5 ms·

Mentor advice: 1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate. 2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, bu

by edw519 4y ago

Mentor advice: 1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate. 2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.) 3. Never let anyone eat your lunch. 4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster. 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete. 6. Your positive mental attitude makes up for most of your shortcomings. 7. Learning the difference between an issue and a detail is half the battle. 8. Avoid introducing new jargon. It's already hard enough to understand. 9. Isolate. Isolate. Isolate. 10. If it's not written down, it's not. 11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us. 12. If you set aside something urgent to go to Happy Hour, how will our annual report differ? (Hint: It won't.) 13. What's the good news? (No matter how bad things are, never hesitate to answer.) 14. A degree in business is a degree in nothing. 15. The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?" (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084127) 16. No project ever dies but many are abandoned. 17. Self praise stinks. 18. If someone can do something once, they can do it again. 19. Almost anyone can do almost anything. And my favorite: 20. Ultimately, go with your gut.

gbro3n 4y ago
Would be great to get some context / examples around some of these
- edw519 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, gbro3n. I'm too lazy to write a blog post about this at the moment, so here's a quickie reply: 1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate. Feedback from my mentor at a silly presentation of mine that convinced no one. I added data (as suggested) and it killed. 2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.) I had trouble selling software. The customer said it was too expensive. That wasn't the real reason. This comment from my mentor taught me to find the real reason. 3. Never let anyone eat your lunch. From an early mentor who kept noticing others take advantage of me (easy when you're in I.T.) without me fighting back. He taught me that sometimes, going along is worse for everyone in the long run. 4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster. I.T. (in its typical "pass the buck" mode) refused to turn on the Production Work-in-Process module of our ERP system because the base data (standards, routings, recipes, etc.) was so inaccurate and incomplete that "the shop reports would be worthless". To which my mentor responded, "What better way to fix them? The people responsible for fixing the data will be much more motivated because they want better reports." Great advice I've used 100 times since then. 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete. Powerpoint presentations are almost always boring and "powerpointless". UNLESS they're real truth (like most good comedy). The best truths are evergreen. And the slides can be used over and over again. 6. Your positive mental attitude makes up for most of your shortcomings. From a mentor who saw something no one else saw (including myself). Once I knew "I had PMA", everything changed forever. 7. Learning the difference between an issue and a detail is half the battle. Almost every corporate dick fight I've ever witnessed was over nothing. Asking the question, "Is this a detail or an issue?" refocused 90% of my attention to what really mattered. And helped me help others do the same thing. 8. Avoid introducing new jargon. It's already hard enough to understand. I got fancy with new terminology in a sales presentation years ago. It failed miserably. This was why. I'm glad I asked. I've never failed because of that again. 9. Isolate. Isolate. Isolate. First mentor, our tech lead, about debugging. VERY evergreen. 10. If it's not written down, it's not. From another mentor. So obvious but so elusive. Born of a stupid argument about building something where no one remembered anything vocalized before. 11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us. My cofounder's remark when I was super frustrated dealing with so much suckiness at our customer. Really set me right. 12. If you set aside something urgent to go to Happy Hour, how will our annual report differ? (Hint: It won't.) My mentor wanted to talk about very important stuff over beers. I resisted. This question was how he got me to see things differently. Urgent is short-term and tech based. Happy Hour is long-term and people based. Both are necessary. 13. What's the good news? (No matter how bad things are, never hesitate to answer.) My mentor and boss always focused on the positive, no matter how elusive. I've adopted this philosophy. Sometimes I think that might have been the best thing I ever did. 14. A degree in business is a degree in nothing. From a professor in my MBA program. Put everything into perspective before I encountered all those silly suits over my career. 15. The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?" (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084127) See the link. I've been talking about this for years. 16. No project ever dies but many are abandoned. One of my mentors liked deadlines for simple urgent projects but hated them for complex important projects. Took me a while to grok this, but has become much more important over the years. 17. Self praise stinks! From my mother when I did my touchdown dance after building something. Great advice (although I still dance once in a while when something works the first time. Sometimes I just can't help myself.) 18. If someone can do something once, they can do it again. The underlying principle (provided by my mentor) for a cost absorption system I wrote and implemented in a human based production shop. If they're not doing what they have done before, there must be a reason. Our job is to find that reason." This applies to all of us. I've even used it to "debug myself' many times. 19. Almost anyone can do almost anything. Hard to grok, but so true. The main reason people fail is that they just give up before they succeed. Again, provided by a mention when I was frustrated by junior programmers weren't coming up to speed fast enough. And my favorite: 20. Ultimately, go with your gut. Really important for a right-brained person like me. It reassures me that left-brain thinking is not only OK, but often essential.
  - insightcheck 4y ago
    Thank you greatly for sharing and updating with examples and context, though I would like to gently suggest an alternative to one piece of wisdom. > “17. Self praise stinks! From my mother when I did my touchdown dance after building something. Great advice (although I still dance once in a while when something works the first time. Sometimes I just can't help myself.)” In contrast, in the book Tiny Habits by Stanford psychology professor BJ Fogg, self-praise is actually described as critical for making new habits and behaviour change stick, as it allows for positive reinforcement [1]. Anecdotally, I’ve observed friends who never celebrate major positive improvements in their life, and they seem to have depressive symptoms. Though on the other hand, it’s quite possible that people view self-congratulatory celebratory gestures as negative. Perhaps it’s good to celebrate your achievements, but mostly in private or just with close friends to avoid attracting competition or challenge from others (I wish it was less risky to celebrate in public or among coworkers, but in practice, not everyone is celebratory of others’ success). [1] More context from Fogg about why he thinks celebrating minor successes is important: https://ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-power-of-celebration-to-make-new-habits-stick/ https://ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-power-of-celebrati...
  - club_tropical 4y ago
    Appreciate your generosity in typing the OG 20 and then expanding upon it when people were curious. Personally I am very surprised you think some of these held up: pos mental attitude, writing things down, value of mba, and - most especially - almost anyone can do anything.
    - edw519 4y ago
      Personally I am very surprised you think some of these held up: pos mental attitude, writing things down, value of mba, and - most especially - almost anyone can do anything. OK then please allow me to give you a recent example of ALL 4 OF THESE that made my (Fortune 50) employer hundreds of millions of dollars in real profits... I built specialized supply chain software that did what nothing else (including SAP and JDA) could do. It supported 10,000 daily orders in 240 warehouses. Our Big 4 Accounting Idiots spent 9 months and $2 million to conclude that it could not be done. I knew better because my users knew better. (I had already earned my own worthless MBA and had worked as an employee for the same Big 4 firm years prior and knew their weaknesses, which were not hard to spot.) 3 different divisions could not agree on anything. I just pulled them together in the same room at corporate headquarters until they got to know each other and hammered out a good design. I built the prototype in 6 weeks because I knew I could. I got buy-in from the people that mattered because it's what they wanted in the first place. 12 offshore programmers built production ready software in less than a year. Everyone else had given up on them and their giant firm because of previous failures but I knew better. I never met any of them, in person or online (because of the time zone difference). Everything was written down. That's the only way this could have been done. The 20 items I presented in my original post are solid gold. Not because of me. But because I learned from brilliant mentors. Personally I am very surprised that you are are very surprised. The tech only takes us so far. I was lucky to have mentors who taught me the soft stuff too. Their advice changed my life much more than any tech advice. Hope this helps. :-)
Yhippa 4y ago
> 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete. What does this mean? That it sticks to high-level, timeless concepts?
- edw519 4y ago
  Yes, that's part of it. It has to speak deep (sometimes elusive) truth. People will be engaged. They will learn. They will use it. And you can use the slides forever. Kinda like stand-up comedy. Ever notice that there are 2 kinds of comics, those who riff with the drunks to get the cheap laughs and those who work at an act to speak evergreen truth, getting deep laughs (and even a few tears). We should be like the latter.
  - thaw13579 4y ago
    I could see that working for presentations for a general audience like a TED talk or maybe intro/closing slides, but otherwise many presentations are context-specific, and trying to frame the content as a "deep truth" might not fly with the audience.
    - FrontierPsych 4y ago
      Yes, you are correct that specific situation require specific numbers. I think the difference is that you can add evergreen content to the specific numbers. But I guess if it is a daily 15 minute sales meeting for something like the number of sales made yesterday, it isn't going to require anything but numbers. But maybe once a week or once a month, the sales meeting could address bigger issues. The "why's" and "wherefores" that are evergreen. These types of meetings can keep people engaged at a deeper level, rather than only look at numbers, where people can become disengaged and not motivated as much. Does that make sense?
      - thaw13579 4y ago
        Yes, I agree it’s good to sprinkle them in, but not for every slide, like the OP advises. I think the challenge is that evergreen content, by its nature, is general and can come across as irrelevant to the specific topic at hand (and easily trend towards cliche). The OP describes all other slides as obsolete, but I think that’s okay in many circumstances.
iKevinShah 4y ago
Some of these are amazing. Specially - The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?"
- swyx 4y ago
  can you explain why? i read thru the linked post and it seemed kinda obvious that differnt people care about different things so you must adapt your value proposition accordingly. i must be missing something
CPLX 4y ago
I dunno. I’ve been around half a century and I’m pretty sure when people say it’s not about the money most of the time it’s about the money.
CamperBob2 4y ago
11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us. I especially like that one. Me, as a newbie in the industry: "Customer X is a bunch of idiots." Boss: "If they weren't idiots, they wouldn't need us." This one, on the other hand: 4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster. If it's software, check your backups first. If it's hardware, ummm, yeeahh, no. Wait 'til it's ready. Trust me on this one.
- elboru 4y ago
  Not a hardware guy. But I guess you can turn on modules individually before everything is done.
- blaser-waffle 4y ago
  > I especially like that one. Me, as a newbie in the industry: "Customer X is a bunch of idiots." Boss: "If they weren't idiots, they wouldn't need us." As a former coworker of mine put it: "if IT was easy we wouldn't get paid decent money for it"

by edw519 4y ago

gbro3n 4y ago

Would be great to get some context / examples around some of these

edw519 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback, gbro3n. I'm too lazy to write a blog post about this at the moment, so here's a quickie reply: 1. An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate. Feedback from my mentor at a silly presentation of mine that convinced no one. I added data (as suggested) and it killed. 2. It's never the money. (They will always say it is, but it's not.) I had trouble selling software. The customer said it was too expensive. That wasn't the real reason. This comment from my mentor taught me to find the real reason. 3. Never let anyone eat your lunch. From an early mentor who kept noticing others take advantage of me (easy when you're in I.T.) without me fighting back. He taught me that sometimes, going along is worse for everyone in the long run. 4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster. I.T. (in its typical "pass the buck" mode) refused to turn on the Production Work-in-Process module of our ERP system because the base data (standards, routings, recipes, etc.) was so inaccurate and incomplete that "the shop reports would be worthless". To which my mentor responded, "What better way to fix them? The people responsible for fixing the data will be much more motivated because they want better reports." Great advice I've used 100 times since then. 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete. Powerpoint presentations are almost always boring and "powerpointless". UNLESS they're real truth (like most good comedy). The best truths are evergreen. And the slides can be used over and over again. 6. Your positive mental attitude makes up for most of your shortcomings. From a mentor who saw something no one else saw (including myself). Once I knew "I had PMA", everything changed forever. 7. Learning the difference between an issue and a detail is half the battle. Almost every corporate dick fight I've ever witnessed was over nothing. Asking the question, "Is this a detail or an issue?" refocused 90% of my attention to what really mattered. And helped me help others do the same thing. 8. Avoid introducing new jargon. It's already hard enough to understand. I got fancy with new terminology in a sales presentation years ago. It failed miserably. This was why. I'm glad I asked. I've never failed because of that again. 9. Isolate. Isolate. Isolate. First mentor, our tech lead, about debugging. VERY evergreen. 10. If it's not written down, it's not. From another mentor. So obvious but so elusive. Born of a stupid argument about building something where no one remembered anything vocalized before. 11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us. My cofounder's remark when I was super frustrated dealing with so much suckiness at our customer. Really set me right. 12. If you set aside something urgent to go to Happy Hour, how will our annual report differ? (Hint: It won't.) My mentor wanted to talk about very important stuff over beers. I resisted. This question was how he got me to see things differently. Urgent is short-term and tech based. Happy Hour is long-term and people based. Both are necessary. 13. What's the good news? (No matter how bad things are, never hesitate to answer.) My mentor and boss always focused on the positive, no matter how elusive. I've adopted this philosophy. Sometimes I think that might have been the best thing I ever did. 14. A degree in business is a degree in nothing. From a professor in my MBA program. Put everything into perspective before I encountered all those silly suits over my career. 15. The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?" (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084127) See the link. I've been talking about this for years. 16. No project ever dies but many are abandoned. One of my mentors liked deadlines for simple urgent projects but hated them for complex important projects. Took me a while to grok this, but has become much more important over the years. 17. Self praise stinks! From my mother when I did my touchdown dance after building something. Great advice (although I still dance once in a while when something works the first time. Sometimes I just can't help myself.) 18. If someone can do something once, they can do it again. The underlying principle (provided by my mentor) for a cost absorption system I wrote and implemented in a human based production shop. If they're not doing what they have done before, there must be a reason. Our job is to find that reason." This applies to all of us. I've even used it to "debug myself' many times. 19. Almost anyone can do almost anything. Hard to grok, but so true. The main reason people fail is that they just give up before they succeed. Again, provided by a mention when I was frustrated by junior programmers weren't coming up to speed fast enough. And my favorite: 20. Ultimately, go with your gut. Really important for a right-brained person like me. It reassures me that left-brain thinking is not only OK, but often essential.
- insightcheck 4y ago
  Thank you greatly for sharing and updating with examples and context, though I would like to gently suggest an alternative to one piece of wisdom. > “17. Self praise stinks! From my mother when I did my touchdown dance after building something. Great advice (although I still dance once in a while when something works the first time. Sometimes I just can't help myself.)” In contrast, in the book Tiny Habits by Stanford psychology professor BJ Fogg, self-praise is actually described as critical for making new habits and behaviour change stick, as it allows for positive reinforcement [1]. Anecdotally, I’ve observed friends who never celebrate major positive improvements in their life, and they seem to have depressive symptoms. Though on the other hand, it’s quite possible that people view self-congratulatory celebratory gestures as negative. Perhaps it’s good to celebrate your achievements, but mostly in private or just with close friends to avoid attracting competition or challenge from others (I wish it was less risky to celebrate in public or among coworkers, but in practice, not everyone is celebratory of others’ success). [1] More context from Fogg about why he thinks celebrating minor successes is important: https://ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-power-of-celebration-to-make-new-habits-stick/ https://ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-power-of-celebrati...
- club_tropical 4y ago
  Appreciate your generosity in typing the OG 20 and then expanding upon it when people were curious. Personally I am very surprised you think some of these held up: pos mental attitude, writing things down, value of mba, and - most especially - almost anyone can do anything.
  - edw519 4y ago
    Personally I am very surprised you think some of these held up: pos mental attitude, writing things down, value of mba, and - most especially - almost anyone can do anything. OK then please allow me to give you a recent example of ALL 4 OF THESE that made my (Fortune 50) employer hundreds of millions of dollars in real profits... I built specialized supply chain software that did what nothing else (including SAP and JDA) could do. It supported 10,000 daily orders in 240 warehouses. Our Big 4 Accounting Idiots spent 9 months and $2 million to conclude that it could not be done. I knew better because my users knew better. (I had already earned my own worthless MBA and had worked as an employee for the same Big 4 firm years prior and knew their weaknesses, which were not hard to spot.) 3 different divisions could not agree on anything. I just pulled them together in the same room at corporate headquarters until they got to know each other and hammered out a good design. I built the prototype in 6 weeks because I knew I could. I got buy-in from the people that mattered because it's what they wanted in the first place. 12 offshore programmers built production ready software in less than a year. Everyone else had given up on them and their giant firm because of previous failures but I knew better. I never met any of them, in person or online (because of the time zone difference). Everything was written down. That's the only way this could have been done. The 20 items I presented in my original post are solid gold. Not because of me. But because I learned from brilliant mentors. Personally I am very surprised that you are are very surprised. The tech only takes us so far. I was lucky to have mentors who taught me the soft stuff too. Their advice changed my life much more than any tech advice. Hope this helps. :-)

Yhippa 4y ago

> 5. The only good Powerpoint slide is evergreen. If it's not, it's already obsolete. What does this mean? That it sticks to high-level, timeless concepts?

edw519 4y ago
Yes, that's part of it. It has to speak deep (sometimes elusive) truth. People will be engaged. They will learn. They will use it. And you can use the slides forever. Kinda like stand-up comedy. Ever notice that there are 2 kinds of comics, those who riff with the drunks to get the cheap laughs and those who work at an act to speak evergreen truth, getting deep laughs (and even a few tears). We should be like the latter.
- thaw13579 4y ago
  I could see that working for presentations for a general audience like a TED talk or maybe intro/closing slides, but otherwise many presentations are context-specific, and trying to frame the content as a "deep truth" might not fly with the audience.
  - FrontierPsych 4y ago
    Yes, you are correct that specific situation require specific numbers. I think the difference is that you can add evergreen content to the specific numbers. But I guess if it is a daily 15 minute sales meeting for something like the number of sales made yesterday, it isn't going to require anything but numbers. But maybe once a week or once a month, the sales meeting could address bigger issues. The "why's" and "wherefores" that are evergreen. These types of meetings can keep people engaged at a deeper level, rather than only look at numbers, where people can become disengaged and not motivated as much. Does that make sense?
    - thaw13579 4y ago
      Yes, I agree it’s good to sprinkle them in, but not for every slide, like the OP advises. I think the challenge is that evergreen content, by its nature, is general and can come across as irrelevant to the specific topic at hand (and easily trend towards cliche). The OP describes all other slides as obsolete, but I think that’s okay in many circumstances.

iKevinShah 4y ago

Some of these are amazing. Specially - The answer to any question is "Who wants to know?"

swyx 4y ago
can you explain why? i read thru the linked post and it seemed kinda obvious that differnt people care about different things so you must adapt your value proposition accordingly. i must be missing something

CPLX 4y ago

I dunno. I’ve been around half a century and I’m pretty sure when people say it’s not about the money most of the time it’s about the money.

CamperBob2 4y ago

11. The reason everyone we work for sucks is because those who don't suck never call us. I especially like that one. Me, as a newbie in the industry: "Customer X is a bunch of idiots." Boss: "If they weren't idiots, they wouldn't need us." This one, on the other hand: 4. The best time to turn it on is before it's ready. You'll get plenty of data to finish it faster. If it's software, check your backups first. If it's hardware, ummm, yeeahh, no. Wait 'til it's ready. Trust me on this one.

elboru 4y ago
Not a hardware guy. But I guess you can turn on modules individually before everything is done.
blaser-waffle 4y ago
> I especially like that one. Me, as a newbie in the industry: "Customer X is a bunch of idiots." Boss: "If they weren't idiots, they wouldn't need us." As a former coworker of mine put it: "if IT was easy we wouldn't get paid decent money for it"