4 ms·

I've never really understood the fear of appearing dumb in comparison to people who are smarter or more knowledgable than you. Isn't it true in sw dev that almo

I've never really understood the fear of appearing dumb in comparison to people who are smarter or more knowledgable than you. Isn't it true in sw dev that almost everyone can be dumb relative to other people? Almost everything can be learned with dedication and effort and the better the people you sorround yourself with are, the faster you level up. And isn't being the dumbest person in the room/company a blessing? This just means that people are paying you to increase your skills and learn from people better than you. How much better can a job get? I have no intention of ever working for Google but the "lots of people there are way smarter than you" would be the biggest draw if I did. edit: Now that I think about it, my habit of asking "stupid" questions (not only about technology) and the fact that I don't really care what people think of me when I do so have stood me in good stead especially with advancing age. I've seen many friends get stuck trying to maintain the illusion of knowledge or understanding and "live in fear" of "being exposed for the ignoramus I am". I don't really care if someone thinks I am an idiot as long as I learn something. Attaching your ego to the perception of others is a dangerous hang up imho

kenjackson 16y ago
In the abstract this is true, but can still be daunting. I remember early in my career I had done a fair bit of C. I'm in a meeting with some architects and they start writig up structs with bitfields. For some reason I must've skipped that section in K&R and never seen it code. My first thought was, "you can't do that in C", but then I noticed that no one else was having a problem with it. Then I realized I didn't know for sure what it was. I wanted to say, "What is that thing after the colon?", but I feared hearing, "This is 'C 101'. You haven't seen this? It's not possible to write good code w/o it. We need to revert all of his changes. Please escort him from the building now". In other words the concern is not that you'll feel dumb relative to smart people. But rather people thinking that this is so basic, how could you possibly not know that. With that said, I did consult at a place where one guy didn't know what free/delete was. He had only worked with garbage collected languages, and I was tracking down tons of memory leaks in his code. When he asked me why he had to free memory (in a C++ application) I did have to pause to avoid saying something I might regret. Everyone has their experiences, and I'm sure he would laugh at my naivette when it comes to Lisp macros.
jacquesm 16y ago
> edit: Now that I think about it, my habit of asking "stupid" questions (not only about technology) and the fact that I don't really care what people think of me when I do so have stood me in good stead especially with advancing age. The only stupid questions are the ones you never asked. The one thing that would help with this is if people realized that compared to others we're all stupid in one field or another, and probably in plenty of them. So there should be no stigma on asking stupid questions or any questions at all, in fact, most stupid questions when looked at in some detail turn out to be not that stupid at all. The most frustrating part of asking 'stupid' questions is if the person that you're asking them off tells you to go away because it is a stupid question or because 'you wouldn't understand', typically if someone has a superior attitude towards a subject but refuses to answer stupid questions it turns out in the long run they didn't know quite as much about it as they suggested in the first place.
jasonlotito 16y ago
> I've never really understood the fear of appearing dumb in comparison to people who are smarter or more knowledgable than you. Consider every joke you've ever heard about a clueless client. Think of every joke you've heard about some support call some tech guy had to take. Think about the "cup holder" joke, the ID 10T given to a customer, or the multitude of stories told on TheDailyWTF. No one likes to be the butt of a joke. > I don't really care if someone thinks I am an idiot as long as I learn something. Attaching your ego to the perception of others is a dangerous hang up imho This is true. But also realize that a large portion of the population have this hangup to some degree. The one thing I can credit to really demonstrating that their is no harm in asking was asking this girl out in high school. I did it at the worst possible time: in front of her friends and mine as well. I just asked, simply and plainly. She was flabbergasted. She invited me to dinner that very night, with her friend. I was promptly told by that friend later that evening when we were alone for a moment that the girl I had asked was "in shock, but in a good way." We ended up dating. I'd never done anything like that before. It occurred to me that it's easy to ask, and that anyone who looks down on asking are people that know less than they let on themselves. I still fall into the trap. But it's handy to realize that asking can lead to surprisingly good, and fun, results.
- Shorel 16y ago
  > No one likes to be the butt of a joke. I think the trick is to always have the last word. It doesn't matter if you make fun of yourself, but it does matter that the one who makes fun out of someone, is you. So I some times make fun of myself and nobody think I'm a lesser being for that.

kenjackson 16y ago

In the abstract this is true, but can still be daunting. I remember early in my career I had done a fair bit of C. I'm in a meeting with some architects and they start writig up structs with bitfields. For some reason I must've skipped that section in K&R and never seen it code. My first thought was, "you can't do that in C", but then I noticed that no one else was having a problem with it. Then I realized I didn't know for sure what it was. I wanted to say, "What is that thing after the colon?", but I feared hearing, "This is 'C 101'. You haven't seen this? It's not possible to write good code w/o it. We need to revert all of his changes. Please escort him from the building now". In other words the concern is not that you'll feel dumb relative to smart people. But rather people thinking that this is so basic, how could you possibly not know that. With that said, I did consult at a place where one guy didn't know what free/delete was. He had only worked with garbage collected languages, and I was tracking down tons of memory leaks in his code. When he asked me why he had to free memory (in a C++ application) I did have to pause to avoid saying something I might regret. Everyone has their experiences, and I'm sure he would laugh at my naivette when it comes to Lisp macros.

jacquesm 16y ago

> edit: Now that I think about it, my habit of asking "stupid" questions (not only about technology) and the fact that I don't really care what people think of me when I do so have stood me in good stead especially with advancing age. The only stupid questions are the ones you never asked. The one thing that would help with this is if people realized that compared to others we're all stupid in one field or another, and probably in plenty of them. So there should be no stigma on asking stupid questions or any questions at all, in fact, most stupid questions when looked at in some detail turn out to be not that stupid at all. The most frustrating part of asking 'stupid' questions is if the person that you're asking them off tells you to go away because it is a stupid question or because 'you wouldn't understand', typically if someone has a superior attitude towards a subject but refuses to answer stupid questions it turns out in the long run they didn't know quite as much about it as they suggested in the first place.

jasonlotito 16y ago

> I've never really understood the fear of appearing dumb in comparison to people who are smarter or more knowledgable than you. Consider every joke you've ever heard about a clueless client. Think of every joke you've heard about some support call some tech guy had to take. Think about the "cup holder" joke, the ID 10T given to a customer, or the multitude of stories told on TheDailyWTF. No one likes to be the butt of a joke. > I don't really care if someone thinks I am an idiot as long as I learn something. Attaching your ego to the perception of others is a dangerous hang up imho This is true. But also realize that a large portion of the population have this hangup to some degree. The one thing I can credit to really demonstrating that their is no harm in asking was asking this girl out in high school. I did it at the worst possible time: in front of her friends and mine as well. I just asked, simply and plainly. She was flabbergasted. She invited me to dinner that very night, with her friend. I was promptly told by that friend later that evening when we were alone for a moment that the girl I had asked was "in shock, but in a good way." We ended up dating. I'd never done anything like that before. It occurred to me that it's easy to ask, and that anyone who looks down on asking are people that know less than they let on themselves. I still fall into the trap. But it's handy to realize that asking can lead to surprisingly good, and fun, results.

Shorel 16y ago
> No one likes to be the butt of a joke. I think the trick is to always have the last word. It doesn't matter if you make fun of yourself, but it does matter that the one who makes fun out of someone, is you. So I some times make fun of myself and nobody think I'm a lesser being for that.