4 ms·

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

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".
      - amonith 4y ago
        > 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'd argue that they are replaced (if they are, because I'm not sure, there are not a lot of old folk because IT industry is pretty young, I already worked with a few 50+ mid devs and the pay is kinda reverse, because old folk already have homes and don't need to pay off huge mortgages) not because they didn't get promoted (mid dev -> product owner / domain expert) but because they stopped upgrading the skills relevant to their current job. So in terms of the example presented by the author it would be developers that are no longer even hyped about languages/tools. And in our imaginary "tiling specialist" it would be a guy that didn't care that the current fad is some kind of funky pattern + new material of tiles and still wanted to lay old ceramic square tiles for his entire life. I'm still not convinced that there is a scenario where you __have to__ care about "the domain" / "the problem being solved" / "the bigger picture" that much. You can, it will improve some aspects of your career, but you don't have to and it would degrade other aspects of said career (we all have about 16h max productive hours daily, and I'm being generous).
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.

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".
    - amonith 4y ago
      > 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'd argue that they are replaced (if they are, because I'm not sure, there are not a lot of old folk because IT industry is pretty young, I already worked with a few 50+ mid devs and the pay is kinda reverse, because old folk already have homes and don't need to pay off huge mortgages) not because they didn't get promoted (mid dev -> product owner / domain expert) but because they stopped upgrading the skills relevant to their current job. So in terms of the example presented by the author it would be developers that are no longer even hyped about languages/tools. And in our imaginary "tiling specialist" it would be a guy that didn't care that the current fad is some kind of funky pattern + new material of tiles and still wanted to lay old ceramic square tiles for his entire life. I'm still not convinced that there is a scenario where you __have to__ care about "the domain" / "the problem being solved" / "the bigger picture" that much. You can, it will improve some aspects of your career, but you don't have to and it would degrade other aspects of said career (we all have about 16h max productive hours daily, and I'm being generous).

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.