it. I wish I hadn’t needed to, but I made sure to provide a comprehensive set of evidence to the investigators, and they all were seen through.
Also, with projects, I’ve always worked my ass off to make sure we’re persuing solid projects that aren’t pie in the sky BS, and if something isn’t working out, people are able to land well in other teams. I’ve never had to lay people off or fire someone because something blew up, even when it wasn’t my doing. I have been on the receiving end of it happening, which is part of why I care so much to not do that to others I suppose.
It has really not been easy to do so, but I put in the work, because it matters to me.
The only reason I even bother is I guess a version of the whole ‘what if you could go back in time and tell yourself something when you were a kid’.
I honestly had no clue of what was even possible, or what it even meant to be congruent with ones values, and it took a lot of pain, mistakes, and learning to figure it out.
Enjoy, and I wish you luck with your adventures.
Computers are fascinating as heck & we have so much to do. Abiding by the non-weird people who don't see this as the most interesting, fascinating, richly-interesting field, playing by their rules, giving them endless comfort space & grace, being zen about it all... it's boring. It's less than I want to see for humankind.
I find it hard to figure out how the two sides tolerate each other better. Your own phrasing of "I'd be interested to hear the perspective of the people left in your wake" is how I think the overwhelming amount of people feel & see motivated individuals, is what gets thought about them. I try to be sympathetic & helpful & meet people where they want, but I feel like the "normal" behavior to deal with weird people is to be silently pissy & angry & unhelpful & isolate them, to hold them in contempt of normality for their urges to be a bit extra. I don't see a lot of bidirectional sympathy, a lot of recognition that mismatched motivations are a two way street, are a bidirectional issue. And I see a lot of assumptions that the extra behavior is almost always problematic & troublesome.
Also, do you feel this trait has made your life happy?
I happen to know two people who have a similar trait. One, I learned, did it to distract themselves from inner demons. I don't know the other well, but they seem to enjoy themselves much more than the first.
I wouldn’t describe my life as easy - but it has been easier than a great many, and the traumas I’ve been exposed to I’ve handled better than most near as I can tell from this, and haven’t been made worse by it. I haven’t ever really enjoyed easy for the sake of easy?
If and when I feel that I pushed and did what I could, as hard as I could, that feels, at worst, ok. Usually even good? If I made a difference, did something I did not know or others did not know was possible, or helped someone in need and made a difference - that is even better. It is often hard to know the results of ones actions, but I do the best I can. Sometimes, you’re not allowed to know. During my EMT clinical rotations, I held the hand of and calmed an older man with obstructive stroke as they attempted to (and failed) to stent him, as I was the only one with the right type of blood pressure measuring equipment, and I wonder sometimes how he did. He was very scared, and rightfully so - but we aren’t allowed to follow up. His story is one of many I’d like to know, but never will.
When I don’t do the best I can, it feels like I’m wasting my limited time here, and that feels terrible, because I know often what could be. The further I diverge, or even worse, if I don’t live my values - being honest, working hard to make the right thing happen for everyone, learning and pushing myself to grow, facing harder truths or working to improve from mistakes or weaknesses I’ve discovered - the more it bothers me - at first, like a mosquito in the back of my mind, then like a knife in the gut if I refuse to listen.
When I live in line with my values, take care of what is important to me, that is - the right thing. It feels good. Even if it is brutally or emotionally hard work, it feels right, I sleep well, and I’m ready to go the next day.
Avoidance and denial is what hurts.
The values you place focus on are particularly well developed, and it's helpful to see how important they are to you. I tend to default to a goal orientation, with values mostly "implied in" through choices of goals at various levels. I'm going to think about how I might use some of these ideas in my life. Thanks for taking the time!
The closer you get, the easier it gets, and the better the feedback loop works. It takes time, and never really ends.
This got me promoted at my last company, which was fun for a while, I could actually change the stupid processes and ways of working - but it wasn't my thing in the long run.
Now I'm working in a smaller team as a normal coder and still can't keep my trap shut - but at least people are a lot more experienced and I've got less stuff to complain about =)
I learned over time a lot about structural incentives and the environmental and emotional reasons why people do things (including myself), and it’s helped me at least in figuring out how to make the right thing happen more often, instead of causing more friction by pointing out that clearly the right thing is not happening instead. And how to avoid places where their values and mine don’t align, and so I’d just end up constantly trying to swim against the current.
Not sure if it helps - it took time to learn (and prioritize) the mentoring and guiding skills and how to avoid the folks and situations who are real problems.
The Doer in his ignorance, will embark on a trip of endlessly trying satisfy his boss, thinking that they are making progress, but they are not.
Everyone knows that it's our (old people) job to say "It can't be done!"
Younger folks are supposed to be "boundary pushers," because they don't know that it can't be done. They keep trying, until they give birth to beautiful unicorns.
Has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with age and [lack of] experience.
Disrupt! FTW!
At least, that's what they tell me, while dissing my experience.
Someone who thrives on novelty will be an uneducated-doer at the start of a project, then convert to an educated-apathetic after completing it. They won't be inspired to do the same thing again because it's not novel. But while it is novel, you can bet they will dedicate a lot of time to it.
Someone who thrives are familiarity will start as an uneducated-apathetic. They will get frozen due to not knowing what to do. But with guidance they can be taught what to do, then will go on to be an educated-doer. These people are happy to keep doing the same projects over and over again. They like what they know.
Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. But I'm sure most of us have worked with both types: the hyper-focused person who works 80 hours a week to get some cool PoC out the door; and the "stick to the process we have in place, please" type. Both are valuable in certain situations, and a liability in others. Carmack and Torvalds appear to be the first kind of person -- granted, I've never met them -- but they do seem to like to build amazing things, then hand them over to someone else to maintain.
I know lots of successful devs who are the latter. They crank out the same kind of code for clients project after project, and will happily work with tools like Wordpress because that's what they know and it makes them money.
If it really is infeasible it’s a win win. Either I figure out how to do something nobody else could have done or I end up giving the next person tasked to take a swing a lot of info about what doesn’t work and maybe they figure it out.
(shortly after burning Dr Johnson's only manuscript of the Dictionary, and realising it will take ten years to re-create):
"No, I love the dictionary, and would like to have my manservant Baldrick read it. Unfortunately it will take him about ten years to learn to read, so please leave it here."
Theory is great, and opens a lot of possibilities. But until you pull out the soldering iron, or the compiler, or the hammer and saw, and make mistakes, you can't really say you know a thing. At best, you know how to start.
The main value of a degree is that basically nobody learn those things properly on the job. So after a few years in industry the person with a degree now knows both theory and practice, while those who just worked only knows the practice and has a glaring lack of theory. And theory is extremely valuable, modern society cannot function without having a lot of people who understands the theory well. Not everyone needs it but some do.
Indeed, doing is learning. :)
As an example, it's pretty hard to fake that you're a top contributor to an open source project.
How could you motivate the 'unmotivated' if, at most companies, employees won't have an honest conversation with their manager about their or the firm's problems? That's step 1 of psycology discussions.
The statement could be true of false, I feel this entire thread is the blind leading the blind
I still get mad about it, because even though I was the one who taught him, I can't help but feel like I've never done anything as cool as that. I most certainly could, but the whole idea jades me and sends me back to the documentation I'm pouring over. Another good example is the "nerds vs hippies" generalization that people like to make: half the world's programmers are immobilized by choice, while the other half is motivated by blindness. Only together can they achieve great things.
Quite the contrary, you should feel proud. IMHO, the real metric of success in life is not what you have achieved, but what your "students" have achieved, so in that metric you're the boss!
Pick a small goal and work towards that.
Break the problem down in to small steps and find ways of solving each step that works best for you.
You might find you don’t even need any of those textbooks.
In my opinion, learning to use math functions as tools rather than having a deep understanding of how they work is an equally valid approach. I know several great WebGL developers who really aren't very good at math.
Consider the following definitions of the dot product:
A) Algebraically, the dot product is the sum of the products of the corresponding entries of the two sequences of numbers. Geometrically, it is the product of the Euclidean magnitudes of the two vectors and the cosine of the angle between them. These definitions are equivalent when using Cartesian coordinates. In modern geometry, Euclidean spaces are often defined by using vector spaces. In this case, the dot product is used for defining lengths (the length of a vector is the square root of the dot product of the vector by itself) and angles (the cosine of the angle of two vectors is the quotient of their dot product by the product of their lengths).
or
B) The dot product takes two vectors as inputs, and returns a value of 1.0 if they're pointing the same direction, -1.0 if they're pointing in opposite directions, and 0.0 if they're perpendicular (as long as they're unit vectors of equal length). This function can be used for diffuse lighting calculations (i.e. is the light direction facing the same way as the surface?), checking if a point is in front of another point, etc.
In my opinion, the second definition is much more useful for someone interested in 3D on the web, but it's something you won't find in math textbooks.
This is perhaps where I go wrong, as I assume it's 'all the same thing'. I currently work on a web app that provides an editing interface for 2D animation with DOM objects (so, rectangles), so I have a notion of using matrices for camera transforms but the extension into 3D animation seems like another planet. I get what you're saying with the tool perspective, but I'm usually nervous about "how do I fix something if something breaks".
In the past when I've spoken of what I work on with friends of friends who're professionals in other fields, and I'd frequently be asked about my 3D animation skills as they had some business idea they wanted to execute on. This experience was primarily my motivation to looking further into 3D rather than say gaming so gun to my head 3D modeling and editing would be the first stop.
But the comments here have been helpful
But I also think that this mindset is something that needs to be learned. Maybe it can only be learned by successfully achieving enough new skills adjacent to things you know. So doing so lets you gain the confidence you'll always figure it out given enough time, and then also maybe gives you a kind of mental pattern of ways to successfully do so.
Anecdotally, I develop webgl and the tooling is meh. Far from figured out and even harder if you want to port to React Native too.
As far as math, some is required. But mostly understanding the relationship between position, velocity and acceleration for animations. As well as sin cos and tan for viewport and triangles.
Don’t give up. Age doesn’t matter. Do a little a day.
Luckily, the math for rudimentary 3d is pretty accessible and well documented. There are tons of quality libraries out there for doing linear transformations, so you likely won't need to learn the nuts & bolts unless you really want to. As a bonus, working in 3d is the best way to build an intuition for a lot of linear algebra subjects.
This is especially relevant now as we have instant exposure to the best of the best of any field simply by opening a social media app.
Yeah this is something I definitely struggle with
That said, I've found myself in both camps on various projects. When you're working on something where the end result is really exciting, it makes a huge difference on you and your team. It's exhilarating. On the flip side, projects were you don't care about the end result, are really brutal to work through. You just work for the paycheck. Any sort of educating about how to do things better feels particularly pointless.
>projects were you don't care about the end result, are really brutal
Yup, better to have no goal than a misguided objective, if you can still have decent accomplishments occurring at a non-stop pace.
>it is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated
Regardless, I'm going to continue to push to the max in both categories.
So what if it takes twice as much action.
The confluence of these two notions is at a sort of induced early blooming in potential workers and thinkers, where simply being chosen for extrinsic support and attention is a better predictor of outcomes than actual or initial ability. That scares people because it doesn't just fly in the face of meritocracy, but questions it at a fundamental level.
Suggests he at least hasn't given up.
He's a very smart guy but I expect the net result of his work in this area to be basically zero. Doesn't sound like he has the background for it, and the task is genuinely huge.
There are good points and bad points to that.
You have to have some implicit knowledge of how things work in order first...but that doesn't always come from formal education.
I suspect this is a root cause of a lot of social and political friction. Doing or showing is sometimes the only hope of getting past that.
> Can you educate a person who lacks the skills for what you need, but is willing to put lots of effort and determination?
But will that motivation remain once they're over the excitement of learning? You have no guarantees that by the time the Do-er is educated they will still be motivated.
> Can you motivate an educated person that has the skills for what you need to act on them with lots of effort and determination?
The implication of the tweet is that this is "harder", but I don't like the word "harder" here, what does it mean? That it will take longer? That it will require more effort on your part? That it is more likely to fail?
Alternatively, hire a motivated and educated person?
If someone is a motivated Do-er, why can't they motivate themselves to go through education? That also confuses me, you say you're motivated, but don't want to put the time and effort to learn?
Basically, I think this whole "Do-er" and "educated" dichotomy assumption is BS. I think it be more apt to talk about "passion" versus "just a job that pays my bills".
If you expect someone to go above and beyond on the job, without you motivating them to do so through actual benefits and compensation (like better pay, bonuses, etc.), you better make sure you found someone passionate enough about the task itself to be motivated to do so purely based on what the task is.
Meanwhile, a non-motivated educated person might just take longer as they're not putting as much effort on a daily basis, but they can still make progress.
But it depends on the task and the understanding required for it. Lots of task actually benefit from shortcuts, you don't need a major for most programming tasks, you don't even need any understanding of algos, data-structures, hardware, OS, distributed systems, math, etc. A lot of task you just need very simple knowledge of a framework and just put in the time to try a few things until it works, google the answers, etc.
So I'm assuming here by "do-er" we mean someone who doesn't bother learning anything unless the task at hand requires them too, and is also going to put constant effort and energy into the task on a daily basis. And this will always be more optimal in the total time spent learning/doing ratio, but if presented with a difficult task, you don't know if the do-er will be able to learn what's needed, because they have no cred that tells you that they are someone who can or can't learn such complicated things. That's where education comes in, you already know the person knows complicated stuff or was able to learn it.
Some just gave up before finishing the assignment and didn't show up to the interview at all.
I think the most interesting hire we did from our technical interviews was someone who solved in a modern version of J2EE, years after Spring had become the 'de facto' standard as a response to J2EE itself. But Spring became that thing it swore to destroy, and the J2EE solution looked pretty elegant.
On the other hand, some of the best people I've worked with in software engineering were never officially trained for it.
Effective education will happen once we remove federal funding from universities. No more administrative cruft, no more extra general classes to pad coffers, no more relying on tenure to excuse poor quality education.
Tech is a very thing-oriented and idea-oriented line of work, and motivating others is a people-oriented task. You need to be inclined toward knowing other people and understanding what makes them tick. Then you can show them connection between that and the work you're doing.
There's no reason one person can't be good at all of that, but the field attracts people who are good at the thing-oriented and idea-oriented stuff since that's the main need.
But if you are a big company it that can burn through people, it might be better to hire the motivated as they tend to put in free extra hours, where as a hard workers tend to quit at quittin time and go do something else.
The constructionist movement is trying to change that. To make making be the education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionism_(learning_theo...
How the hell are you supposed to motivate them about calculus if its all so abstract (see limits)?
So, if someone wants to do something to give that person tools to achieve it will be productive. If someone does Not want to do something it is very difficult to talk them into doing it.
Makes sense. But I do not know in what context this is discussed our what is the supposed implications.
a) someone has an incentive to do something, but knows not how
b) someone is very agreeable or pliant in their personality, and is willing to carry out instructions if they don't already know how
c) someone's incentives are not well aligned to do the thing, or are not agreeable/pliant enough to do it anyway, but knows how to do it
If I know how to set up and administer a mail server, under c) I won't do it if there are no incentives (e.g. pay). If I need a mail server, but don't know how to do it, as under a) I will pay someone to do it, or to teach me.
b) is probably quiet and long-suffering, but may never understand the whys and wherefores.
So incentives are probably more important than analyzing things in terms of "doers" vs. "non-doers". Could have implications for hiring policies -- less important that candidate does not have 5 years of Frobnitz framework experience, more important to provide an incentive for the candidate to become proficient.
But I think this was not the point. He said "read what you love until you love to read" which sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. So, I don't really think he was saying anything deeper than "follow your bliss", unfortunately.
Carmack is a pretty sensible chap. I find his viewpoints to be practical.
The Grit article on Wikipedia mentions persistence and tenacity and stick-to-it-tiveness as roughly synonymous; and that grit may not be that distinct from other Big Five personality traits, but we're not about to listen to that, we're not going with that, because Grit is predictor of success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)
To the original point,
> In psychology, grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective). This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. Distinct but commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include "perseverance", "hardiness", "resilience", "ambition", "need for achievement" and "conscientiousness". These constructs can be conceptualized as individual differences related to the accomplishment of work rather than talent or ability.
Right there. The secret to my success. And my motto "How hard could it be?"
The most ambitious want to be "world class good at it" . Hence nothing gets ever started because it seems like an unsurmountable mountain to climb.
But there is a silver lining. The possibility of exploring social relationships.
With regards to social relationships it doesn't really matter if you are having a party in Beverly Hills or in Des Moines.
It's exactly the same thing.
I've actually observed the opposite. For a non-insignificant number of people, it seems like their university degree is seen primarily as a piece of paper that allows them to demand a high wage while actively avoiding mental or physical exertion.
The only problem if there is one IMO is that everyone is so encouraged/socially pressured into university, that even in the absence of any intellectual curiosity or merit in a particular field they must go. So of course certain programmes or universities get saddled with poor 'retail management' (or worse!) metrics.
There is a stigma against not pursuing undergraduate study (ever increasingly far down the socio-economic ladder) and also against having working to lower-middle class jobs with a degree! We can't have it both ways! If so many people should be post-nominally lettered, then naturally so many jobs should be staffed by graduates.
I’d argue that the piece of paper is more for a semi-secure livable wage than a high wage, with or without physical exertion. From my anecdotal subgroup, I’ve yet to meet a person who expects (let alone: hopes for) high wages (above $25/hr) as a result of their degree.
Not everyone likes taking risks and dealing with failures (and there will always be some - even if it us just on the way to success).
If industrialist feedback loops are destroying the planet, are more doers engaging grand scale industrialism doing an ideal objective?
Maybe we should educate people so they’re less inclined to chase the coin of mere mortals RP’ing grandads emotional memes