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Worst? Surely not the worst possible advice. E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around

by drdeca 11y ago

Worst? Surely not the worst possible advice. E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you"

nraynaud 11y ago
One I like is the "learn programming, there is a lot of money there".
- foobar2020 11y ago
  It is a reasonably good advice. After all there is plenty of programming work that does not require ever learning how does quicksort work or what is a mutex. Accessible to nearly anyone with increased intelligence.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Definitely ROTFL! Let's take the most mind numbingly boring thing possible, cross it with something that takes ridiculous amounts of concentration, add a dash of "no normal personal will ever understand what you are doing" and top it off with "all your colleagues are idiots and you spend most of your day arguing about minutia, while they simultaneously complain about the same thing with respect to you". Every year, no matter how much money you make, your justification for a raise is, "If I'm going to put up with this crap, they're going to have to pay me a lot more than this!" If you become a programmer for any reason other than passion, you are either very naive or very courageous.
austinjp 11y ago
Worst career advice. Which would seem reasonably translated as "words presented as advice for career improvement which actually require serious analysis and may not be right for you in your context". But that's not as catchy.
hugh4 11y ago
>E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you" The badness of advice is surely also a function of how likely people are to actually follow it. Nobody's going to follow your shitty advice, but a lot of people really do follow their unrealistic passions all the way to a minimum-wage gig while they wait for their music/painting/acting/whatever career to take off.
- balabaster 11y ago
  Most of their passions lead them to those low paying jobs not because their passions are unrealistic, but because they don't have the vision to lucratively leverage that passion.

by drdeca 11y ago

Worst? Surely not the worst possible advice. E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you"

nraynaud 11y ago

One I like is the "learn programming, there is a lot of money there".

foobar2020 11y ago
It is a reasonably good advice. After all there is plenty of programming work that does not require ever learning how does quicksort work or what is a mutex. Accessible to nearly anyone with increased intelligence.
mikekchar 11y ago
Definitely ROTFL! Let's take the most mind numbingly boring thing possible, cross it with something that takes ridiculous amounts of concentration, add a dash of "no normal personal will ever understand what you are doing" and top it off with "all your colleagues are idiots and you spend most of your day arguing about minutia, while they simultaneously complain about the same thing with respect to you". Every year, no matter how much money you make, your justification for a raise is, "If I'm going to put up with this crap, they're going to have to pay me a lot more than this!" If you become a programmer for any reason other than passion, you are either very naive or very courageous.

austinjp 11y ago

Worst career advice. Which would seem reasonably translated as "words presented as advice for career improvement which actually require serious analysis and may not be right for you in your context". But that's not as catchy.

hugh4 11y ago

>E.g. it is much better than "work with the intent to cause as much harm as possible to yourself and those around you" The badness of advice is surely also a function of how likely people are to actually follow it. Nobody's going to follow your shitty advice, but a lot of people really do follow their unrealistic passions all the way to a minimum-wage gig while they wait for their music/painting/acting/whatever career to take off.

balabaster 11y ago
Most of their passions lead them to those low paying jobs not because their passions are unrealistic, but because they don't have the vision to lucratively leverage that passion.