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I wouldn't be surprised if that was directly adapted from the anecdotes of Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs [1]. """ After crunching a lot of data, they found that t

I wouldn't be surprised if that was directly adapted from the anecdotes of Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs [1]. """ After crunching a lot of data, they found that the only thing the productive employees had in common (other than having made it through the Bell Labs hiring process) was that "Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell Labs electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist. It wasn't the case that Nyquist gave them specific ideas. Rather, as one scientist recalled, 'he drew people out, got them thinking'" (p. 135). """ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist

ryukoposting 2y ago
The cynic in me expects someone to read this and come to the conclusion that what they really need is more data to improve their review process. Clearly we need to know who's eating lunch together!
- blitzar 2y ago
  The cynic in me expects poor performers / low contributers who read this come to the conclusion that they are the Harry Nyquist of their organisation.
  - gffrd 2y ago
    The cynic in me expects people to read this thread and pat themselves on the back for definitely _not_ a being Harry Nyquist OR a poor performer / low contributor!
blub 2y ago
This by the way is an excellent argument against home office for professions where innovation plays an important role. I don’t think we’ll ever see a Wikipedia quote saying “the only thing productive employees had in common is that they were hanging out in a Microsuck Teams chat room”.
- vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
  Not entirely convinced. The tradeoff is in-office you need to sit next to someone. Remote you can talk to anyone in the world. But it is the role of good WFH culture to avoid siloing of people.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Except you don’t actually talk (as in have a real conversation) with anyone on Teams.
    - danaris 2y ago
      Maybe you don't. I've never had any trouble having real conversations on online platforms, whether for work or otherwise.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Research shows, that is about as accurate as saying a Twinkie is real food. Not completely wrong, but…
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        danaris 2y ago
        [Citation needed]? I've not heard of any research that shows that it's impossible to have meaningful conversations on these platforms. And please note the distinction between "it is impossible to have such conversations" and "some people (especially less tech-savvy people) have a harder time having such conversations" on these platforms. Teams/Slack/Discord/etc is just another communication medium. Once our society has, collectively, had more of a chance to get used to them, and once we're no longer dealing with an entire generation who were bad managers before the personal computer even existed (</hyperbole>), I wager you'll see a lot less complaining about the medium itself.
hinkley 2y ago
I have been accused by a number of people who like me of “asking good questions” and of asking difficult questions by people who don’t. I sucked at school until someone opened up the idea for me around third grade that how the curriculum is taught is just the teacher’s opinion, not a law, or a religion. If you can reframe the material in a way that makes sense to you then do so. I ended up spot-tutoring a bunch of people over the years because I would hear them complain about how the material made no sense and I would swoop in and say, “yeah how they teach this is bullshit, have you tried thinking about it this way?” Which validates their frustration and then gives them a life raft. That kind of reframing to keep up can become reframing to get ahead. I went from Problem Student to grade school “valedictorian”, to polymath. Years ago we were all fixated on the trap of Expert Beginner and I would half-joke that I was instead an Expert Journeyman - able to quickly get to adequate instead of mediocre in a new discipline. And these days I think that may be what “polymath” is most of the time. Just knowing what the next question is to ask to keep going. The big breakthroughs come from people who become experts in most fields, but these same sorts of people also get pretty good at music or painting or writing as a hobby. As good or better than mediocre professionals. The first time this happened to me in a professional setting, a coworker was stuck on a SQL problem and insisted I pair with them to help debug it. I told her I’ve never touched SQL, just worked on some bespoke data processing. She didn’t care. Come here anyway. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t help her find her problem by just asking her what this part does and that part does. Why does this work that way? And I started writing SQL a couple weeks later, substantially off of just that interaction, bolstered by what first generation search engines could scrape together. And the thing is when everyone asks you questions and you don’t break their trust, you quickly learn where all the bodies are buried in the project/org. Which is a valuable asset for someone wishing to become a lead or staff engineer. I became lead by popular vote most times, rather than an actual game plan to get promoted. I just did what thought needed to get done and was within my abilities, which looks a lot like leadership, especially if management doesn’t have that quality. Port in a storm, that’s me. But I’ve never ever completed the most stories or features. I’ve occasionally fixed the most bugs, the most performance issues, or workflow problems. Is calculated I saved forty man hours a week for the team on code-build-test-push ergonomics and my shitheel boss was still made about my productivity those two quarters. I could not show up to work and still be contributing 8 hours a day, dummy.

ryukoposting 2y ago

The cynic in me expects someone to read this and come to the conclusion that what they really need is more data to improve their review process. Clearly we need to know who's eating lunch together!

blitzar 2y ago
The cynic in me expects poor performers / low contributers who read this come to the conclusion that they are the Harry Nyquist of their organisation.
- gffrd 2y ago
  The cynic in me expects people to read this thread and pat themselves on the back for definitely _not_ a being Harry Nyquist OR a poor performer / low contributor!

blub 2y ago

This by the way is an excellent argument against home office for professions where innovation plays an important role. I don’t think we’ll ever see a Wikipedia quote saying “the only thing productive employees had in common is that they were hanging out in a Microsuck Teams chat room”.

vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y ago
Not entirely convinced. The tradeoff is in-office you need to sit next to someone. Remote you can talk to anyone in the world. But it is the role of good WFH culture to avoid siloing of people.
- lazide 2y ago
  Except you don’t actually talk (as in have a real conversation) with anyone on Teams.
  - danaris 2y ago
    Maybe you don't. I've never had any trouble having real conversations on online platforms, whether for work or otherwise.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Research shows, that is about as accurate as saying a Twinkie is real food. Not completely wrong, but…
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - danaris 2y ago
        [Citation needed]? I've not heard of any research that shows that it's impossible to have meaningful conversations on these platforms. And please note the distinction between "it is impossible to have such conversations" and "some people (especially less tech-savvy people) have a harder time having such conversations" on these platforms. Teams/Slack/Discord/etc is just another communication medium. Once our society has, collectively, had more of a chance to get used to them, and once we're no longer dealing with an entire generation who were bad managers before the personal computer even existed (</hyperbole>), I wager you'll see a lot less complaining about the medium itself.

hinkley 2y ago

I have been accused by a number of people who like me of “asking good questions” and of asking difficult questions by people who don’t. I sucked at school until someone opened up the idea for me around third grade that how the curriculum is taught is just the teacher’s opinion, not a law, or a religion. If you can reframe the material in a way that makes sense to you then do so. I ended up spot-tutoring a bunch of people over the years because I would hear them complain about how the material made no sense and I would swoop in and say, “yeah how they teach this is bullshit, have you tried thinking about it this way?” Which validates their frustration and then gives them a life raft. That kind of reframing to keep up can become reframing to get ahead. I went from Problem Student to grade school “valedictorian”, to polymath. Years ago we were all fixated on the trap of Expert Beginner and I would half-joke that I was instead an Expert Journeyman - able to quickly get to adequate instead of mediocre in a new discipline. And these days I think that may be what “polymath” is most of the time. Just knowing what the next question is to ask to keep going. The big breakthroughs come from people who become experts in most fields, but these same sorts of people also get pretty good at music or painting or writing as a hobby. As good or better than mediocre professionals. The first time this happened to me in a professional setting, a coworker was stuck on a SQL problem and insisted I pair with them to help debug it. I told her I’ve never touched SQL, just worked on some bespoke data processing. She didn’t care. Come here anyway. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t help her find her problem by just asking her what this part does and that part does. Why does this work that way? And I started writing SQL a couple weeks later, substantially off of just that interaction, bolstered by what first generation search engines could scrape together. And the thing is when everyone asks you questions and you don’t break their trust, you quickly learn where all the bodies are buried in the project/org. Which is a valuable asset for someone wishing to become a lead or staff engineer. I became lead by popular vote most times, rather than an actual game plan to get promoted. I just did what thought needed to get done and was within my abilities, which looks a lot like leadership, especially if management doesn’t have that quality. Port in a storm, that’s me. But I’ve never ever completed the most stories or features. I’ve occasionally fixed the most bugs, the most performance issues, or workflow problems. Is calculated I saved forty man hours a week for the team on code-build-test-push ergonomics and my shitheel boss was still made about my productivity those two quarters. I could not show up to work and still be contributing 8 hours a day, dummy.