Working

I have currently worked in different types of work. From being a driver to being a moving operator, to a warehouse Employee, and finally, a Data Scientist. I find office work to be quite the benefit of blue-collar work, but that is just me.

One revelation I had is that you can make your job your passion. If only you let it be. I had no idea that programming and automating things would be a passion of mine.

There is no shame in choosing your passion as your way of making your living, but your passions do not go away if you do not. You can choose a job that makes your passion possible outside of work.

Links

• John Carmack on Shorter Work Weeks HN discussion
• 3 Budgets Context related to how and where the IT is budgeted and how it affects your job.
• 4 types of teams from Team Topologies
• 25 year engineering retrospective
• Advice to Young People

Thoughts

• In the midst of Shannon’s career, some lawyers in the patent department at Bell Labs decided to study whether there was an organizing principle that could explain why certain individuals at the Labs were more productive than others. They discerned only one common thread: Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell Labs electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist. It wasn’t the case that Nyquist gave them specific ideas. Rather, as one scientist recalled, “he drew people out, got them thinking.” More than anything, Nyquist asked good questions
• When you are having trouble and see that your time at a company is coming to an end, you send out feelers to other places. This might be friends, old colleagues, etc. But when interviewing, it should be in tip-top shape. When interviewing, you should look for clues, how the people greet you when you arrive and how easy it is to ask for things. This includes you as well. Bar Raiser. One of the things that impressed me about a job offer one time was that all the people I had talked with reached out and congratulated me on the job offer; it was an important thing that really struck me as a positive aspect.
• If you look at a business not as a collective of people working towards a goal or product but rather as a bunch of kings and queens scrabbling over power and influence, things usually make more sense.
• You are always replaceable.
• In a work-to rule action (the French call it greve du zele), employees begin doing their jobs by meticulously observing every one of the rules and regulations and performing only the duties stated in their job descriptions
• There are too many titles, but still not enough.