> In the true Murican spirit you can compensate natural abilities with "hard work" -- for a time. Yup. I’ve done this and seen it happen in others. When I star

> In the true Murican spirit you can compensate natural abilities with "hard work" -- for a time. Yup. I’ve done this and seen it happen in others. When I started my career, I could stay up late or pull an all nighter to focus on and clutch out some project, make a deadline, or whatever. The first time I didn’t make it, was an eye opener. 15 years later I fell into a semi-related trap. Instead of getting help, I was pouring more and more of my time (without all nighters) into a project that was continually “almost there, except for this one thing...” and got negative but helpful feedback after a meeting where we had to “reset the plan.” Any one of those earlier problems could’ve been addressed if I hadn’t tried to shield the team from them, even if it meant changing the requirements or budget. Instead, we got to the end, and had nothing to show but a bunch of partially-working pieces.