Comment by idopmstuff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by idopmstuff | Hacker News Reader

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This is a great article, and my only issue with it and my only issue with it is that I think it's too limited. This isn't just a tech thing - the world we live in is one where having more context in a professional environment is almost always useful.

If you spend time learning about how HR functions, it'll help you understand how things like promotions work. Spend time with marketing, and you'll learn lessons about human interaction (what gets someone's attention, how to write copy in a way that people understand, etc.). Spend time with sales, and you'll learn about relationship building. None of those things are unique to tech.

I'd even go beyond work-related stuff and say this attitude is universally positive. Spend time with contractors, and you'll learn stuff that'll help when you own a house. Spend time with teachers, and you'll learn things that'll help with raising kids. Spend time with doctors, and you'll learn what minor-seeming medical issues are worth taking to the doc and what might seem bad but doesn't warrant a doctor trip.

I'm probably biased because I'm a PM at an early-stage startup, which requires a very generalist skillset, and I love to learn stuff about other people's jobs.

>the world we live in is one where having more context in a professional environment is almost always useful

THIS. My career pivoted in a new direction simply because I asked a question to a co-worker [0]. The core qualities of curiosity and empathy leads to riches of mind, friendship and wallet. Some reminders I try to adhere to:

- Believing that seeking opportunities to help others is universally positive since trust blooms from the soils of good intentions. And trust opens up possibilities.

- Asking just one more question.

- Finding that extra minute to hear one more story

[0] https://medium.com/@boilerupnc/ten-lines-9a8403984bbf?source...

> With an umbrella of ignorance as my shield, I asked what was her mission.

I really like that line. When I was early in my career, I wanted to sound smarter than I was, so I tried to avoid asking dumb questions to experts. Now that I'm an expert in some things, I realize how ridiculous that was - the experts would've clearly known I was not an expert and weren't going to be impressed by the depth of my knowledge.

When people come and ask me things with humility, I'm almost always happy to explain, and in my experience that's true of most people (especially the smartest/most knowledgable).

I have the feeling that I'm missing something here. Reading the headline, I expected a real, genuine and directly applicable advantage for a software engineer. But I couldn't find it.

While it leads to an interesting life for sure, I don't see how the writer's suggestions (or your suggestions) make for an unfair advantage for any particular role in tech.

Your examples also don't map to a direct advantage in a tech career. If you'd say that it helps indirectly and in intangible ways, then perhaps, yes. But in interviews I did, the lessons from your examples would not have helped. (I'm an iOS software engineer, by the way).

Well, I'd get rid of the word "unfair" - that's not actually true.

But putting that aside, I would guess that maybe you're in a very large company? I think the more siloed and specific your role is, the less helpful this sort of thing would be. I work at a ~20 person startup, and an engineer who can think with a product mindset, talk directly to customers and write good user-facing documentation is much more valuable than someone who can just write code to spec. At a 20,000 person company, that's likely not the case.

As a barely competent Dev who just became senior by actively helping out people who looked like they were struggling in the org slack, I firmly disagree.

It's led to friendships with many many people (and their managers) and a broader understanding of lots of things and is definitely the key to my own career progression.

It's most definitely not my code!

Yes, what you say is true for sure. I think the emphasis on specialization has been net negative in terms of general life ROI but net positive in terms of career/job -at-scale ROI. There's far more positivity to come when you adopt a mindset/attitude like you mention, it bleeds towards everything else. There was societal shift with this and something more should learn.

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