Tell a fish success is measured by climbing a tree, and he will spend his whole life thinking he’s a failure.
What skills, attitudes, personality traits have you seen mismatched to a certain job that later made the individual an awesome worker in another job?
I maintain that lazy programmers are the best programmers because they put all their energy towards having to do as little work as possible. Everything goes to efficiency. Everything that can be automated will be. The code will be structured and documented to avoid future work.
YUP can I automate this? is the output as good as my manual work? did I just save my client 8 billable hours? can I go home now
“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
~ Bill Gates
Absolutely. Let me spend five hours to automate this ten minute task.
I did that once and cost someone their job.
Back in the bad old days of 2009, the company I apprenticed at furloughed the secretary and made me enter in job tickets. We had a special relationship with one client and they used us like one would use a drop shipping company – they sent us their customer orders and we fulfilled them. It was low volume (per job), high frequency work. About 80% of our tickets originated from PDFs that always followed the same pattern. As my first serious foray into programming, I automated the ticket intake for just their tickets so I didn’t have to type them up manually. At the time, I did not realize reducing a 10 minute task to 10 seconds (repeated about 15 times a day) would mean they never brought her back to work full time.
I don’t feel that bad about it: In the 5 years there she’d never been given a raise, the healthcare plan was atrocious, and she found out she was pregnant during the furlough. However, she decided to look for another job, and found one as a secretary at a school just down the street from her house. It was a dramatic pay increase, much better benefits, and better job security.
I left a few months later, and a year or so after, the business folded.You’re talking about a recurring task that takes ten minutes every time. I’m talking about a one-off that would take ten minutes to do and never come up again. We are not the same.
You never specified it was a one-off. And lazy workers won’t automate a one-off, because they are lazy.
Ha! I’ve definitely done that, too.
It’s just the above story makes for more interesting reading.
If you do that task 6 times a day after a week you’re in a net positive of time. And a lazy programmer would not automate something he will do just once, because of laziness it’s easier to just do the 10 min task once.
xkcd has the chart for this: https://xkcd.com/1205/
Did that over and over job before last.
CFO was complaining about how much time “her girls” spent daily on a task.
“You’re scanning CSVs with you eyeballs?! I can make that go away.”
She didn’t understand what I was saying, so I went behind her back to her second in command.
“Send me a couple of example files.”
Within 2-hours we were ready to test. Perfect. My god accounting loved me.
Yes! There are so many times where a focus on efficiency is mislabeled “laziness”. As long as the job gets done the same or faster, it’s just efficient to put less work into it.
Cruelty is not so good in nursing but is a desirable trait in a CEO.
Paranoia (to a healthy degree) is good for information security professionals but drives literally everyone else crazy. I wish people would adopt more of that, though. Maybe we’d see fewer data breaches…
The CEO of my company decided to send a holiday E-Card to everyone right before Christmas. I reported it as a phishing attempt and IT just laughed and said it was fine. Apparently I’m the only one that reported it and just… What? An email from outside our organization that claims to be from the CEO and contains a non-descript link to an unknown website? And I’m the only one that saw red flags from that?!
I’m sorry. I agree with you that your take is valid. I once had to explain to the assistant to the CFO why it was a bad idea to whitelist a gambling website (“they’re doing a fun play for the world Cup that uses points instead of real money’”) for the team handling customer card payments…and even then she still wanted it done until I told her she had to officially sign a release accepting responsibility for negative outcomes.
IT probably just laughed at the absurdity. C suite does whatever it wants and IT just has to deal with the fallout.
A very large penis is an asset in porn but frowned upon for mall Santas.
“You’ve been very naughty”
that’s very chaste of you
I almost cried with joy when my boss at my new job as a massage therapist thanked me for being so quiet. I was turned down for jobs and nearly fired from one for being “too quiet.”
That sounds amazing!
“Thinking outside the box” is rewarded in software development but terrifying when applied to assembling an airplane.
Boeing would like to know your location.
Ha! Boeing couldn’t find me when I worked there.
If you become a whistleblower, they’ll find you for sure.
Sadly, the kind of info I have is just embarrassing, not criminal nor safety related.
Also doesn’t work for submarines
Thinking outside of the box too much is scary in manufacturing and engineering. Mistakes are expensive to fix.
Most neurodivergences
ADHD is hell in a corporate setting but fantastic in a creative profession (I do both)
My untreated ADHD was a huge asset when I worked customer support for an airline. I had tons of customer complements and I was hailed as an example by area management on how to balance corporate costs with getting customers what they want.
I utterly failed managing a team of 15 people doing the exact same job. The multiple competing priorities on any given day often left me in task paralysis.
Now I work in I.T. and my ADHD is an asset again. I complete most days work in 3-5 hours and play video games the rest of the time.
ASD is great in an office where you can work in an office without distractions and noise, not so great in creative work IMO.
I say that as someone that’s both ASD and ADHD, and have a BFA with a focus on fashion design. I was pretty good at pattern making, but too literal in for design. Currently I do pre-press, and I’m solidly competent.
Conversely…there’s a reason why the venn of ASD and IT is almost a single circle
Logical reasoning is good for programming but won’t get you anywhere in management.
Logical reasoning is good for programming
For a given type of logical reasoning.
(Everquest once introduced the command “/stand” in a patch, replacing the existing command “/sit off”)
autism_IT_superpower_trope.jpg
Joking aside. I struggle in everyday conversation or in most job settings because the small inconsistencies and inaccuracies that are a normal part of everyday speech accrue in my head without any discharge in a painful way and I either detach to cope (and look like I don’t give a shit) or have to splurge back at someone all the minor nonsense logical inconsistencies they’ve been using over the last few minutes. Or people rely so much on you being in the same mental world as they are that I genuinely don’t understand what they mean and come across like a pedantic asshole. From experience this is deeply unwelcome. I would not last long anywhere where normal conversation and ways of thinking is not the thing under the microscope.
In software development, I can take architects, senior devs, department heads, c-level execs… whoever… streaming technical info, regulatory requirements, business processes at me seemingly for any length of time because I can ask anything I want and at the end of it they’ll ask me what’s wrong with it and I can give them a list and how to fix it. I’m also completely immune to telling senior-whomever that they are wrong, because when I tell them, it’s because they are and I can show them why.
For this I am paid $$$. Anywhere else I would be fired.
(Also, watch The Accountant, it’s great)
Wow! Good thing you’ve found a place to shine.
One thing that separates you from another person questioning authority is that you immediately back it up with facts and offer solutions. Many people who would be able to spot the issues would just take the opportunity to say “boss man, you’re an idiot” and refuse to elaborate beyond “trust me, I know what I’m doing, I’ll fix it.”
Having a brain is wanted in most professions, however the military would preffer brainless suicidal muscle sacks.
brainlesspoor suicidal muscle sacksActually ideally both
Same with policing. Most police departments (in the US at least) basically don’t want folks above C-student level. There are tests required to be a cop and it’s possible to be rejected for doing too well on them.
Only for infantry, and only at the lowest levels. They want people to obey, but not be duller than a sack of hammers.
Brutally beating up and killing people is seen as insanity in education but effective in law enforcement
Until there’s a school shooting and every teacher is expected to be the Good Guy With Gun™.
ADHD. I’m an excellent developer… I’d probably murder someone if I had to do retail or do any other “always on” job.
Working in emergency medicine would be amazing, but the first lull that happened, I’d fuck up and people would die
I have ADHD and I have worked in Emergency Medicine…and the lulls just result in going down weird rabbit holes in the medical information databases. I’m a medical student now and I am really hoping to get into Emergency med for residency.
Questioning your superior’s orders in the military is probably gonna get you yelled at, probably dishonorably discharged, and if at war, could cause your country to lose a battle, or possibly a war.
Questioning your captain’s orders on an airplane is a good part of Crew Resource Managenment (CRM) and sometimes can let the captain realize his/her mistake and avoid a catastrophe. And sometimes it even goes as far as just telling your captain to fuck off and you take over the controls, if the captain’s capacity to fly is demininished for some reason (aka: subtle incapcitation).
What separates four nymphomaniacs from two alcoholics?
The cockpit door.
Old joke I learned from my pilot father.
Or the one I personally love: “Just like the first guys, we all experienced the ride up, and no wants to be there when these pilots land. That’s why we jump out of the plane!” /cue_the_door_opening
For those who don’t know, the plane often lands before the skydivers do. Figure that one out…
Unless they’re wrong. You’re supposed to turn down unlawful orders.
Wonder how often that goes well for the subordinate.
What are you talking about? All the world knows we are the shining beacon of truth, justice and righteousness, over here!
Primitive human nature. It’s a bitch
There are so many jobs where looking at only the details in front of you at a given time is absolutely crucial, and yet being called myopic is still an insult.
Improvisation is a brilliant skill in something where you can just keep going if something goes wrong. Attention to detail is a brilliant skill in something where something going wrong will get someone killed. The example that comes to mind is a stage hand vs a stage hand where pyrotechnics are involved.
That one is thought provoking. The jobs seem so similar at a glance, but they need very different people to do each of the jobs well.
