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Comment by mcantelon | Hacker News Reader

Not sure who said this first, but the classic quote is "If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room."

If you're the big fish in a small pond you're not only missing out on learning from others, and creating impressive things, but ingrained cynicism and having an over-inflated sense of worth are also risks.

Fortunately having an unchallenging job can provide lots of time and energy for research and side projects that can lead to jumping into more interesting work.

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"If you're the big fish in a small pond you're not only missing out on learning from others, and creating impressive things, but ingrained cynicism and having an over-inflated sense of worth are also risks."

Absolutely true.

"Fortunately having an unchallenging job can provide lots of time and energy for research and side projects that can lead to jumping into more interesting work."

You know, in theory this is true. In practice, I've been in this situation a couple of times in my career. And it sucked. Hard. It was soul crushing. It was depressing. I found myself emotionally drained at the end of every day. I would complete my work in a short timespan every morning, then somehow end up mindlessly cruising Facebook (or whatever passed for Facebook back then) throughout the day. My latent productivity plummeted in direct correlation to my plummeting mental engagement.

Maybe I'm an unusual case. But oddly enough, I find a boring, trivial, meaningless job almost more draining than a challenging and extremely fast-paced one. In the latter, at least I am revved up, and thus I have energy for side projects on the weekends.

The other side of the coin is even worse actually, I have been in plenty of positions where you are the only human who can do most of the work, and the others just form a queue in front of your desk.

That is a sign that either your employer needs more qualified people or you need another job.

It is a sign that you are a knowledge hoarder, happy that others are dependant on you. There is a lot of job security in that I guess. If you want to do yourself and others a favour, instead of giving your fellow co-workers fish, teach them to fish. Maybe you could learn something satisfying from them.

I knew I would get a response like this as soon as I posted my comment. And to clarify, I dont mean to have me explain things, but to have me do things that they themselves could "never do!".

I completely get where you are coming from though, hah!

I think the dread of going in to yet another mind crushingly boring day of work also contributes to that. Just the thought that tomorrow is going to be exactly the same hanging over you all the time can be draining.

> "Fortunately having an unchallenging job can provide lots of time and energy for research and side projects that can lead to jumping into more interesting work."

That's not always true.

It only works if the job is both easy and coming at a low enough pace that you can do it in a couple of hours and forget about it.

However, when the amount of work itself is overwhelming and the job is unchallenging, it works out the other way: it sweeps all your energy and leaves you burnt out at the end of the day. You get home and all you want to do is drink a couple of beers and watch a TV series until you're sleepy enough that you can go to bed and fall asleep, getting just enough sleep to be ready for more bullshit the next day.

> However, when the amount of work itself is overwhelming and the job is unchallenging, it works out the other way: it sweeps all your energy and leaves you burnt out at the end of the day. You get home and all you want to do is drink a couple of beers and watch a TV series until you're sleepy enough that you can go to bed and fall asleep, getting just enough sleep to be ready for more bullshit the next day."

I'm on some twisted variant of that where I'm stuck trying to sift through a backlog of tutorials or Algorithm review so I can still be considered remotely competent enough to apply elsewhere, finding myself staying up 'til 1, sometimes 2AM, only to wake up the next day to repeat the cycle. Only reason I haven't 'rocked the boat' yet with my supervisor is because it's a fairly high-profile project, but definitely starting to apply elsewhere if they ignore my request to switch from backend to front-end after this. Glad to know I'm not the only one.

>You know, in theory this is true. In practice, I've been in this situation a couple of times in my career. And it sucked. Hard. It was soul crushing. It was depressing.

I'm in a similar boat. Not as bad as your experience sounds, but I would definitely consider it an unchallenging job that leaves me feeling more stressed than anything. I have lots of ideas I want to pursue in my free time, but I know that if I get involved in a project it will make time go by quicker and I'll just have to be back at work sooner. Everything I do in my off time is designed to make it feel as long as possible. I haven't read a book in months. Sometimes I don't even want to watch TV because it's too entertaining.

God damn that's depressing to write down.

You should read that book. Seriously. If you don't have fun at your job, and you're not having fun away from your job something needs to change. It's easier to have fun in the latter situation versus changing your job. Good luck my friend.

Which book?

I don't know, I saw that you said you haven't read a book in months - I thought maybe you had one in mind.

If not, I recommend "Timeline" by Michael Crichton. It's not a taxing or immensely intellectual read, but it's a great adventure story with very interesting and suspenseful parts. It's a lot of fun to read and definitely won't feel like work - it'll feel like play.

I couldn't agree with you more. I actually said this at my last job interview when asked why I was leaving. I've learned more in the last 6 months being surrounded by much smarter people than the 6 years of being "the smart one".

I won't lie though, the ego-hit of being "the dumb one" when surrounded by truly brilliant people is hard - 100% worth it - but hard.

That's why I believe one should always try to minimize his ego and embrace the kind of humility a curious kid has.

I know that I am good at what I do but I keep being curious and waiting to be told "You're wrong. this is the better way of doing it". That's definitely worth multiple cuts to your ego.

> "If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room."

Corollary: every non-empty room has at least one person that is wrongly there.

That's only a corollary if there is a clear ordering in the room. For many rooms I would imagine the ordering is fuzzy and you don't know for sure if you are the smartest person there. This would happen if everyone is roughly the same caliber, in which case the room is fine and nobody should leave!

I took a job after the dot com bust where I knew at the interview they were not a high-quality team, but I felt like I had no choice. I took the job and was told after a year there and at age 25 that my tech skills were "the finished product" which was high praise, but just made me sad. I was by far their best programmer but only because the rest of the team were nearly worthless.

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