How to criticize computer scientists (2001)
cs.purdue.edu
cs.purdue.edu
A colleague of mine at a company I worked at, very intelligent, would often hurl this verbal weapon out at anyone delivering any kind of technical presentation. He was a very deep thinker and always had incisive insights. It was both a treat, and also terrifying to see him essentially interrogate the presenter. I only had to go before him one time, and it was both a test of one's knowledge of the material, and a measurement of one's emotional fortitude.
As for the question, the answer was almost always "No, you are missing nothing. The rest of us simply do not exist on the same level as you do".
I'm also hoping the people you worked with could tell the difference. If not, I hope you ran away from such a place. It's rare for someone truly that much smarter than everyone else to stick around without management siloing them into more focused work.
Also, I hope you meant presentations about theoretical or engineering work and not some vague business goal. If it's the latter most of us reading this would have similarly ripped it apart (constructively), hence the need for management especially at bigger orgs. The best way to handle vague business goals is to present it to upper management and let the implementation details be filled in by their team if they agree to proceed with work.
I am currently in this exact situation in my team. While I love everyone and really like what I do now, it became "the team vs that one guy". Which is ridiculous as he's supposed to be the pillar of the product.
So here we are, the strongest part of the team became the biggest risk.
Listening is a skill hard to master. Especially when you have no plans to try.
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you have a lot of inexperienced people spoiling the place, not "that one guy".
> So here we are, the strongest part of the team became the biggest risk. ... he's supposed to be the pillar of the product.
The big risk is management dropping the ball not willing to coordinate your product better and depending too much on one person. If it really is such a long bridge to cross between your SME and everyone else you have to accept that the product will be as bad as the dumbest person on your team. The product has to be well understood by everyone, not just one person. You might lose your only talent here if you can't hire better people to fill in the rest of the team.
> I love everyone and really like what I do now
Not to be too harsh but this should be the lowest priority business goal. Joy at work is just one tactic to retain employees. If your people can't get acceptable work done in the first place you can't expect anyone to be happy.
How can I say this more bluntly? Don't abuse your smartest people to keep lesser people employed and happy?
There is absolutely nothing in situation described by me, that fits this sentence. I'd like to explain that but you (?) already gave downvote to my comment, so it will likely just make me feel worse that I wrote a wall of text that no one will read.
I actually still agree with points you made, as a general advise.
If you don't have much control over hiring, company culture, etc. it wasn't directed at you, but someone definitely does.
I whole heartedly disagree. Happiness is more than just about retention. It's also about efficacy of your employees. Happy employees do better work and produce more.
Maybe I was too subtle in implying that the path to success in such a situation is to pay the SME more and crack the whip and refuse raises on the ones dragging things down until they quit. I'm pretty sure they have been with the company too long and/or have managed to avoid work thus far only hurting themselves and the company long term. Treating them well won't do anything if they take it for granted. The next round of hires should keep these lessons in mind.
You can absolutely have a great workplace full of happy people, but you need to build that on a foundation of competence and respect. Happiness is a lot of little things done right. It's the result, not the cause.
> Happy employees do better work and produce more.
Employees who do better work and produce more are happy when they're working with peers who do the same.
I’ve never worked with people whose happiness depended on productivity. It’s always been assumed that it worked the other way around.
"How would you do it?"
"Oh I don't know about that."
Always a pleasure from the armchair theorists.
As an ex-TA in a science program, for the love of god just cite your source if you want to paste a wall-o-text. The differences between a lit review and research are in your goals, imho.
How to Criticize Computer Scientists (2001) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26609492 - March 2021 (101 comments)
> I certainly hope faculty will take this essay to heart and sharpen their insulting skills. In the future please make all your thrusts count.