raygelogic

if you're actually struggling to get people to interact with you the way you want, I think the real problem is your expectations of other people. if they miss the plot, it might be because you timed the conversation poorly, or because you talked to the wrong person for what you need.

this whole post reads like it's coming from someone who sees people as tools to get what they need. the reason I talk to people when I'm struggling with a problem isn't for reference, but for connection, and to get my own wheels turning.

I'll grant that it's interesting to think about. now that LLMs exist, we're forced to assess what value human brains provide. it's so dystopian. but there's no other choice.

it was rainy so at 1,900 feet he was probably in a cloud

something about this doesn't quite sit right when I consider my experience with negotiating for roles at startups. I agree with the approach for big tech, but it sets a weird tone for working closely with a team if you just spent a week stressing them out and shaking them down. I've done that negotiation for myself, tried to hire people who did it to me, and I've watched others go through it. it always leaves a funny smell with the team, because at the startups I've been involved with it's kind of rare to play hardball.

just my experience. I am more on the mission-driven end of the why-do-you-work spectrum, it's not just the money for me. and I've gotten bitten in the ass by the sharks who sit on the board and hand down layoffs, I know it's how the world works. just speaking about the small teams where you are negotiating with the overworked hiting manager.

I think about this a lot as I get older. what I've realized is that being young (like under 30) is a pretty big deviation as far as physiology goes. the rest of life is a long slow decline, so you gotta set yourself up to manage it.

I am so sorry for what's happening to this man, and I hope he finds peace in his last days.

the economics, ethics, and effectiveness around early approvals are really difficult to manage. companies have a strong incentive to get earlier approvals. but once the cat is out of the bag, it's hard to get it back in. if a sub-standard drug makes it to market and gains wide adoption, it makes later drug trials of more effective drugs really hard. where's the outrage for potential beneficiaries of better therapeutics?

I don't mean to say this man and others shouldn't get a chance at a hail mary when they're staring down death. just, it's risky business for others in the future. I hope the best for him and others.

overall this is great. but I'm surprised that meeting acceptance criteria is under "implementation" and considered less important than api design. I agree that api design is harder to change later on, but the most important question is, does the PR solve a problem that currently exists? if it does, then you can think about whether it does it well.

it makes me wonder if the product/engineering split has grown wider than it should. we really should be pretending we're product managers more.

20% seems like an underestimate, especially if you consider a lack of knowledge of how to use one's computer to highest efficiency.

also, most platforms suffer from feature bloat without a cohesive user experience. probably because they are trying to capture the widest audience, without carefully planning alignment/integration across features.

one things that's missing is the ability to ignore politics. you have to know what hills to die on, when to enforce boundaries, when to back off, etc. also, having to make decisions, argue for them, and be accountable to them, without fully understanding all the details. I found these things to be far and away the most stressful parts of management.

if you're trying to build a product, code is a liability. not sure that an esoteric codebase is the best signal to candidates that the bottom line is solving problems for stakeholders, rather than beautiful code.

it's really interesting how polarizing of an issue this is with engineers. I definitely think it's a good idea, but you can really mess it up royally with bad implementation (plus there are scaling considerations). considering how polarizing it is though, it might be one of the best signals to attract the kinds of engineers who care about how their product is used.

actually I think the best targetting is for all engineers to play a support role with their stakeholders, whoever they may be. devops supporting with full-stacks, data eng working with DS, (these already happen), and UX working with the masses.

ha, boston, climbing obsession, career pivot to software eng... are you me? did mark twight also have an oversized impact on your life? I burnt out on alpine climbing and never got anywhere close to elite, but I feel the exact same way. wouldn't trade a minute of sitting out bad weather in a tent.

are we talking about project names or the names of classes and objects?

if it's projects, ideally the long-term architecture is well enough understood to give the thing a whimsical yet meaningful name (ideally not cryptic). building a page caching service? call it gutenberg or something to start. when it inevitably grows past scope, it's ok. no one will care if gutenberg also handles analytics callbacks or whatever.

classes really shouldn't change in scope, ideally, so it's probably better to be a bit more specific to their purpose.

overall this is a good hot take, if a bit broadly put.

I've worked with a number of northeastern university grads, and they are consistently well prepared. NEU has co-op program, a standard part of their undergrad, where they get like a year of experience before graduating (5-year undergrad is the norm). who knows if the school is what creates the difference, but grads are really well prepared in general.

mccartney wrote most of the great ones though ;-)

but, the beatles worked because they didn't have such big egos, at least with each other.

I really do care about making the team successful, way more than my own contributions. it'll take time to let go of the BS in my subconciousness.

I think the state of things is pretty good overall. most of my anxiety comes from this fear that I'm not gonna be an owner of what we've built if they're the one making all the decisions. it's silly, but letting go of that isn't easy. 'preciate the thoughts.

I think it comes down to jevon's paradox--if your demand is unbounded, making production more efficient doesnt reduce inputs, it makes you produce more. in the case of k8s, more reliable, more scalable, etc

how much of the uproar over this is about implementation vs intent? disinformation isn't worth being returned when the user is seeking information. like if you are looking for the health impacts of soda, you probably don't want coke writing your answers.

I'm all for neutral platforms, but it feels like you either opt out of editorializing and end up with trash driven by SEO, or editorialize and marginalize some content producer or consumer. any play feels like a losing move from the business's perspective.

I think remote work makes more sense the more stable the development pathway is. the more cross function work, the more uncertainty, and maybe the higher the required velocity, the more important it seems to be able to have impromptu discussions. I find I spend a few hours a week just catching up on things I'm missing in the office while working remotely. and when I do go in, I'll learn something that causes a total pivot in my understanding of a business need.

that said, I never have had as much deep focus as when I'm working from home, in particular in the evenings. really important discoveries are made there too. so I think having both is optimal. and above all, having a flexible job is something I've come to expect for work-life harmony.

I really don't think you can measure developers by their productivity. the impact of productivity is predicated on design meeting requirements, the accuracy of requirements is predicated on stakeholders knowing what they need.

the only quality that matters is how effective the software is in its business function. how effective does it make stakeholders? how well does it capture engagement by users? the right question to ask changes in business context, but if you can't answer it, you might as well throw darts and flip coins. if you can measure the impact of their code before and after deployment you might have a chance, but it's probably hopeless.

as far as I can tell it boils down to a subjective and qualitative assessment of developer performance. you can also take the contrapositive: where would we be without this person? how long would we have taken to get there without them? what would we not have learned without this person?

I'm nervous about the implicit bias that comes with this kind of perspective, but I think it's the best we have for now.

this is significant when you consider historical context. this was a common view held in the 50s, but over time, maximizing shareholder value over all stakeholder value became the dominant concern. it's good to see the intent swinging back. sure, it's just words right now. when we see worker salaries grow to take up a larger piece of the pie, we'll know they mean it.

I don't think mental gymnastics are necessary. he's owner of an institution that has clearly played a huge role in his life, and that has been in his family for a long time. he strongly believes in the purpose of the business he runs, and the community that has formed within its walls. the purpose of the paragraph you quoted is to portray his own conflict with selling something that can be harmful. it doesn't sound like he's justifying his choices to me; it sounds like he's uncomfortable with the harm it's associated with, and is acknowledging it.

and as others have said, the neighborhood bar is unique in that the things you mention are things that people DO together, whereas the bar is a place where people simply BE together. I agree that those are places where you can make friends, but with those activities, what often happens is that mildly interested people come and go, and devotees form a hard social core that is difficult to penetrate. a bar--or a church, or elk's lodge or whatever--is a standing institution, whose main social function is community building of some kind.

no it doesn't. it's 15-year-olds self-reporting on how familiar they are with mathematical topics, some of which are made up.

the best advice I can offer is to join a team that has deep pockets. the biggest reason my company succeeded is that they had cash to burn. sure, they were smart. they moved quickly, they dropped failing products instead of holding on to them. they made consistently good decisions. but they also were able to sink millions into the company's products and promotion thereof without going under for years, long enough to stumble upon a hugely profitable model.

no idea how to assess the size of a company's pockets. maybe one that has a founder who has already had a successful exit. every other attribute of a company is basically fortune telling.

imagine trying to convince a sernior candidate to do your assignment, and imagine all the other offers she or he has who aren't asking that much of their free time. it's not about how much time it would take, it's about the other choices they have.

this comment misses the point and is why we don't give take-home work to senior developer candidates. they are in high demand and will not spend their free time on homework, when many other companies will gladly hire them without making them jump through hoops.

there are more sheer cliffs, there are taller mountains, and there are harder routes, for sure. but what makes a cliff, a mountain, or a specific route inspiring is harder to define than its physical countours. there's a mountain in Argentina called Cerro Torre that is seen my many alpinists as the holy grail of mountaineering. it's about 11,000 feet tall, and has a neighbor to the north called Fitz Roy that is even taller and has more terrain on it. but Cerro Torre is steeped in history of climbers making their own attempts on it, and has features peculiar to it that make it seem impossible.

on the other hand, within the alpinism/rock climbing community, Everest isn't actually even seen as the Mt Everest of climbing. if you read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air", he elaborates on this. the commercialism associated with the mountain, the way it is treated by guided parties, and the way it is seen as a bucket list item that anyone with the means to hire guides can haul themselves up, all serve to detract from the appeal of the mountain to the "true" adventure mountaineer. I say that a little toungue-in-cheek, though. if any alpinist had the opportunity to climb everest far from the crowds and without the $50k price tag, they would probably leap at it immediately. the point is, even Everest's stature has fallen in prominence among many alpinists, in favor of more technical peaks (though exceptions are readily available). it's been this way since the 60's and 70's.

the 60's and 70's were the time that yosemite climbing began to really take off. warren harding climbed the nose (the most prominent and popular route on el capitan) in 1958, royal robbins climbed the sheer northwest face of half dome in 1957. from then on, legends like chuck pratt, yvon chouinard, john long, jim bridwell, john bachar, peter croft, ron kauk, and lynn hill, all made their impact on the cliffs of yosemite. many of them went on to climb in the greater ranges of the world. yosemite for a time was a melting pot of the finest pratitioners of the sport--until you could no longer spend an entire summer in camp 4 because of overcrowding.

fast forward to modern day, it's still the proving ground for so many rock climbers and alpinists around the world. to climb the most prominent cliff in the most historically meaningful place still has power that captivates. some of it is its accessibility, some of it is the beauty of the mountain, and some of it is the difficulty, but much of it is simply legend.

hey, actually no one maintains the routes in an official capacity. there are groups of climbers who voluntarily will upgrade fixed protection, or individuals who do the same, but certainly no governing body. it's not like a hiking trail, for example. it's pretty wild west, but generally people work together.

as far as the objective risks, they include loose rock, broken holds, wet rock, birds spooking you, base jumpers spooking you, hornets, climbers dropping things by accident on you.

achievements in climbing can be kind of difficult for non-climbers to see the relevancy of, since the conventions of success seem a little arbitrary until you put some time into it. it was interesting to see the news cycle pick up tommy caldwell and kevin jorgeson's ascent of the dawn wall in yosemite in january 2015. it was certainly the biggest thing to happen in yosemite at the time, but no bigger in terms of its relevancy to climbing than a handful of other ascents that happened in the few years surrounding. it was a huge climb, and worthy of all the attention it got, but it was a little peculiar to see it get more airtime than any climb since maybe the original dawn wall ascent by warren harding in 1970.

before alex's climb this week, it would be totally reasonable to make the claim that el cap will never get free-soloed. it's too sustained, the only feasible routes are too insecure. no one, expert or not, would ever get shouted down for making that claim, even among a cohort of dreamers who all want to live the impossible. among that cohort, free solo climbing isn't all that common; maybe one in a hundred climbers have ever climbed a difficult route taller than 100 feet without a rope. which makes him alien even within his sport.

honnold just landed on the moon. what he did doesn't require any of the qwerks of convention that accompany most big-wall free climbs. everyone immediately understands the idea of scaling a cliff without a rope. everyone can even try it. el cap is a ten minute walk from the car. but in case the context of the climb is unclear, this is the kind of feat that only comes along every few generations.

maybe I'm overstating it. from one perspective, this climb was another incremental step on honnold's journey. all of his previous ascents were mind-bending as well: moonlight buttress in zion, the regular northwest face of half dome, el sendero luminoso in el potrero chico, mexico. besides, technical rock climbing as we understand it today is only two or three generations old at most, and it's already produced this monster of an achievement. we may see more in our lifetime. I just wouldn't bet on it.

this is such a typical HN discussion; misleading headline provokes reaction to the headline rather than the content of the article. nowhere in the article are entrepreneurs discussed, or doctors, or anyone else whose work requires many hours of clocked-in work.

the fundamental claim of the article is that deliberate focus in a creative field cannot happen without deliberate rest. you can't always be on if you want to achieve the types of breakthroughs which underpin the most significant steps forward in science, literature, and music.

that's it. he never discussed Gates' work habits, except in context with Gladwell's 10k hours for expertise thesis. he then goes on to say that those 10k hours do not exist in a vacuum, and that this number is often misinterpreted; those 10k hours of focus also require a commensurate amount of leisure and rest.

he even specifically says that "[scientists'] legacies are often easier to determine than those of business leaders or famous figures", which to me says that those individuals are outside the scope of his discussion. how so many people here are projecting that conclusion is a mystery to me.

this strikes me the same way as the story of the guys who figured out where to add armor to bombers during WW2. the places on the plane that had bullet holes after a mission clearly were operational enough to return to base. the places that never had any damage were probably critical, so that's where armor was added.

if a company can make billions with a poor-quality codebase, clearly quality isn't a bottom-line concern.

what is a concern is shipping the damn product.