5 ms·

Good advice to advance your career, but I'd say there's nothing wrong with being passionate/excited about the craft and not the result. Newbies should just be a

Good advice to advance your career, but I'd say there's nothing wrong with being passionate/excited about the craft and not the result. Newbies should just be aware that this can affect their career (they will have better job security as they won't be picky about the domain, but they will probably earn less as they won't ever be domain experts). There are endless examples from other "industries". There are people that love painting, but never care who sees their work. They love the creative process. There are people that love carpentry, but hate doing utilitarian furniture that sells well. They love how zen manual labor can be and that the result is physical. It's not "wrong-way-aroundness", it's just a different goal.

Ensorceled 4y ago
I disagree, imagine if someone showed up to a construction site and said "I bought a new hammer and have little to no idea how to use it, are there any cool or important projects I can pound nails into?" If it was my home, I would hope the crew boss would tell them to go build a shed or something first.
- amonith 4y ago
  In this scenario he'd just be told exactly which nails to pound and his work would be inspected. This is a very good example actually, construction work is a really popular summer gig for students in my country (Poland). They know nothing and don't care about the domain (building houses), they just follow supervisors and the designs. You can't give them an entire house to build, but they are very useful and cheap members of the crew. They'll never be architects (they don't want to), but they'll earn enough to buy whatever students want and they'll always find some work no matter what is being built and where.
  - AuthorizedCust 4y ago
    In other words, the supervisor holds the vision of the output, and that person assures that the people interested in the craft are acting towards creating the desired output.
    - baremetal 4y ago
      1. A supervisor will demonstrate what is expected. 2. Then the worker tries it while the supervisor watches. 3. Feedback is given 4. Repeat 2-4 until satisfactory work is achieved. Depending on the task this may be as little as 5 minutes for something simple or much longer for more complicated things.[1] [1] I own a rough framing business
  - aynyc 4y ago
    I worked construction in high school and college in the US. This is not how it generally works. If you are a high school kid, your summer construction gig is usually slave labor, meaning carrying ton of stuff up and down, cleaning stuff as you go and be a general gopher. You don't do anything remotely close to the construction of the house. The only exception is being a roofer, which you just tar stuff with other crew members.
    - amonith 4y ago
      I think that's a bit outside of the topic, because we're now discussing a case of "only passion, 0 knowledge" which was not the point. The author of the article thinks that not looking at the bigger picture (or the upper "decision level" if you will) is inherently wrong. My point is that enjoying the process and not caring about the product is more than enough realistically. So assume a worker that perfectly knows and likes their job, but doesn't care about the process "above" him. If you enjoy the process of tiling and you have some experience with tiling, you don't have to care about what kind of building/room you are working on. Somebody designed the room, somebody picked the right materials, somebody probably bought them and it's in the spec/design. You can just "tile away" and make a career out of it. Similarly in software, if you care only about programming and languages and whatnot and not the product - it's all you need with the right team/org. You won't be a product owner and you wont advance to "decision-making" levels in the company, but if you don't want to why would you need to.
      - aynyc 4y ago
        I can't really agree to what you are describing, despite the fact that certain parts of my career, I fit your description perfectly. The issue I have with is the statement of "make a career out of it". I don't think you can, at least not in the software industry, a lot of folks are perfectly competent developers but can't move forward and eventually get replaced by younger/cheaper developers because they are basically doing the same thing for the past 10 years. I agree with having passions for something, but making a career out of it is a lot harder if you don't do the "extra".
        4y ago
- tom-thistime 4y ago
  Feels like a central issue. I find a lot to agree with here, and a lot to agree with in the comment you're responding to.
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    I think the original articles message could boil down to "start small" and people are taking that to mean "don't start"
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  That sounds a bit out of place in a construction site, but every mechanical shop has something to try the new hammer on, and the equivalent in a physics lab would stop everybody so they bring stuff to try the hammer on. The difference is mostly of culture, and seems completely irrelevant to what you are trying to say.
khaledh 4y ago
Well said. I spend my day doing professional software development in a particular domain, where I solve real, tangible problems. In the evening I like to spend some time on aimless programming, tinkering with new languages, technologies, tools, etc. I do it for the enjoyment of the learning and the creative process as you mentioned, with no particular goal in mind.
alvis 4y ago
There are 2 things that excite human -- learning and realisation. The author pointed out the way how to realise a thing. But as many are also saying, being aimless is an opportunity to learn, explore and discover new possibilities. It's like how many of us are playing with ChatGPT at the moment. It's a journey of discovery that can lead you to realise the potential and create something truly amazing in later time. Would anyone say porting ChatGPT to many existing applications aimless?
- shanebellone 4y ago
  "Would anyone say porting ChatGPT to many existing applications aimless?" I would. It's FOMO not innovation.
  - solarmist 4y ago
    Until it is innovation. The problem is you can't tell which it'll be in advance.
    - shanebellone 4y ago
      Can you name one innovation derived from a remixed API?
bdcravens 4y ago
Fortunately in software you can pursue your passions in your free time for no pay.
Dave3of5 4y ago
> but they will probably earn less as they won't ever be domain experts I disagree. I've rarely seen any programmers that are domain experts, most of those domain experts are actually hired in a consultancy role. As they work through the projects programmers can become very familiar to a specific domain but in general that's not their job and they will be treated as such. They will be consulted on implementation but less likely, if at all, on strategy. Which is what I would expect from a domain expert i.e. a consultant. The highest paid programmers move jobs most often the lowest paid don't that'll tell you what becoming a domain expert means for a programmer.
- dasil003 4y ago
  While it's true that in practice most programmers are bricklayers (especially given the growth of the industry leading to a young-skewing population), that doesn't invalidate the GP's thesis that domain expertise is a good lever for compensation growth. The biggest mistakes and greatest successes of my programming career have always been related to the breadth of my understanding of the product domain and UX that I was operating in. The other thing I find curious in your comment is the implication that strategy is usually set by domain experts who tend to be consultants. This very much runs counter to my experience, where consultants are brought in for specific jobs or problems where an outside perspective is needed, but generally those things are scope-boxed or time-boxed tangents to the business. The big strategy is generally set by leaders and influencers within the company via a mix of formal and informal venues. These individuals will have the most knowledge of the context specific to that business and how it competes in the marketplace. Consultants, by contrast, can develop a cross-cutting knowledge of industry, which can be a valuable data point well worth paying for, but a company who relies on consultants as the primary driver of strategy is rudderless and probably in decline.
  - Dave3of5 4y ago
    You are probably thinking of management or business consultants like McKinsey and the like. A lot of companies will hire a consultant as a permanent member of staff when they are working in a specialist domain note they may be called something different like solution architect or suchlike but they are acting as consultant. I've been in several that had these types. I think the only companies that didn't were companies in industries that didn't need any specific domain experience example here are one that did: * Oil and Gas (Flow metering) * Network Timing and Sync testing * Health and Care (Worked in Care and had several) * Practice Management Ones that didn't * Data analysis * Data warehousing
jrm4 4y ago
Hmmm. I don't know, I'd argue these are the people that might just happily write the proverbial DestroyBaghdad function.
greenhearth 4y ago
Yeah, exactly. What if there're no problems to solve? I like the metronome just fine and I want to write a Tetris in Haskell just to see if I can do it, or something like that?
- amonith 4y ago
  Even if someone created a design that solves "the problem", there are probably thousands of subjects/situations where that design needs to be actually applied. No single software scales infinitely and is infinitely customizable. Some software even is customizable too much and that becomes its own problem. We need a lot of "bricklayers" that don't care about the problem but can be elastically moved around between projects to implement the ever increasing backlog of "solutions". Entire companies are created that solve that exact problem.
  - greenhearth 4y ago
    This is the old Joseph Weizenbaum observation that the computer is a "solution looking for a problem," which, now that you mention it, I think can be applied to the entire tech industry.
Mimmy 4y ago
[dead]

Ensorceled 4y ago

I disagree, imagine if someone showed up to a construction site and said "I bought a new hammer and have little to no idea how to use it, are there any cool or important projects I can pound nails into?" If it was my home, I would hope the crew boss would tell them to go build a shed or something first.

amonith 4y ago
In this scenario he'd just be told exactly which nails to pound and his work would be inspected. This is a very good example actually, construction work is a really popular summer gig for students in my country (Poland). They know nothing and don't care about the domain (building houses), they just follow supervisors and the designs. You can't give them an entire house to build, but they are very useful and cheap members of the crew. They'll never be architects (they don't want to), but they'll earn enough to buy whatever students want and they'll always find some work no matter what is being built and where.
- AuthorizedCust 4y ago
  In other words, the supervisor holds the vision of the output, and that person assures that the people interested in the craft are acting towards creating the desired output.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    1. A supervisor will demonstrate what is expected. 2. Then the worker tries it while the supervisor watches. 3. Feedback is given 4. Repeat 2-4 until satisfactory work is achieved. Depending on the task this may be as little as 5 minutes for something simple or much longer for more complicated things.[1] [1] I own a rough framing business
- aynyc 4y ago
  I worked construction in high school and college in the US. This is not how it generally works. If you are a high school kid, your summer construction gig is usually slave labor, meaning carrying ton of stuff up and down, cleaning stuff as you go and be a general gopher. You don't do anything remotely close to the construction of the house. The only exception is being a roofer, which you just tar stuff with other crew members.
  - amonith 4y ago
    I think that's a bit outside of the topic, because we're now discussing a case of "only passion, 0 knowledge" which was not the point. The author of the article thinks that not looking at the bigger picture (or the upper "decision level" if you will) is inherently wrong. My point is that enjoying the process and not caring about the product is more than enough realistically. So assume a worker that perfectly knows and likes their job, but doesn't care about the process "above" him. If you enjoy the process of tiling and you have some experience with tiling, you don't have to care about what kind of building/room you are working on. Somebody designed the room, somebody picked the right materials, somebody probably bought them and it's in the spec/design. You can just "tile away" and make a career out of it. Similarly in software, if you care only about programming and languages and whatnot and not the product - it's all you need with the right team/org. You won't be a product owner and you wont advance to "decision-making" levels in the company, but if you don't want to why would you need to.
    - aynyc 4y ago
      I can't really agree to what you are describing, despite the fact that certain parts of my career, I fit your description perfectly. The issue I have with is the statement of "make a career out of it". I don't think you can, at least not in the software industry, a lot of folks are perfectly competent developers but can't move forward and eventually get replaced by younger/cheaper developers because they are basically doing the same thing for the past 10 years. I agree with having passions for something, but making a career out of it is a lot harder if you don't do the "extra".
      - 4y ago
tom-thistime 4y ago
Feels like a central issue. I find a lot to agree with here, and a lot to agree with in the comment you're responding to.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  I think the original articles message could boil down to "start small" and people are taking that to mean "don't start"
marcosdumay 4y ago
That sounds a bit out of place in a construction site, but every mechanical shop has something to try the new hammer on, and the equivalent in a physics lab would stop everybody so they bring stuff to try the hammer on. The difference is mostly of culture, and seems completely irrelevant to what you are trying to say.

khaledh 4y ago

Well said. I spend my day doing professional software development in a particular domain, where I solve real, tangible problems. In the evening I like to spend some time on aimless programming, tinkering with new languages, technologies, tools, etc. I do it for the enjoyment of the learning and the creative process as you mentioned, with no particular goal in mind.

alvis 4y ago

There are 2 things that excite human -- learning and realisation. The author pointed out the way how to realise a thing. But as many are also saying, being aimless is an opportunity to learn, explore and discover new possibilities. It's like how many of us are playing with ChatGPT at the moment. It's a journey of discovery that can lead you to realise the potential and create something truly amazing in later time. Would anyone say porting ChatGPT to many existing applications aimless?

shanebellone 4y ago
"Would anyone say porting ChatGPT to many existing applications aimless?" I would. It's FOMO not innovation.
- solarmist 4y ago
  Until it is innovation. The problem is you can't tell which it'll be in advance.
  - shanebellone 4y ago
    Can you name one innovation derived from a remixed API?

bdcravens 4y ago

Fortunately in software you can pursue your passions in your free time for no pay.

Dave3of5 4y ago

> but they will probably earn less as they won't ever be domain experts I disagree. I've rarely seen any programmers that are domain experts, most of those domain experts are actually hired in a consultancy role. As they work through the projects programmers can become very familiar to a specific domain but in general that's not their job and they will be treated as such. They will be consulted on implementation but less likely, if at all, on strategy. Which is what I would expect from a domain expert i.e. a consultant. The highest paid programmers move jobs most often the lowest paid don't that'll tell you what becoming a domain expert means for a programmer.

dasil003 4y ago
While it's true that in practice most programmers are bricklayers (especially given the growth of the industry leading to a young-skewing population), that doesn't invalidate the GP's thesis that domain expertise is a good lever for compensation growth. The biggest mistakes and greatest successes of my programming career have always been related to the breadth of my understanding of the product domain and UX that I was operating in. The other thing I find curious in your comment is the implication that strategy is usually set by domain experts who tend to be consultants. This very much runs counter to my experience, where consultants are brought in for specific jobs or problems where an outside perspective is needed, but generally those things are scope-boxed or time-boxed tangents to the business. The big strategy is generally set by leaders and influencers within the company via a mix of formal and informal venues. These individuals will have the most knowledge of the context specific to that business and how it competes in the marketplace. Consultants, by contrast, can develop a cross-cutting knowledge of industry, which can be a valuable data point well worth paying for, but a company who relies on consultants as the primary driver of strategy is rudderless and probably in decline.
- Dave3of5 4y ago
  You are probably thinking of management or business consultants like McKinsey and the like. A lot of companies will hire a consultant as a permanent member of staff when they are working in a specialist domain note they may be called something different like solution architect or suchlike but they are acting as consultant. I've been in several that had these types. I think the only companies that didn't were companies in industries that didn't need any specific domain experience example here are one that did: * Oil and Gas (Flow metering) * Network Timing and Sync testing * Health and Care (Worked in Care and had several) * Practice Management Ones that didn't * Data analysis * Data warehousing

jrm4 4y ago

Hmmm. I don't know, I'd argue these are the people that might just happily write the proverbial DestroyBaghdad function.

greenhearth 4y ago

Yeah, exactly. What if there're no problems to solve? I like the metronome just fine and I want to write a Tetris in Haskell just to see if I can do it, or something like that?

amonith 4y ago
Even if someone created a design that solves "the problem", there are probably thousands of subjects/situations where that design needs to be actually applied. No single software scales infinitely and is infinitely customizable. Some software even is customizable too much and that becomes its own problem. We need a lot of "bricklayers" that don't care about the problem but can be elastically moved around between projects to implement the ever increasing backlog of "solutions". Entire companies are created that solve that exact problem.
- greenhearth 4y ago
  This is the old Joseph Weizenbaum observation that the computer is a "solution looking for a problem," which, now that you mention it, I think can be applied to the entire tech industry.

Mimmy 4y ago

[dead]