Attention is your scarcest resource (2020)
benkuhn.net
benkuhn.net
Where's the waste in what you're describing?
If all this stuff is going on then it doesn't sound wasteful at all to me.
Also sometimes this same network that creates insights creates things like when I couldn't remember the lyrics to Mingulay Boat Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29l90zcoTBo) so I bopped around the house for a week singing "Heel ya ho boys/Let her go boys/She's a vampire/Set her on fire" so it's not all diamonds in the mine
So whenever you spend attention you spend life time.
This helps me now and then to put away my phone and just live.
What activities, in your taxonomy, count as "just living"?
Reading a novel? Reading a trashy magazine? Washing dishes? Building a model boat? Conversation? Staring out the window?
You know I can't think of any reason why phone activities aren't also living.
To be clear I’m talking about the mindless scrolling many of us do, if you’re reading a dissertation on battery chemistry or something on your phone I find that’s a different story.
It is not a bad thing, just all about balance. If you are focused and consistently dedicate even little time to some activities you can achieve incredible results.
Sometimes doing nothing is more productive than attempting to fill the gaps with meaningless noise
Watching TV does. People do a lot of that too. Anything to save observing things as they are or reflecting on them.
(So I don't use actually use my phone, I use a computer. Same effect.)
But that's not new:
> Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius—set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words, that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness. Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
So the problem appears when you start to feel that you spend your life on things you have to do, and you have very little time for things you want to do. This is something everybody experiences at some point.
For me, one of the most happy periods of my life was when I was working 4 days a week, for example. It gave me a lot of space to actually feel I'm living. It also gave me a slightly greater sense of control over my life, and the time to appreciate it. As for the type of activity, it's secondary.
post on HN.
It's OK, we're all mad here.
It's not possible for me to be emotionally invested in anything because I'm profoundly disappointed in life. I want a refund.
When nothing works, go for delusions (only if you're stable enough to not have them break apart the nature of your reality too much).
Also, go travel; be it on the other side of the city in a new coffee shop, in a new town for their town's day or sth, or in a new state/country/continent, travel somehow manages to shuffle the internals in one's brain enough to reboot to a different baseline; good trick for when current internal state is too meah.
Those are some heuristics I'm using for dealing with my own inner despair when it comes and they have only a sparse intersection with proper dealings of depression.
For example, we visit our local hospital every weekend to hand out magazines, books, and toys to people whose lives have been affected by an accident or illness. It's rewarding, and the group of volunteers changes each month, so you get to help others and meet new people. Helping others is also a great way to help yourself. Afterwards, we usually spend an hour or two socialising at a bar near the hospital. The doctors know us, and they sometimes join our table.
If that doesn't work either, exercise and therapy have worked for some of my friends. Having a personal trainer two or three times a week is often better than going to the gym on your own, and seeing a life coach or therapist once a week can really help you move forward.
(Only re-opened to comment this)
Maybe that works in huge companies, but most managers I have worked with are unlikely to agree with zero concurrency in software engineers :)
As a side note: I have actually a lot of attention (so it is not scarce at all) but not always at the thing that just needs to get done atm.
With less rewarding tasks, however, I would say attention and discipline are exactly what I wish I had more of. Writing documentation, listening to other people talking in calls, etc.
Basically when a task has JUST the right urgency and/or difficulty level, my ADD superpowers engage and I can Just Do It.
But anything outside of that I just get bored and instead build a tool to filter and enrich RSS feeds, because it tickles my brain the right way.
I can kinda force myself to focus, but not always.
About 10 years ago, when I consumed much less media content like Instagram or YouTube, everything was different in that I used to be an avid reader of fiction, which I now can hardly do without losing focus.
I have recently at the age of 45 went through the trouble of getting myself 'diagnosed'. The whole process and theory is IMHO all very hand-wavy. I guess it boils down to the fact, if one's neurotype is incompatible with one's life you can call it illness and you need to give it a name to get treatment/help. In my case I don't want to take drugs, however, I am more self aware, which helps a bit creating less damage to myself and others (hopefully). It helps a bit also giving it a name myself and looking for better tools. While I certainly had trouble in my youth (which mostly my mother covered for me), it wasn't that much of a trouble in between, but as I grow older m ability to compensate by staying up all night to wait for some focus is decreasing. Regarding distractions: for me it is rather HN than YT, because it keeps my brain busy without pushing too much trash and ads into it as a side effect.
I've been using e-ink readers for about a decade, starting with the first Kindle (the one with a tiny keyboard) and now a Kobo Libra Colour (because f. the dude who can rent a whole city for his wedding).
I can pick it up, open the cover and it's _exactly_ where I left it the last time.
It weighs exactly the same whether I'm reading a 100 page novella or the latest Brandon Sanderson 1500 page brick. My eyes don't get tired because the display only updates on page change and it can ONLY read books, there's no way for me to get distracted by a notification.
Now I've started to train my brain to pick up my e-reader when I have the urge to start doomscrolling some algorithm shit hole. I've gone through 4 books in the last month already =)
Not like this jerk, who's kid had to put time in his calendar for playing chess with him, because he was too interested in his own career https://www.pathtostaff.com/p/work-life-balance-slows-career...
Speedrunning a career at the expense of living the rest of your life just seems psychotic to me.
Not because I don't want to prioritize my kids, I really do and am fortunate enough to be in a position where I'm able to, but I often let them down because I end up getting distracted with work calls and forget commitments I've made to them.
Honestly having a calendar reminder pop up for me that I promised I'd play a game of Pokemon cards with my kid at a certain time let's me make sure that time stays free for them.
Just spend time with your kids, and block time on the calendar if it helps you do that. Then you kid won't feel the need to do that themselves.
Right now, I’m not really out of time or energy or attention, but I just don’t feel the interest to pursuit any intellectual hobbies that I used to pursuit. Occasionally I went back to them but quickly dropped after maybe a day. I used to work on hobbies every day, but nowadays? Maybe once per month.
Anyway, my advice is to NOT get a kid or even married if you have some strong intellectual interests. Family and kids are going to replace them as a new life style. It is not a worse one, neither a better one, just a different one. But you might never ever in this life get to drill deep into what you loved because you are going to lose the love — but not entirely, so you still regret.
If you're not interested, don't have them. I had one parent that enjoyed parenting and one that did not, and having a parent that doesn't want or like kids is so obvious to the kid. It definitely causes issues.
I have found that people don't know what to do with people who don't follow 'the life path', whatever path that is. Like here, I'm an oddball for not going all in on my career or caring that much. In general life, being an unmarried woman with no kids in my late 30s means people don't know where to 'put' you. A lot of parents in particular tend to think of childless people as children/adolescents, which is rather annoying.
One reason I don't seriously seek partnership is that I don't want to give up my time for intellectual and creative pursuits. The usual come back is 'if you find the right person...' but I can't move out of my state without losing healthcare and as a homosexual I've got a small dating pool. Partnering would require compromise on this, and I don't want to.
> Definitely already observe the being seen as children thing.
I'm hoping this gets better as I age. I have noticed people in their early to mid 30s, particularly those following 'the' life path, can get on a really high horse. But the longer people live, the more likely something is to happen to prove to them how fickle and random life is. (e.g. a child dying, a divorce, struggling with infertility, cancer, etc.)
I felt an urgency when I was younger that isn't there any more (while ironically being acutely aware I have less time).
I don't know if that is age, or that I feel more content with family life and so feel less need to chase other things, but it's a distinct difference.
Honestly, having kids seems to focus people and help them drive toward efficiency and priorities.
I think some people just slow down more than others when they age.
Alternatively, their priorities might simply be revealed by their preferences and energy allocation. Like the people who want to be very physically fit, but when it’s time to work out they can’t find the motivation.
Speaking of fitness, 40s is when lifestyle and health choices start to catch up to people. The cumulative impact of diet, sleep, exercise, and choices like alcohol consumption start to appear in the 40s or even 30s. There was a stark split among my friends in the 30s where those of us who stayed fit and had even moderately healthy diet, sleep, and lifestyle diverged from those who ate whatever they wanted, didn’t exercise, or even frequently drank alcohol. Claiming a lack of energy due to age (or blaming family, career, kids, etc) was the first major divergence.
The reality is that family, and especially kids, are just better and more rewarding than anything else. That's the part I think gets lost in the narrative. Needless to say there have to be exceptions to that, and maybe you or someone reading this is one of them.
But in general, that's the reality. I was kind of surprised by it, even though everyone had told me variations on this story for decades. I think it's a little bit impossible to understand just how wonderful it is to spend time with your own children, and help and watch them grow, until you start doing it.
I always thought I had no interest in kids. Turns out I just don't like other people's kids much. Still don't really, it's not like I'm going to go play with other kids for fun, or be a school teacher or coach or something. But that's not the same thing at all. If you don't have kids the reality is there's nothing in your life you can extrapolate from to actually understand what it feels like.
In addition to that, as you get older you realize that most intellectual interests and passions aren't going to ultimately be meaningful to anyone.
That's fine, it's not what they're for. But every year it gets a little more impossible to delude yourself into thinking that somehow you're going to transcend the relatively mundane reality you're actually in. Your train set, or collectible collection, or whatever it is, isn't going to have enduring value, to anyone. Again, that's fine.
Perspectives change. Sometimes it makes me sad, and I wish I could have the delusions of youth back, and think that I was so close to the big breakthrough where it would all click.
It's natural to miss all that. But being older is pretty great too.
> In addition to that, as you get older you realize that most intellectual interests and passions aren't going to ultimately be meaningful to anyone.
I agree with this. But I still feel that I have some intellectual pursuits that I'd like to try out (e.g. going back to school and hopefully get a PHD on something I care about) before going into the venue of vanity. I kinda think it's cool to throw out tons of intellectual shit when my kid and friends are around. Like, talking Astronomy for hours during a camping trip, or picking up a rock and talking about the fossil embedded for hours, which is going to be super cool. David Attenborough has always been my role model as a knowledgeable father who can talk shit for hours without stop. I don't really need a PHD for many of these as most is about being knowledgeable, but you get what I'm saying.
> Perspectives change. Sometimes it makes me sad, and I wish I could have the delusions of youth back, and think that I was so close to the big breakthrough where it would all click.
Yeah. I'm in the sad state right now. Hopefully I'm going to get used to it. I actually don't care too much about big breakthrough because I knew from early on I'm not made of it. I'm more into keep exploring the universe by whatever means until I die. I just don't want to settle down. I told my kid, my wife and my friends that the best way to die is to die on something one feels passionate about. That's why family and kid give me more meh than wow. But it is just me, so I totally get why other people don't get it.
My family's tight-knit small city is great for raising families and almost everybody has some interesting hobby. Even mothers of toddlers. Sure, they don't have six figure salaries, but their cost of living is low and quality of life is high. YMMV, not all small cities. Also, they are reluctant to let strangers into the fold. You need to earn their respect.
DO NOT GO THERE AS A REMOTE WORKER. They will hate you because those people are destroying small communities by raising rentals and real estate prices, while keeping most of their money invested somewhere else. You have no idea how much they hate those people.
Find a community with similar background to you or your wife. Harsh weather might be a good thing. Go visit and find out how to fit in. By default they don't like people from outside the community. What you think makes you the same as them is likely not what they think (e.g. "hey I'm White and the same brand of protestant as you"). You'd be surprised many of these small towns are more welcoming to rural Catholic Mexicans than "fellow Whites". When SHTF, like a bad storm or a flood, those rural Mexicans will risk their lives helping the community. Most "fellow Whites" visitors will just pick up and leave to the big city.
Now that I think of it, maybe go to a disaster-stricken town and help rebuild. That could be a ticket in.
I know it might sound ridiculous but I never succeeded in any hobbies. Family and kid take away time from me so I feel even less likely to be successful in any hobbies. But why do I stick "Hobby" and "Success" together? I think that's because I have never been successful (by my own definition, whatever it is) in real life.
Similar…
I think it is because you intuitively learn that you need to have some buffer of energy for crises.
I get that some families are lucky but these are the ages that health problems and losses starts to show up. Even more for your parents. Every year it is something…
I wholly disagree. All but a small number of the happy, successful people I know in highly challenging or intellectual positions have families and children in later life.
I do know several people who avoided dating altogether in pursuit of some other goal and, honestly, it hasn’t turned out the way any of them expected. One had a small startup exit but is now trying to play catchup on life with a lot of regrets, basically.
I think this advice is similar to the advice to young people to drop out of college so they can start companies or follow some passion: You don’t hear about the vast majority of students who drop out and regret it, you only imagine the Bill Gates of the world who drop out and achieve their dreams. For most people, the advice doesn’t get them closer to success or happiness like they imagine.
At least, if you want to be present in your kids lives. If you want to have kids and just see them develop around you and attend a soccer game or recital every now and then, kids aren't a big time sink either.
If you're fine with them going off to daycare or having your partner raise them solo, then you don't need to sacrifice any of your time really.
If I had money for cleaning services, landscaping, laundry, day car, large suv etc it would be easier
I'm an academic in the humanities with kids, currently in my late 30s. While having children certainly reduces the time and mental bandwidth available for purely intellectual pursuits, I’ve found it forces me to focus more sharply on what truly matters—both in life and in research.
Paradoxically, I feel more intellectually alive now than before. The recent advances in AI are transformative, and they’ve opened up unprecedented possibilities even for resource-constrained researchers like myself. This moment in time feels uniquely energizing and urgent, especially for the humanities.
Of course, having kids is a major responsibility, and in academia—where short-term contracts and financial insecurity are common—it can be daunting. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to do both: raise a family and engage deeply with my field. But this is very personal terrain, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
Single life consumes an enormous energy. Home life with toddlers feels so much more focused, calm, and amenable to deep work
> Interest
maybe you outgrew them. maybe don't try to pursue something you're not Interested in. let interest be the north star that guides your attention.
that "conflict" you feel between what you Are interested in, and what you Think you should be interested in, is not healthy.
>I found it difficult to tell what I really want.
i assume it's almost universally true.
it might be the case that you're already doing what you really want.
and what you think you should do, those thoughts that create the conflict, are most of the time internalized expectations.
only recently i realized that all my adult life i've done pretty much only what was good for me. avoided some major traps of conformity. but constantly felt that anxious pressure from internalized expectations.
now i'm learning to trust my Self - that preconscious source of "wisdom" that i was previously not even aware of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytiZ7zw5vqQ
My takeaway is a little different. I'd still love to have the opportunity to pursue those things, but there's not a chance I'd ever trade what I have for that (I realise you weren't suggesting you would). tldr; I feel at peace with the road not travelled.
I definitely don't want to ever trade my kid away, but sometimes I just wonder the what-ifs.
I am still interested in a lot of things and try to casually read about them or watch YouTube videos on the topic. But I don’t get hands on as much as I used too. I have the time but I’ll be less present and focused with my kids tomorrow is what I’ve learned. If I dive into something today, I’ll be extra introverted tomorrow as my brain is still spinning on it tomorrow. Yes, I have trouble context switching sometimes. My energy tomorrow will be less if I spend my time today creating versus if I am consuming which tends to be passive even if I am learning and feel like I’m being productive (I’m really not ).
I do think it will return. I’m trying to be present in my kids life at the age they want me present. Before long, they’ll have their own life and hobbies and then they’ll be out of my house. I think each of those will mark steps in my return to my former self. I was selfish with my time before because it didn’t really effect anyone, being selfish with my time now would cause me a great deal of regret and at the end of the day I value family well beyond my own interests and hobbies.
This is exactly what I'm feeling. Occasionally I got motivated and wrote some code for my side projects, but my heart would be gone for the next X weeks/months. I don't know why I need so much time to recharge, but that's it.
> I do think it will return. I’m trying to be present in my kids life at the age they want me present. Before long, they’ll have their own life and hobbies and then they’ll be out of my house. I think each of those will mark steps in my return to my former self. I was selfish with my time before because it didn’t really effect anyone, being selfish with my time now would cause me a great deal of regret and at the end of the day I value family well beyond my own interests and hobbies.
I agree with you. I definitely don't want to regret about not being present, thus the struggle. But as you and others said, hopefully this is going to change. Good luck!
I'm single and without kids, but I still have to say... although I appreciate your honest thoughts, I think the quoted bit is an unfortunate message to be in the top-voted comment on HN, because of how it will be tallied by impressionable young minds.
As we all know, tech industry has a huge problem with ageism and other hiring discrimination that's outright illegal in the US, but pretty openly practiced and promoted.
If you were a founder who thus far had little life experience beyond college, and you were deciding who to hire, some of what you'd read on HN would have you assuming you needed to hire only other people recently out of college, and without family.
Which would probably be a mistake, but HN will only tell you about the few times that randomly worked out, rather than all the times it was an avoidable disaster.
"Never felt being successful in life" -> "Want to achieve something" -> "Naturally turns to hobbies" -> "Family and kid takes focus and time away" -> "Get frustrated"
I think that's the loop I'm in.
My best ideas always come to me when I'm almost asleep and I have no idea why that is, which is really frustrating because I know I'm never going to remember them. Sometimes I'll get up and write it down but the bar's pretty high for that because then I'm awake and I know I'll end up zombie-ing around the house for another 2 hours until I'm tired enough to sleep again.
I realise this is interesting to no-one but me, but it's WEIRD, right!?
Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) kept a tape recorder by his bed, for exactly this reason. One morning he woke up and found that the tape was all the way at the end. He re-wound it and found that he had played a guitar riff and sung the words "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" several times. The rest of the tape was of him snoring.
Time is your most precious resource. Everyone wants more, but there is no way to get more. Nobody knows when their supply will run out. We do not produce it, having been granted a finite amount of it by our existence.
Attention is to time as shopping is to your paycheck.
I disagree. My paycheck stays what it is when I do not go shopping. Time keeps running out regardless of where my attention goes.
To me it seems that attention most certainly is a separate resource.
And more importantly, regardless of what it is, it is more important. Time is meaningless. My attention is not.
There are a lot of interdependent dynamics involving the experiences of time, attention, the outcomes of their use, and the resulting qualia between the three.
Shopping and paycheques seem extremely quantitative, but the matter of time and attention is quite qualitative as well. I wouldn't agree that they're the same, either.
One could argue that what you buy has qualitative aspects, but let's say you're just buying commodities to feed yourself or clean your home or what have you. Not choosing between New Balance and Nike and worrying about the corresponding qualitative factors. In this scenario I find the two hard to compare meaningfully. They seem like they're layers of abstraction away from being properly compatible.
I realize this is entirely subjective and these ideas are fairly fungible at a glance. It's just interesting to think about.
I read the article assuming they were talking about work, not life in general.
This is just false. Time cannot be your most precious resource, because there are many, many ways to push the likelihood of you dying tomorrow, next year, or next decade down considerably from where it is. Exercising, for example, or reaching a healthy weight, or quitting recreational substances like alcohol or opioids. Yet in reality we see a great many people who refuse to do any of these things, and statistically end up with less time because of it. Empirically speaking this is very strong evidence against time's claim to ultimate value.
It's true that there seems to be a maximum amount of time our unaugmented wetware can provide us, but something being finite does not make it the most important thing you have. I have a finite amount of money in my pocket, yet money isn't my terminal goal.
If people aren't, as we fairly well know they aren't, perfectly rational utility maximizers, than the fact that people do not consistently take an action or set of actions which would be utility optimal if a given proposition were true is not xounterevidence to the proposition.
We're not talking Bryan Johnson here. People fail so, so often at taking any of the most absolutely obvious, well known, high ROI things they could do to actually increase the number of seconds they spend breathing that "erm but people aren't perfectly rational" doesn't cut it. By and large, they simply do not care that much.
Kids this days...
And the obligatory https://xkcd.com/1227/
Multitasking well maybe... but at a really strong mental consequence for the surrounding environment that likes to... slow down, actually.
A lot of us don't get it until the first big loss.
For your: https://donethat.ai/time-value-calculator For your team: https://donethat.ai/time-value-calculator-team
That cafe scenario is still allowing your attention to watch the world. You can also daydream or mind wander and allow your attention to be squandered on not useful, even harmful things, like negative thought cycles.
This is why attention is the cash value, not time, because it’s so easy to misplace our attention and waste it, gaining no value. and yet time is going forward at the same pace, it is not possible for us to “waste” time itself, if it’s always happening no matter our actions.
Attention is what we actually are doing at any moment. Time is taken up by sleeping, being unconscious, and also being attentive while conscious. The amount of attention we can muster in our waking hours, the amount of things we can focus on and get done, that matters more than mere time.
Again it’s like saying all that matters is the amount of miles you hiked, not the beautiful things you saw and the challenges you overcame on the mountain. Miles and time are mere measurements.
And downvotes aren’t used for disagreement on this forum, they’re for low-effort, non-contributing comments.
It is like “The Goof Troop Movie Trilogy is finally getting its final installment… hyuck”. Like no it isn’t, that’s not happening, that’s just made up. Those are just words that are fun to read but mean nothing
Most people try to fix their focus through better time management or productivity systems, but the real solution is usually structural - changing what you're responsible for, not how you manage those responsibilities.
https://paulgraham.com/vb.html
It's so true it hurts me!
It occurred to me that it would be beneficial to use flashcards to trigger the memory. It sounds unconventional/unorthotodox use of flashcards but why not. Take screenshots of your codebase/functions/commits, capture progress on your workbench, take little notes of your progress/procedures/learnings/recipes and resurface them. I'm sometimes annoyed to rediscover a useful tool I made time ago.
I yet haven't done this systematically, much less using a SRS, but it is sure worth a try. Difficult to predict when this is worth the effort. But it's a good habit to keep "lab notes" anyway.
Usually in a "pristine" environment. Which an open office is not.
Attention and Information are at odds with each other.
Everything else can be renewed.
I wonder what the best way of arranging it is. I guess you want to schedule them or have set weekly times, otherwise there's a slight overhead of remembering and finding the best time to timebox. Or maybe you use the last timebox to schedule the next one..
It forcefully tries to hack you and steal your scarcest resource.
Counterpoint: a manager who is not spending at least some time on programming or in the codebase/PRs is not able to evaluate fully their teams' strengths and weaknesses and collaboration and is less of a 1x manager than a manager who does code/spend time in the codebase(s).
Let me elaborate further.
# Engineering Excellence
It's a part of our job to foster and encourage engineering excellence. A hands-off "I only manage" type of engineering manager can get the following signals for a team member in terms of excellence:
- from other team members (great)
- from Jira/PRs merged output (good-ish)
But is this merged PR the best work that can be done? Is it maybe not shoddily but quickly done, and LGTM-ed by others? Do you get good feedback about that person from other team members because they are great at being friends, or because they are excellent engineers? Is the codebase slowly becoming unmaintainable from the whole team vibe coding? You can't know for sure, cause you didn't check, and if you are "I only manage" type of engineering manager, after some time you wouldn't be able to tell the difference even if you checked either.
Conclusion: an engineering manager who doesn't frequently check the codebase and or/code themselves can rely on fewer signals to gauge technical ability in their team and is less informed and capable to steer engineering excellence than a hands-on engineering manager.
# Promotion and recognition
It's a part of our job to recognize talent for the work they do and reward them for that. An "I only manage" engineering manager can rely only on two things to find things to reward in a software engineer:
- Other teammates' feedback (okay-ish)
- If that software engineer themselves brought up a significantly difficult achievement and self-advocated for their work (bad, selects for chest thumpers)
An "I only manage" engineering manager not looking at code is blind to the achievements of more shy engineers that don't loudly advertise their work, and can be also blind to a dynamic where teammates don't know what others are doing. On the other hand, a hands-on manager might find achievements that teammates don't, and build a culture of celebrating each others' achievements + actually knowing what the hell others are doing.
Conclusion: "I only manage" engineering manager can be blind to some dysfunction and reward disproportionately people good at selling themselves. A hands-on engineering manager has a better and ampifly teams' recognition of one another and create a culture of shared celebration of achievements.
# Know what people are talking about
If you don't code/solve technical problems and you "only manage", what makes you qualified to hold a discussion, and even worse, judge merit of your team members? Why are we shoving a dynamic where the least qualified judges others and "solves" their problems. Sure, many problems are people problems, like salary, conflict, etc, but these problems are very often related to actual job performance. How can you judge thoroughly if someone is actually doing a good job ("I only manage" uses 80% vibes and 20% second-hand stories) and deserves that salary increase if you haven't seen their code or how they communicate with others in PRs?
I want to stress out that I don't advocate for managers that are the best devs in their team, nor managers who don't care for their teams' wellbeing. I am simply saying that to actually manage well, you gotta be "in the things", know well what your team is doing AND HOW WELL. To judge software engineering capabilities, you yourself need to have sharp software engineering capabilities and getting a taste of the daily work makes you a far better engineering manager than the "I only manage" type of manager.
Nobody is complaining though, stuff gets done.
Like, you can learn speed reading / scanning and go through all of HN's daily submissions in half an hour (... I do that), but how much do you actually retain? Or you can pick one and go in deep with it. I've seen both on HN, it's fairly easy to pick out those that just read the headline and jumped into the comments (...like me) and those that read and understood the article, did or brought some extra research, and did a thoughtful and well crafted reply.
Focus on your goal + discipline & practice + semen retention = you will be a "übermensch".
And if you are an athlete of any type of sports, you will learn the hard way how it is important to keep that energy at least several weeks (to several months) before (and during) the competition.
Better not meet him in the elevator when he was beyond his third day of semen retention. #fired #fired #fired