I worked at a Japanese corporation for most of my career.
They are not a “warm and fuzzy” bunch.
But they respect apologies. If I screwed up, I quickly learned to cop to it. The absolute worst thing I could do was cover it up.
Their attitude was not a punishing one, but we were expected to fix our mistakes, and ensure they did not happen again.
If we said we did not know something, it was assumed we would learn, or find someone who did.
Lot of “personal responsibility” stuff.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
I am constantly encountering people that Absolutely. Will. Not. Admit. Ignorance. Or. Fault. Even when it’s quite clear.
My biggest win, mentoring: a new guy put in charge of 'Engineering data' e.g. putting ad-hoc document solutions under one umbrella. He was worried, not an Engineer, thought he'd make a fool of himself. I said "Here's the trick. If you don't know something, say out loud "I don't know what that means. Can you explain it to me?" And because Engineers usually are happy to explain their shit, they'll not think badly of you but instead become helpful. Never bluff or fake it.
Fast forward 2 years. Everybody now respects him. He's the most generally knowledgeable guy in the company, the CEO consults him. Moved to manage the new products. He's on the road to Director now. Still the same helpful guy with the reassuring voice and the insistence everybody in the room understand before moving on.
I always give this advice to juniors and stakeholders. If you bullshit an engineer they can smell it from a mile away and they'll never respect your opinion again. If you tell them you don't know, you'll get an hour of expert level education on a subject for free.
Something I say to every new employee on their day one is: "I expect questions. I will come looking for you if you don't have any and ask you why you don't."
Because even if you know all the tech stacks we're using inside and out, which I don't believe, you still won't know our own local quirks. Everyone knows you don't know; don't be the last to that party.
I wouldn't describe that as being "absolutely" right. A team is more productive when its individuals' strengths are pooled together, and there's no sense in refusing to make use of a specialist's skills (within reason).
Yes, you want people to learn and become more self-sufficient over time, but not at the cost of finishing projects in double the time.
Depends. It was “the boss.” If they are a critical-path engineer (which, in my experience, is a very bad idea for managers), then they shouldn’t be used as a StackOverflow board.
However, if they are a true manager, then they work on “interrupt,” anyway, and their quick answers may improve the performance of the team, which is really Job One for any manager.
I say this, having been a manager for many years.
It sucked. I hated it, which is why I am pivoting back into engineering.
I was a damn good manager, though. If you go to my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see lots of testimonials from former employees.
One reason I was good, was because I kept myself out of the critical path.
I generally agree with you here, but there is still a limit to what extent and over what it is reasonable to interrupt a manager - given enough interruptions, they won't have any capacity left over at all!
This, and I hate putting someone in a situation that they don't know up from down... Even with the "highly opinionated framework" thing you still get lots of variation on how things are built, and my products are no different.
I find people are much more immediately capable if I can get a 1-2 hour "nuts-to-bolts" meeting to cover the bases. Also gets the mojo going for good questions as well.
The advice is fine, but it comes off as disingenuous to extrapolate a single anecdotal example so confidently without articulating the basis for your confidence.
> Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
It's specific to company cultures, not Americans in general.
My first job out of college was at a dysfunctional company with a lot of internal competition. Making a mistake or taking responsibility for a failure was something that would be remembered for years and brought up at every opportunity. I remember my manager coaching me through covering up a simple mistake because he knew another team was eagerly waiting for me to slip up so they could attempt to take over our almost-finished project.
My second job was the polar opposite. When someone made a mistake, other teams jumped in to help fix the problem and kindly educate the person about how to avoid the problem in the future. Mistakes were a learning opportunity, admitting fault was a show of leadership, and the only real way to fail was to be chronically careless or to lie.
The biggest difference between the two companies was that the first company felt like a zero-sum game. We always felt like we were competing against other teams for bigger slices of the company budget, limited attention from executives, or just to keep our jobs through the next round of layoffs. It was every team for themselves, and other teams' mistakes were an opportunity to take them down a notch.
Meanwhile, the better company operated like everyone was on the same team. We all succeeded or failed together. Mutual respect an taking responsibility for your actions were not only encouraged by management, it was a requirement if you wanted to work there. I've tried to model my management style after this.
> It's specific to company cultures, not Americans in general.
I mean as someone who's worked in a corp that has one foot in the US and one foot in Japan, I see where OP is coming from.
Japan's business culture is no-frills "get it done" which rewards performance + optimization all the way down to the factory worker/janitors. In the US we have a culture of middle-management bloat where performance is usually transitive up the chain in some weird hierarchy; ie: my accomplishments are actually my manager's. This is all done with the "teamwork" mechanic - I didn't accomplish something... the team did.
What this leaves is a whole buncha people who know their failures will blow back on them 10X vs. any successes, giving the company an excuse to withhold incentives (raises, bonuses, etc). You're incentivized to cover stuff up because you know it's going to come up in your reviews, and with your accomplishments being diluted into the "team" it ends up being a major point of contention.
This is all anecdata but... I really understand/see where OP is coming from with his comparison as someone with a similar situation!!
Having one foot in Japanese culture and the other in American, I think there's a lot of saving face in Japan too (as with Asian and Western cultures in general), just it doesn't take the form of cover-ups in the business world as much.
It's not foreign in American culture, either. My understanding is in the us Navy for junior officers and enlisteds anyways covering up is the worst thing you can do; you can cause catastrophic accidents that if they don't kill anyone will result in no punishment besides a "what did we learn here?" lecture.
Not as true in the upper, more political ranks so I understand.
> Japan's business culture is no-frills "get it done" which rewards performance + optimization
Uhhhhh what? Japanese IT companies run decades old practices, are hugely inefficient and if anyone suggests they change its the famous "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down"
Also they are not known for rewarding performance what-so-ever, they're known for rewarding seniority and butt-in-seat time. They're famous for both of those.
Yeah - it's an over-generalization for sure... my anecdotal experience may not apply across the board.
Things moved fast and people were pushed to innovate/iterate within their roles. The Japanese mothership was quick to get things done without much BS and always seemed interested in optimization/solving problems efficiently (on time, on budget).
> It's specific to company cultures, not Americans in general.
I think some cultures have an ingrained mistrust of the idea that some people are so far above others. Perhaps that attitude forces a false humility onto geniuses, but it works as a cultural inoculation against blowhards and pretend superheros. In the U.S., I think we have a complicated melange of different influences ranging from the New England protestant stereotype who would never tolerate such people to the South which I think cultivates an unfortunate craving for Great Man saviors (which can manifest on the small scale, like one engineer gathering a cabal of awed worshipers in an engineering organization, or on the national scale with politicians.) These are broad stereotypes, and I think cultural and geographic mixing in the U.S. makes accurate generalization impossible, but different people have different gut reactions to people who make implicit or explicit claims to greatness, and I think these gut reactions are culturally ingrained in childhood. Companies can cultivate a culture, but I don't think that will override whether a person responds to grandiose self-presentation with aversion or craving.
The last couple of years, I’ve been “refactoring” myself, to pivot from being a manager (I ran a C++ image processing shop for a long time), to being an engineer (specializing in native Apple device programming in Swift).
For years, I never needed to self-promote. The people that mattered knew all about me; warts and all. It wasn’t important for anyone else to be impressed.
I am now working towards hanging a shingle as a contract engineer, and I need to let folks know why they should pay me for my work and experience.
It’s really difficult to talk about myself and what I can do, without it sounding like boasting; yet that’s what I’m expected to do.
I am really, really honest, which is, apparently, absolutely worthless in today’s business environment. The Japanese really liked it, but no one else seems to find it at all appealing. I’m not one of those “brutally honest” people that ends up making a pariah of themselves, but I have a very stringent code of personal ethics that I follow.
All that is to say that I’m not good at the “humblebrag.” If I’m good at something, I simply say that I’m good at it. I don’t claim expertise at anything I don’t know, and I don’t make promises I don’t plan to keep.
You don’t last long at a Japanese company, if you are full of hot air.
I’m way past the Dunning-Kruger Peak, and the Jon Snow Trough.
If I say I can do something, I mean it. I won’t say I can do something that I can’t do.
I once interviewed a guy who was technically adequate but who was a complete snake oil salesman in the coding interview. He couldn't solve one particularly difficult problem, which was totally fine (most people we hired couldn't solve it) but he blustered a lot trying to verbally convince us that his solution was correct even after we pointed out a case it failed on. Then he tried to Jedi mind trick us into thinking we had agreed that his solution was correct, and when that didn't work, he spent the rest of his time drawing complicated diagrams that had no apparent bearing on the problem and muttering random theoretical terms under his breath while waving away our attempts to help him make progress. Finally, when we told him our time was up, he said, "Well, it looks like I've encountered a problem I can't solve" ...dramatic pause... "WHICH RARELY HAPPENS."
When we discussed this behavior afterwards, my boss's response was, "Don't worry about it. He's been working as a consultant for the last couple of years, and consultants have to act like that. It's a survival thing."
So... yeah. I think you are going to have to think very hard about what you CAN say that will produce the same effect as the things you won't say. I suspect there are a lot of things that aren't literally true or false that you could say to communicate to people that they will be in good hands with you.
If you decide to give it up in the end, I think people will be very sympathetic to you applying for a permanent position as a developer and saying that you tried contracting and decided you weren't cut out for it. I think most people working permanent jobs in software engineering can't imagine themselves succeeding as contractors and will admire that you even tried it.
I’ve already figured out that it’s worthless to even try looking at permanent positions.
No one wants to hire anyone over 40 as an engineer. After a series of insults and attempts at humiliation, I realized the deal. It’s a very different world from the one I left, when I joined that Japanese company.
I won’t lie, and I won’t compromise my personal integrity. If that means that no one will want to hire me to develop their critical must-not-fail products, then so be it. It's surprising to learn that people actively seek out folks with compromised ethics for these types of gigs, but it's a funny old world.
I’ve already reconciled myself to the fact that this means that I may never work for anyone other than myself; which is acceptable, but not ideal.
I just find it rather personally offensive to encounter this kind of willful self-destructiveness.
I have the skills and experience to make a lot of money for people. I’m quite willing to take risks with startups, and have a truly vast array of experience in many, many disciplines (which is usually fairly valuable for things like startups). I have tremendous self-discipline and integrity (You get that, when your boss is 7,000 miles away, and doesn't speak English), clean up pretty well, and am used to selling complex ideas to powerful, skeptical, conservative managers. I'm a top-shelf writer, having been writing since I was a child. I'm a very good architect, having developed infrastructure-level systems that have lasted decades (If you order the current SDK for DSLRs from my alma mater, you will find a module in there that I designed in 1994, and I've also developed a really big open-source infrastructure for NPOs, that is becoming the worldwide standard after more than ten years). My GitHub ID Activity Log is solid green.
My entire career has been delivering software (as opposed to just “writing” software), I don’t have a need for ego-gratification, I’m fine with a very reasonable compensation, and am mostly doing this because I simply love software development.
If I say all that in an interview, though, it's assumed that I'm lying, even though I have a vast open-source portfolio of hundreds of thousands of lines of hand-crafted, ultra-high-quality, single-origin, small-batch (and also really big-batch), artisanal code, over a decade of commit history, in dozens of repos and gists, hundreds of pages of documentation, reams of articles, blog posts, and other examples of top-quality writing that describe, in detail, how I work, think, design, assess risk, test and deliver.
It's all up-to-date, too. My last checkins will probably happen later today. I'm working on delivering a new Bluetooth explorer app to the App Store. It looks like today is Submit Day.
It's my experience that no one will even glance at that. I think it's kind of crazy. I would have killed for that kind of data on prospective hires.
I’m actually perfectly fine, doing my own thing, but I find that I miss being on a team.
> I’ve already figured out that it’s worthless to even try looking at permanent positions.
>
> No one wants to hire anyone over 40 as an engineer.
Maybe you're shooting too low. People hire a lot of engineers over forty, but mostly into high-level positions where they are expected to mentor junior developers, guide decisions about technology, work closely with people outside of engineering, and otherwise help set standards and direction for the team. It's still technically an individual contributor role, but you're judged by your influence on the performance of everyone around you. The emphasis you place on your individual technical achievements indicates that you aren't aware of that aspect of the role that companies expect someone with your level of experience to fill.
On one hand, I think it's unfortunate, because if you want to concentrate on producing excellent individual work, there should be the same place for you at 40 or 50 as there is for somebody doing that at 30. On the other hand, they're demanding more of you because they expect that somebody with your level of experience should be able to deliver it, and they're probably right. You probably are capable of doing that stuff if you are aware of the expectations and aware of your influence on the organization around you.
And it can be kind of demoralizing for a team when leadership is required (as it always is) and someone with your chops and experience fails to step up and provide it because they're focused on the amazing quality of their individual work.
Again, I think you can probably do everything these higher positions require, but you'll have to rebalance the way you pitch yourself (add some stuff about your ability to mentor, guide technology decisions, etc.) to show that you accept those expectations and will do your best to live up to them.
You have a good point. I've assumed that it's the opposite. People see that I've been a manager, and don't want me on their team because I'll try to take it over (one of the reasons that I'm leaning towards a consultant role, as that's less of a threat).
Well...it will all come out in the wash or the rinse. I'll be giving online courses in Swift and Bluetooth soon. I have to set up the presentations and curricula for them. I've been mentoring and training for decades; almost entirely for the open-source work I've done. I suspect that it may be a direction worth exploring.
I have been absolutely stunned at the virulence of the ageism. I guess that it's maybe a by-product of all the polarization that's going on.
> People see that I've been a manager, and don't want me on their team because I'll try to take it over
Oh yeah, this has changed 180º in the last ten years. My experience in startups since, say, 2013, is that development teams are expected to be 90% self-managing. Managers spend their time doing recruiting and high-level meetings and spend maybe an hour or two a day trying to stay in touch with what their team is doing.
Confusion with the product team? Quality issue with a junior developer? Something gets postponed and you need to decide what to do next? Developers are expected to take care of this stuff amongst themselves. Managers get informed and maybe consulted, and of course have authority to intervene, but the traditional day-to-day responsibilities of management now belong to the senior members of the team. My recent managers have attended planning meetings with devs so they have an idea what their team is doing and are available to answer questions about priorities and help with tough calls, but they're happiest if the team handles everything without them so they can concentrate on big-picture work.
For someone like me who entered the industry twenty years ago, it feels like we're doing our manager's job for them, but it's the new normal.
That makes a kind of sense. The smaller the difference between two viewpoints, the harder it is to distinguish the difference. Its possible to argue forever and never see which is better/right.
> I am constantly encountering people that Absolutely. Will. Not. Admit. Ignorance. Or. Fault. Even when it’s quite clear.
IMO this is one of the fringe benefits of a good math education. Almost everybody who does math for long enough, especially if you work in small groups with your peers, will have a moment of "oh, I see, I am totally wrong and you are totally right" and find out that being wrong does not make someone a bad person. And you will see your peers do the same.
It's one underrated side effect of clear and unambiguous reasoning. Yes, many things are grey areas, but there's value in a place where you can't throw up a muddle of goalpost-shifting and rhetorical tricks to run away from your own errors.
Also in math, you spend a majority of your time not understanding things. As soon as you understand something in math, you immediately move on to the next thing you don't understand. As opposed to say engineering where you tend to get good at a particular process and applying it. In math confusion is the default state.
I agree (I think Andrew Wiles said something like this but I can't find it now).
When I was younger and my dream was to become a programmer, I imagined (probably rightfully so) my default state in life would be feeling very secure in the fact that I am an expert in my job and know advanced stuff and so on. Now that I became a mathematician instead, I miss that sort of self-assurance.
I've been through that one enough times to realize it's always my fault. The more convinced I am that it's a compiler bug, the harder I look for my mistake.
When you write software you write bugs, because nobody is perfect. You cannot even try to deny the bugs that you wrote, because it's all in source contol. Your fix might even brake something else, every senior knows this.
So I still feel the more experienced you get, the more you have to aknowledge your own shortcomings.
> Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
So true. And people wonder why others don't apologize - we teach them to not apologize, because an apology is an admission of guilt and then we destroy them.
> In there they explicitly advise, "never admit fault".
It's interesting to compare that advice with the advice to healthcare professionals and healthcare organisations in the UK. Telling the truth when things go wrong, even if that means admitting fault, is the law. They must do it. They have to say what went wrong, how it went wrong, what they're going to do to fix it for you, and how they're going to prevent it happening to other people in future.
Doctors are human beings. They make mistakes like every other person. The healthcare system makes them work extremely long hours, so mistakes become even more likely. Doctors aren't supposed to be mere humans, though. They're supposed to be infallible godlike beings who know everything and do everything right every single time.
They have to look like they know everything otherwise they'll lose the respect of their colleagues and even their patients. Even something simple like a procedure checklist improves patient safety but people are resistant because it could be viewed as a sign of weakness. I know one professor who was openly mocked by patients in front of her staff because she brought reference books with her to the hospital. Since they usually make a lot of money, they are attractive targets for litigation. If they make a mistake, they could be personally sued for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Is it any wonder concepts like defensive medicine exist?
I once heard that doctors are trained to yell "there!" instead of "oops" or something similar. The idea is to always project confidence even when you know you made a mistake.
Don't know if there's any truth to it, but it sounds plausible.
>Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
Shoutout to all the foreigners working in the US that don't say that know everything, are quiet in meetings when everyone is yelling out stupid ideas, regularly give up their design when a competing one gets promoted loudly, then never get promoted. Eventually you'll learn never to admit failure or ignorance and eventually start demanding who made the error.
I have seen people do that kind of thing in the US (shame for not knowing) but it's not universal and plenty of people (including me in leadership positions) see that it's important and valuable to be able to admit I don't know, ask for help, etc.
I don't know about any research supporting this (see what I did there) but in my experience the best performing teams provide a safe space - where you are not immediately judged or criticised for mistakes, uncertainty or asking questions - but this necessary to bleed upwards to not holding teams to unrealistic deadlines, to careful assessment of quality of definition of work set, even towards what Incall "outcome driven development" where we set metrics to be changed and then assert commits will change said metrics
Conversely my worst work has been done when i have bullshitted and now need to keep up the lie.
Pro-tip - don't do this
Pro-tip-2 - confidence that you can do something you have not done before, when having a history of success in the field is not the same as bullshitting
Anyway it's hard to measure objectively- but you tend to reward the right people when you do.
And no, markets don't do that nearly as well as you might think
I couldn't agree more! The hallmark of a good team is to provide an environment where you do not have to be constantly on the lookout for 'losing face' or 'losing status', but in fact, an open and honest environment is being fostered. Thanks for sharing your tips---it's appreciated!
> And no, markets don't do that nearly as well as you might think
Markets depend on Good information To function well. Market participants can distort the information in the market for profit. In so far as this profiteering can be maintained, markets won’t function so well.
Some conjecture that might not be too far off the mark.
My gut feel (yeah I know) is modern day free markets are at best 80% free and usually around 50. From structural inefficiencies to unintended regulation effects, things rarely work the way the Topsy and Tim description says.
> I don't know about any research supporting this (see what I did there) but in my experience the best performing teams provide a safe space
The term in organisational behaviour is "psychological safety" and it comes up probably in the first couple hours of your manager training at any competently run company in 2020. Hell, it's in Steven Covey's 7 Habits.
As you're saying, it's the bedrock of promoting actionable feedback and exceeding zero-sum behaviors.
I know, (although i dont remember it from Covey - just lots of sharpening the saw analogies, which is weird cos I don't know anyone who sharpens a saw - knives yes, saws no)
Anyway, yes it's basic, it's taught - and it is almost non-existent especially when excrement hits the fan.
Excellent blog post. One of the big issues, unfortunately, is that there are too many of THEM. I just sat through a job interview where they bombarded me with topics and asked me to rate myself on a scale from 1-know nothing, 2-familiar and 3-expert.
I immediately understood that this was a pointless exercise for me. I knew That I don't consider myself an expert. I haven't studied any topic long enough to call myself an expert. On the other hand, I like to believe that I don't fall in the "clueless" part either. I have worked in the computer industry form many years now and have overall pretty good problem-solving skills and am able to produce work that generates value for my employers.
Still, I learn every day and improve on my skill, but it will require a lot before I dare to call myself an expert. Others call me an expert, a wizard, and other nice things, but this is never anything I would use to describe myself.
I never got the job offer. Good riddance! I doubt I would have accepted the job anyway.
This type of rating system is always disappointing. Candidates and interviewers each have different ideas of what expertise means -- I guess because there is no real context around the question. Maybe it's a trope to say, but it seems like competence and likelihood to rate oneself an expert are inversely correlated (barring hubris or real expertise!).
I used to ask candidates to rate themselves from 1-10, e.g., in database performance analysis, and often would get people rating themselves a 9 or a 10 without being able to articulate anything about the topic. It just seems very meaningless, since we were going to have a discussion anyway -- and the conversational part of the interview is more revealing, in any case.
I usually find that (within a broad range of capability) someone's actual knowledge on a given topic is inversely correlated with their self-rating on a 1-10 scale.
I’ve found some companies use the rating systems to tailor interviews to your strengths by providing descriptions at each level (e.g. “10 means you wrote the book about it”). It’s not always useless.
I personally never experienced it myself. But I can imagine it being useful in a relativistic sense.
For example if the candidate puts 9 for PHP and 5 for Haskell, you can get the rough idea what language they prefer or are more comfortable in using. You are not comparing these ratings against other candidate's ratings.
The THEM in the article are "The Elders of Mathematics" though, and in particular his professor, who _didn't_ have any issues admitting ignorance. When you say that there are "too many of THEM" you probably meant the "wrong crowd" people.
Also, are you supposed to answer on a relative basis, or absolute? If I was running the intervied and was asked that question in response, I would consider it a Good Sign.
A related passage from Socrates' Apology: "Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing
Eh. Stupid questions of various varieties do exist (and it is not unkind to recognize that). They mostly arise from:
* mental laziness (didn't want to spend a few seconds thinking and just wanted to be handed the answer -- very commonly disguised as curiosity)
* bad faith (trolling, attempts at eliciting humor, "not really a question but a comment", agenda pushing)
It's very tiring to respond to stupid questions of this ilk -- it shifts the burden from the questioner to the respondent. It's not neutral, and having an environment of "no question is stupid" is draining -- psychologically, empathy is a finite resource like it or not. That's why there are so many guides on how to ask questions. (asking questions that elicit useful answers is actually a life skill!)
That said, I think the spirit of "no-stupid questions" is really about being open to (1) really out-of-left-field questions that challenge our thinking; (2) sincere questions that arise from curiosity; (3) clarification so that one doesn't persist in the wrong direction. I think this framing should be encouraged and environments/cultures should be cultivated to enable this.
But in my opinion "no stupid questions" as a catch-all is not practically tenable. The costs seem too one-sided.
I swear to god, there were stupid questions during lectures. And "senpai notice me, praise me for asking this question despite the answer being obvious/irrelevant" questions. And the "I was not listening can you repeat it" questions.
1. You don't actually know that the answer was obvious to the asker. They may have missed a critical piece of info. Or, you may have missed a critical piece of nuance in their question.
2. Also, when someone asks if anyone has questions, and nobody has any questions, it can feel demoralizing and like nobody cared or understood what you were saying. Filling that space with an obvious question can be a small kindness. If you had a better question, maybe you should have asked it.
Disclaimer: I felt the exact same way as you when I attended university and have gained some perspective since.
There were clearly attention-seeking non-questions presented as questions in my larger university lectures (1). They were not good questions, and could accurately be described as bad questions or really just non-questions. You see the same kind of people grab the mic during Q&A at conferences and proceed to pontificate without any real question.
The (2) case is sort of nuanced, sure. I think there were sort of two cases of "dumb" question here: (2a) the person really just hasn't been paying attention and asked a question covered earlier in the same lecture, potentially even quite recently; if they didn't understand it, they should have asked when it was introduced, and if they weren't paying attention, they should've been. And (2b), remedial-type questions, which would be good in a class prior to the current one, but just demonstrate that the asker isn't ready for the course they're in.
These are bad questions for everyone else in lecture, who get to be distracted and sidelined from learning.
I didn't get the impression that anyone was throwing freebie questions to the professor to invite more questions from the tentative, but that's just my anecdotal experience.
What makes for good questions? I think good questions are timely and on-topic — relevant to recently discussed material. Save the questions about homework for after (or before) class, or office hours.
"Kindness" seems to be in short supply, these days.
It really is depressing to see how many people take kindness for weakness. I'm seeing that demonstrated in this very article's comments.
One thing that I did learn in that corporation, was how to be an effective member of an effective team.
There is no culture on earth that comes close to the Japanese for effective teams. There's a ton of downsides to their culture (but I won't get into that); but their teams are incredibly tight and effective.
Being an effective member of a team requires far more than "hard" skills. It requires a lot of "soft" skills, and, in my experience, those lessons seem harder to learn.
One of the lessons that I learned, very early on, is that the person I denigrate now, may the one that I depend on to pull my ass from a fire, down the road.
At that time, they will remember whether I helped them, or tripped them up. To their credit, most of the Japanese that I know won't actually take that into account. If helping you helps the team, they will do it; regardless of how they feel about you.
That's actually kind of amazing, and rather humbling.
> One of the lessons that I learned, very early on, is that the person I denigrate now, may the one that I depend on to pull my ass from a fire, down the road.
Why would you denigrate someone in the first place? Imo, the kind thing is not to denigrate anyone, including people that can not possibly be useful.
Interestingly, I've especially struggled with this with those in closest with. It can be hard to "turn off" your friendship and be more respectful with someone you are comfortable with. But when you're in a meeting with other folks, a joke that might come off as friendly (giving someone a hard time) is suddenly misinterpreted by others.
> Or, you may have missed a critical piece of nuance in their question.
In such case, nuance would be visible from answer.
I am not saying that every question is bad. But had experience of few individuals flooding lectures with too many such questions and it was not good experience. (They did it systematically, but lecturers eventually figured out to how to limit them - but it took multiple stalled lectures for that to happen. )
I was pretty mad at the guy who kept asking basic linear algebra questions in a course that already had linalg as a pre-req.
Yes, I know you don't know that, and yes, you're going to be confused if you don't remember how to diagonalize, but this is your 4th linalg question today, can you please review your linalg notes before next class? It's not just you but a whole class that's held up here.
One reason is that I am not afraid to ask questions about why something is. I need to learn my subject "to the bone."
At the start of class, I'd always be asking questions that would have facepalms and guffaws around the room.
By the end of class, I'm helping everyone to figure the material out.
The best teachers I ever had were trained teachers; not subject matter experts.
The absolute worst teachers I ever had were subject experts. They would routinely skip important fundamentals, and shame you for not knowing them. I guess that they assumed we would be able to figure it out on our own; which isn't a bad idea.
Except when they don't give us the time or access to resources required to learn.
I dont have that experience. People who asked simple questions or "senpai notice me" were not the ones helping everyone out by the end of class.
Mostly, first group were people who did not paid attention or were not used to think for themselves. Plenty of times it takes like 15 seconds to find the answer if you think about it. People who don't bother to think rarely start to be able to figure out on more difficult concepts by the end of the class. The dichotomy between people who ask simple questions and the ones who don't care is false one. There is massive group of people who think for themselves at least a bit when they come across issue.
"Senpai notice me" people tended to be orthogonal to quality of knowledge or willingness/ability to explain. Full disclosure, I asked these questions when the "participation" was necessary to get points. It is a bit stupid when you know answer, but still needs that participation point ...
None of that has anything to do with quality of lecturer.
I guess part of my issue, is that I'm "on the spectrum," so my drivers and motivations are very different from many folks.
I'm not very competitive. In American culture, that makes me a "reject," but I have always felt that I need to get by on my own merit; whether or not that compares favorably to anyone else.
People who know more than I do are not "competitors." They are resources.
The biggest issue that I have with people (and I am guilty of this, myself), is the tendency to ascribe motive to behavior.
In my case, I'm dead wrong -a lot- (See "on the spectrum," above). I've just learned that my projections of motive are usually wrong, so I have come to ignore them, and concentrate on the facts that are on the table (as opposed to in my head).
If I want to impress the teacher, I do good work. If I want to learn the topic, I ask questions to resolve gaps.
It really is that simple.
A class is just a transitory experience. If I fail to learn the subject matter because I'm afraid of what these people that I'll probably never see again think about me, I have no one to blame but myself.
Yeah, the worst lecturer I ever had was a maths genius. I remember on one occasion someone asked a question and the best he could do was "but that's trivial".
I had a multivariable calc prof who used one of those overhead projectors and would spit on the projection as he lectured. He was also pretty hostile to the students.
"Even a fool is wise who knows when to keep his mouth shut" -Proverbs
"I know it's a much better decision to shut yo' mouth
When you don't know what you talkin' 'bout
Than to validate what everybody already thinks of you" -Hip hop
I don't really care what my classmates think of me. I'm not there to make them happy.
I'm there to learn.
If I don't understand a subject "to the bone," I am quite tenacious about finding out what makes it tick; even if that means bothering a content expert teacher with questions about fundamentals.
The results speak for themselves.
I also don't shame or humiliate others; even if they seem to be "intellectually lazy," or willfully ignorant. I get absolutely no benefit from that attitude.
None whatsoever. In fact, learning to shame and humiliate others makes me a pretty shoddy team member. No one wants to work with someone that will jump on their weak points and won't help them to fulfill their potential.
I have some regrets in my college experience, but this is definitely not one of them. Ask questions. It's like a cheat code; you're getting twice the education that someone who doesn't ask questions is, because you walk away with a comprehensive, integrated understanding of a topic but they walk away with one shot full of random holes.
Plus, if you're wondering it, so is half the class. There was only a couple of occasions where it turned out I was on a very idiosyncratic path and decided to just let it go. Most of the time the class is nodding along at the question.
> I don't really care what my classmates think of me. I'm not there tomake them happy.
That remark shows a complete lack of understanding of your situation, your best interests, and social awareness.
In the very least, your role is to ensure your peers don't become a roadblock on your path to progress. The least you should aim for is to leverage your classmates as facilitators by helping you lower the difficulty curve.
By completely disregarding your classmates you are effectively doing the stupidest thing you could do, other than antagonizing both the student body and teachers: make your life harder just because you are totally oblivious to the importance of living in society
One of the things I've read from folks who know a lot about startups used to amaze me. Intelligence is not necessarily a critical factor in whether founders will be successful or not. In fact, it can be counter-indicative! The more intelligent you are, you more likely you're one of the people like the author mentions. I've also read that it's not the geniuses, necessarily, that make it. Most times it's just the slow plodders. A genius may become overly-attracted to one of their own ideas. They may stick with it too long, or they may be overly-defensive when they receive honest feedback. A plodder just keeps trudging along, happy to take whatever feedback comes their way, happy to change if needed, happy to learn from others.
I captured this concept in my first book with a phrase I call "profound ignorance". It's not just admitting you're ignorant, it's admitting you're probably ignorant about everything. And that's fine. Ignorant people don't know yet, and if they're curious, they go try to find out. Even when they do find out, they're still quite open to being wrong. They are, in fact, ignorant.
I found this had a profound impact in my programming and consulting career. Frankly, it's bad for your career and good for your life. People want to hire people that know a bunch of stuff, and to be open, honest, and curious about being profoundly ignorant is not reassuring. Other programmers many times want to play posturing games. It is, after all, part of our social programming. Ignorant people usually don't do so well in these games. But on a personal level? It was liberating. I could find whatever I wanted to and deep dive in it. Since I didn't know much of anything, I was able to talk about topics I have a ton of experience in without feeling like I had to attack or defend any pre-held opinions. It was, in fact, what I consider "growing up", both as a human and as a professional.
When we think of how much programming is skewed towards youth, we should keep in mind that most really young people have not had this growing up experience. We should wish them well and cut them a bit of slack if they're acting like we did when we were their age. After all, it's human.
That's why when stuff is being advertised as "everyone can do it", everyone gets excited but I run away. I don't want to be overcome by hard workers, so I am looking for stuff for which you truly have to be a genius to do it and hard work is not a shortcut.
I was half-joking, more like fed up with this overused "everyone can do it" mantra (e.g. I saw it several times in Andrew Ng's machine learning course, which turned me off the subject (not that I had been turned on too much in the first place, but I was curious what he was going to say about the subject that could enthrall me (not much, probably just dimensionality reduction))).
Anyway, if you want to work in a genius-level field, you have to be motivated enough to find it on your own.
This only demonstrates that people with high status in academia can admit ignorance and get a good result. I can speculate that the author would get very different results if he professed ignorance at his first job--I think coworkers who followed "fake it til you make it" would get promoted faster.
But there's something to the status thing, and I think he illustrates it: if you have any status or credibility at all, you also have the ability to set the tone.
And you probably should. The few managers and executives I've met with who can't take "I don't know" and "this was a mistake" in stride without losing their cool immediately start getting lied to and shielded from bad news.
In the light of amelius's comment: Is the first promotion that relevant? If you learn faster by asking questions, you are a more skilled programmer much sooner. If your first employer doesn't honour that, you then have the skills to switch and earn according to your much higher skills at another company.
Companies cannot perfectly measure your programming skill and most software companies don't conduct in depth algorithm interviews. Most of the hiring decision is based on your likability, social skills, previous job history (including job title and skills listed from that first promotion), and how you handle interview questions. You can bullshit your way very far in most of the software development world even if you're only 80% as good as your peers. If you have "junior developer" or "senior developer" on your resume but aren't as good as a "entry level developer", it's a moot point if you get called for an interview but the other guy doesn't.
I don't know about others but in my experience if I get a new hire who doesn't ask any questions there's a good chance they've got no idea what they're doing. Nothing worse than having to constantly prompt someone to let you know that they're stuck because they refuse to say anything.
The fake till you make it people quickly top out. Someone who is afraid to admit they don't know something will end up not learning.
My personal anecdote contrary to your point is my first programming interview. My answer to pretty much every question was "I don't know, but I'm excited to learn". I thought the interview went horribly, but I was offered the job. The owner who hired me (who ended up becoming a friend and we worked together at multiple companies), told me later that my confidence to say I didn't know something is what put me ahead of other candidates. Without knowing me well yet, he felt he would be able to trust me.
That's not necessarily my take from the story---but I can see where you are coming from! The prof was not saying that he does not know anything, he was just elucidating the 'boundaries' of his knowledge.
My take was that you can be confident about the skills that you _do_ have, and honest about the skills you _don't_ have.
I think this touches on a general point which the author misses.
If you are already viewed as an alpha intellect in the group (or say you are viewed as one of the best software engineers in your company), then you have the luxury of being able to be modest and in fact expressing such modesty will even enhance your reputation among your peers.
If you are somewhat insecure about your abilities or if your reputation is unestablished or you are not particularly recognised, then admitting ignorance in front of your peers is unlikely to enhance your reputation or feeling of self-worth.
When I hear those at the top-of-the-hierarchy - whether in a management structure or in "technical ability" structure - being modest about their abilities or admitting ignorance, it often comes across as insincere to me.
I am surprised nobody is talking about the math part of the story.
For me - I had the exact same experience with topology as the author. I was taking a normal math class and in the middle of the normal class the professor started talking about topology. He got the whole class excited about topology to the point that we all enrolled in topology the next quarter.
Imagine our disappointment when we discovered our new topology professor did not love topology. He taught the class by rote. Topology is not a subject I could learn on my own. I dropped the class and sadly still wonder what I missed.
The lesson for me is that it is not enough to admit ignorance. You also need an enlightened guide and mentor.
There also seems to be this misconception that being intelligent gives you a license and even a propensity to be a jerk. I just don't buy it. Sometimes smart people are jerks. But if you're a jerk the onus is on you in my mind to prove you are smart. I won't make that assumption.
When I was younger I loved ideas for their own sake and was constantly disappointed when I went to have fun with some idea and found that everyone gathered around it viewed it as an opportunity to assert dominance. I fled so many fields because I believed ultimately I would find some place where people were there for the ideas themselves, not for the zero-sum battle for status. Ultimately I left academia and became a programmer because it seemed the ego battle was less a part of the process. I hate the competition-based culture of early academia -- olympiads and whatnot -- for the same reason. The reward isn't in the ideas themselves or the work but in the ranking.
Two telltale signs of a mature mind: if someone readily admits he does not know something, or if someone readily admits he was wrong. Call it metacognitive skills if you want.
Similarly, the instructors I really hate are the ones who don’t know the answers to questions but they’ll try to come up with answer on the spot because they think you (or the eavesdropping student) doesn’t know better. Just say you don’t know!
My least favourite instructor, upon being asked whether a certain convergence criterion was just necessary or also sufficient, assumed a very ponderous face and replied sagely---or so he thought---with a simple 'it depends'. The rest of the course went downhill pretty fast from there.
I've always readily admitted when I don't know something. Might be that I was raised in Arkansas, where ignorance is a little more acceptable.
It's usually a great benefit for me, for the same reasons the article describes. However the problem I've found is that--as an engineer--if you don't profess complete knowledge, there's a limit to how effective you can be in leadership. Engineers don't take you seriously, if you act as though you have any doubt in yourself. It's a wall I keep hitting and I've about decided I need to start feigning full-bore 10x brogrammer ego just to herd some cats.
> Engineers don't take you seriously, if you act as though you have any doubt in yourself
As an engineer, me and my firsthand experience do not agree with this.
On the other hand, where I worked the entire team is involved and onboard with setting goals and prioritizing things that need to be done. We absolutely don't expect our manager to understand more than we do on our service.
I'm not talking about management, I'm talking about leadership. Do you have a tech lead on your team? If not how do technical decisions get made? Is it democratic (everyone votes) or more meritocratic (everyone argues their opinion and the strongest one wins). In my experience it's typically the later, and it's in that case that demonstrating a lack of confidence is likely to defeat your chances of leading the team in the direction you think it should go.
It is meritocratic, we don't technically have tech lead, but we do have seniority. However, the most senior engineer doesn't pretend/try to give the impression that he knows everything. Usually each person will have a portion of the project that he knows best and his opinions are the primary driver in that portion. Others give recommendations based on those opinion and not overriding them (normally).
There are larger issues in direction but for those I think all of our opinions are fairly similar - being engineers, we dislike complexity and like things maintainable and extendable.
Developing a sense of what you know or do not know is a big part of learning. In ML, this is called confidence estimation and is harder than actually learning the task. Most ML models just learn to solve the task and have shit confidence estimations. I presume with humans it takes many years of learning a subject to really know how much you do not know. It's a process of calibration of confidence based on lots of background knowledge on the topic (going from unknown unknowns to known unknowns).
"I do not have enough knowledge of this subject to hold an informed opinion" is a statement that should be respected, not ridiculed.
We have a tendency to view people who change their views as "wishy-washy" and "flip-floppers", instead of respecting them for informing themselves and reevaluating their positions.
The truth is that egomaniacs tend to be the ones who get all the fame and glory. Just look at Musk, Trump, and anyone else who's managed to acquire a massive cult following.
"The power of admitting ignorance", or, the folly of refusing to learn something you don't know. I dunno. It seems self-evident. The issue here is ego. Self-awareness. Humility.
I have to note this: a typical classroom may have up to a couple hundred students and some kind of schedule to uphold. If everyone asks questions all the time, there would be no progress done, and "fast learners" would be bored out of their minds, while the "slower" ones would still have a hard time. Also, schedule would just be trashed by such approach
Thanks for sharing this — I needed it. I think this explains why I often say “I get it” when I really don’t: I don’t want to look stupid. But being able to admit ignorance means that I can test my mental models and make them even better. I need to be able to admit my ignorance to myself to be able to ask myself the questions that strengthen my understanding of new or unfamiliar concepts.
In my experience it's often quite obvious when someone doesn't understand something and they say they do. Someone who properly understands will typically offer some tidbit of feedback from their understanding as an acknowledgement. And if not forthcoming I will extend the conversation to try and tease out that bit of feedback. I think this works because the people who genuinely understand something are usually keen to demonstrate that understanding in some small way.
If I explain something to a coworker and he doesn't understand it, I think that is because I explain it badly and will try to reformulate or find someone else to explain it.
But it only works because I consider my colleagues. If a random person does not undestand, I will react differently.
Glad to help out! I think this is also a cultural thing to some extent: no one wants to 'lose status' in front of their peers. Overcoming this is important to actually learn something---and to me, this displays great confidence.
I'm never afraid to make an ignorant statement, especially on a forum like HN. Best case is that someone more knowledgeable will come along and teach me something.
now imagine such an attitude in a non-academic setting where instead of a professor replying to a student it's the division head or president or chief executive replying to a junior staffer: "I don't really know what is going on, maybe you can help figure it out?"
They are not a “warm and fuzzy” bunch.
But they respect apologies. If I screwed up, I quickly learned to cop to it. The absolute worst thing I could do was cover it up.
Their attitude was not a punishing one, but we were expected to fix our mistakes, and ensure they did not happen again.
If we said we did not know something, it was assumed we would learn, or find someone who did.
Lot of “personal responsibility” stuff.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to pounce on admissions of failure or ignorance, and engage in shaming and humiliation of the person that admits an issue.
I am constantly encountering people that Absolutely. Will. Not. Admit. Ignorance. Or. Fault. Even when it’s quite clear.
It’s crazy.