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But if you feel the stress of keeping up with new tech or keeping up with book reading, don't you think it's the same? Just don't worry, everyone has their own

But if you feel the stress of keeping up with new tech or keeping up with book reading, don't you think it's the same? Just don't worry, everyone has their own pace

bobbyadamson 3y ago
I don’t think it’s the same. The author frames it as a social pressure. It actually reads as a personal anxiety that they project on the world in my opinion. They started feeling competitive about books as an 8 year old? I’m not shocked they assume anyone asking them what they’re reading is some test. I can’t imagine walking through the world like this. Of course there is some of this in software related fields, but for a lot of us the bigger risk is a demonstrable professional one. If you haven’t learned anything new in tech in the last 10 years you could be out of a job. There is a whole ocean of jobs for which you would not qualify.
mapt 3y ago
"I will be completely unable to make a meaningful contribution to a five minute discussion at a cocktail party a couple months away" vs "I will be completely unable to collaborate on a project because I literally don't understand the concepts on which it's based" The only non-fluid timeliness considerations of literature are typically social in nature and casual in import. Not so, tech.
- prewett 3y ago
  I've made a point of not bothering to learn new tech environments unless I was interested, and it hasn't made me unable to collaborate. Usually I just learn it on the fly, when I'm asked to do something outside my usual scope at work. Although I did have a moment of panic when I signed up for a contract work with some OpenGL/C# work. I was hoping to talk them into C++, but I'd used C# before. Turned out to be a TypeScript project using WebGL, neither of which I'd done anything with, so I had a couple of days of panic until I realized that TypeScript was similar enough to C++ that I could get work done while learning. (Also, if you want to learn new things, doing lots of smallish contracts is a great way to do it. You select the contracts that are doing something new but leverage some of your existing knowledge. These are not hard to find; you'll have a harder time finding something that doesn't require some learning!)

But if you feel the stress of keeping up with new tech or keeping up with book reading, don't you think it's the same? Just don't worry, everyone has their own pace

bobbyadamson 3y ago

I don’t think it’s the same. The author frames it as a social pressure. It actually reads as a personal anxiety that they project on the world in my opinion. They started feeling competitive about books as an 8 year old? I’m not shocked they assume anyone asking them what they’re reading is some test. I can’t imagine walking through the world like this. Of course there is some of this in software related fields, but for a lot of us the bigger risk is a demonstrable professional one. If you haven’t learned anything new in tech in the last 10 years you could be out of a job. There is a whole ocean of jobs for which you would not qualify.

mapt 3y ago

"I will be completely unable to make a meaningful contribution to a five minute discussion at a cocktail party a couple months away" vs "I will be completely unable to collaborate on a project because I literally don't understand the concepts on which it's based" The only non-fluid timeliness considerations of literature are typically social in nature and casual in import. Not so, tech.

prewett 3y ago
I've made a point of not bothering to learn new tech environments unless I was interested, and it hasn't made me unable to collaborate. Usually I just learn it on the fly, when I'm asked to do something outside my usual scope at work. Although I did have a moment of panic when I signed up for a contract work with some OpenGL/C# work. I was hoping to talk them into C++, but I'd used C# before. Turned out to be a TypeScript project using WebGL, neither of which I'd done anything with, so I had a couple of days of panic until I realized that TypeScript was similar enough to C++ that I could get work done while learning. (Also, if you want to learn new things, doing lots of smallish contracts is a great way to do it. You select the contracts that are doing something new but leverage some of your existing knowledge. These are not hard to find; you'll have a harder time finding something that doesn't require some learning!)