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Everyone can self-identify as they like, the real ones in this case are easy to spot just asking them to tell you some stories of absurd problems they solved. T

Everyone can self-identify as they like, the real ones in this case are easy to spot just asking them to tell you some stories of absurd problems they solved. They always have a boatload of war stories.

Reebz 4y ago
Exactly. The real ones, with experience, can regale with numerous stories of their trials and tribulations. Critically, it won’t come across as boastful, because they’ll detail how they loved the challenge, the context, and the solution.
- Manjuuu 4y ago
  Yes.
mgkimsal 4y ago
An issue I’ve found is that often these stories don’t tend to be believed. To the untrained ear, they sound like typical BS everyone throws around. Tiny example: I joined a company and a nightly process was data import. The import was starting to take longer than 25 hours, threatening the “daily” aspect, and on the verge of causing logistical problems because of this. The problem had been looming for months and has taken more time from multiple folks than anyone anticipated, impacting other projects’ timelines. It wasn’t on my plate, but I overheard others talking about it. I took a look, and spent a couple days testing out ideas. I got a 25 hour process down to 30 minutes. Had to do it myself first to prove it, because just making suggestions to the “experienced” folks was dismissed with “that’s not how this works, you don’t understand”. After I got it to 30 minutes, the same folks “optimized” my process down to about 25 minutes, then didn’t overly acknowledge the approach I’d used to make this manageable again. I’ve had pushback on this story like “well, there was probably something you’re leaving out. Everyone likes to think their contribution is the most important, but things are a team effort. We’re not all superheroes”. If you ask for war stories, be prepared for dailywtf-level stuff sometimes.
- Manjuuu 4y ago
  > “well, there was probably something you’re leaving out. Everyone likes to think their contribution is the most important, but things are a team effort. We’re not all superheroes”. That's how people that give no contributions whatsoever would reply, I think. The pattern "identify thing that takes too long, local expert says it's unfixable and you don't understand, you fix it in a few hours, local expert downplays" is VERY common, but until the one controlling the budget is aware of reality I'm ok with it. And in those cases you see the good people because they get excited and want to help improve more things.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Haha just leave off the part of the story where it humiliates someone else. Anyway you should take cash over credit any day. Credit can be taken in the most brazen ways by those with more political power in the org and all you can do about it is bloody some noses, not a great reputation builder. You must know that whether people admit it or not, they know who did the lions share and its an invisible card in your back pocket but to exercise it takes tact and stones. An alternative way to frame your story is that your solution was immediately validated by greybeards and effortlessly extended!! ;-)
- heavenlyblue 4y ago
  I think you just left out the most important bit of the story... What exactly did you do in order to reduce it from 25 hours to 30 minutes?
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    Quick steps: * Create new table on disk. * Create temp table in RAM. * Start chunked import. * Import 50k rows in to temp table. * Dump temp table to new table. * Clear temp table. * Import next 50k rows. * Repeat. * Drop old table, rename new table on disk to regular name Each row being imported was updating indices. Just removing indexes, then importing, did speed it up, but not as dramatically. Importing most to RAM table, then chunking to the final table. That was a core key. I'd indicated early on "let's try temp memory tables". It was dismissed ("we tried that" and also "what's that?"). So I did my own tests, and it was pretty dramatic.

Reebz 4y ago

Exactly. The real ones, with experience, can regale with numerous stories of their trials and tribulations. Critically, it won’t come across as boastful, because they’ll detail how they loved the challenge, the context, and the solution.

Manjuuu 4y ago
Yes.

mgkimsal 4y ago

An issue I’ve found is that often these stories don’t tend to be believed. To the untrained ear, they sound like typical BS everyone throws around. Tiny example: I joined a company and a nightly process was data import. The import was starting to take longer than 25 hours, threatening the “daily” aspect, and on the verge of causing logistical problems because of this. The problem had been looming for months and has taken more time from multiple folks than anyone anticipated, impacting other projects’ timelines. It wasn’t on my plate, but I overheard others talking about it. I took a look, and spent a couple days testing out ideas. I got a 25 hour process down to 30 minutes. Had to do it myself first to prove it, because just making suggestions to the “experienced” folks was dismissed with “that’s not how this works, you don’t understand”. After I got it to 30 minutes, the same folks “optimized” my process down to about 25 minutes, then didn’t overly acknowledge the approach I’d used to make this manageable again. I’ve had pushback on this story like “well, there was probably something you’re leaving out. Everyone likes to think their contribution is the most important, but things are a team effort. We’re not all superheroes”. If you ask for war stories, be prepared for dailywtf-level stuff sometimes.

Manjuuu 4y ago
> “well, there was probably something you’re leaving out. Everyone likes to think their contribution is the most important, but things are a team effort. We’re not all superheroes”. That's how people that give no contributions whatsoever would reply, I think. The pattern "identify thing that takes too long, local expert says it's unfixable and you don't understand, you fix it in a few hours, local expert downplays" is VERY common, but until the one controlling the budget is aware of reality I'm ok with it. And in those cases you see the good people because they get excited and want to help improve more things.
peteradio 4y ago
Haha just leave off the part of the story where it humiliates someone else. Anyway you should take cash over credit any day. Credit can be taken in the most brazen ways by those with more political power in the org and all you can do about it is bloody some noses, not a great reputation builder. You must know that whether people admit it or not, they know who did the lions share and its an invisible card in your back pocket but to exercise it takes tact and stones. An alternative way to frame your story is that your solution was immediately validated by greybeards and effortlessly extended!! ;-)
heavenlyblue 4y ago
I think you just left out the most important bit of the story... What exactly did you do in order to reduce it from 25 hours to 30 minutes?
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  Quick steps: * Create new table on disk. * Create temp table in RAM. * Start chunked import. * Import 50k rows in to temp table. * Dump temp table to new table. * Clear temp table. * Import next 50k rows. * Repeat. * Drop old table, rename new table on disk to regular name Each row being imported was updating indices. Just removing indexes, then importing, did speed it up, but not as dramatically. Importing most to RAM table, then chunking to the final table. That was a core key. I'd indicated early on "let's try temp memory tables". It was dismissed ("we tried that" and also "what's that?"). So I did my own tests, and it was pretty dramatic.