What is quite worrying to me is doing hard, mundane work in an “easy” way (eg my job is subpar and I’m not sure what direction is moving in but I’ll just do what my boss says and work a little extra to make sure it’s really good). And I think that sometimes it’s pretty hard to pick hard work that will align right in the long term. I don’t know.
I don’t get why people don’t realize that we’re all playing capitalism and it doesn’t make sense to tie your hands behind your back for the sake of some company that doesn’t care about you. One thing to pass up some profits to be a more decent person or whatever, another to do it for an abstract entity that would happily toss you onto the street for a few dollars were it able to.
I’m not sure. For me the point in college was to learn a lot, or outscore other students on the curve, so I didn’t really care about TAs or textbook costs. At work my point is just building a career, to which most coworkers are just incidentally relevant. If coworker is an asshole I’m lucky so far to usually treat it as an opportunity to learn how to deal with assholes, and learn how dodge their moves/move in the right direction anyway. But it’s easier to do this the easier your life is in general perhaps.
Perhaps it’s a bit cynical, but I believe it’s all nonsense. Anyone put in charge of a software project is going to read some books on managing software if he’s not trash. There, he will learn the pitfalls of estimates and etc. and use them in a way that makes sense. Perhaps it’s again cynical, but my assumption is that if people want something within an overly short time-period, they want a piece of shit that meets the minimum interpretation of requirements, which may be possible in their time period.