What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry | Hacker News

!tags:: #lit✍/📰️article/highlights
!links::
!ref:: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry | Hacker News
!author:: news.ycombinator.com

=this.file.name

Book cover of "What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry | Hacker News"

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Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest.This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, deploy and maintain. Not much real advice on the behavioral side, to the point that people often take trainings for behavioral interviews and memorize “leadership principles” and other nonsense.
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Your job satisfaction/pay are a function of your impact. Your impact is a function of your leverage.If you're a "pure coder" who doesn't have any of the other skills you mentioned, your output is incredibly limited. At best, you produce a day's worth of code in a day, but you also require someone to manage you closely to make sure you code the right stuff.The more of these other skills you have, the more you can (a) work independently (b) make others more productive and (c) make sure your team/business is doing the right things and (d) drive overall efficiency.The more of these things you do, you become orders of magnitude more impactful than a pure coder.
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The more specialized your work, the greater the risk that you will communicate in ways that are incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
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dg-publish: true
created: 2024-07-01
modified: 2024-07-01
title: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry | Hacker News
source: hypothesis

!tags:: #lit✍/📰️article/highlights
!links::
!ref:: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry | Hacker News
!author:: news.ycombinator.com

=this.file.name

Book cover of "What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry | Hacker News"

Reference

Notes

Quote

Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest.This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, deploy and maintain. Not much real advice on the behavioral side, to the point that people often take trainings for behavioral interviews and memorize “leadership principles” and other nonsense.
- No location available
-

Quote

Your job satisfaction/pay are a function of your impact. Your impact is a function of your leverage.If you're a "pure coder" who doesn't have any of the other skills you mentioned, your output is incredibly limited. At best, you produce a day's worth of code in a day, but you also require someone to manage you closely to make sure you code the right stuff.The more of these other skills you have, the more you can (a) work independently (b) make others more productive and (c) make sure your team/business is doing the right things and (d) drive overall efficiency.The more of these things you do, you become orders of magnitude more impactful than a pure coder.
- No location available
-

Quote

The more specialized your work, the greater the risk that you will communicate in ways that are incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
- No location available
-