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Ask HN: What skill has benefitted you the most?

joshxyz 6y ago
Sales. Life is sales, get used to rejection, negotiation, persuasion. Motivating yourself is sales. Getting that job is sales. Dating that girl is sales. Getting that raise is sales. Convincing yourself to create a business is sales. Getting your first customer is sales.
gt565k 6y ago
Having a solid understanding of SQL and how the database runtime works. I.e. indices, partioniong, materialized vs non-materialized views, etc. It really makes a huge difference for software engineers. Lots of software engineers just treat a database as a dumb data store and never leverage even a fraction of its utility. Often times you see a lot of nasty code written in the application layer that could have been handled so much more gracefully and efficiently in the database layer.
tudelo 6y ago
Being able to solve arbitrary leetcode type problems in an interview setting. The funny part about this is I'm much better at interviewing than being a software engineer :) I guess I could have worse problems in life...
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Knowing how to split the problem space in debugging. Something is going wrong. Where is it going wrong? Could be anywhere. Well, not anywhere - it has to be either A, B, or C. How can we get more information? OK, we put logging in here and here, and run this test, and we find out that it's in B. Now, how could it go wrong in B? And so on until you understand what's really causing the problem.
high_byte 6y ago
it's both my blessing and my curse. I don't know if it's a skill per se, some might say it is - I never hesitated to walk away from money.
giantg2 6y ago
I don't have one. My main skill is forming different/ independent opinions and speaking my mind. This has greatly hampered my career.
misterioss 6y ago
Discipline, I think. To do tasks regardless of internal/external state of mind.
- jp42 6y ago
  This! It's a superpower. It's very hard though. I still struggle.
potta_coffee 6y ago
On resume? AWS + Golang. Career-wise? Having enough grit to tough through problems other developers don't want to solve. In life? Grit and persistence has helped me there too. I feel like I'm smart but probably not above average.
flukus 6y ago
Bash and related tools. From monitoring and spelunking logs, generating code, generating input, switching states, quickly looking up client data, background compiling, etc. It gets an enormous amount of work done quickly and easily.

Sales. Life is sales, get used to rejection, negotiation, persuasion. Motivating yourself is sales. Getting that job is sales. Dating that girl is sales. Getting that raise is sales. Convincing yourself to create a business is sales. Getting your first customer is sales.

gt565k 6y ago

Having a solid understanding of SQL and how the database runtime works. I.e. indices, partioniong, materialized vs non-materialized views, etc. It really makes a huge difference for software engineers. Lots of software engineers just treat a database as a dumb data store and never leverage even a fraction of its utility. Often times you see a lot of nasty code written in the application layer that could have been handled so much more gracefully and efficiently in the database layer.

tudelo 6y ago

Being able to solve arbitrary leetcode type problems in an interview setting. The funny part about this is I'm much better at interviewing than being a software engineer :) I guess I could have worse problems in life...

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Knowing how to split the problem space in debugging. Something is going wrong. Where is it going wrong? Could be anywhere. Well, not anywhere - it has to be either A, B, or C. How can we get more information? OK, we put logging in here and here, and run this test, and we find out that it's in B. Now, how could it go wrong in B? And so on until you understand what's really causing the problem.

high_byte 6y ago

it's both my blessing and my curse. I don't know if it's a skill per se, some might say it is - I never hesitated to walk away from money.

giantg2 6y ago

I don't have one. My main skill is forming different/ independent opinions and speaking my mind. This has greatly hampered my career.

misterioss 6y ago

Discipline, I think. To do tasks regardless of internal/external state of mind.

jp42 6y ago
This! It's a superpower. It's very hard though. I still struggle.

potta_coffee 6y ago

On resume? AWS + Golang. Career-wise? Having enough grit to tough through problems other developers don't want to solve. In life? Grit and persistence has helped me there too. I feel like I'm smart but probably not above average.

flukus 6y ago

Bash and related tools. From monitoring and spelunking logs, generating code, generating input, switching states, quickly looking up client data, background compiling, etc. It gets an enormous amount of work done quickly and easily.