+1 on the book idea. Sounds like a delightful read. I have a similar philosophy as well that’s worked for me. I’ve never once cared about getting credit or props, I make my boss/team look like geniuses. That naturally tends to reward you as well. Great individual contributors are actually pretty rare. Out of hundreds of engineers I’ve worked with closely, only a few were brilliant in the way you described.

If you’re looking for related reading, perhaps for inspiration, there’s a great book called

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.

I highly recommend it.

I work as an engineer for a huge financial company, so I relate. I was a scrappy upstart who worked himself through the lowest tiers of my industry towards the top. I’m also neurodivergent.

I can speak on for days about how bosses don’t care who’s doing the work as long as it gets done.

As a top performer, you’re likely to feel that people should perform at the standards you set, and your natural first instinct is probably to try to train and educate your coworkers. You soon realize that they either don’t give a shit or they’re offended that you’re giving them advice. No problem, we live in a hierarchical society, so you tell your boss about the problems you face, they’ll have your back, right? Wrong. You’re rocking the boat, and the boss’ job is to keep the boat afloat.

Now, instead of rocking the boat, you start to wonder if you there’s a way you can change the current of the water so the boat goes in the proper direction. That’s where wisdom and skill meet. There’s an incredible amount of depth involved in influencing people and change. I wish it wasn’t the way of the world, but it is. Being brilliant is only half the battle.

There’s a documentary on YouTube called “The internet’s own boy”, if you want to learn more. Basically, he was offered a 6 month plea, but he would be a convicted felon, and basic logic/morality tells you that you shouldn’t plead guilty to a crime that you didn’t commit. However, the justice system is very imperfect, and often people plead guilty for reduced sentencing even if they’re not guilty. He stood on principle until his legs gave out. they were already in millions spent in attorney fees. Not a shred of justice can be found in how Aaron’s story ended.

Agreed. I think we took self expression too far. Things like the Internet, hip hop, counter culture etc definitely changed how we express ourselves. I cringe at the idea of how I defended the use of words and phrases even as an adult, hiding behind defenses like “intent matters”. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s that I started to think about how the things that I express might be harmful to others. Thankfully I don’t see many kids act like we acted. I even caution my son against the use of phrases that might be worded too strongly, such as something “being stupid”. If we can give our children a world to inherit, I think they can come closer than we’ve ever been to world peace.

I guess let people have their fun, but I agree. Class C space is pretty insignificant

I’m not a developer but I write a lot of code for network infrastructure automation… when I started learning I was already a network engineer so I figured it would be a cakewalk. I think it takes a certain type of person (patience, persistence, tenacity, etc) to excel in a computer science field. I’d reckon a lot of young people think the jobs are all pretty sweet and cushy

I agree with most of what you said but it wouldn’t hurt to create a watered down version of the site and put it on a subdomain like noobs.github.com … There can be separate UIs for different kinds of users.

They could ask when you register an account what you intend to use GitHub for and what your familiarity is.

Basically PH and other xxx sites need you to verify your identity by uploading your ID. It’s what should be unconstitutional and a violation of privacy.

What are the implications of this?

I have been a network engineer with no degree for many years, but I did have a lot of certs. It’d be nice if there were something similar for programming. But I’ve never seen anyone care that much about the engineer title. I’ve always thought it’s someone who understands his craft/engine design in and out, but doesn’t design it himself. The architect designs it. The tech can perform documented solutions

IANAL but i’m pretty sure that even without an NDA anything you develop on the job is considered IP of the company. However, as long as it’s not a blatant copy paste(a rewrite), it’s hard to legally enforce that because they have to prove damages. Meaning that if they shelfed the idea/program, even if it’s a blatant copy paste they can’t do anything.

Born 1929 in Sanok, Poland and died in 2005 in Warsaw, Poland. I can only imagine the shit this man saw in his life.

What programming language? You might have to back to basics. I know what you mean though. That was my frustration as well. The basics aren’t covered well enough on many courses, and learning in a browser IDE adds anxiety when following tutorials if you don’t know how to set up your environment.

If it’s with Python, maybe I can help. Getting your environment set up is the most important part. I like to use pycharm, it forces you into virtual environments but that’s a good practice to follow and gives you plenty of practice with the basics since you’ll have to install your dependencies for every project.

Sometimes the dependencies change, and it’s nice to know what version you previously used vs how the new package version works.

I worked as a network engineer and got pretty frustrated working with outdated applications that were not user friendly. Once I became a supervisor, a large part of my job became writing and generating reports summarizing events that happened on the network that no one would ever read. I wanted to learn programming to automate the things I hated about my job.

I’m still an engineer, not a developer, but I enjoy writing user focused programs that reduce or eliminate worker frustration. As with many jobs, it’s not the networking that’s difficult, it’s all the other bullshit you have to do.

Also, learning how to parse, model and visualize data can really help you make your point to your management and get your ideas pushed through. Also a great way to earn brownie points with your bosses, as managers tend to love graphs.

Wish I could say it was a passion for me but I really learned out of necessity.

thanks for making Lemmy a better place

Honestly I’d suggest something that gets you out of the house more. Motorcycles, Latin dance, hiking and drinking is what I do for fun. I do enjoy programming for fun sometimes but the inspiration is something you have to find in other areas of life.

Bruh on one post people are bandwagoning rust and then on another post people calling it esoteric 🤣 hard to see what’s what past the hype. I mostly code in Python though so I might need to find out for myself

That’s great. That’s basically the route I’m looking to take, though my background is mostly with networking, so I have some catching up to do in sysadmin skills. Thanks for your insight! I’ll give you a follow (idk if that exists in the fediverse lol) and maybe follow up with you later. It’s great you’re willing to be a resource for the aspiring engineers. That’s the kind of spirit I try to embody.

Dang, I thought it was easier to break into programming. Did you have any formal education? I totally felt that, I had to climb through the ranks one painful step at a time.

If I had the chance to follow my dreams, I would have been a paramedic, followed by either park ranger or some form of rescue team. Unfortunately, as a poor immigrant, I had to focus on pay, and paramedic pay was only about 2x minimum wage where I live, so I decided not to follow my dream. Thankfully I ended up in something else I enjoy. All that to say, you’re a hero in my book, and I’ve always thought paramedics should be paid significantly more.