Hacker News Reader

Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

At this point in your career, you should optimize for improving your skills by working with programmers who are better than you, in a rapid feedback environment.

View on HN

This mirrors advice often given to musicians. Nobody wants to be the best player in the band.

Holy Occam, you've managed to say more with a single sentence what I was struggling to put in several paragraph (all while I still working on the first draft my comment)!

OP needs to learn and the way to do is not just doing, but by looking at good examples, then doing, then receiving feedback on how it could be done better, and then improving.

Did you work with anyone who was better than you? What were the most useful skills you learned?

Really looking forward to a reply here! Pg did write a bit about what he has learned from tlb: http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html (see the "Recognition" paragraph)

There's arguably no single greater environment than learning from great people.

Communication, choosing your battles, patience, emotional intelligence, just to mention the managerial and partnership aspects. Too many technical / marketing skills to name.

I come from a 100% technical background, and I can tell the skills I've acquired in the past year will last me a long, long time.

Several, including pg and rtm. The hardest skill is knowing what could be simplified, and what's good enough.

Assuming that pushing to gain skills is the highest priority. Since I have while a bit of autonomy in the current startup (comparing to working in other company), would it be possible to improve my skills while simultaneously trying to changing things in the company (since I'd get to do more things)? Or would that be a futile effort?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com