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This attitude is a disease that a lot of software engineers have. If only everyone else wasn't so stupid, if only there were no politics, and no lying business

This attitude is a disease that a lot of software engineers have. If only everyone else wasn't so stupid, if only there were no politics, and no lying business people! Then I could design the perfect system and be successful and my beautiful software would realize its true potential. If you really want to succeed you absolutely must learn to be pragmatic about sales, and business and politics and people. The world is run on narratives and stories and lies and faith and emotion and all kinds of illogical things engineers don't like. You also must also stop thinking about things in terms of success and failure, there's not really any such thing except in our heads and in the way we present ourselves to others, only your attitude and what you are doing today matter. Also in a week you might wake up and find out you have cancer and you will just be sick for the rest of your life and never work on anything ever again, forget about the past, forget about the stress and feeling of being angry or unjustly treated and just be who you want to be today, and make everyone else believe it too.

deleted 4y ago
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happyjack 4y ago
One of the best comments I've read on this site, and I wholeheartedly agree. Narratives and emotions run the world. Engineering / facts only come into play when there's liability to kill people or lose investors money.
mrtranscendence 4y ago
> there's not really any such thing except in our heads I disagree. When my father's used car lot went under, that was a massive failure of planning and leadership, sending my family into a financial spiral with effects felt for decades. There was no upside here. Hell, he ended up in jail briefly as a result of the debacle. There's definitely such a thing as failure. That said, I agree that the poster's mindset seems to be doing them no favors here. Sounds like they've always been paid, they've done good work, they've broadened and deepened their engineering experience. As long as they can still find a job there are worse things than this kind of failure.
fullstackchris 4y ago
> Also in a week you might wake up and find out you have cancer and you will just be sick for the rest of your life and never work on anything ever again, forget about the past, forget about the stress and feeling of being angry or unjustly treated and just be who you want to be today, and make everyone else believe it too. this hit hard, and for me it just proves how much harder i should work on things I care about, and not what the next clown wants me to accomplish for them

deleted 4y ago

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happyjack 4y ago

One of the best comments I've read on this site, and I wholeheartedly agree. Narratives and emotions run the world. Engineering / facts only come into play when there's liability to kill people or lose investors money.

mrtranscendence 4y ago

> there's not really any such thing except in our heads I disagree. When my father's used car lot went under, that was a massive failure of planning and leadership, sending my family into a financial spiral with effects felt for decades. There was no upside here. Hell, he ended up in jail briefly as a result of the debacle. There's definitely such a thing as failure. That said, I agree that the poster's mindset seems to be doing them no favors here. Sounds like they've always been paid, they've done good work, they've broadened and deepened their engineering experience. As long as they can still find a job there are worse things than this kind of failure.

fullstackchris 4y ago

> Also in a week you might wake up and find out you have cancer and you will just be sick for the rest of your life and never work on anything ever again, forget about the past, forget about the stress and feeling of being angry or unjustly treated and just be who you want to be today, and make everyone else believe it too. this hit hard, and for me it just proves how much harder i should work on things I care about, and not what the next clown wants me to accomplish for them