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Failing to be humble eventually leads to arrogance. This advice is counterproductive. The part regarding being proud of who you are is completely tangential. I

by tabeth 10y ago

Failing to be humble eventually leads to arrogance. This advice is counterproductive. The part regarding being proud of who you are is completely tangential. I also highly doubt that "90% of people" in the tech industry don't understand what a "good programmer" does. The best advice is just to become as best as you can by trying as much as you can: 1. Deliberately working 2. Learning from people you perceive to be better. 3. Keeping up with trends. 4. Mastery of the basics/fundamentals. 5. A razor sharp focus on what really matters -- value in the context of the business/domain.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> 5. A razor sharp focus on what really matters -- value in the context of the business/domain. This is a tricky part, and you have to ask yourself explicitly - what do you want to work on? Becoming a better programmer, or a better employee/entrepreneur? Because business does not optimize just for good, quality work. It optimizes for earning money. Which involves things like: - doing good, quality work which can be sold - doing good enough work, minding the essential tradeoff between quality and business realities - doing shitty, half-assed work and having a good sales team sell it anyway - doing useless shiny things that don't really help the intended audience, but help your business to get their money If the needs of your business are from the latter two groups, being a good programmer goes directly against your career success in that place. Unfortunately, it is my belief that most of the jobs in our industry fall into those two groups. From the POV of everyone else but programmers, the code is only means to an end. I want to emphasize it, because a lot of advice for programmers tells you about the "razor sharp focus on what really matters -- value in the context of the business/domain", and I found that for some reason, it never resonated with me. It took me a while to understand why - it's because this advice comes from a business mindset, where making money is the goal and the means to it are tangential. I have the opposite mindset - for me, it's the product that matters, not how to make more money off it. Realizing that those are two different worldviews has helped me stop feeling inadequate just because I couldn't bring myself to enjoy the business value. It also helped me understand the POV of management and what they expect from me.

by tabeth 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> 5. A razor sharp focus on what really matters -- value in the context of the business/domain. This is a tricky part, and you have to ask yourself explicitly - what do you want to work on? Becoming a better programmer, or a better employee/entrepreneur? Because business does not optimize just for good, quality work. It optimizes for earning money. Which involves things like: - doing good, quality work which can be sold - doing good enough work, minding the essential tradeoff between quality and business realities - doing shitty, half-assed work and having a good sales team sell it anyway - doing useless shiny things that don't really help the intended audience, but help your business to get their money If the needs of your business are from the latter two groups, being a good programmer goes directly against your career success in that place. Unfortunately, it is my belief that most of the jobs in our industry fall into those two groups. From the POV of everyone else but programmers, the code is only means to an end. I want to emphasize it, because a lot of advice for programmers tells you about the "razor sharp focus on what really matters -- value in the context of the business/domain", and I found that for some reason, it never resonated with me. It took me a while to understand why - it's because this advice comes from a business mindset, where making money is the goal and the means to it are tangential. I have the opposite mindset - for me, it's the product that matters, not how to make more money off it. Realizing that those are two different worldviews has helped me stop feeling inadequate just because I couldn't bring myself to enjoy the business value. It also helped me understand the POV of management and what they expect from me.