Life lessons from the first half-century of my career | Hacker News Reader

Life lessons from the first half-century of my career

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419 pointszdw160 comments

My best leaders have been those who "share their Legos", so to say. That don't hoard information, but instead step aside and let others take on more responsibility.

My first tech lead when I started working had a great reputation. Everyone in the company knew him. I looked up to him. He knew everything! Whatever feature I worked on and needed to ask details about our integration partner, he could answer. Only later did I realize it was more because he had put himself in the middle, than it actually being helpful. I was the one working on something, but he was the one going to all meetings and talking with others. It made it harder for me, never being directly involved. Maybe it made him feel more useful, enjoying being the goto-guy etc?

Then I got a new tech lead, and she was the one that made me realize what a manager could be. She encouraged me to own the stuff I was working on completely, and joined meetings more as a backup for me but wanted me to be the main point of contact. Instead of being the middleman of everything, she instead enabled me and mentored me.

So I've always aimed to be like her. Now that I'm at 10 yeo experience, can I enable those "under" me and let them learn by allowing them to take on some of my responsibility? It's a constant conscious decision, because the default is to keep feeling important.

That's an interesting viewpoint, since the usual mantra is 'a good manager protects the engineer' by going to meetings and letting them do deep work without distraction. Maybe in your case she saw the potential of a future lead/manager and wanted to push you in that direction?

I imagine it depends on the type of meeting and how many pointless busywork meetings a company mandates

(Good) meetings are deep work.

Too many engineers think that engineering work is sat in front of the thing they're building, building it.

You need to know what to build. You need feedback on how to build it (no matter how experienced you are, you want other perspectives to help improve your thinking). You need feedback on iterations. You need to discuss and get ideas on problems.

These are all done with other people. The best way to discuss them with other people is not to swing by and have a chat. It's to block out some time.

If you spend too much time in meetings, the balance is wrong. But so is too little.

If your manager is going to the meetings, you're not being a good engineer, and they're not letting you be a good engineer.

I'd recommend to try and block these up a bit, have meeting free days and the like, but if you're the kind of engineer who thinks meetings are not work, you're going to lose out to those engineers who want to collaborate and engage with colleagues, partners and other stakeholders.

Love your point.

> (Good) meetings are deep work

Sadly not enough managers think that either. I've seen a hierarchy where managers only pay attention when their superiors are around. Day-to-day engineering meetings were not their moment to shine, so they took those meetings from the car driving in. The other option, railroading meetings with a strict slide deck, is also not the way to get engineers' minds to engage.

Good meetings are deep work, but there are two sides to it, and it must be lived in the culture.

> You need to know what to build

I like to refer to this as "the hardest problem in computer science."

Several times over my ten-year career I've spent months building a thing to what we thought were the specs, only to have to throw most of it away because the specs change at the last minute, or somebody learned the hard way that details like are you paying for access to the thing, or access to the group the thing is in can actually matter a whole lot when you're building software. I would say I nearly always spend more time defining the problem than solving it.

This was my work in defense. Weeks or months are spent in design and the code itself only takes a few days.

Now at my company teams will spend no time planning, code like crazy, only to redo it multiple times.

Illusion of progress. There must be a middle ground.

Is this the core tenant of agile development? To release often and speak to stakeholders often? The hardest part is deciding when to do that first release I suppose.

As soon as you've got something releasable.

Though, you should break work up in a way to get to something releasable asap.

The latter is where I think it's more art than science still, or at least I can't come up with a good written process on how you do it (other than the constant "where is the value in this" and "what's the smallest thing we can build" questioning), but I can always do it!

As mentioned below, it seems you don't like true agility (though, the critical piece is re-evaluating often, most teams miss that).

If you want a successful example in a traditional engineering industry, you don't need to look further than SpaceX vs Boeing and their rocket development (one got a smaller budget and blew up a number of rockets and has been earning money for 4+ years, the other got twice the grant and wasn't trusted to bring astronauts back from ISS a few months ago).

I think SW people are entitled. "I can't work unless I have hours of uninterrupted time. Waah!"

Figure it out and get over yourselves (myself included).

It depends a lot on the meeting. If the meeting is scoping work (and with a clear agenda), important/rare context or honest feedback then the developer being involved will increase the likelihood of the project succeeding. If the meeting is status reports or other requests for information then maybe block them from going.

The issue is that the person developing needs access to as much real data as possible (which may be found in a meeting) but as much shielding from the scar tissue of bureaucracy as possible. Bureaucrats should spend time talking to team leads, developers should spend time talking to people with real problems that need solving. The dividing line between those two things involves judgement. And some projects developer productivity is guaranteed to be low from the get go and their meeting attendance barely matters (eg, how developers spent their time prior to the project being re-scoped isn't so impactful).

I had an inexperienced manager who followed this tack of protecting me from meetings, over my objections. What ended up happens was I lost crucial context. I think he just didn’t know how to be useful as a manager. He’s now a staff engineer elsewhere. Good for him.

I never understood the “encourage others to take ownership” manager thing. I mean, I can do the same and encourage others to do things and that would let me with very little actual work to do. Like, why would I even be necessary as “manager that encourage things” if we have to begin with engineers that are paid to take on ownership from the very beginning?

There's a good and bad way to be the manager that encourages taking ownership. You're skeptical of the lazy type. it's masked also as "delegation". ICs tasked with doing literally everything, and yes it can get ridiculous, but even then the ICs do learn outsized skills.

The good kind is in medium to large companies there's definitely middle management needs that must be done. A good manager is doing and shielding you from those things. The ownership is about domain, skill, and project expertise. People closest should be in positions of ownership. A manager is the grease in the machine.

There's taking ownership of a project without being micro-managed and there's having to deal with everything from above and sideways in a large organization. I have certainly been in roles where I got insulated from a lot even if I had a lot of day-to-day autonomy.

A manager should be intercepting requests for your time and prioritizing your work. There are always more things that need doing than there are hours for you to do them in. They should know what is important, and steer the ship appropriately while you're out gathering requirements, analyzing, building, and iterating based on feedback.

They should also, depending on the engineer, periodically be checking in to make sure that you're on track and not spinning your wheels.

This. We need to stop admiring flashiness. We need to start admiring people that bring out the best in others. Our brains instantly turn to the glitteriest/loudest/fanciest object in the room. It is hardwired for some reason - unfortunately in this day and age that will no longer help us in the long run.

Turning to sports, Nikola Jokic is one of these people...you can see his quite leadership everyday. He is selfless on the court, bringing out the best in his teammates, he hates the lime light. He celebrates his rivals. This is such a poor example compared to that wonderful article linked, I but I truly hope my kids internalize some of the value that he demostrates especially in this day and age of awfulness elsewhere.

There's a lot of people that just aren't capable of releasing control like that.

I think it's a sign of a non toxic environment to work in too. Somewhere that does t require political games and you can trust your leaders.

Now we have endless and repeated layoffs and executives telling us we'll be replaced by computers. Gotta hold on to everything.

> Only later did I realize it was more because he had put himself in the middle, than it actually being helpful.

It doesn't feel good at first, but you just have to re-frame it.

I've found that many people who complain about this are really not about that life of political games and constant, low effort interruptions on MSFT Teams. For self-aware individuals, the resentful/villain narrative dissipates and individuals embrace the benefits of a buffer. The layers can mean a much more leisurely pace for a paycheck.

Wild. I would have loved your first manager and hated your second. I want to build and I have zero interest haggling with stakeholders over minutiae. I'll take a good buffer manager that understands the problem space any day.

It is interesting to think about. Someone like the first manager is actually very valuable at a company where people leave very quickly, especially in an industry where most of your coworkers will have been at the company for less than 5 years.

How much can you truly know about the system if you're going to leave the job in a year or two? How much would you invest?

The only issue with the first manager, IMO, is that they weren't willing to share knowledge or help elevate others. You can understand as much as them and still encourage others and help people grow.

No reason why the first manager and second manager couldn't be a single person.

But what if the first manager leaves? He's made himself too important.

Someone might think so, but ultimately, nobody is (too important).

I think you're reading things into it I never stated. Like, those meetings weren't "haggling minutiae with stakeholders", he wasn't a good buffer. I couldn't "build" when I didn't know what to build.

At a corporate job, starting projects will catapult you more than finishing them. Especially long multi year projects.

My mentor mentioned this to me and it took me a LONG time to understand it.

Starting an AI project for example will:

1. position you as the AI thought leader just becuase you were first to the idea

2. associate AI used anywhere with you

3. bring you up in any conversation about AI

It's really weird but this how all those useless executives operate. Start projects and leave :) . Highly recommend reading "Stealing the Corner Offfice" https://a.co/d/5dTRSNQ if you don't plan to do a startup.

> this how all those useless executives operate

Being visible in a positive way to the right people is 100% necessary for career advancement inside companies. The fact that this is abused by otherwise incompetent people is unfortunate, but good people need to understand and use this knowledge to advance also.

I think incompetent people (Management above) get abused by other incompetent people. When the circle starts, is the slow decay of the Company.

Spot on. One look at LinkedIn posts tells you everything about this “paperclip” optimization.

Opposite view

“smart and gets things done”

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...

When it’s time to interview, interviewers ask for results. That’s the entire “R” in answering interview questions in STAR format.

I’ve seen people spin Results in their favor within a company, where you can validate them, but for interviews it seems nearly impossible to validate.

Does anyone have techniques for that?

My job as a developer (until 2020) was to ensure the project or major feature I was over was done on time, on budget and meets requirements.

My job was not to go out and sale the product whether the product made $0 or $1 million dollars I had no control over.

The other thing I need to communicate is that I am capable of working at the level of scope, impact and ambiguity required for the job.

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html

I didn’t understand that myself until a decade ago. Before the gatekeeping starts (not by you), yes it got me through a 5 round behavioral loop at BigTech (AWS’s consulting department) and after leaving, now a “staff software architect” at a third party consulting company (both full time direct hires).

> ensure the project or major feature I was over was done on time, on budget and meets requirements.

The issue with this is that the bounds are drawn by someone else, the best you can do is 'meet them'. No one really cares if you save 90% of the budget, it was already allocated and will just get funnelled off somewhere else. It doesn't matter if it's early, because they probably didn't need it until they said they needed it, and 'meets requirements' is a given.

Compare this to a sales job or something more outward facing, a sales person might have targets but can blow them out of the water with some luck and skill (and get paid commission). They aren't operating within someone else's small framework, but a free variable against the open market.

It’s not that simple. It’s a negotiation up front if you are responsible for a feature/project. You talk to the stakeholders and let them prioritize what’s most important - budget, time, requirements - and you talk to them about the tradeoffs.

Your leverage comes from working on larger more impactful projects that have more impact and scope.

As a mid level employee I was responsible for smaller projects, now I’m responsible for larger projects with multiple “work streams”, more people under me and closer to the “business” and sales”

Also equally thankless when one team meets all goals/deadlines for their small product but the rest of the department is a dumpster fire — making the entire product suite unusable.

The other team is outside of my circle of influence and control.

But at the end of the day, did money get put in my account?

Course language:

https://youtu.be/3XGAmPRxV48?si=ibxkZ2_GYaITjiWt

I like to call that not being on the critical path of company success: whenever you can, push to get your team onto that path, and if management can buy into OKR as methodology, which can help achieve valuable alignment (as long as they don't misapply OKRs for a regular "these are features we want").

I don't, except for trying to contact people at the job applicant's former workplace and ask "is this really what happened"? (I wouldn't do)

I'm thinking that as long as someone finishes projects you start, it's easy to take credit for all of it from start to finish, when interviewing elsewhere?

I’m not saying lie and I never have. But when you change jobs, you control the narrative.

At your current job, your history of both successes and failures are well known, even if the failures happened early on and you learned from them. You never get a second chance to make a first impression

You can't practically validate it.

This is why it's important not just to ask about previous results. This is also why you see so many "solve this random programming problem" type interviews - they hope (wrongly) that it's less fakeable and somehow gives you an idea of how they will do in the future.

I don't find those particularly useful (like many), i instead try to understand how they think and approach things.

If this is a manager, for example, give them real organizational problems you've seen, and ask them how they would approach them, and walk you through their thought process, etc. You will often start to get "weird" answers with fakers or spinners, especially if you start to ask about anything related to performance or improving it (again, in my experience, YMMV, etc). One idle theory (IE i don't claim this is correct in any meaningful way) i had about this was that a lot of the didn't actually know how to help people or organizations, so if you force them to try to explain how they approach it for real, they start to fall apart. Instead of thinking about that stuff, they were thinking about how to progress or spin things for themselves. Meanwhile, good managers often spend lots of time thinking about how to help their people and organizations, and whether they are good or bad or whatever, it's not a topic that tends to trip them up.

For IC's, for example, you can get them to teach you something real they learned on the project they claim was a great success, ideally a thing that helped make the project successful. In my experience, this also will lead you fairly quickly to discover if they believe they are smarter than everyone else. The best people i ever found (in retrospect) were usually the ones who would teach me things they learned, but usually not things they came up with. They would teach me something they learned from someone else during the project, but was still critical to the success of the project.

Everything in an interview is, of course, fakeable with enough preparation. The above things for sure - but it is harder for people to fake approaches, fake teaching, and spin results successfully all at the same time, etc.

You start to get into the "this person is in the 99% percentile of all fakers" kind of thing that is probably not worth trying to solve ;)

> This is also why you see so many "solve this random programming problem" type interviews - they hope (wrongly) that it's less fakeable and somehow gives you an idea of how they will do in the future.

Whether they can code or not isn’t indicative of whether they can get things done. The last time I had an open req last year, the coding part was ChatGPT simple. It was for a green field initiative. I needed to be able to throw any random thing that came up - a complex deliverable - and know they could run with it - talk to the stakeholders, disambiguate the problem space, notice XYProblems, come back with a design and a proposal and learn what they needed to learn with a little direction. I needed a real “senior developer”. Not someone that “codez real gud”.

I actually turned down a “smart” candidate who was laid off from the AWS EC2 service team I think dealing with Elastic Block Storage (EC2 encompasses more than just VMs).

I knew he could code. But he didn’t show me any indication that he could deal with the ambiguity on the level I needed or the soft skills.

Agreed fully.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...

Eh? Not really a rebuttal, but more of a hopeless extension that

1. Smart and GTD is good enough hiring criteria

2. but for Unicorns™, you need to source and hire hyper-productive visionaries who nurture the right culture on top of having #1

And he says you get #2 by luck or polling friends for the alpha 10x developers they know.

Not very actionable, but hard to disagree that it seems to be a common denominator.

That’s for low level employees not thought leaders ;)

I've seen this so much... It's quite disheartening when you are the actual expert or most-experienced person in terms of that "thing", but that's not how office politics works.

What's worse is that when the "unapproved" person wants to start some sort of new project or initiative, they get constant push back in the form of "it's risky" or "where will we find the funding". Seen it 3 times in my 2 decade career where the "approved" person then X-amount of time later suggests the same thing and magically it's a good idea and funding appears out of thin air.

You know how it went - they mentioned it to the right person on the golf course (or these days, at a cycling run).

Same here. A closely related phenomenon is something I called the Information Week effect.

Information Week used to be a paper magazine. Managers who made decisions about technology projects but who didn't really know anything about technology loved IW and read it on the crapper regularly. In my career I would routinely pitch ideas for new projects that would get no traction until 5 years later when the same idea showed up in IW. After that happened it was always easy to get funding. But by that time I was usually bored with the idea and on to the next thing.

Was the idea sold the same way? You obviously need to get buy in across the org, which in itself can be a daunting task and requires you to create various pitch decks, project plans etc.

> useless executives

Thank you for saying it. After decades in software, I've developed the perspective the people at the top (of medium to large companies, not small ones) are actually bottom feeders and most software companies could function without having a c-suite.

In all the years of this profession, it's as if software engineers cannot be optimized enough. Yet, when has a company taken a look at middle to upper management and tried to optimize that? They don't, or do it in name only. Those people are the financial and emotional ticks of an organization.

I’ve been at several of the top tech companies and my observation is that most (though not all) the top executives do merit their positions. In terms of breadth of knowledge and perspective, depth on some number of key topics, and overall drive and impatience for inaction.

I could choose to be more cynical in order to feel better about myself, but I accept that if I was the quarterback at college, they’re the NFL.

I agree. I've known execs who wouldn't be out of place in a Dilbert cartoon or were otherwise painful (and heard stories about others). But, by and large, they're pretty savvy and often work hours/travel to customers, etc. to a degree that many people here would absolutely hate.

Google and read the "Gervais Principle" by my friend Vekat.

You're welcome and I'm sorry! :)

I would add:

If there's anything worse than feeling bad at work, it's feeling bad because of not getting a job.

Bad experiences at your workplace might make you want to quit without having another job offer lined up, and you might even feel good for the first 1-2 months.

But do not underestimate how soul crushing it is to look at your savings go down while having your bills always on the back of your mind, and being constantly ghosted or rejected, for months, even for positions that sound literally aimed at your skillset or are basically the same of your last role.

Just, don't.

Also: If you move to a different location, be aware of how that would affect your ability to rely on your network if you need to find a job.

Even if you work primarily remotely and your network is mainly working at on-site jobs, you might need to rely on them at some point. And by the time your situation gets bad enough that you start seriously considering hybrid or on-site positions, you might not be able to relocate, so it would be as if you had no network at all.

I’ve been laid off twice over the past two years in 2023 and last year. Both times looking for a job was focused on two tracks - the type of job I wanted and the types of job (or contract) I didn’t want but was qualified for.

The main goal was to get any job that would pay enough to keep me from going through savings or in 2023, savings or my three and half months severance.

I wasn’t going to let my ego get in the way. In 2023, I got Amazoned and wasn’t too proud to get any old enterprise CRUD job.

Luckily, it didn’t resort to that either time and both times I found the job I wanted within three weeks.

> I wasn’t going to let my ego get in the way.

Also important.

The rest of this comment is not aimed at you specifically because it doesn't apply to your situation (being laid off), so when I say "you" I mean in the generic sense:

---

When leaving voluntarily, if you realize it was a grave mistake, don't let your ego prevent you from getting back in touch with your previous employer and asking if there's any chance to work for them again, assuming you're prepared to stay with them for an even longer time (this is the important part). The first time you make a mistake like this, it's likely due to lack of experience, you didn't realize how good you had it, or you didn't know it could get this bad, and you learned the hard way.

If it happens a second time tho, that's on you.

Also, remember that taking unpaid leave for a few months might be an option depending where you live. Maybe your thoughts of leaving are just because of burnout and all you need is to take a longer break.

But yeah, first priority is getting a job that lets you stop running through your savings. After you have that and can stop worrying about bills, you can walk your way up again from there with a clear mind.

honestly, that’s terrible advice. Anyone working at a big tech (or even not that big) for a few years should be able to save enough money to get some freedom to change jobs, even in a bad market. Being jobless might be soul crushing if you don’t prepare yourself but staying in a place where you get burnt out is a lot, lot worse, having been in both situations.

For me the best advice is to not think you are rich just because you are making >150-200k/year. Save money and live frugally

It's good advice for young people. I remember not getting my contract renewed during the dot bomb/911 and it was a soul crushing 6 months. I had to move to another city for work and took a 40% pay cut. Now that I'm pretty comfortable in my finances, it's important to take a sabbatical when you need it. Right now I'm so burned out I don't like programming, even on personal projects, so that can be pretty detrimental to my career. I decided to take a sabbatical. I gave 5.5 months notice as to not put anyone out, but I'm going to try to enjoy it. Tech is generally soul crushing these days, so pick your poison.

There are 2.8 - 4 million developers in the US. How many do you think are working at BigTech?

No matter how much money you save, it’s senseless to go through the money unnecessary. Jobs in 2025 don’t just fall out of the sky. Burn out is a choice. Do your work, go home. Start interviewing.

Yep. During the tech boom of the last 15 years or so, I think a lot of tech people got used to leaving a job for whatever reason and having a new one lined up the next week. That is absolutely not the norm for professional jobs and is almost certainly not the norm for tech jobs today. I know people who were laid off during dot-bomb and never got another equivalent job again. I was extremely lucky in that regard in that I landed a good (better) if lower-paying job in about a month through my network.

> The cost of praise is small. The value to others is inestimable.

Cannot overstate this point. Many people I've worked with (myself included) have suffered from imposter syndrome at one point or another. Hearing from your manager or someone you respect that you've done a good job often makes a world of difference.

I often wonder why it's so hard for some managers to provide praise. It's almost as if they didn't want to feed egos out of fear.

Fear and a scarcity mindset, many people treat things as a zero-sum game when in practice the sum is usually greater than the individual parts.

The advice in the article is great, and much of it resonates with what I have seen over my career as well.

Praise is only valuable when scarce.

US-style "great job" praise for fulfilling basic tasks devalues actual positive feedback and should be avoided.

Failing to acknowledge actual great work is also detrimental.

There's a balancing act and it's hard to get right. It also depends on the person.

I would say: Praise is only valuable when honest (rather than scarce).

Praise should not be seen as "money": the problem is not the amount.

Praise should be seen as a feedback tool, i.e. getting to know the truth of how valuable the work is. Feedback without honesty is not usable.

Both are true, as praise is absolutely a currency that can be devalued like any other.

Given with abandon, even honestly, it loses its value to both the disponer and recipient. That's something that many in management roles never appreciate and is one of the reasons that some give it too sparingly. They've found that abundant praise loses its utility and come to the incorrect conclusion that scant praise is best.

Honestly it can just feel weird. Like when I praise someone I feel like I’ve put both me and the other person into an emotionally vulnerable state. Sometimes it feels more comfortable to remain detached and “professional”. Could just be my own neuroses though

It can be a even real mutual feeling but still there is massive added value in such praise for both giver and receiver. Depends on how its done obviously.

I’d say that yes it adds huge value but that doesn’t necessarily make it easy to do

It's not easy. Depends on the culture where one grew up, too, and family values weigh a lot in this. But when people from many different backgrounds get together to work, praise is the kind of thing that prevent networks from falling apart.

Sure it’s just the original question is “I don’t get why they don’t do it” and “because it’s hard” is the answer

I once had a boss who used to say (and lived by) "the absence of criticism ought to be praise enough". His thinking was that employees aren't children who need to be praised for just doing their job.

Did he consider an absence of criticism to be praise of his management technique?

There was no absence of criticism of his management technique. In fact, the topic came up as part of that critism.

I make a habit of always praising my colleagues when they help me or deserve it. It has made work so much more enjoyable.

Can you explain what you mean by your second sentence? Is it that your colleagues became more friendly?

I can't speak for the original commenter, but for me, it serves to remind me that I'm working with some very talented engineers, which feels good. Plus I think it helps to build trust, which is useful when you're not seeing eye-to-eye on some technical or product issues.

Of course. I often thank them publicly for their assistance when i ask(ed) for their help. When i started praising my colleagues i noticed two different changes.

I myself became more friendly and more sociable around my colleagues. Giving compliments feels nice. The other was that colleagues indeed became more friendly and respectful both towards me and each other. Meetings became more friendly. Getting help was easier.

His take on insecure people not giving others enough space is also an interesting observation and well phrased. It's the inverse situation, and the symmetry works in a fascinating way.

First, I absolutely love your username, 10/10! On top of others' impact on you when they give you some kudos or encouragement I'd like to add that [authentically and honestly] offering those kudos and encouragement to someone else also feels pretty incredible, compounding the effect.

And it really is important to reiterate the unintended, outsized impact your positive comments can have on the recipient. I've personally had 3-4 different people who I've known or worked with throughout my life come up to me years later and tell me how some [to me] small, offhand positive comment or compliment I'd given them had completely changed the course of their thinking on something or had kept echoing in their mind ever since.

I had had no idea until they told me.

So I guess it's also equally important, if somebody else has positively impacted you like that, to let them know what they did! It will likely completely surprise and encourage them.

My career isn't quite as long as his, but I concur with all the sentiments.

I will note that some of these are easier to say in hind-sight than do at the time.for example There's a lot of pressure on you in your early career to prioritize work over family.

I would add the following; if you have the choice, work at a place you like to go to, doing work you like to do, either people you can grow to work.

I know that's not practical advice for most, but if you are in such a place don't trade it away just for money or status.

And if you come across such an environment and are offered a spot the consider it carefully, even if it isn't the highest paying offer.

For those who may not know, Patterson is the father of RISC CPU architecture and with John Hennessey (former Stanford president) the author of the standard intro computer architecture text.

> Lazowska and I had a hard time finding other leading computer scientists to join us out of a well-founded fear that criticizing DARPA might make it much harder to get DARPA funding. While I had DARPA funding for the prior 20 years, for the next two projects after that op-ed I needed to learn how to raise funds from industry to replace the substantial DARPA funding of the past. I also lost a consulting role from a company with ties to DARPA due to my stance.

I really like that he says that sometimes principles have costs, but he advocates principles anyway.

By contrast, the LinkedIn story version would end more like, "...and that dog turned out to be the head of DARPA, and gave me a big raise!"

“Have a job you love” -

As someone who has basically never had the chance to work in an environment I’d say I “love”, I’m not sure how to take away any sort of lesson.

Sounds great on the surface, but how many people are afforded the privilege of selecting a job based on what they’re passionate about?

That probably means you're not in the right field of work. I also have never had a tech job I love, but work part-time as a SAR EMT which I do love.

Software pays the bills, but I'm working towards being able to retire at ~45-50 and will work in pre-hospital medicine for the rest of my useful life thereafter. I'd do it for free (and often do, as a volunteer).

Might you be interested in combining the two fields? If you’ve got an eye on tech consulting/startups in the EMT space, give me a shout out. My email is my HN profile at gmail.

A lot of advice shown here isn't really actionable, and is a more sophisticated version of "get born in a developed country, don't be unattractive". Of course I'd like to have a job I love, the problem is that such jobs are extremely difficult to find. Of course I'd like to focus on building relationships with people, the problem is, I'm an outcast and my personality is compatible with very few. Of course I'd like to focus on important things in life, the problem is, life is inherently pointless, so there's no objective way of telling what is important and what is not.

“don't be unattractive” is a very actionable advice which most nerds ignore.

> the problem is, I'm an outcast and my personality is compatible with very few.

Are you willing to change? Our personality isn't set in stone, pretty much the opposite. Every social skilled person had to learn it at some point.

I second this. Everyone should strive to be somewhat physically fit, dress well and eat well. It's a huge psychological boost. Like Deon used to say, "look good, feel good, play good."

Walking 30 minutes a day in the outdoors when permissible gives me huge mood improvements. I can definitely feel the difference on the days when I don't walk. Buy some button down collar shirts, shower when you leave the house, get a decent haircut, simple stuff. Makes a world of difference on how you are perceived and therefore treated as well.

> “don't be unattractive” is a very actionable advice which most nerds ignore.

Half of the population needs to be below median. No matter how you rearrange things, you can't escape this basic fact. This means that if all women get a boob job, we won't be living in a world of beautiful women, but rather the expected boob size will go up. It's super strange to me that so few people understand this basic fact of statistics.

> Are you willing to change? Our personality isn't set in stone, pretty much the opposite. Every social skilled person had to learn it at some point.

I think we're talking about two different problems here. I don't have issues getting people to like me, I have issues liking them back.

> It's super strange to me that so few people understand this basic fact of statistics

You are misunderstanding attractiveness. We could get to a situation where 100% of men are unattractive to women, actually, some places are very close. Men find much more than 50% of women attractive while women think a much smaller % of men are an eligible partner. There is no median involved in sexual attraction.

You're trying to find nerdy ways to maintain hopelessness or something. Attractiveness is not a relative scale, if the entire population became more attractive, the "median" would more attractive .... but I hate to even engage in this overly nerdish reasoning. You're making it seem like you have an intellectually superior position by saying "It's super strange to me that so few people understand this basic fact of statistics", but I don't think your position would stand-up to a purely logical analysis as much as you think. The fact is, you can improve yourself and it has benefits so don't be so invested in saying its not true, energy is probably better directed the other way. I

> Attractiveness is not a relative scale

It is.

I think you're both right,

Look here: 100 men and 100 women in their thirties in a small town. The men don't work out and don't study and learn new things.

Then a day they all start working out at the gym, cut their hair properly and spend time learning new things, getting more well paid remote jobs.

This will increase the number of relationships in that small town! (I think)

Before, some of the women were singles because they couldn't find any attractive men. After, they had many attractive men to choose between, although 50% of the men are still below average among the men in that town.

But the men as a group, improved compared to the women in the town.

> This will increase the number of relationships in that small town! (I think)

The problem is, in real life we're observing exactly the opposite. The most developed societies where people are the most educated, self-aware, hygienic, etc. are also the societies where loneliness is on the rise.

I'd like to point to an analogy: some years ago, getting a college degree was sure way to secure a successful career. Many people rushed to get themselves educated. Did all these people get the jobs they expected? No, simply the bar went up, and now you need a Master's degree to flip burgers

That's interesting. Turns out that more women than men go to university:

"Nationwide, women comprised 58% of all college students in 2020, up from 56.6% six years earlier"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/08/07/wome...

(That's a big difference, almost 50% more women)

The men who didn't go to university, will to these women tend to look less attractive, which should mean:

fewer relationships forming.

It's the opposite to my 100 men and women example: The women started learning new things and making more money, not the men o.O

Well said. I tried and bailed on LinkedIn about ten years ago because so much was forced happy-talk like this article. I think this author is writing earnestly but there is a load of pressure on everyone to think and speak this way even though it makes zero sense for their specific cases. I think it may be called "toxic positivism" in that context.

I really want to get off LinkedIn for this same reason. The happy-speak is so nauseating. The only reason I stay on is so recruiters can find me, but would be great to hear more of your experience in the job market without it.

Pretty bad, overall. I got diddlysquat out of LinkedIn when I was job hunting 10+ years ago but then I got nothing out of my other leads, either. I was old back then and older now so I am staying at my employer until I'm fired, retired, or expired. LI may be required these days to get anywhere, I just adjusted my travel plans so I didn't need to deal with its BS or the general Talent Acq/HR gauntlet required to get past square one. Probably not helpful to you but there it is...

I mean this in a respectful way so it's not personal or anything as it might sound.

Isn't this kind of a loser mindset, though? It's a mentality of making excuses and our culture has made that a fashionable thing but what about taking a more active, less victimized role in your life (not just you specifically but anyone with this mindset)? Also, saying "life is inherently pointless" is just a nerdy way to miss the point.

> Isn't this kind of a loser mindset, though?

Yes, what's wrong with that? Life is miserable for vast majority of people. That's the harsh truth.

> but what about taking a more active, less victimized role in your life (not just you specifically but anyone with this mindset)?

Well, it's true that you can only get anything in life by working for it, but doing so isn't exclusive with admitting that the game is rigged. I'm not saying to just give up and do nothing, I just don't like the attitude that everything is possible, thus every failure is the individual's fault, and it's never simply external factors at play. For example, I got a good job because I worked hard for it and I happened to graduate exactly during software craze. Someone a few years younger doesn't have the same opportunities despite putting the same amount of hard work. To the same tune, I don't have a very active social life because at some point I lost some lottery and I can't magically change that no matter how much I effort I put. When I was born, I received some privileges, but also some unfair limitations, and that's how we roll.

> Also, saying "life is inherently pointless" is just a nerdy way to miss the point.

For thousands of years people way smarter than us were trying to find the point of life, and still cannot agree on anything, so I think that saying that life is pointless is at least useful for practical purposes.

My job allows me to exchange labor for money to support my addictions to food and shelter and my passions.

I can’t muster up passion for any for profit company

There are plenty of interesting jobs in the public sector or in other mission-driven organizations.

My motto is dont hate what you do.

Doesn't mean I need to love it.

Telling people they should love their job is elitist. It looks down upon everyone in society who isn't in one of the few positions to "love their job" and get paid well for it.

It depends on many things (country, market, skills, etc.) but I suspect the set is pretty large. But it requires actively looking and optimizing for doing what you love.

As a personal data point, after finishing my PhD and being sick of having no money I optimized for most money under a constraint of the job not being absolutely intolerable. Which, in hindsight, was not ideal. Over the next 25 years I switched to optimizing for the most interesting job under a constraint of money just being enough to pay my basic bills. This included passing on an offer from a hedge fund that would pay three times as much but seemed pretty soul crushing. Optimizing for what I love tends to eventually work well on money, too.

So I would absolutely not slam a door on a job in a bad market because I hate it, but I would keep looking. My 2c.

Maybe you’re like me. I love working on things but I don’t like working with other people. As such, there’s never going to be a way for me to love my job.

I read the tips and thought, "Well, good for him I guess?" It is easy for very successful people to write homilies like this but what worked for them may not/will not work for most. This guy clearly has a few more brain cells than the average person and was in good environments. To his credit, he made the most of them and contributed greatly to his field. When I hear people mumblefrotz about "passion" my skepticism ramps to 11. This is the stuff of management consultants and motivational speakers. A very few can write their own ticket, the rest of us have to make do with what we can get.

In my case, I wish I had worked much harder and with more focus in my youth and early to mid career. Whatever time I did take off I should have spent differently. Hell, I should be doing something more worthwhile right now. Can't go back of course but I expect to think that way even in my last moments.

Why do you wish you had worked harder?

I could have made contributions in line with the support and advantages I have been given.

Some great stuff here's my thoughts on 3 of the 16 points

>Choose happiness

This one stuck out to me because recently I've been struggling with some stuff but making sure I had some routines that made me happy (having food at consistent times, a little morning routine with a walk/yoga) has made me more composed and lets me go after things.

>It’s not how many projects you start; it’s how many you finish.

Juggling a few too many open projects right now. Some of them that would be quite cool to show off are just stuck because I don't find the time and they aren't in a presentable state yet.

>Look for the positive opportunities

Surprisingly enough this is about how he got together with his wife even though it's in the career-focused segment. The story is sweet though and repeats the oft-repeated advice of making up after arguments.

> No one’s last words are, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

Rich people love saying this.

I bet there are some dudes who die penniless in a gutter who do wish they had a bit more money.

> And if you come across such an environment and are offered a spot the consider it carefully, even if it isn't the highest paying offer.

Also be aware that places aren't always what they seem.

Several times, I've made the big decision to go to the place I want to be, with the people I want to work with and learn from.

The majority of times, great things followed. But don't get overconfident. One really bad move can wipe out all the others.

If I had to pick some guidelines from my small number of data points:

* Avoid the places where everyone has to be a kind of salesperson or evangelist, even for something that should have merit. (Manipulators and liars will thrive, and corrupt.)

* Be cautious when considering going to a magnet for the privileged and status-seeking. (I actually had a great experience at one of them, and still think well of it, but most are mixed at best.)

* Listen carefully to your mentor-types, when they hint that a move you're considering is a bad move. (They might not want to discourage you in some dream. So they might pause, have a note in their voice of concern rather than enthusiasm, and say carefully-worded advice for how to do well there. But it's advice they shouldn't have to give, unless something is very wrong with the place.)

Numbers 8 and 14 resonated with me. I worked with people who thought so highly of themselves and with those who actively undermined me. For the first I learned to let them rant and I might ask a clarification but after their lengthy polemic I make it a point to say I disagree. Albeit in a monotone non confrontational voice as possible. For the later, I can only pray to keep my composure as the ridiculousness of their attacks is an affront to logic, civility, and basic decency. I also remind myself there is a reason why this person was hired and I will only be wasting my health trying to fight the powers that be. I can only hope to avoid being collateral damage as their behavior will eventually cause their career to self destruct.

Sounds like you are thinking of yourselves highly as well. Early in my career as a tech lead I had some junior with your mindset in my team. Maybe my ideas weren’t perfect at that times but that junior sabotaged everything with I guess the mindset you described above. So my takeaways is nowadays to identify such non team players as early as possible and get them off the team asap.

very cool read although I wish one of these days I click on a link and it talks about how someone overcame a cult, being doxxed etc and finished their project or ended up getting a PhD so I can believe there is hope

I can't help you with belief and I struggle with it myself at times but there is always hope. Next focus on manifesting your hopes into reality and modifying then in response to everything you learn doing so! :)

Hey bro I was looking through your profile and it seems like you’re in a rough spot. Send me an email, I want to see if I can help. It’s in my profile

> Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.

This is a great one that I’ve really taken this to heart this last year. It’s become fashionable in recent years to think that habit building, discipline and ‘systems’ are the key to success, but I’ve been finding more and more that passion and intrinsic motivation are far more powerful. This is unfortunately unmarketable though since you generally either have intrinsic motivation for a specific thing or you don’t.

Nice article. Thanks for posting.

I'm almost 15 years into my work and my favorites are,

> “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” > Fortune favors the bold

If you're not naturally born with it, it requires you to push yourself out of your comfort zone, but once you experience it working, you'll feel Übermensch, as Friedrich Nietzsche describes it.

“There are no losers on a winning team, and no winners on a losing team.”

Doesn’t this go against Stack Ranking very team twice a year and pushing out the “subjective” lowest performer ? Why should anyone on the team work for the team when the stack ranking disincentivizes team cohesion.

Indeed. My experience in a large company is that you get a promotion faster by joining a low skills, low performing team than joining a very successful team.

> Until recently, one company had a highly visible 10-step technical ladder, which led some engineers to pick projects that were the safest path to getting promoted by avoiding high-risk, high-reward projects. In my opinion, that behavior was bad for their careers and bad for the company.

I won't ask what company that is, since maybe there was a good reason not to say.

But is there a new fashion about this (edit: moving away from the now-familiar promo ladder gaming), spreading to other companies?

If so, is it genuinely to improve effectiveness, or something less laudable to workers (e.g., to reduce staffing costs)?

I've seen stuff like this at several companies.

It's created by HR to improve "fairness" and to help certain groups find clearer paths to promotion. But OP nails it in finding that it's often used as a "checklist" for people to do the bare minimum and then point to that when demanding promotion. It's rather gross IMHO.

As a retired manager in tech for 20 years this is a way to get the promotion hunters out of your face. There are many only interested in titles. I don't consider them good hires but man do they rise up in the ranks and they end driving the company down.

IME. Id say it is about 50/50, the chaff from the wheat. I think this has been true thru history.

> They believe there is nothing to learn by asking for feedback, which leads to them making disastrous decisions. Whether or not my diagnosis is accurate, I’d steer clear of such people, as in my experience catastrophe is just around the corner.

> At the opposite end of the personality spectrum are insecure people, who I’d also avoid, as they tend to see credit as a zero-sum game, needing to diminish you to bolster themselves.

You avoid them in situations in which you don't think you can influence them to be more like you think would be better for them (and you)?

Can you sometimes influence them?

Depends.

For the insecure, yes, but in a way you take on a mantle of parent or mentor where you repeatedly compliment and reassure them, allowing them to fail and seeing its not about them or their character but just another problem to solve. It helps when they see you fail publicly and handle it with grace. This often takes years, but it can work. But sometimes it doesn't, as if the psychological damage is well outside the workplace.

For the grandiose, I've never had that experience. It could be they have narcissistic, sociopathic, or psychopathic tendencies. It could also be from some other neurodivergent influence, in which case all you can do is work around them, not with them. If you are put in a position where you are the sacrificial goat, quit. Leave. There be dragons.

> It helps when they see you fail publicly and handle it with grace.

I like that mindset, it also removes some nervousness before presenting or performing something :-)

> could be they have narcissistic

That's what I thought too when skimming the article. I though it was odd that the author didn't seem to recognize this, but instead wrote about "people who think they are smarter".

Only lesson 16 is extremely important when you’re out of money and luck. Sure, you want to practise the other 15, but you can’t.

Was this actually written by a human being? I made it halfway through with eyes glazing and gave up. I would love to hear from the human that wrote this.

Are you suggesting that this is llm-generated? I don’t get that vibe… what makes you think that?

Gut instinct perhaps. Maybe the author is best placed to answer. Happy to believe there is a human there. Just have a few questions.

This is David Patterson; he's a giant of computer science ...

I know, but it looked like a load of fortune cookies were cracked open and someone added a word salad

Greatest cookie banner I’ve ever seen.

> 13. “Audentes Fortuna iuvat.” (Fortune favors the bold).

And luck favours the prepared mind.

Thanks for sharing that was insightful

This is a thought-provoking article for sure.

> At the opposite end of the personality spectrum are insecure people, who I’d also avoid, as they tend to see credit as a zero-sum game, needing to diminish you to bolster themselves.

As a self-proclaimed insecure person, I take a lot of issue with this statement, putting it mildly. I have no idea where Patterson got this idea, but it is, of course, utter nonsense. To write off insecurity like this is as much an ableist statement as any, as if you have to be confident (from the start!) about anything you do. It is almost an immediate write-off of people in the autism spectrum, with attention deficit disorders, people with mental or physical disorders, with anxiety disorders (like myself), "neurospicy" people (includes me as well) to name a few, or just anyone with traits that make them feel that it's hard for them to fit in.

I wholeheartedly agree with the advice to focus on people and to "choose happiness" but this is no strategy for dealing with adversity. I have, of course, no idea what struggles Patterson's had to face in his life (we all have them, for sure), but I'd suggest reading up on Kristin Neff's works on self-compassion instead of dismissing insecure people like this.

I will propose the opposite. Rather than to "avoid working closely with them" and exclude them further (feeding their insecurities), foster relationships with insecure people, and foster your own insecurities. Listen to them (the people, the insecurities), as they can tell you what you have been so sure about that you may have to reconsider.

Highly insecure about posting this, fearing the backlash, but there you go.

People often prefer to see those who are similar to them in a positive light, since that’s their primary frame of reference. Some struggle to grasp that someone with a completely different perspective or set of social skills can have something valuable to offer. I see this most in hiring practices where hiring managers ask highly personal questions and claim it is to check your "cultural fit", but they are probing for people similar to them. I also see it in how people treat others they’ve just met that are from a completely different background, there is typically a faint form of aggression for literally no reason.

> At the opposite end of the personality spectrum are insecure people, who I’d also avoid, as they tend to see credit as a zero-sum game, needing to diminish you to bolster themselves.

Like many sweeping broad statements, it is entirely useless to base decisions on. The world isn't black and white, there are shades of gray all around.

props for writing this out

i know it couldn’t be easy

we have limited time in this world

i’d rather spend it with the strong and confident, who need me less than weak and insecure

it’s not fair

it’s not right

but that’s the structure of the world

i don’t like hearing well aktually, because for every one time they are right (and they are right occasionally) i’ve had to listen to to them whine where they have low context

don’t waste peoples time with your insecurity

don’t help the weak

help yourself

You have to help yourself before you help the weak.

You wrote multiple paragraphs denigrating his point in response to criticism not even specifically addressed at you — but which nevertheless triggered your insecurities.

Do you think that behavior rebuts his point?

I hear you, but it's not other people's job to deal with your insecurities. You have to fake it until you make it, to use a cliche. Be mindful when your brain starts being unfairly critical, pause and think, "hey wait a minute, I'm doing better than most people on this earth, so I must be doing something right." It takes a while, but you have to work at it.

Also, try to get out of the habit of being overly critical of other people. That habit will usually extend you being critical of you. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and extend the same courtesy to yourself.

Understand you deserve to take up the space you exist in and you deserve to breathe the air you breathe.

Best of luck.

brilliant. write a medium paper on this, very eloquently put

> Also, try to get out of the habit of being overly critical of other people

What makes you think he is?

He wrote:

> people with mental or physical disorders, with anxiety disorders (like myself)

From that does not follow that he would have a habit of being overly critical.

Did you blindly start to believe in what the article author wrote, or how were you thinking

(Sorry btw Clubber if I sounded annoyed. You were trying to post helpful advice, that's nice. At the same time, from my perspective, there's misunderstandings going on.)

You're not completely wrong, but you're not completely right either.

If you're insecure, and you respond by criticizing everything everyone else does so that you feel better about yourself, then I don't want you on my team and I don't want you in my life.

But if you're insecure, and you don't tear others down, then sure, welcome, neurodivergent or not.

I think this is what Patterson was getting at - it's the behavior, not the insecurity itself. If you don't behave like that, then your insecurity may be painful to yourself (and you may need help for it), but it's not destructive to those around you.

tl;dr brilliant baby boomer who was at the right place, at the right time with the right brain was given great opportunities in life. He then highlights his unwavering moral compass when taking positions that would impact him and his family in a limited way financially.

Good for you bud.

Now let me return to real life as a millennial of average intelligence in 2025 tech faang.

this is just boomer talk, I am sorry but todays world is different to the one he grew up in. We face challenges that makes prioritizing 100% on family extremely hard.

I mean two can play the poor me game. My uncle grew up half starving in a shack in Alabama during the depression then signed up for WWII and served in the Pacific Theater. After that, he volunteered to fight in Korea, "because I needed the money." When he came back he used the GI bill to get an education and became a teacher.

Boomers got drafted to fight in Vietnam and a lot of them died and had pretty rough patches if they made it back. They lived through probably the worst inflationary period in the 1970s along with the oil shock, and got replaced by computers and offshoring in the 80s and 90s. Their crushing factory jobs got outsourced and most of the farmers had to sell off their multi-generational family farms because massive agribusiness made it so they couldn't compete. A lot of them couldn't take it and killed themselves.

Go back further in time and it gets worse. I'm not saying you don't have it rough, but put it in perspective. Lots of generations, including the Boomers, had it rough.

Good observations.

Things were not very uniform 50 years ago either.

Patterson was already out of college in 1972, Howard Hughes was still alive and was the richest man in the US, but Hughes was reclusive and accomplished more without attracting attention, compared to someone like Musk in a similar position today.

But Hughes Tool and Hughes Aircraft were only somewhat similar to working for Tesla or Spacex. This was the '70's and Hughes had made so much money decades earlier that his manufacturing operations were much more old-fashioned and he provided intentionally better jobs and security for engineers and workers than alternative contemporary employers like oil or automotive. Everything like that was still expected to be "career for life" if you wanted it to, with constant advancement in pay at least, if not job title.

All these companies had tons of applicants so like today the vast majority of highly qualified candidates never had a chance.

I was around back then so I'm officially a boomer according to current guidelines.

But I was not quite out of high school around 1972, so it was a little too late to be very similar at all.

This would be an exact quote in that long gone time frame, from millions of people my age, allow me to embellish:

"(1976) I am sorry but todays world is different to the one he grew up in. We face challenges that makes prioritizing 100% on family extremely hard."

IOW, this is what millions of the younger "boomers" sounded like by that time. Talking about fortunate people only a few years older than themselves. Not 50 years older at the time like Patterson is now.

Being extremely aware of things like this for 50 full years myself, people like Patterson with his background and philosophy, I really have always admired more than anything else.

It's easy for me to appreciate high-performers thriving in a more flourishing landscape without envy.

For one thing, that can set an example of what it is supposed to be like.

It's not my fault that the economy had been destroyed while I was still a teenager, and those who were already adults had opportunities that were never going to reappear.

And it's not their fault either, they were just barely adults at the time.

I figured I could whine over the roll of the dice, or focus on the reality of the situation.

Edit: No doubt I was born into an equally prosperous time as Patterson, that's what makes me "officially" a boomer. It was just too good to last once the crooks came into political power.

> this is just boomer talk, I am sorry but todays world is different to the one he grew up in. We face challenges that makes prioritizing 100% on family extremely hard.

The hallmark of (Gen Z and Millenial?) talk, if we are doing stereotypes, is victimhood.

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