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Search - "self awareness"
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When error messages have self-awareness and fix problems by themselve the world will burn but I have less issues to care about.
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I was thinking today about a certain aspect of running a software startup and then it came to me...
Hank Scorpio, from the Simpsons, was right in his approach.
So many time I have seen people get hired only for the company to get a less-than-optimal performance from them.
But why is this? Of course, it is many factors but one of the major ones is...
Employers seem to lump employees in together and assume that since most developers operate in one way that the new devs should be the same way.
The problem with this seems to be that we are all pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Let's face it, most devs (like most people) are not good, and almost everyone is not living up to their potential because of a lack of understanding of themselves and how they can achieve more.
On top of that, most devs are just employees who will do what you tell them to.
Since those above developers are the norm (Reference Seinfeld "95% of people are undatable") we have to assume that there is a 5% who are exceptional.
The difference between the 5% and the 95% is NOT some built-in superiority but that the 5% has a good idea themselves and an understanding of how to get the most out of them. They set goals and then find the right path to achieve them. They don't coast.
By assuming these developers are the same as the others is REALLY hampering their potential and by doing this the company only hurts itself.
So, that's a lot of talking but what actionable things can be taken away from this?
Hank asks Homer "What is your dream?"
Well, employeers should take the time to identify which of these developers are in the 5%. A problem arises though when the 5% decide it is in their best interest to blend in.
Like when home says his dream is to "Work for you?" Hank shuts him down and wants to get to the truth. He makes Homer comfortable with not only vocalizing but achieving his dreams.
When an employer is looking for their types they should be looking for the following...
1. A real genuine desire to achieve
2. A real plan to get their goals done
3. Critical thinking and self-evaluation
But more importantly, when they identify these types they should be asking questions like...
- How can we help you be more productive?
- Is there anything about our current operating norm that is hindering you?
- How does your productivity workflow look?
3 difficulties arise though…
1. Most hiring managers are incompetent, and quite frankly, everyone thinks they are in the 5% and for those managers who delude themselves into this without putting in the work, they will have an impossible time actually identifying those who are actually good and productive employees.
2. Showing special treatment to these folks may upset the people below.
3. You will hear things you don’t like…
Examples include…
- That new fancy open-office that you got because it was the trendy thing to do, you might hear that this is a huge hinderance.
- These days people seem to treat devs like nomads, “just give him a laptop and a table and he is fine”!. You may hear that this is complete BS. Real achievers may want a dedicated desk with multiple monitors, a desk with drawers etc.
- This WILL cost you money. I know of developers who cannot work without a dedicated whiteboard. Buy them whatever they need.
- They may want BOTH a standing desk and a chair to sit on.
- Etc.
The point is that it seems to me to be a foolish strategy to tailor your entire company to force everyone into the same work habits. Really good employees have the self-awareness to develop their own productive practices and any keeping of them inside a box will NOT help.27 -
Conversing with developers can be frustrating.
Here is a good one from today. 2 people 1 women (let’s call her W) and one man (let’s call him M)
W: “Hey guys! Our team is looking for lots of great developers. Front end, back end, data, dev ops. At above market salaries with a great team! Reach out to me is you want to chat. I would love to hear from you.”
Translation: I have a great offer and want to help others achieve and strive in their careers.
M: “also, guys/less-gendered-alternative plz” proceeds to chastise this women about using the word guys.
Translation: I have no level of social awareness, but I have a need to feel big and important. So I’ll take offence for those who aren’t offended to make me feel better about my lack of fucking personality.
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I’m not really concerned about opinions about the gender issue. It isn’t about that.
It’s just tiring dealing with these people’s bullshit.
It’s time to grow up folks, stop arguing on the fucking internet.
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I also once saw a developer chastise 2 women we worked with while we were out for drinks for the exact same thing; using the word guys.
He was so busy “defending” them from themselves that he ended up making them uncomfortable and then they left.
He was saying “don’t exclude women” while fucking excluding the only women there.
What a fucking douche.4 -
Society would be a much better place if people had same level of emotional/mental self awareness as much as they have physical self awareness.18
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So I did an undergraduate degree in Physics and as part of that did a few courses involving c++. The classes were terrible ("make a class, it'll get you extra marks" kinda bad). I found them interesting but had the self awareness to know it was a terrible course. So fast forward a year and I'm following the MIT CS 001 video lectures and it clicks.
I've been a dev ever since. I've not let my mathematical background slip as it's bloody useful but I enjoy what I do day to day. For the most part.2 -
"In a sentence: Technically brilliant, delightful to work with, combined with a self-awareness and strong desire to improve. We also want to make sure everyone is highly supportive of each other; we win as a team."
In short: you're looking for a unicorn, which your company won't be.
Guy really said he wants the charisma of Steve Jobs and the technical genius of Wozniak...
are people really this stupid?2 -
Problems. We get them frequently, to me it feels like life is not about being happy and all, it's about how you handle your problems. Any kind of problem, be it work related, you personal life anything.
Developing the skill to deal with different kinds of problem is what makes your life better and better.
What world taught me till now, to run away from the discomfort, a lot people talk about how environment is bad, and you should not take shit from anyone. But few things tell us what's actually lack inside us. Maybe, on social media we don't boast a self awareness based thinking because is makes people uncomfortable to think about their own behaviour. Self awareness is becoming more and more important for me now. I am trying to keep my self love intact, it's hard though. But knowing your own shortcomings and taking actions to understand and do something about them makes me feel in more control. Makes me happy. :)
I'm writing this, because I just got a work problem and I snapped and closed my laptop very impatiently. Then in few seconds I realised, it's a kind of a problem that I should try to 'deal' with and not go into a loop of self hatred. Even though my heart ja racing fast, and all the hormones which are making me wanna feel sad, I feel aware and more in control that hey, you are feeling this because this problem has these consequences but let's try to solve it. :) -
When I think of myself as a 41 year old junior developer (2nd career shift), my mind immediately goes to "40 Year Old Virgin" for some reason ...2
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I love our industry but it’s filled with way too many tech grifters, fakes and waste men pretending to know what they’re doing. A lot of whom low key hate coding and the people that do it, wish they were as good and those people yet lack the self awareness and humility to see where they fall short and actually learn the technology.
Even if you see the industry as just a way to make some money, learn how to code and if you can’t do that then learn to appreciate the process. Stop talking as if you know what you are doing while embarrassing yourself and coming off as a dunce and condescending to those that do.5 -
I was going to rant today about lack of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in some developers, this rant was based on the interviews I have seen flop over the years.
But then, as I am typing it, people in my office start having this exact conversation. We get together and discuss it and in the end we come to the same conclusion as my rant.
Now it feels like a waste to rant about something on the internet when I got to have a real in-person discussion about it.
It’s like devRant in real life!
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The outcome of the offline chat...
- Have a cultural policy that is strictly NO ASSHOLES
- Watch for people who are nasty on the internet, especially LinkedIn
- Be careful with people who have a lot of questions for you but answer your questions with “we are in stealth mode” or something similar
- There is no point in wasting your time on these folks in an interview, just politely conclude it as fast as you can and move on -
I have enough self awareness to realize that I will start hating on 9-5 jobs the moment I start my own company.
I'd be one of those douchebags that go - "Pffftt you have a JOB? okay loser, go suck your boss"2 -
Recently I started to study app development (I am frontend/backend developer) and I noticed unlike when I was younger, I have a focus limit of about 6 hours. After 6 hours I become super distracted... I am slowly getting back to normal but recently I got so distracted I decided to play a breve game and which one better than half life alyx?
Well, if you have a vr headset play it: I swear I spent 2 hours just fucking around and looking at the environment... in one scene you enter a house and I went full detective trying to understand why the house was messed up: picked up stuff, looked in the corners and so on... it really gives you an impression of what vr could be4 -
Emotional support thread - feel free to comment here if you've ever been in a conversation about .NET, .NET Core, .NET Standard, .NET Framework and someoneverysmart has declared that it is actually very straightforward and obvious and then proceeded to explain in a way that is neither straightforward nor obvious, or is even plain wrong.
Feel free to link them to this thread. I guess it is unlikely these folks have the requisite self awareness to get anything out of it, but it is worth a try.
Finally for anybody about to comment here to explain the differences, please read the above three times, try to get it into your skulls that this thread is more about empathy and awareness than it is about the differences in .NET versions; and then go ahead and explain here anyway becauese I guess it will be a good cautionary tale.4 -
General inquiry and also I guess spreading awareness (for lack of a better category as far as I can tell) considering nothing turned up when I searched for it on here: what do you guys think about Sourcehut?
For those who don't know about it, I find it a great alternative to GitHub and GitLab considering it uses more federated collaboration methods (mostly email) mostly already built into Git which in fact predate pull requests and the like (all while providing a more modern web interface to those traditional utilities than what currently exists) on top of many other cool features (for those who prefer Mercurial, it offers first-class repo support too, and generally it also has issue tracking, pastebins, CI services, and an equivalent to GitHub Pages over HTTP as well as Gemini in fact, to name a few; it's all on its website: https://sourcehut.org/). It's very new (2019) and currently in public alpha (seems fairly stable though actually), but it will be paid in the future on the main instance (seems easy enough to self-host though, specially compared to GitLab, so I'll probably do that soon); I usually prefer not to have to pay but considering it seems to be done mostly by 1 guy (who also maintains the infrastructure) and considering how much I like it and everything it stands for, here I actually might 😅2