<story><title>95%-ile isn&apos;t that good (2020)</title><url>https://danluu.com/p95-skill/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>&amp;gt; For a lot of people their career is just a way to get paid. As long as they don&amp;#x27;t get fired that&amp;#x27;s enough for them.&lt;p&gt;This was one of my hardest earned lessons when I became a manager. Previously I had worked my way into high-performing teams where everybody really cared about doing a good job. I was so surrounded by people with that mindset that I assumed that’s just how everybody in tech operated.&lt;p&gt;Only later did I realize that I was surrounded by those people because my managers actively selected for those hires and carefully weeded out the people who weren’t interested in anything other than doing the bare minimum to collect a paycheck.&lt;p&gt;As a hiring manager, the opposite selection bias occurs: The candidate pool is heavily biased toward people who have lost their jobs or are being pushed out as part of a PiP. You end up interviewing a lot of people who really just want to collect a paycheck and be bothered as little as possible with actual work.&lt;p&gt;Poke around Reddit or even HN and this work minimization mindset is even celebrated by a lot of people. If you’ve been surrounded by high achievers and motivated people who would have chosen programming jobs because that’s what they like to do every day, it can be a shock to work with people who really just hate doing anything that resembles work. Yet they’re out there, in surprisingly large numbers.</text></item><item><author>e4e78a06</author><text>&amp;gt; Being even 50%-ile among professionals for either would certainly be extremely impressive.&lt;p&gt;I think you&amp;#x27;d be surprised at how low the bar is. And how people either 1) don&amp;#x27;t care about actively improving or 2) don&amp;#x27;t effectively learn from their mistakes. For a lot of people their career is just a way to get paid. As long as they don&amp;#x27;t get fired that&amp;#x27;s enough for them. And for other people they never developed a growth mindset and a habit of introspection, or they treat mistakes&amp;#x2F;failure as a painful memory to be avoided rather than something to be learned from.</text></item><item><author>elil17</author><text>A video game and public speaking seem like really weird&amp;#x2F;unusual examples.&lt;p&gt;A ton of people play video games, very few people do it professionally. A ton of people give talks, but it’s usually a small part of their jobs. Being even 50%-ile among &lt;i&gt;professionals&lt;/i&gt; for either would certainly be extremely impressive.&lt;p&gt;When I think about normal jobs, which are less competitive fields than professional gaming or speaking, being 95%-ile is very good (although 50%-ile is not great). Certainly, the top 5% of people at my company (200 people in my office, so 10 people I work with) are on the “top of their game”, so to speak - they always drive towards the most important objectives, rarely make errors, come up with incredible ideas, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lelanthran</author><text>&amp;gt;  If you’ve been surrounded by high achievers and motivated people who would have chosen programming jobs because that’s what they like to do every day, it can be a shock to work with people who really just hate doing anything that resembles work.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a false dichotomy[1]&lt;p&gt;[1] If I am reading you correctly, you&amp;#x27;re saying that there&amp;#x27;s two extremes&lt;p&gt;1. Programmers who enjoy it.&lt;p&gt;2. Programmers who hate doing anything that resembles work.&lt;p&gt;But, honestly, those two classes can&amp;#x27;t be the extreme ends of the spectrum. &amp;quot;People who enjoy programming&amp;quot; overlap significantly with &amp;quot;people who hate doing the work assigned to them&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;You make it sound like people who hate doing the work you assigned to them must be people who hate programming.&lt;p&gt;IME, it&amp;#x27;s almost the opposite - people who love programming aren&amp;#x27;t going to be the least bit excited about mindless CRUD duties on an over-engineered stack that has 27 levels of indirection before it even hits the database record.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  Yet they’re out there, in surprisingly large numbers.&lt;p&gt;It appears that way to you because you are drawing wrong conclusions from your observations. You&amp;#x27;re looking at devs who hate working on &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; stack, for &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; team and extrapolating that to &amp;quot;These devs hate working as a programmer&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;IOW, your observations that people hate working is accurate, your conclusion that it must be because they hate programming is not.</text></comment>
<story><title>95%-ile isn&apos;t that good (2020)</title><url>https://danluu.com/p95-skill/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>&amp;gt; For a lot of people their career is just a way to get paid. As long as they don&amp;#x27;t get fired that&amp;#x27;s enough for them.&lt;p&gt;This was one of my hardest earned lessons when I became a manager. Previously I had worked my way into high-performing teams where everybody really cared about doing a good job. I was so surrounded by people with that mindset that I assumed that’s just how everybody in tech operated.&lt;p&gt;Only later did I realize that I was surrounded by those people because my managers actively selected for those hires and carefully weeded out the people who weren’t interested in anything other than doing the bare minimum to collect a paycheck.&lt;p&gt;As a hiring manager, the opposite selection bias occurs: The candidate pool is heavily biased toward people who have lost their jobs or are being pushed out as part of a PiP. You end up interviewing a lot of people who really just want to collect a paycheck and be bothered as little as possible with actual work.&lt;p&gt;Poke around Reddit or even HN and this work minimization mindset is even celebrated by a lot of people. If you’ve been surrounded by high achievers and motivated people who would have chosen programming jobs because that’s what they like to do every day, it can be a shock to work with people who really just hate doing anything that resembles work. Yet they’re out there, in surprisingly large numbers.</text></item><item><author>e4e78a06</author><text>&amp;gt; Being even 50%-ile among professionals for either would certainly be extremely impressive.&lt;p&gt;I think you&amp;#x27;d be surprised at how low the bar is. And how people either 1) don&amp;#x27;t care about actively improving or 2) don&amp;#x27;t effectively learn from their mistakes. For a lot of people their career is just a way to get paid. As long as they don&amp;#x27;t get fired that&amp;#x27;s enough for them. And for other people they never developed a growth mindset and a habit of introspection, or they treat mistakes&amp;#x2F;failure as a painful memory to be avoided rather than something to be learned from.</text></item><item><author>elil17</author><text>A video game and public speaking seem like really weird&amp;#x2F;unusual examples.&lt;p&gt;A ton of people play video games, very few people do it professionally. A ton of people give talks, but it’s usually a small part of their jobs. Being even 50%-ile among &lt;i&gt;professionals&lt;/i&gt; for either would certainly be extremely impressive.&lt;p&gt;When I think about normal jobs, which are less competitive fields than professional gaming or speaking, being 95%-ile is very good (although 50%-ile is not great). Certainly, the top 5% of people at my company (200 people in my office, so 10 people I work with) are on the “top of their game”, so to speak - they always drive towards the most important objectives, rarely make errors, come up with incredible ideas, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tayo42</author><text>&amp;gt; Poke around Reddit or even HN and this work minimization mindset is even celebrated by a lot of people. If you’ve been surrounded by high achievers and motivated people who would have chosen programming jobs because that’s what they like to do every day, it can be a shock to work with people who really just hate doing anything that resembles work. Yet they’re out there, in surprisingly large numbers.&lt;p&gt;You say this like its a bad thing?&lt;p&gt;Even still, wanting to work less but taking pride in your work aren&amp;#x27;t mutually exclusive ideas. Id prefer to work as little as possible, I always do the best I can though and take care to be thoughtful and do things right. Im just not going to bend over backwards for a corporation.</text></comment>