10 ms·

Don't End The Week With Nothing

456 points by austengary 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago
Awesome post! I like his comments about building human capital, reputational capital, and social capital. This is forgotten by many folks. It's not just the cash. I also like the importance of working on things you can show and share, and that people can see.
seancoleman 13y ago
Similarly, within a company you should aim to work as close to the product & customer as possible in a revenue-generating role instead of support roles classified as overhead including LOB applications, internal tools, etc.
- patio11 13y ago
  I agree. I've got company-specific career advice in a separate essay from a few years ago, but hate repeating myself, and it was semi-offtopic for this one so I excised it. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...
  - eropple 13y ago
    I still really enjoy the comments on that article. The visceral, knee-jerk hatred you managed to engender for pointing out pretty obvious stuff was amazing.
- dba7dba 13y ago
  Earlier in my career, I was warned IT was hated by management because it's seen as a black hole of budget. My advise is stay away from IT as a career. Go with a career where you can create something that's marketable.
  - mooreds 13y ago
    My hope is that IT is now seen as a partner in making the business better (not sure how long ago you were warned). But, I agree, it is always better to be on the revenue side than the cost side of the equation.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - eterm 13y ago
      Most people get mad every time they have to pay for a tank of gas. Its not rational, they know they can't go without it but they still hate it.
  - matwood 13y ago
    Management doesn't hate IT, they hate cost centers. Like patio11 says above do not be a programmer, but be someone who generates revenue (or cuts cost) using software. Align your interests with managements interests of cost saving and revenue generation and management will love you. It is not always easy though. A lot of management simply does not understand what is possible with IT. That is where the communication angle comes in (and business savvy). It is ITs job to not just do the work, but to help the business understand what is possible with great IT work. Having a great IT department working with business can be a huge multiplier and competitive advantage when done properly.
    - dba7dba 13y ago
      As an IT worker (network admin, helpdesk, server admin), you can only cut cost so much. Often you need periodic infusions of capital to function. But for a programmer, every line of code you write is used to bring in revenue. That's how management (edit: mainly in tech startups) sees it.
      - patio11 13y ago
        If it were only true that management viewed all programmers' contributions as being additive to revenue. Alas, the grass is barely greener on this side of the fence.
- MattGrommes 13y ago
  I worked at an insurance company doing mainly 3 things: maintaining an existing system, being lead on swapping out a different system for something newer, and rewriting a small bit of the business to be automated. I was never treated better than on that last project because I could say "This new thing will save the company $XX,000 a week." Feature-creep and hassles are significantly reduced when you can put direct dollar values on things.
itengelhardt 13y ago
He's so right about the whole "work on things you can show to the next prospect" thing. I wish my 20-year-old self would have known that.
nicholas73 13y ago
Curious, how did you end up as a salaryman in Japan? Do they treat a drop-in foreigner as potential lifers as they would a Japanese recruit straight out of college?
- patio11 13y ago
  Foreigners interact really quirkily with many Japanese societal norms. My company proposed hiring me as a salaryman (正社員) at our interview. I was flabbergasted, having assumed that they would naturally only consider me for contract employee status (契約社員). You don't want to be a salaryman but you really don't want to be a contract employee. My future boss made it clear (for the first of many times) that he intended on dealing with me squarely, in a fashion which is not universal among all Japanese employers, and that I had skills and educational attainment closest to his salarymen and thus I should be a salaryman. He asked if I understood what he was asking for me. I said that I did, that I was honored, and that owing to my age and situation I didn't think I could promise him that I would reside in Japan continuously until my retirement. He said that he understood I had particular circumstances and would accept the possibility of me leaving at some indefinite point in the future as long as it was, say, 4 years off, seeing as he was sticking his neck out for me. I told him that 4 years was a long time for an unmarried 25 year old and asked if 3 was acceptable. We shook on it, so to speak. To my bosses' enduring credit, they were scrupulously fair in dealing with me as a Japanese salaryman, despite that being almost shockingly abnormal at many Japanese firms, and they made it quite clear that everyone else was to deal with me in the same fashion or they'd find out what a Japanese multinational will do on behalf of a wronged employee. [Edit to add: If people detect notes of conflicting opinions from me regarding salarymanhood, it's largely because that one specific bit of Japanese corporate culture -- loyalty -- really resonated with me. Feudalism is a pretty effed up system, too, but aside from all the Game of Thrones Except In Real Life bits it had its own peculiar beauty to it. I sort of feel like that about salarymandom.] How I got hired there is a long story. I think I've told it on HN and elsewhere before.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Thanks for this post. I'm always fascinated by culture/work intersection points.
dkrich 13y ago
I would add: work on high-profile (read, important to senior stakeholders) projects within your current company. When a person above you's livelihood is reliant on how you perform, doing well will get you promoted at light-speed compared to people who work on stuff important to a small, junior group of people. Seriously, if you have a doubt about whether the project is important, go up at least two levels in your company and figure out where his/her interests lie and start aligning your efforts with those interests.
- rprospero 13y ago
  On an intellectual level, I understand the importance on working on the high profile projects, but I'm not sure how to do it without feeling, well sociopathic. As an example, a friend of mine recently lost his job. His co-workers had a similar attitude and focused on the high profile work the the CEO cared about (e.g. industry conferences, television ads). My friend focused on more junior level tasks (e.g. tech support, maintaining the corporate website). He even had some tasks with negative prestige (e.g. unclogging toilets). When a change in the tax code altered the company's finances, my friend was fired. Within a month, the company had lost half their clients as support calls were going unanswered, the website was down, and clients who visited in person encountered an office that smelled of feces. None of my friend's tasks were high profile, but they were all critical to the health of the company. I know that I'll be rewarded better if I do the high profile tasks instead of the drudge work. However, the drudge work still has to be done. Should I ignore the drudge work and let the organization fall apart around me or should I convince some other person to perform the drudge work for which they won't be rewarded?
  - mooreds 13y ago
    Or, you could work for an organization that recognizes (even glamorizes) the drudge work. See Zappos, etc.
    - wpietri 13y ago
      I think it's also worth learning to do internal PR for unglamorous things. I was once a sysadmin, and I got incredibly tired of being unappreciated. Eventually I burnt out on the work and shifted to other things. But I came to realize that some of it was my fault. Uncomfortable with recognition, I was almost secretive about how much hard work I was doing to keep everything running smoothly. I didn't even give people a chance to appreciate what I was up to. In retrospect, I was thinking that good work would shine on its own, that they would understand the complexities of what I was doing. Hah! I don't even do that myself. I don't run around saying, "Hey, the internet is amazing! Thank you $ISP for keeping me connected!" every 20 minutes. But when it goes down, I go right to WTF-land. If you're going to take one for the team, let the team know. And when you notice other people doing important but unglamorous stuff, call it out. Praising them publicly helps create a culture that values more than the showy big wins. There's a technique called "appreciative inquiry" that I've found really helpful to shift my thinking in that regard. Rather than starting from an expectation of perfection, I start by asking myself, "What's good about this?"
cotsog 13y ago
Reminds me of the "No more zero days" post on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af http://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_jus...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
thu 13y ago
The disparity between the U.S. and Belgium is huge: I have a nice GitHub public profile. I am a capable and experienced Python and Haskell developer. I am building Reesd (https://reesd.com https://reesd.com), a redundant storage service made of: - Several Docker containers, linked through Open vSwitch, - Web frontend, - SCP reimplementation with account permissions and bucket plan limits, and on-the-fly SHA1 check, - Redundant backend store, - Background jobs to check files SHA1 to detect early corruption, - Payment done through Stripe (almost done), - HAProxy, - Email through mandrill, - I'm working on adding PostgreSQL synchronous replication. I think I have largely proved myself to possible employers. Still it is excessively difficult to find a job without moving abroad: the belgian market for non-Java/.Net/C# developers is small. Search for a Python developer position, you'll find 1 or 2 public postings. And they will offer you a ridiculously small salary since the market is on their side. When I see the perks you are offered in the SV this is crazy. And then you have posts like these to move you forward. A chance HN is accessible abroad :) B.t.w. it's maybe the third time that I post Reesd as part of a comment on HN. I think it made sense to include the link in my comment; but still, is it ok to do so regularly even if the subject makes sense ? Edit: hey, thanks for the replies!
- gumby 13y ago
  > ...it's maybe the third time that I post Reesd as part of a comment on HN... still, is it ok to do so regularly even if the subject makes sense ? Totally. You're not spamming ("if the subject makes sense") and of course nobody sees all the comments. So if you're adding to the discussion and your link to your work helps, then go for it! For years I had the bad attitude "simply do the work and obviously everyone will know how good (or not) I am". That quasi worked in the lab where we all shared a filesystem but no, it's terrible personally, professionally and, in the case where I did do good work, for everyone else. I'm still unlearning that... Note: there are plenty of scammers and the simply inept who "network" by blindly inserting themselves into other conversations. Doesn't sound like you're at risk of that. Go for it.
- joshdotsmith 13y ago
  This is Hacker News. If you can't post a relevant link in a comment to something you built yourself, then I just don't know anymore.
mooreds 13y ago
Hmmm... I wonder if everyone followed this advice, would it have the side effect of decreasing pay for the high profile jobs (like API evangelist, someone working on Android, etc) relative to the less public jobs (Build Guy, adwords engineer)? I'm guessing so. That'd be an interesting outcome.
- beat 13y ago
  The "build guy" thing stung for me, as it's been much of my career. Shit rolls downhill, man. It's a job that only gets recognized when it goes wrong.
  - mooreds 13y ago
    I've never been the "build guy" full time, but I have been the developer who enjoyed/took care of the process/version control/scripting. It is worth saying that there is a great series of best practices, etc, that are worth documenting (and publicizing) around builds. (Even if it is hard to justify investment in improving builds sometimes.)
    - beat 13y ago
      I've certainly enjoyed the technical challenge of bringing in best practices and better tools, and I've really enjoyed playing the emissary between dev and ops (a co-worker once called me a "one man DevOps team"). But the fact that there's no visibility until things go wrong - there's a real problem with the responsibility/authority ratio in that role.
  - josephlord 13y ago
    I suppose there are still routes to visibility if you can develop and release tools to support testing and building. There is probably room to blog too. But you probably need to work quite hard on visibility, the natural state is the invisible.
iterable 13y ago
Investment banking is the same way. 100 hour+ weeks for weeks on end.
swanson 13y ago
I'm paraphrasing Merlin Mann, but another benefit of this approach in a day-job environment is that you demonstrate you are capable and deserving of doing cool work. When a shiny Rails project is coming down the pipeline, is it more likely to be staffed by someone who hasn't done Ruby before or the engineer who's got a personal Rails project on her GitHub and blog posts about lessons learned? Who is top of mind when a client comes in and needs a mobile app built? The person who gave a lunch-and-learn talk about iOS last week. Want to take a week to explore a new framework instead of getting stuck on maintenance work between billable projects? Well, if you have a track record of producing artifacts of value it is a much easier sell to $MANAGER.
maerF0x0 13y ago
On some level http://geekli.st/ http://geekli.st/ is right on the money according to this post.. Show off the things you did. Even if it's small ("Added replica set to mongodb cluster") .. Over time the cards add up to expertise.
luu 13y ago
For a decade, I've gone after the most interesting thing I could find without regard for visibility. My current job is the most interesting thing I've done so far, but it's likely that my employer won't disclose my current project until after another company publicly discloses they're doing the same thing. Looking at how that's worked for other systems/infrastructure projects around here, I doubt I'll be able to talk about my job for N years, where N is a significant fraction of a decade. Now that I'm a year out from my previous job, I can talk a bit about what I did back in the 2010 timeframe. By the time I'm able to talk about what I did for them in 2012, it will be ancient history. And yet, my career has been full of interesting work and I regularly get inquiries for neat sound jobs based on (as far as I can tell) nothing more than my having a pulse. It's true that, on occasion, someone who's familiar with my work contacts me. But much more often, it's someone who has no idea what I've done who's desperate to hire because, nowadays, everyone is desperate to hire. I expect that, one day, the job market will cool down and I'll have a bit of trouble finding something I really enjoy. But, from where I am now, the tradeoff seems worth it, even if that day is tomorrow.
- adrianbye 13y ago
  you can talk about the types of things you can do without breaking confidentiality
  - patio11 13y ago
    Yes and no. Yes, he could say "I work for AmaGooFaceSoft on a new type of infrastructure product which most companies can't even conceive of but which makes a lot of sense when you have 10,000 engineers and several hundred thousand servers." Then the question is "Oooh ooh what kind of infrastructure product is that?" and the answer will be "Do you remember Map/Reduce or BigTable or Hiphop? It's spiritually similar to those but totally unlike any of them and if I tell you any more my boss will have my guts for garters. Really cool tech though. You'd love to hear about it... if you worked here. Of course, if I told you about it, you'd not understand half of the explanation, since it plugs into four other proprietary systems that you -- as a member of the general public -- will never know about."
beat 13y ago
I saw this when it hit my email earlier today. I was actually planning on sending patio11 a thank you note for it later, just because it rings so true for me.
badman_ting 13y ago
I can't really deny that this is good advice, but boy I really would just like to write code for a few hours a weekday and leave it at that. I have a good job so if you "need proof" (besides talking to me) that I'm a damn good developer, well I guess you won't be hiring me.
- ben336 13y ago
  I don't think the argument is that you need to "have proof". Its that the work you do during the weekday isn't amassing you long term value. If you lose your job/want to do something else, you have minimal "credit" beyond the ability to hold down a job to apply elsewhere, and any provable skills you've gained in the process. Writing code outside work isn't the only way to gain "credit", just one way of several that he mentions in the piece.
ogreyonder 13y ago
In regard to working on side projects: > Just ask. The worst they can say is "No." And that's where I have to ask: what do you do when they say no? I followed this advice a year back or so and it essentially put the brakes on any serious side-projects. I work for a big company that you've absolutely heard of.
- boyter 13y ago
  You do it anyway. So long as its outside normal working hours and whoever you are working for's market it will be fine. Otherwise big companies could claim they own the the capitol improvements to your property which you do on your own time. Generally don't be a dick and work on your stuff while at work and you will be fine.
  - icedchai 13y ago
    Exactly. It's best not to even mention it. Just keep it to yourself.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    In a "big company you've absolutely heard of" it can be very hard to claim that you are outside of your employer's market. Several such big companies define their market as "everything tech-related". (Whether this would stand up in court is dubious, but do you also want to go up against a billion-dollar company's crack legal team in court?) Also, I've heard the main issue isn't actually getting sued, it's that VCs or investors won't even touch you if there's the slightest hint that you might not own your code. If your side-project takes off it's nice to be able to enlist other peoples' help instead of miring yourself in legalities.
    - boyter 13y ago
      Unless you are shooting to make 100 million a year, any company I have heard of (thinking Google, Microsoft, Apple etc..) will not consider that a big enough market and you should be fine. Agree with the VC thing, but assuming you are doing it outside of work it shouldn't be a huge problem, but check with a lawyer.
jammmuel 13y ago
It's pretty simple. Do what you love doing. If you don't, move on. I love what I do. It's not a about money. It's about doing good by doing what you love.
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  That's great if doing what you love gets you paid, like software. If what you love isn't something that's considered economically viable, you're pretty much out of luck.
- GregBuchholz 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084381
  - jammmuel 13y ago
    There is some truth in this, yet I'd describe myself as fortunate and passionate, not elite.
Raj123123 13y ago
Summary: work on things you can later show off I think this is great oversimplification of the real world and see 2 problems: 1) There are many jobs that simply do not allow the inner secrets or secret sauce to be made public. Even a supposedly open company such as Google does not publish the exact formula for its biggest secret sauce (search ranking). Sure the PageRanking patent formula is public, but this only gets one so far - the actual ranking is much more complex and involves many more factors - otherwise SEO would have been automated long ago. 2) How long until companies recognize that employees are leveraging publication of their work and thereby work to stop it (e.g. enforce policies). Many corporations readily recognize that a large problem is turnover and spend significant amounts to try to prevent it and then hire new employees - what is to stop them from creating and enforcing policies to prevent employees from all external publications?
- jimbokun 13y ago
  That's a huge impetus for increasing turnover. All your employees talented enough to publish something worthwhile will leave as soon as they get another decent offer somewhere allowing them a little more recognition.
  - Raj123123 13y ago
    strict policy of not publishing anything related to your employment. Keep the employees busy filing useless internal TPS reports
    - infinite8s 13y ago
      You aren't going to keep any of your good employees that way.
- rmc 13y ago
  If companies are worried about high turnover, they should try the carrot, and not only the stick
seestheday 13y ago
Anyone have experience or suggestions on how to do this within analytics? I currently do do web/social/paid media/crm analytics for a large company you have definitely heard of. I'm not just thinking of my current situation though, I'm interested in pursuing this long term so any and all suggestions are welcome.
- bigiain 13y ago
  At a previous job/business, we built a quite large revenue stream doing analytics and A/B testing for clients by demonstrating the effectiveness on charity jobs. See if you can convince $large_company to let you do (and most importantly, talk about) side projects for reputable charities (perhaps giving credit to $large_company as well as taking it for yoursef) or for friends businesses/startups. The other thing I see working well for friends/colleagues is presenting at conferences/meetups. We've got a "Web Analytics Wednesday" meetup here in Sydney, and a pretty much continual flow of web design/development related meetups/mini-confs/industry-specific groups. See if you can pitch "I want to present some of what we at $large_company do to people in $industry at $event" to your boss.
  - seestheday 13y ago
    Thanks, I've had success at web analytics Wednesdays. I don't have one in my local city, but I have organized one and it had a great turnout. Speaking at conferences and on panels has been good as well, but my company is on a downturn right now, so travel & conferences are locked down for the time being. I REALLY like the idea of showcasing side projects. I do some web development and hosting for several non profits associated with my extended family. Historical Associations, political websites (ranging from the left to the right), my wife's recipe blog, a christian campground, etc. I'm going to start digging into the analytics for them and blogging about it. It's definitely worth my time, and small amounts of cast for some SEM campaigns to showcase those skills. Thanks for triggering this thought process. Genuinely appreciated.
jarofgreen 13y ago
Interesting comments about GitHub. What do you think about using GitHub for code hosting and issue tracking but having a separate website that you want to be the main presence for a project? I've literally just done that while Open Sourcing a successful project I've been working on for almost 2 years.
huangc10 13y ago
A bit off topic (or maybe not). How does one become a salaryman in Japan? *edit or rather, how easy is it to get a software job in Japan?
jhh 13y ago
That wasn't a very good essay. Kind of sad that it gets voted so high. First and foremost it's way way too long for little actual content.
stefek99 13y ago
»there's less of the "we own everything you think of at any point in your employment" nonsense these days« Wish me luck, I've just signed to such a contract :)
- pjscott 13y ago
  Depending on where you live, that may not be enforceable. In California, for example, stuff you make on your own time, without using your employers resources (etc.), belongs to you, and your employer has no say in the matter. (I am not a lawyer and don't have a citation for this, so take it with a grain of salt.)
lukeholder 13y ago
Does this mean if I work from home I am less visible and should reconsider?
- crpatino 13y ago
  It depends, but mostly yes. As a remote worker, people won't come to like you. They won't necessarily dislike you either, just not form bonds with you on the basis of spending 8+ hours together every day. You won't get a share of their "Dunbar budget", so to speak. If you are really, really good, there is no reason to think this will affect you. You earn your place in terms of your contribution, which may be the raw amount of work you perform, but you can use force multipliers to. By over-communicating, and in general having the disposition to help out people. On the other hand, if your work is average or below average, I believe it's far easier to hide in plain sight at the office; blending with the crowd, being seen at least putting the hours.
kimonos 13y ago
True! Because doing what you love to do and making others happy are ways of living life to the fullest.

456 points by austengary 13y ago

Awesome post! I like his comments about building human capital, reputational capital, and social capital. This is forgotten by many folks. It's not just the cash. I also like the importance of working on things you can show and share, and that people can see.

seancoleman 13y ago

Similarly, within a company you should aim to work as close to the product & customer as possible in a revenue-generating role instead of support roles classified as overhead including LOB applications, internal tools, etc.

patio11 13y ago
I agree. I've got company-specific career advice in a separate essay from a few years ago, but hate repeating myself, and it was semi-offtopic for this one so I excised it. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...
- eropple 13y ago
  I still really enjoy the comments on that article. The visceral, knee-jerk hatred you managed to engender for pointing out pretty obvious stuff was amazing.
dba7dba 13y ago
Earlier in my career, I was warned IT was hated by management because it's seen as a black hole of budget. My advise is stay away from IT as a career. Go with a career where you can create something that's marketable.
- mooreds 13y ago
  My hope is that IT is now seen as a partner in making the business better (not sure how long ago you were warned). But, I agree, it is always better to be on the revenue side than the cost side of the equation.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - eterm 13y ago
    Most people get mad every time they have to pay for a tank of gas. Its not rational, they know they can't go without it but they still hate it.
- matwood 13y ago
  Management doesn't hate IT, they hate cost centers. Like patio11 says above do not be a programmer, but be someone who generates revenue (or cuts cost) using software. Align your interests with managements interests of cost saving and revenue generation and management will love you. It is not always easy though. A lot of management simply does not understand what is possible with IT. That is where the communication angle comes in (and business savvy). It is ITs job to not just do the work, but to help the business understand what is possible with great IT work. Having a great IT department working with business can be a huge multiplier and competitive advantage when done properly.
  - dba7dba 13y ago
    As an IT worker (network admin, helpdesk, server admin), you can only cut cost so much. Often you need periodic infusions of capital to function. But for a programmer, every line of code you write is used to bring in revenue. That's how management (edit: mainly in tech startups) sees it.
    - patio11 13y ago
      If it were only true that management viewed all programmers' contributions as being additive to revenue. Alas, the grass is barely greener on this side of the fence.
MattGrommes 13y ago
I worked at an insurance company doing mainly 3 things: maintaining an existing system, being lead on swapping out a different system for something newer, and rewriting a small bit of the business to be automated. I was never treated better than on that last project because I could say "This new thing will save the company $XX,000 a week." Feature-creep and hassles are significantly reduced when you can put direct dollar values on things.

itengelhardt 13y ago

He's so right about the whole "work on things you can show to the next prospect" thing. I wish my 20-year-old self would have known that.

nicholas73 13y ago

Curious, how did you end up as a salaryman in Japan? Do they treat a drop-in foreigner as potential lifers as they would a Japanese recruit straight out of college?

patio11 13y ago
Foreigners interact really quirkily with many Japanese societal norms. My company proposed hiring me as a salaryman (正社員) at our interview. I was flabbergasted, having assumed that they would naturally only consider me for contract employee status (契約社員). You don't want to be a salaryman but you really don't want to be a contract employee. My future boss made it clear (for the first of many times) that he intended on dealing with me squarely, in a fashion which is not universal among all Japanese employers, and that I had skills and educational attainment closest to his salarymen and thus I should be a salaryman. He asked if I understood what he was asking for me. I said that I did, that I was honored, and that owing to my age and situation I didn't think I could promise him that I would reside in Japan continuously until my retirement. He said that he understood I had particular circumstances and would accept the possibility of me leaving at some indefinite point in the future as long as it was, say, 4 years off, seeing as he was sticking his neck out for me. I told him that 4 years was a long time for an unmarried 25 year old and asked if 3 was acceptable. We shook on it, so to speak. To my bosses' enduring credit, they were scrupulously fair in dealing with me as a Japanese salaryman, despite that being almost shockingly abnormal at many Japanese firms, and they made it quite clear that everyone else was to deal with me in the same fashion or they'd find out what a Japanese multinational will do on behalf of a wronged employee. [Edit to add: If people detect notes of conflicting opinions from me regarding salarymanhood, it's largely because that one specific bit of Japanese corporate culture -- loyalty -- really resonated with me. Feudalism is a pretty effed up system, too, but aside from all the Game of Thrones Except In Real Life bits it had its own peculiar beauty to it. I sort of feel like that about salarymandom.] How I got hired there is a long story. I think I've told it on HN and elsewhere before.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Thanks for this post. I'm always fascinated by culture/work intersection points.

dkrich 13y ago

I would add: work on high-profile (read, important to senior stakeholders) projects within your current company. When a person above you's livelihood is reliant on how you perform, doing well will get you promoted at light-speed compared to people who work on stuff important to a small, junior group of people. Seriously, if you have a doubt about whether the project is important, go up at least two levels in your company and figure out where his/her interests lie and start aligning your efforts with those interests.

rprospero 13y ago
On an intellectual level, I understand the importance on working on the high profile projects, but I'm not sure how to do it without feeling, well sociopathic. As an example, a friend of mine recently lost his job. His co-workers had a similar attitude and focused on the high profile work the the CEO cared about (e.g. industry conferences, television ads). My friend focused on more junior level tasks (e.g. tech support, maintaining the corporate website). He even had some tasks with negative prestige (e.g. unclogging toilets). When a change in the tax code altered the company's finances, my friend was fired. Within a month, the company had lost half their clients as support calls were going unanswered, the website was down, and clients who visited in person encountered an office that smelled of feces. None of my friend's tasks were high profile, but they were all critical to the health of the company. I know that I'll be rewarded better if I do the high profile tasks instead of the drudge work. However, the drudge work still has to be done. Should I ignore the drudge work and let the organization fall apart around me or should I convince some other person to perform the drudge work for which they won't be rewarded?
- mooreds 13y ago
  Or, you could work for an organization that recognizes (even glamorizes) the drudge work. See Zappos, etc.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    I think it's also worth learning to do internal PR for unglamorous things. I was once a sysadmin, and I got incredibly tired of being unappreciated. Eventually I burnt out on the work and shifted to other things. But I came to realize that some of it was my fault. Uncomfortable with recognition, I was almost secretive about how much hard work I was doing to keep everything running smoothly. I didn't even give people a chance to appreciate what I was up to. In retrospect, I was thinking that good work would shine on its own, that they would understand the complexities of what I was doing. Hah! I don't even do that myself. I don't run around saying, "Hey, the internet is amazing! Thank you $ISP for keeping me connected!" every 20 minutes. But when it goes down, I go right to WTF-land. If you're going to take one for the team, let the team know. And when you notice other people doing important but unglamorous stuff, call it out. Praising them publicly helps create a culture that values more than the showy big wins. There's a technique called "appreciative inquiry" that I've found really helpful to shift my thinking in that regard. Rather than starting from an expectation of perfection, I start by asking myself, "What's good about this?"

cotsog 13y ago

Reminds me of the "No more zero days" post on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af http://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_jus...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

thu 13y ago

The disparity between the U.S. and Belgium is huge: I have a nice GitHub public profile. I am a capable and experienced Python and Haskell developer. I am building Reesd (https://reesd.com https://reesd.com), a redundant storage service made of: - Several Docker containers, linked through Open vSwitch, - Web frontend, - SCP reimplementation with account permissions and bucket plan limits, and on-the-fly SHA1 check, - Redundant backend store, - Background jobs to check files SHA1 to detect early corruption, - Payment done through Stripe (almost done), - HAProxy, - Email through mandrill, - I'm working on adding PostgreSQL synchronous replication. I think I have largely proved myself to possible employers. Still it is excessively difficult to find a job without moving abroad: the belgian market for non-Java/.Net/C# developers is small. Search for a Python developer position, you'll find 1 or 2 public postings. And they will offer you a ridiculously small salary since the market is on their side. When I see the perks you are offered in the SV this is crazy. And then you have posts like these to move you forward. A chance HN is accessible abroad :) B.t.w. it's maybe the third time that I post Reesd as part of a comment on HN. I think it made sense to include the link in my comment; but still, is it ok to do so regularly even if the subject makes sense ? Edit: hey, thanks for the replies!

gumby 13y ago
> ...it's maybe the third time that I post Reesd as part of a comment on HN... still, is it ok to do so regularly even if the subject makes sense ? Totally. You're not spamming ("if the subject makes sense") and of course nobody sees all the comments. So if you're adding to the discussion and your link to your work helps, then go for it! For years I had the bad attitude "simply do the work and obviously everyone will know how good (or not) I am". That quasi worked in the lab where we all shared a filesystem but no, it's terrible personally, professionally and, in the case where I did do good work, for everyone else. I'm still unlearning that... Note: there are plenty of scammers and the simply inept who "network" by blindly inserting themselves into other conversations. Doesn't sound like you're at risk of that. Go for it.
joshdotsmith 13y ago
This is Hacker News. If you can't post a relevant link in a comment to something you built yourself, then I just don't know anymore.

mooreds 13y ago

Hmmm... I wonder if everyone followed this advice, would it have the side effect of decreasing pay for the high profile jobs (like API evangelist, someone working on Android, etc) relative to the less public jobs (Build Guy, adwords engineer)? I'm guessing so. That'd be an interesting outcome.

beat 13y ago
The "build guy" thing stung for me, as it's been much of my career. Shit rolls downhill, man. It's a job that only gets recognized when it goes wrong.
- mooreds 13y ago
  I've never been the "build guy" full time, but I have been the developer who enjoyed/took care of the process/version control/scripting. It is worth saying that there is a great series of best practices, etc, that are worth documenting (and publicizing) around builds. (Even if it is hard to justify investment in improving builds sometimes.)
  - beat 13y ago
    I've certainly enjoyed the technical challenge of bringing in best practices and better tools, and I've really enjoyed playing the emissary between dev and ops (a co-worker once called me a "one man DevOps team"). But the fact that there's no visibility until things go wrong - there's a real problem with the responsibility/authority ratio in that role.
- josephlord 13y ago
  I suppose there are still routes to visibility if you can develop and release tools to support testing and building. There is probably room to blog too. But you probably need to work quite hard on visibility, the natural state is the invisible.

iterable 13y ago

Investment banking is the same way. 100 hour+ weeks for weeks on end.

swanson 13y ago

I'm paraphrasing Merlin Mann, but another benefit of this approach in a day-job environment is that you demonstrate you are capable and deserving of doing cool work. When a shiny Rails project is coming down the pipeline, is it more likely to be staffed by someone who hasn't done Ruby before or the engineer who's got a personal Rails project on her GitHub and blog posts about lessons learned? Who is top of mind when a client comes in and needs a mobile app built? The person who gave a lunch-and-learn talk about iOS last week. Want to take a week to explore a new framework instead of getting stuck on maintenance work between billable projects? Well, if you have a track record of producing artifacts of value it is a much easier sell to $MANAGER.

maerF0x0 13y ago

On some level http://geekli.st/ http://geekli.st/ is right on the money according to this post.. Show off the things you did. Even if it's small ("Added replica set to mongodb cluster") .. Over time the cards add up to expertise.

luu 13y ago

For a decade, I've gone after the most interesting thing I could find without regard for visibility. My current job is the most interesting thing I've done so far, but it's likely that my employer won't disclose my current project until after another company publicly discloses they're doing the same thing. Looking at how that's worked for other systems/infrastructure projects around here, I doubt I'll be able to talk about my job for N years, where N is a significant fraction of a decade. Now that I'm a year out from my previous job, I can talk a bit about what I did back in the 2010 timeframe. By the time I'm able to talk about what I did for them in 2012, it will be ancient history. And yet, my career has been full of interesting work and I regularly get inquiries for neat sound jobs based on (as far as I can tell) nothing more than my having a pulse. It's true that, on occasion, someone who's familiar with my work contacts me. But much more often, it's someone who has no idea what I've done who's desperate to hire because, nowadays, everyone is desperate to hire. I expect that, one day, the job market will cool down and I'll have a bit of trouble finding something I really enjoy. But, from where I am now, the tradeoff seems worth it, even if that day is tomorrow.

adrianbye 13y ago
you can talk about the types of things you can do without breaking confidentiality
- patio11 13y ago
  Yes and no. Yes, he could say "I work for AmaGooFaceSoft on a new type of infrastructure product which most companies can't even conceive of but which makes a lot of sense when you have 10,000 engineers and several hundred thousand servers." Then the question is "Oooh ooh what kind of infrastructure product is that?" and the answer will be "Do you remember Map/Reduce or BigTable or Hiphop? It's spiritually similar to those but totally unlike any of them and if I tell you any more my boss will have my guts for garters. Really cool tech though. You'd love to hear about it... if you worked here. Of course, if I told you about it, you'd not understand half of the explanation, since it plugs into four other proprietary systems that you -- as a member of the general public -- will never know about."

beat 13y ago

I saw this when it hit my email earlier today. I was actually planning on sending patio11 a thank you note for it later, just because it rings so true for me.

badman_ting 13y ago

I can't really deny that this is good advice, but boy I really would just like to write code for a few hours a weekday and leave it at that. I have a good job so if you "need proof" (besides talking to me) that I'm a damn good developer, well I guess you won't be hiring me.

ben336 13y ago
I don't think the argument is that you need to "have proof". Its that the work you do during the weekday isn't amassing you long term value. If you lose your job/want to do something else, you have minimal "credit" beyond the ability to hold down a job to apply elsewhere, and any provable skills you've gained in the process. Writing code outside work isn't the only way to gain "credit", just one way of several that he mentions in the piece.

ogreyonder 13y ago

In regard to working on side projects: > Just ask. The worst they can say is "No." And that's where I have to ask: what do you do when they say no? I followed this advice a year back or so and it essentially put the brakes on any serious side-projects. I work for a big company that you've absolutely heard of.

boyter 13y ago
You do it anyway. So long as its outside normal working hours and whoever you are working for's market it will be fine. Otherwise big companies could claim they own the the capitol improvements to your property which you do on your own time. Generally don't be a dick and work on your stuff while at work and you will be fine.
- icedchai 13y ago
  Exactly. It's best not to even mention it. Just keep it to yourself.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  In a "big company you've absolutely heard of" it can be very hard to claim that you are outside of your employer's market. Several such big companies define their market as "everything tech-related". (Whether this would stand up in court is dubious, but do you also want to go up against a billion-dollar company's crack legal team in court?) Also, I've heard the main issue isn't actually getting sued, it's that VCs or investors won't even touch you if there's the slightest hint that you might not own your code. If your side-project takes off it's nice to be able to enlist other peoples' help instead of miring yourself in legalities.
  - boyter 13y ago
    Unless you are shooting to make 100 million a year, any company I have heard of (thinking Google, Microsoft, Apple etc..) will not consider that a big enough market and you should be fine. Agree with the VC thing, but assuming you are doing it outside of work it shouldn't be a huge problem, but check with a lawyer.

jammmuel 13y ago

It's pretty simple. Do what you love doing. If you don't, move on. I love what I do. It's not a about money. It's about doing good by doing what you love.

steveklabnik 13y ago
That's great if doing what you love gets you paid, like software. If what you love isn't something that's considered economically viable, you're pretty much out of luck.
GregBuchholz 13y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084381
- jammmuel 13y ago
  There is some truth in this, yet I'd describe myself as fortunate and passionate, not elite.

Raj123123 13y ago

Summary: work on things you can later show off I think this is great oversimplification of the real world and see 2 problems: 1) There are many jobs that simply do not allow the inner secrets or secret sauce to be made public. Even a supposedly open company such as Google does not publish the exact formula for its biggest secret sauce (search ranking). Sure the PageRanking patent formula is public, but this only gets one so far - the actual ranking is much more complex and involves many more factors - otherwise SEO would have been automated long ago. 2) How long until companies recognize that employees are leveraging publication of their work and thereby work to stop it (e.g. enforce policies). Many corporations readily recognize that a large problem is turnover and spend significant amounts to try to prevent it and then hire new employees - what is to stop them from creating and enforcing policies to prevent employees from all external publications?

jimbokun 13y ago
That's a huge impetus for increasing turnover. All your employees talented enough to publish something worthwhile will leave as soon as they get another decent offer somewhere allowing them a little more recognition.
- Raj123123 13y ago
  strict policy of not publishing anything related to your employment. Keep the employees busy filing useless internal TPS reports
  - infinite8s 13y ago
    You aren't going to keep any of your good employees that way.
rmc 13y ago
If companies are worried about high turnover, they should try the carrot, and not only the stick

seestheday 13y ago

Anyone have experience or suggestions on how to do this within analytics? I currently do do web/social/paid media/crm analytics for a large company you have definitely heard of. I'm not just thinking of my current situation though, I'm interested in pursuing this long term so any and all suggestions are welcome.

bigiain 13y ago
At a previous job/business, we built a quite large revenue stream doing analytics and A/B testing for clients by demonstrating the effectiveness on charity jobs. See if you can convince $large_company to let you do (and most importantly, talk about) side projects for reputable charities (perhaps giving credit to $large_company as well as taking it for yoursef) or for friends businesses/startups. The other thing I see working well for friends/colleagues is presenting at conferences/meetups. We've got a "Web Analytics Wednesday" meetup here in Sydney, and a pretty much continual flow of web design/development related meetups/mini-confs/industry-specific groups. See if you can pitch "I want to present some of what we at $large_company do to people in $industry at $event" to your boss.
- seestheday 13y ago
  Thanks, I've had success at web analytics Wednesdays. I don't have one in my local city, but I have organized one and it had a great turnout. Speaking at conferences and on panels has been good as well, but my company is on a downturn right now, so travel & conferences are locked down for the time being. I REALLY like the idea of showcasing side projects. I do some web development and hosting for several non profits associated with my extended family. Historical Associations, political websites (ranging from the left to the right), my wife's recipe blog, a christian campground, etc. I'm going to start digging into the analytics for them and blogging about it. It's definitely worth my time, and small amounts of cast for some SEM campaigns to showcase those skills. Thanks for triggering this thought process. Genuinely appreciated.

jarofgreen 13y ago

Interesting comments about GitHub. What do you think about using GitHub for code hosting and issue tracking but having a separate website that you want to be the main presence for a project? I've literally just done that while Open Sourcing a successful project I've been working on for almost 2 years.

huangc10 13y ago

A bit off topic (or maybe not). How does one become a salaryman in Japan? *edit or rather, how easy is it to get a software job in Japan?

jhh 13y ago

That wasn't a very good essay. Kind of sad that it gets voted so high. First and foremost it's way way too long for little actual content.

stefek99 13y ago

»there's less of the "we own everything you think of at any point in your employment" nonsense these days« Wish me luck, I've just signed to such a contract :)

pjscott 13y ago
Depending on where you live, that may not be enforceable. In California, for example, stuff you make on your own time, without using your employers resources (etc.), belongs to you, and your employer has no say in the matter. (I am not a lawyer and don't have a citation for this, so take it with a grain of salt.)

lukeholder 13y ago

Does this mean if I work from home I am less visible and should reconsider?

crpatino 13y ago
It depends, but mostly yes. As a remote worker, people won't come to like you. They won't necessarily dislike you either, just not form bonds with you on the basis of spending 8+ hours together every day. You won't get a share of their "Dunbar budget", so to speak. If you are really, really good, there is no reason to think this will affect you. You earn your place in terms of your contribution, which may be the raw amount of work you perform, but you can use force multipliers to. By over-communicating, and in general having the disposition to help out people. On the other hand, if your work is average or below average, I believe it's far easier to hide in plain sight at the office; blending with the crowd, being seen at least putting the hours.

kimonos 13y ago

True! Because doing what you love to do and making others happy are ways of living life to the fullest.