13 ms·

From my experience in the tech industry I can say with utmost confidence that "not smart"/"talentless" people who are determined and hard-working lead to signif

by paxys 3y ago

From my experience in the tech industry I can say with utmost confidence that "not smart"/"talentless" people who are determined and hard-working lead to significantly better real world results than geniuses who are lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented. The vast majority of problems at any company are easy and don't need any big technological breakthroughs to solve. They are instead held back by (1) lack of effort or (2) lack of organization. If you can manage either (or preferably both) you will have a good career in the industry.

chii 3y ago
> (1) lack of effort or (2) lack of organization. (3) lack of reward I say the former 2 is caused by 3. Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? It's why small/founder owned startups get more done with less, because they know themselves how much reward they'd get when putting in the hard yards.
- iSnow 3y ago
  Small groups of like-minded people (from the same cultural and social background) move faster because they have less friction and a shared mission statement. That is something that translates badly to bigger groups, no matter the reward. Us tech guys already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay.
  - jraph 3y ago
    > already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay In addition to those, having clues that my work is appreciated (by colleagues / customers / users) plays a big role as well.
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      Making an effort in general (in all things: dressing well, speaking well, working hard) is almost completely a social activity. If there's nobody to impress, it's 10x harder to motivate myself. You end up having to imagine a hypothetical future person that your effort would impress, which is much less convincing to the lizard brain.
- tharkun__ 3y ago
  Your parent never mentions overtime. Personally I agree with his assessment and none of it requires overtime. Lack of effort literally means people that show the level of effort your reply seems to suggest you are putting in. A normal level of effort, not just doing exactly as much as you need not to get fired is generally enough to stand out and have good results (output and pay wise). No overtime required. A good level of organization helps in that regard because you aren't wasting any of the effort you are making. It cuts out the overtime by itself.
  - a_imho 3y ago
    Hard disagree, bruteforcing work for rewards is waaay sub optimal in the vast majority of cases. Most people are better off interviewing, job hopping and always-be-leaving and/or social engineering their careers. Note, I'm talking about competent people who can hold a job. Any unit of effort put in over not-getting-fired is almost 100% wasted (financial) reward wise.
    - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
      Exactly. It's much, much easier to get promoted if you brown-nose or schmooze with your boss. If anything, being the hardest working man in a team is a sure way to not get a promotion because you are too valuable as a work-horse
    - tharkun__ 3y ago
      We may have very different ideas about all this. And different experiences and expectations of life. I'm not sure what "bruteforcing" means here. I definitely had people on my team that were of the "just-enough-not-to-get-fired" variety. In most places they would not have been fired - agree. But they worked for me and I expect you to actually be doing your job and not just kissing up to the boss. I don't expect you to do overtime and I will protect you and the rest of the team from said overtime BS. I'm really really allergic to unrealistic BS "deadlines" and I'm super extra allergic to deadlines that get set because someone else did not do their job properly (like a PM not planning properly and such). The general "pretend to be busy for 60h a week" culture is something I despise. Put in a regular 40h (or if that's your place 35h, 37.5h etc.) of work but I don't want to "see" you be on Facebook (or HN for that matter) on work time. And you have to actually display competence when we have a technical conversation. There are so many people being passed off as intermediate to senior level that just do the bare minimum not to get fired that are perpetual juniors with 20 years of experience. The worst guy was actually one of those and he really thought he could weasel his way out of actually doing work with the typical "I ran into issue X and Y and Z and it took forever to solve them" dance. For things that literally take 5 minutes to solve for someone that is not just pretending. Provably. So yeah, not with me. Go work for someone else. And yes, I got to this place by - horror, shock - actually doing good work. I've gotten 20% raises without asking for them by just doing a regular 40h week doing my normal work.
- thrdbndndn 3y ago
  This is very true, but not sure how to solve it. For a job where the "reward" (mainly salary) is fronted and somewhat fixed (no bonus or bonus isn't worth it), some (even most) people basically work as little as possible to not get themselves fired. But it would also be challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman.
  - chii 3y ago
    > challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman. profit sharing. This happens at the executive level, because it correctly aligns the incentives. But somehow, the run of the mill employee cannot be trusted to think for themselves and be incentivized?
    - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
      Profit sharing works at every level, just the people at the top don't want to give a cut to those below them. So it's pure greed.
- Lutger 3y ago
  2 and 3 are often intertwined. A lack of proper reward sometimes is exactly what lack of organization means or results in. I've worked at many different jobs, the really dysfunctional ones tend to punish rather than reward good work. Also, be careful with the overtime. A really well organized company is able to pay its employees for every hour that they work. They also don't need overtime to make up for dysfunctional planning. Overtime is, after all, a lack of reward by definition. That is, I'm assuming unpaid overtime of course. Its not always like this, though in my experience the really messy organizations put a lot of value on overtime, either because there was a crisis all the time or it was the 'look me being busy (with my career)' kind of politicised org.
- bagels 3y ago
  Am in a startup, finding the low expectation around getting funding is affecting my attitude towards 1 and 2.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Because they enjoy it. Because they want to create cool stuff. Intrinsic motivation! Maybe they have to turn it into some kind of business in order to sustain it. Sometimes things have huge operational costs and people are unable to maintain their existence without making money. The ideal of creation for its own sake remains though.
- nickd2001 3y ago
  Obligatory "Office Space" quote: ;) Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?
- dasil003 3y ago
  Small teams get more done with less because communication overhead is low and agency is high in each individual. Big teams tend to struggle because people don’t know exactly what to do to move the whole shambling enterprise forward. It’s less about effort and more about coordination. Aside from the specific IC skills present, some understanding of the social dynamics and systemic outcomes of the teams ways of working needs to be sprinkled throughout the team to keep things on track. People tend to want to draw a box around their role so they have clarity in their work, but problems don’t conform to these boundaries, and often the hardest thing is framing challenges in the right way so that the team can make progress and avoid devolving into finger pointing or learned helplessness. Forget rewards for a second, just recognizing small actions and statements that have huge net negative impact on a team can be surprisingly difficult at scale.
- hirvi74 3y ago
  > Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Fear of punishment i.e., getting fired. That's why I do it most of the time. I know for a fact I won't get rewarded for it.
corethree 3y ago
Sure but just because someone is smart doesn't mean they don't work hard. And a smarter person can achieve what a stupid person can with less effort. This is just reality. I mean it's akin to saying a car can drive faster then a plane if the plane doesn't accelerate. Of course. I think as stupid person I can find certain niches and excel in areas where smart people typically don't attempt to try, but reality is reality and we have to face it.
- pertymcpert 3y ago
  OP didn't make the statement that you're arguing against.
  - corethree 3y ago
    No he didn't. I'm adding to his statement. Saying it's kind of a meaningless statement as meaningless as saying a car can go faster then a plane if the plane isn't moving. A hard working stupid person can accomplish more then a smart person if the smart person isn't working at all. This statement is as obvious and insightful as the statement about the plane. And it sort of obfuscates the fact that smart people have a huge advantage in the fact that they have to work less hard. Additionally despite all of this, there's no magical thing stating that all smart people never work hard. Smart people may in many cases even work harder than stupid people.
BenFranklin100 3y ago
This mirrors my experience as well, and would only change 1) to 1) a lack of directed effort, and add 3) lack of people skills.
hackerlight 3y ago
If it's in R&D, medium intelligence people simply can't contribute even if they try really hard.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  I don't think this is true for all R&D. Or even most? I often start working in a new area that I can begin with a subset of options, then need some larger very complete set of info to get complete coverage. Filling in all those tables takes a lot of time. Having someone help do that, or ideally just do it all, vastly increases my cadence. It does require someone who can understand and deliver clear objectives. And then wrangle lots of messy info from messy and random sources into a clear standardized form, so it's immediately usable. Another area, is someone to put a new tool through a lot of sanity checks. This takes someone with some creativity, to come up with lots of interesting oddball toy problems, and ensure the new tools work smoothly for every crazy idea. Fast and prompt ad hoc testing can jumpstart an unusually thorough test suite (as well as catch problems very early). I personally run out of steam a bit when it comes to testing all corner cases. When ever I run out of steam on some repetitive or exhaustive task, it is a good time for some secondary help. I expect there are many such high time cost, repeatable, semi-regular tasks. You still need good worker fit. As with any valuable work, we each should spend our time where our hours are most valuable. A tendency to do it all, may mask a poor ability to organize, communicate and delegate (or just a poor budget for getting help).
- 0xEF 3y ago
  Can confirm; for some reason I keep getting pulled in to product development at my company because my opinion is somehow valuable. For context, the rest of these attendees are all engineers. I'm just a wrench. I don't think I've ever contributed anything aside from a head nod and a confirmation that I can build what's on the print (which always has errors anyway, so answering yes or no is irrelevant since I don't have a choice but to try and build what they tell me to). But, they still pay me, so I show up. Source: I am a medium intelligence person.
- bloak 3y ago
  They probably can't lead the project but they can definitely contribute. I'm not quite sure what "intelligence" is - some people have strange personalities that make them hard to classify - but you don't need to be exceptionally good at anything to contribute to research (or R&D).
kypro 3y ago
It really depends what you're referring to as tech work here... Low IQ people in my opinion are almost incapable of tackling certain technical problems – generally those which require complex maths or reasoning ability. That said, most tech work isn't that. In fact, most tech work isn't even technical. Designers or product owners are tech workers, but don't necessarily need to be "smart". And even the technical roles tend to be basic UI work or building a CRUD backend in which case you're 100% correct.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  99% of IT problems in the world doesn't require brilliance in any way, just consistency and effort put in. Anytime some good junior tries to put the brilliance into place it doesn't require it, its a sad story about literal technical debt down the line. But good luck explaining this to most smart folks who are running around with big hammer trying as much new stuff as possible.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    In my humble opinion, it actually requires a lot of intelligence to do really stupid things...
    - shoubidouwah 3y ago
      reminds me of the saying that every year, the intelligence threshold needed to end the world drops a bit more - cannot for the life of me find it again...
      - toombowoombo 3y ago
        Found it! Moore's Law of Mad Science: "Every 18 months, the minimum IQ to destroy the world drops by one point." - said by Eliezer Yudkowsky at the At Singularity Summit 2007. youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEt1Wfl1jvo&t=1230s&ab_channel=singularitysummit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEt1Wfl1jvo&t=1230s&ab_chann...
- 3y ago
KronisLV 3y ago
> From my experience in the tech industry I can say with utmost confidence that "not smart"/"talentless" people who are determined and hard-working lead to significantly better real world results than geniuses who are lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented. This hit me especially hard in university, where I went from being "the smart kid" to suddenly encountering subjects where I could no longer get by with crunching on the evening before the test and instead needed to actually have a work ethic for studying long term. The same applies to programming or learning more skills - you might need to fail more times than someone has even tried to get good at something, whether that's fighting the compiler for a new language, or reading the same material and doing exercises in a book multiple times until the dots finally connect. > Be audacious. Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s more often than not the case. As far as the article goes, though, I am very curious about this point. I've also seen this and have experienced it myself, for example when needing to message someone and ask about a thing or organize something without necessarily knowing the full picture. Personally, I'd say it's almost like anxiety, due to not knowing all of the variables and overthinking things, or even just wanting to be considerate and not waste someone's time on a social level... whereas in actuality working on the issue is almost always better than just ruminating. I've heard the expression of "You get what you ask for in life" and think that it holds true - if you want to make things happen in life, whether that's getting a promotion, getting a new job, or making progress on a project, you're unlikely to do any of those by just thinking about all of the details. Same with circumstances like running a business on some hackathon level code - that person is going to make money and eventually be able to refactor things, whereas someone else won't even launch while chasing the perfect codebase, the perfect landing page, the perfect mobile app or component library or tech stack. > Ask your naive questions. With the previous point in mind, this has been particularly hard, especially when you start worrying about what others will think of you for asking questions that might seem a bit basic. You should still ask them and get as many details as possible. That can be the difference between not asking the important stuff and wasting weeks of work to hit some roadblock way down the road, or asking a bunch of silly questions in a meeting, having someone scoff at you a bit, but ignoring their attitude and realizing that the way they want their auth system to work isn't realistic, bringing that up, and saving everyone a major headache after setting them back on the right path. Plus, in general it's good to make sure that everyone is on the same page and for taking notes, as the article mentions. On that note, do take notes whenever you can, maybe even have meeting recordings somewhere!
nomilk 3y ago
Reminds of this PG quote: > If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student. Not the same source, but similar message and very much worth the watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8TwkfxEdJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8TwkfxEdJ0
- Jensson 3y ago
  100 percent determination describes most conspiracy theorists, it isn't a good trait to have that much of. So I'd argue that you need to drop quite a bit of it for the person to even reach average effectiveness, otherwise the person will be stuck trying things that will never work.
  - weast 3y ago
    That is a really good point. Determination without direction (or at least a misguided one) produces a lot of wasted energy. i guess the idea here of determination with lack of intelligenxe assumes some sort of intellectually elite group that can steer the determined work to some optimal outcome.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      > i guess the idea here of determination with lack of intelligenxe assumes some sort of intellectually elite group that can steer the determined work to some optimal outcome. I think that idea comes from school where you can do well just by repeating simple patterns, there mindless determination can take you very far. But after school it starts to hurt you if you don't re-evaluate what you do often enough, which is why many who get great grades never achieve much afterwards, they are just too determined on a set path and don't look around enough.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. -- Ronald Reagan
glimshe 3y ago
What you just said is true and not exclusive to the tech industry. Effort and grit will likely elevate pretty much anyone. Of course, nothing beats hard work in addition to talent.
DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
You still have to be reasonably intelligent to be personally well-organized, which is a key component. Also, getting a company (or just your group) organized and maintaining task-focus is definitely a type of talent. So yeah, you don't have to be a math genius or software expert to be the next Steve Jobs, you just need find a lot of Wozniaks who will do what you tell them and let you keep most of the money. Which is extremely difficult.
sph 3y ago
PSA for people that believe they are somewhat smart, have cool ideas yet seemingly no power whatsoever to actually work on them. If you believe you are chronically lazy and feel it is causing issues in your life. If you feel you are living at 10% your true potential: Get tested for ADHD. If that is your problem, know that the chemical fix for it is extremely effective. It's taken me 30+ years of self-hate, a suggestion en passant from someone that I might have ADHD, diagnosis, medication and my life has completely turned around in ways unimaginable before (3 years and counting). Email's in the profile if you wanna chat about it. EDIT: I did write a post last year about my experience and research on the topic: https://combo.cc/adhd/ https://combo.cc/adhd/
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y ago
  What would be the safest drugs to consume ?
  - toolz 3y ago
    Considering there's no biological measurement being used to diagnose or correct ADHD, it's more of an "art" than a science. I presume you're looking for the safest drug that's also effective, because the safest would be not taking any drugs and optimizing for general health and lifestyle. I've heard of people achieving modest success with modafinil. Also with l-thyeanine/caffeine combos. Both of which have very well understood safety profiles. In the states you'll be unlikely to get a modafinil prescription as psychiatrists here have some perverse relationship with more potent and more harmful (dextro)amphetamines.
    - Rewrap3643 3y ago
      Psychs won't prescribe it because it's a wakefulness promoting agent, not a typical stimulant. There's insufficient evidence to prescribe it as a first-line treatment for ADHD. Insurance companies are also unlikely to pay for it in absence of a diagnosed sleep disorder. Methylphenidate is the clinically correct alternative to amphetamines.
blitzar 3y ago
If you want a really good career in the industry, I sugesset mixing "not smart"/"talentless" with a healthy dose of "lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented". Senior management material.
mrweasel 3y ago
There's an old interview with Rasmus Lerdorf somewhere on the net, where he talks about just hacking something together and make it work. It doesn't have to be good or the best way of doing things, then some "computer science guy" can come along and fix it later. In many ways that's a good way of creating security issues, but it's also an excellent way of actually getting a feature build. The smarter people is being given a sense of direction, by being shown the bad implementation and tasked with improving it.
- azornathogron 3y ago
  Perhaps this is how the world ends up with "PHP: a fractal of bad design"? Not that I want to be too snarky about it: I used PHP a bit back in the LAMP stack days, and as bad as the language was it was easy to get stuff up and running. So perhaps Mr Lerdorf is right. (I hear PHP might be somewhat better now, though I can't vouch for that myself)

by paxys 3y ago

chii 3y ago

> (1) lack of effort or (2) lack of organization. (3) lack of reward I say the former 2 is caused by 3. Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? It's why small/founder owned startups get more done with less, because they know themselves how much reward they'd get when putting in the hard yards.

iSnow 3y ago
Small groups of like-minded people (from the same cultural and social background) move faster because they have less friction and a shared mission statement. That is something that translates badly to bigger groups, no matter the reward. Us tech guys already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay.
- jraph 3y ago
  > already get rewarded with great working conditions and good pay In addition to those, having clues that my work is appreciated (by colleagues / customers / users) plays a big role as well.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Making an effort in general (in all things: dressing well, speaking well, working hard) is almost completely a social activity. If there's nobody to impress, it's 10x harder to motivate myself. You end up having to imagine a hypothetical future person that your effort would impress, which is much less convincing to the lizard brain.
tharkun__ 3y ago
Your parent never mentions overtime. Personally I agree with his assessment and none of it requires overtime. Lack of effort literally means people that show the level of effort your reply seems to suggest you are putting in. A normal level of effort, not just doing exactly as much as you need not to get fired is generally enough to stand out and have good results (output and pay wise). No overtime required. A good level of organization helps in that regard because you aren't wasting any of the effort you are making. It cuts out the overtime by itself.
- a_imho 3y ago
  Hard disagree, bruteforcing work for rewards is waaay sub optimal in the vast majority of cases. Most people are better off interviewing, job hopping and always-be-leaving and/or social engineering their careers. Note, I'm talking about competent people who can hold a job. Any unit of effort put in over not-getting-fired is almost 100% wasted (financial) reward wise.
  - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    Exactly. It's much, much easier to get promoted if you brown-nose or schmooze with your boss. If anything, being the hardest working man in a team is a sure way to not get a promotion because you are too valuable as a work-horse
  - tharkun__ 3y ago
    We may have very different ideas about all this. And different experiences and expectations of life. I'm not sure what "bruteforcing" means here. I definitely had people on my team that were of the "just-enough-not-to-get-fired" variety. In most places they would not have been fired - agree. But they worked for me and I expect you to actually be doing your job and not just kissing up to the boss. I don't expect you to do overtime and I will protect you and the rest of the team from said overtime BS. I'm really really allergic to unrealistic BS "deadlines" and I'm super extra allergic to deadlines that get set because someone else did not do their job properly (like a PM not planning properly and such). The general "pretend to be busy for 60h a week" culture is something I despise. Put in a regular 40h (or if that's your place 35h, 37.5h etc.) of work but I don't want to "see" you be on Facebook (or HN for that matter) on work time. And you have to actually display competence when we have a technical conversation. There are so many people being passed off as intermediate to senior level that just do the bare minimum not to get fired that are perpetual juniors with 20 years of experience. The worst guy was actually one of those and he really thought he could weasel his way out of actually doing work with the typical "I ran into issue X and Y and Z and it took forever to solve them" dance. For things that literally take 5 minutes to solve for someone that is not just pretending. Provably. So yeah, not with me. Go work for someone else. And yes, I got to this place by - horror, shock - actually doing good work. I've gotten 20% raises without asking for them by just doing a regular 40h week doing my normal work.
thrdbndndn 3y ago
This is very true, but not sure how to solve it. For a job where the "reward" (mainly salary) is fronted and somewhat fixed (no bonus or bonus isn't worth it), some (even most) people basically work as little as possible to not get themselves fired. But it would also be challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman.
- chii 3y ago
  > challenging to change the rewarding structure to something similar to salesman. profit sharing. This happens at the executive level, because it correctly aligns the incentives. But somehow, the run of the mill employee cannot be trusted to think for themselves and be incentivized?
  - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    Profit sharing works at every level, just the people at the top don't want to give a cut to those below them. So it's pure greed.
Lutger 3y ago
2 and 3 are often intertwined. A lack of proper reward sometimes is exactly what lack of organization means or results in. I've worked at many different jobs, the really dysfunctional ones tend to punish rather than reward good work. Also, be careful with the overtime. A really well organized company is able to pay its employees for every hour that they work. They also don't need overtime to make up for dysfunctional planning. Overtime is, after all, a lack of reward by definition. That is, I'm assuming unpaid overtime of course. Its not always like this, though in my experience the really messy organizations put a lot of value on overtime, either because there was a crisis all the time or it was the 'look me being busy (with my career)' kind of politicised org.
bagels 3y ago
Am in a startup, finding the low expectation around getting funding is affecting my attitude towards 1 and 2.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Because they enjoy it. Because they want to create cool stuff. Intrinsic motivation! Maybe they have to turn it into some kind of business in order to sustain it. Sometimes things have huge operational costs and people are unable to maintain their existence without making money. The ideal of creation for its own sake remains though.
nickd2001 3y ago
Obligatory "Office Space" quote: ;) Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?
dasil003 3y ago
Small teams get more done with less because communication overhead is low and agency is high in each individual. Big teams tend to struggle because people don’t know exactly what to do to move the whole shambling enterprise forward. It’s less about effort and more about coordination. Aside from the specific IC skills present, some understanding of the social dynamics and systemic outcomes of the teams ways of working needs to be sprinkled throughout the team to keep things on track. People tend to want to draw a box around their role so they have clarity in their work, but problems don’t conform to these boundaries, and often the hardest thing is framing challenges in the right way so that the team can make progress and avoid devolving into finger pointing or learned helplessness. Forget rewards for a second, just recognizing small actions and statements that have huge net negative impact on a team can be surprisingly difficult at scale.
hirvi74 3y ago
> Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? Fear of punishment i.e., getting fired. That's why I do it most of the time. I know for a fact I won't get rewarded for it.

corethree 3y ago

Sure but just because someone is smart doesn't mean they don't work hard. And a smarter person can achieve what a stupid person can with less effort. This is just reality. I mean it's akin to saying a car can drive faster then a plane if the plane doesn't accelerate. Of course. I think as stupid person I can find certain niches and excel in areas where smart people typically don't attempt to try, but reality is reality and we have to face it.

pertymcpert 3y ago
OP didn't make the statement that you're arguing against.
- corethree 3y ago
  No he didn't. I'm adding to his statement. Saying it's kind of a meaningless statement as meaningless as saying a car can go faster then a plane if the plane isn't moving. A hard working stupid person can accomplish more then a smart person if the smart person isn't working at all. This statement is as obvious and insightful as the statement about the plane. And it sort of obfuscates the fact that smart people have a huge advantage in the fact that they have to work less hard. Additionally despite all of this, there's no magical thing stating that all smart people never work hard. Smart people may in many cases even work harder than stupid people.

BenFranklin100 3y ago

This mirrors my experience as well, and would only change 1) to 1) a lack of directed effort, and add 3) lack of people skills.

hackerlight 3y ago

If it's in R&D, medium intelligence people simply can't contribute even if they try really hard.

Nevermark 3y ago
I don't think this is true for all R&D. Or even most? I often start working in a new area that I can begin with a subset of options, then need some larger very complete set of info to get complete coverage. Filling in all those tables takes a lot of time. Having someone help do that, or ideally just do it all, vastly increases my cadence. It does require someone who can understand and deliver clear objectives. And then wrangle lots of messy info from messy and random sources into a clear standardized form, so it's immediately usable. Another area, is someone to put a new tool through a lot of sanity checks. This takes someone with some creativity, to come up with lots of interesting oddball toy problems, and ensure the new tools work smoothly for every crazy idea. Fast and prompt ad hoc testing can jumpstart an unusually thorough test suite (as well as catch problems very early). I personally run out of steam a bit when it comes to testing all corner cases. When ever I run out of steam on some repetitive or exhaustive task, it is a good time for some secondary help. I expect there are many such high time cost, repeatable, semi-regular tasks. You still need good worker fit. As with any valuable work, we each should spend our time where our hours are most valuable. A tendency to do it all, may mask a poor ability to organize, communicate and delegate (or just a poor budget for getting help).
0xEF 3y ago
Can confirm; for some reason I keep getting pulled in to product development at my company because my opinion is somehow valuable. For context, the rest of these attendees are all engineers. I'm just a wrench. I don't think I've ever contributed anything aside from a head nod and a confirmation that I can build what's on the print (which always has errors anyway, so answering yes or no is irrelevant since I don't have a choice but to try and build what they tell me to). But, they still pay me, so I show up. Source: I am a medium intelligence person.
bloak 3y ago
They probably can't lead the project but they can definitely contribute. I'm not quite sure what "intelligence" is - some people have strange personalities that make them hard to classify - but you don't need to be exceptionally good at anything to contribute to research (or R&D).

kypro 3y ago

It really depends what you're referring to as tech work here... Low IQ people in my opinion are almost incapable of tackling certain technical problems – generally those which require complex maths or reasoning ability. That said, most tech work isn't that. In fact, most tech work isn't even technical. Designers or product owners are tech workers, but don't necessarily need to be "smart". And even the technical roles tend to be basic UI work or building a CRUD backend in which case you're 100% correct.

saiya-jin 3y ago
99% of IT problems in the world doesn't require brilliance in any way, just consistency and effort put in. Anytime some good junior tries to put the brilliance into place it doesn't require it, its a sad story about literal technical debt down the line. But good luck explaining this to most smart folks who are running around with big hammer trying as much new stuff as possible.
- arethuza 3y ago
  In my humble opinion, it actually requires a lot of intelligence to do really stupid things...
  - shoubidouwah 3y ago
    reminds me of the saying that every year, the intelligence threshold needed to end the world drops a bit more - cannot for the life of me find it again...
    - toombowoombo 3y ago
      Found it! Moore's Law of Mad Science: "Every 18 months, the minimum IQ to destroy the world drops by one point." - said by Eliezer Yudkowsky at the At Singularity Summit 2007. youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEt1Wfl1jvo&t=1230s&ab_channel=singularitysummit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEt1Wfl1jvo&t=1230s&ab_chann...
3y ago

KronisLV 3y ago

> From my experience in the tech industry I can say with utmost confidence that "not smart"/"talentless" people who are determined and hard-working lead to significantly better real world results than geniuses who are lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented. This hit me especially hard in university, where I went from being "the smart kid" to suddenly encountering subjects where I could no longer get by with crunching on the evening before the test and instead needed to actually have a work ethic for studying long term. The same applies to programming or learning more skills - you might need to fail more times than someone has even tried to get good at something, whether that's fighting the compiler for a new language, or reading the same material and doing exercises in a book multiple times until the dots finally connect. > Be audacious. Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s more often than not the case. As far as the article goes, though, I am very curious about this point. I've also seen this and have experienced it myself, for example when needing to message someone and ask about a thing or organize something without necessarily knowing the full picture. Personally, I'd say it's almost like anxiety, due to not knowing all of the variables and overthinking things, or even just wanting to be considerate and not waste someone's time on a social level... whereas in actuality working on the issue is almost always better than just ruminating. I've heard the expression of "You get what you ask for in life" and think that it holds true - if you want to make things happen in life, whether that's getting a promotion, getting a new job, or making progress on a project, you're unlikely to do any of those by just thinking about all of the details. Same with circumstances like running a business on some hackathon level code - that person is going to make money and eventually be able to refactor things, whereas someone else won't even launch while chasing the perfect codebase, the perfect landing page, the perfect mobile app or component library or tech stack. > Ask your naive questions. With the previous point in mind, this has been particularly hard, especially when you start worrying about what others will think of you for asking questions that might seem a bit basic. You should still ask them and get as many details as possible. That can be the difference between not asking the important stuff and wasting weeks of work to hit some roadblock way down the road, or asking a bunch of silly questions in a meeting, having someone scoff at you a bit, but ignoring their attitude and realizing that the way they want their auth system to work isn't realistic, bringing that up, and saving everyone a major headache after setting them back on the right path. Plus, in general it's good to make sure that everyone is on the same page and for taking notes, as the article mentions. On that note, do take notes whenever you can, maybe even have meeting recordings somewhere!

nomilk 3y ago

Reminds of this PG quote: > If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student. Not the same source, but similar message and very much worth the watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8TwkfxEdJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8TwkfxEdJ0

Jensson 3y ago
100 percent determination describes most conspiracy theorists, it isn't a good trait to have that much of. So I'd argue that you need to drop quite a bit of it for the person to even reach average effectiveness, otherwise the person will be stuck trying things that will never work.
- weast 3y ago
  That is a really good point. Determination without direction (or at least a misguided one) produces a lot of wasted energy. i guess the idea here of determination with lack of intelligenxe assumes some sort of intellectually elite group that can steer the determined work to some optimal outcome.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > i guess the idea here of determination with lack of intelligenxe assumes some sort of intellectually elite group that can steer the determined work to some optimal outcome. I think that idea comes from school where you can do well just by repeating simple patterns, there mindless determination can take you very far. But after school it starts to hurt you if you don't re-evaluate what you do often enough, which is why many who get great grades never achieve much afterwards, they are just too determined on a set path and don't look around enough.
15457345234 3y ago
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. -- Ronald Reagan

glimshe 3y ago

What you just said is true and not exclusive to the tech industry. Effort and grit will likely elevate pretty much anyone. Of course, nothing beats hard work in addition to talent.

DonsDiscountGas 3y ago

You still have to be reasonably intelligent to be personally well-organized, which is a key component. Also, getting a company (or just your group) organized and maintaining task-focus is definitely a type of talent. So yeah, you don't have to be a math genius or software expert to be the next Steve Jobs, you just need find a lot of Wozniaks who will do what you tell them and let you keep most of the money. Which is extremely difficult.

sph 3y ago

PSA for people that believe they are somewhat smart, have cool ideas yet seemingly no power whatsoever to actually work on them. If you believe you are chronically lazy and feel it is causing issues in your life. If you feel you are living at 10% your true potential: Get tested for ADHD. If that is your problem, know that the chemical fix for it is extremely effective. It's taken me 30+ years of self-hate, a suggestion en passant from someone that I might have ADHD, diagnosis, medication and my life has completely turned around in ways unimaginable before (3 years and counting). Email's in the profile if you wanna chat about it. EDIT: I did write a post last year about my experience and research on the topic: https://combo.cc/adhd/ https://combo.cc/adhd/

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y ago
What would be the safest drugs to consume ?
- toolz 3y ago
  Considering there's no biological measurement being used to diagnose or correct ADHD, it's more of an "art" than a science. I presume you're looking for the safest drug that's also effective, because the safest would be not taking any drugs and optimizing for general health and lifestyle. I've heard of people achieving modest success with modafinil. Also with l-thyeanine/caffeine combos. Both of which have very well understood safety profiles. In the states you'll be unlikely to get a modafinil prescription as psychiatrists here have some perverse relationship with more potent and more harmful (dextro)amphetamines.
  - Rewrap3643 3y ago
    Psychs won't prescribe it because it's a wakefulness promoting agent, not a typical stimulant. There's insufficient evidence to prescribe it as a first-line treatment for ADHD. Insurance companies are also unlikely to pay for it in absence of a diagnosed sleep disorder. Methylphenidate is the clinically correct alternative to amphetamines.

blitzar 3y ago

If you want a really good career in the industry, I sugesset mixing "not smart"/"talentless" with a healthy dose of "lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented". Senior management material.

mrweasel 3y ago

There's an old interview with Rasmus Lerdorf somewhere on the net, where he talks about just hacking something together and make it work. It doesn't have to be good or the best way of doing things, then some "computer science guy" can come along and fix it later. In many ways that's a good way of creating security issues, but it's also an excellent way of actually getting a feature build. The smarter people is being given a sense of direction, by being shown the bad implementation and tasked with improving it.

azornathogron 3y ago
Perhaps this is how the world ends up with "PHP: a fractal of bad design"? Not that I want to be too snarky about it: I used PHP a bit back in the LAMP stack days, and as bad as the language was it was easy to get stuff up and running. So perhaps Mr Lerdorf is right. (I hear PHP might be somewhat better now, though I can't vouch for that myself)