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Is it weird that I don't get this at all. I've never been competitive and no exam has ever driven me to tears. Everything I've learned was self thought and I

by Fuxy 12y ago

Is it weird that I don't get this at all. I've never been competitive and no exam has ever driven me to tears. Everything I've learned was self thought and I took it at my own pace which is way slower than academia requires but that gave me the opportunity to delve deeper and answer my own questions. I don't care about competing with my peers I just want to see cool things and have fun building cool things with other people. That's probably why stress never gets to me and I never push my self into psychological hell hole. I've done it once when I was a student and I never want to go back to that and I'm certainly not going to accept an employer pushing me to that. I would rather quit.

pm90 12y ago
No its not weird at all, just goes against the conventional notion of competitiveness. Which is a good thing; look at all the people worrying themselves silly about whether they're "better" than their peers. The nice thing about being in computing is that there is just so much work to do that you can have a lot of people working without ever competing directly for the "top job".
JustSomeNobody 12y ago
No, not at all. You're the type of person I'd rather work with. I have no desire to compete with anyone for anything. I've worked places where code reviews were looked at as a way to bash other developers. I don't want any part of that. It's not healthy for developers or the business. Fortunately, I'm good enough at what I do that I can choose not to work at those places.
engi_nerd 12y ago
I'm only competitive with myself -- I just want to learn. I'm not happy if I'm not learning something and practicing some of my skills. But I'm also quite happy lingering on something and really exhausting its depths. Do you know more than I do about something? There are lots of things that you (the general you, meaning anyone) know more about than me. All I want is to learn from you, and teach you some things that I know (which reinforces my own learning). That's it. One of the reasons I left my last job was because it was very much a competitive, back-stabbing sort of environment. You could only get "better" in that environment by actively making someone else worse. How that makes sense when your goal is to produce a research product, I'll never know. I guess what I'm saying with all of this is, I'm happy to see other people admit to the overall viewpoint that you've shared here.
jd3 12y ago
Spot on. I guess different people just have different life goals?

by Fuxy 12y ago

pm90 12y ago

No its not weird at all, just goes against the conventional notion of competitiveness. Which is a good thing; look at all the people worrying themselves silly about whether they're "better" than their peers. The nice thing about being in computing is that there is just so much work to do that you can have a lot of people working without ever competing directly for the "top job".

JustSomeNobody 12y ago

No, not at all. You're the type of person I'd rather work with. I have no desire to compete with anyone for anything. I've worked places where code reviews were looked at as a way to bash other developers. I don't want any part of that. It's not healthy for developers or the business. Fortunately, I'm good enough at what I do that I can choose not to work at those places.

engi_nerd 12y ago

I'm only competitive with myself -- I just want to learn. I'm not happy if I'm not learning something and practicing some of my skills. But I'm also quite happy lingering on something and really exhausting its depths. Do you know more than I do about something? There are lots of things that you (the general you, meaning anyone) know more about than me. All I want is to learn from you, and teach you some things that I know (which reinforces my own learning). That's it. One of the reasons I left my last job was because it was very much a competitive, back-stabbing sort of environment. You could only get "better" in that environment by actively making someone else worse. How that makes sense when your goal is to produce a research product, I'll never know. I guess what I'm saying with all of this is, I'm happy to see other people admit to the overall viewpoint that you've shared here.

jd3 12y ago

Spot on. I guess different people just have different life goals?