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Some of the things that helped me:

- Write thousands of lines of code and learn from your (inevitable) mistakes.

- Read books and articles written by people who are smarter than you are.

- Work with people who you can learn from.

Work Hard Be Nice. It helped me understand how tough it is to bring about change at the grassroots level and why one needs to make a lifelong commitment to such causes.
http://www.amazon.com/Work-Hard-Be-Nice-Promising/dp/1565125...

- Read some books, like The Gene.
- Improve my soft skills.
- Work on some idea.

Work in progress is a fine thing to have on Hacker News as long as there's a way for users to check the work out. In this case there's a sample chapter, which more than clears that bar. In fact we've added "Show HN" to the title, because this is the kind of thing that Show HN is for: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

This is very direct and honest, thank you!

You make a very good point. Whatever I manage to build is going to be experimental.

You're also right that therapy is a common way to create that self awareness, but it's not the only way. Some techniques work well without a guide like meditation and journalling, and others require a little guidance but nothing as in-depth as therapy (Byron Katie's Work and Sedona Method are two that I've personally found very effective).

A somewhat related, but distinct question is: how do you get the skills to make those high salaries?

I don't care about salaries persay, but I do care about being valuable. Of course, the two things are very related.

Here are some things I've heard people mention that are chicken-and-egg kind of answers:

- Get a great mentor

- Work at a great company

- Work on a high performing team

- Work on a difficult product

Unfortunately, all of these presuppose greatness to begin with, and only help to become even more great. Which is nice, but not useful for someone trying to get there to begin with.

I'm in my 2nd year of being a "professional", and I worry if I'm on the right trajectory, or not. By the way, if someone is reading and is willing to spare 15 minutes of their time I'd love to get your advice, email in profile. Moreso if you're based in the east.

I'm certainly open to trying -- we've been experimenting with mixers and other methods to put engineers in touch with founders.

FWIW, Work at a Startup allows for engineers to designate that they are remote, which helps filter companies that are potentially open to such roles.

If you have ideas, happy to explore them!

For Google that simply isn't true. Check out Work Rules some time. Google has put a ton of effort in having a repeatable hiring process that specifically avoids this problem of interviewer bias. Most people, even Googlers do not really understand their hiring process and how it works. It isn't to hire the best coders.

It's easy to look at those construction workers and think "Wow, those dudes have real jobs" because they get to build huge skyscrapers or subways.

But they're looking right back at you thinking the same exact thing, because you get to work on your laptop in an air conditioned office and don't go home smelling like sweat, dirt, and fumes.

There's a great quote from Bud Smith's book Work that has much better wording with the same idea, but I can't find it

Some people are inherently unhappy but also keep an eye out for unhappiness caused by misalignment, misunderstanding, or disengagement relating to feelings of disempowerment.

Compensation is important up to a point but nobody likes feeling like they are wasting their time and powerless to make positive change.

> No one likes to do Oncall or operational or migration work or deal with mess left by earlier group.

No one likes doing these things if they don't see the point, if there's no buy-in and the work is just a directive from above, if everybody feels like they are treading water and not making any progress, etc...

There are too many possible contributing factors to list them all but most solutions involve listening, communicating, and making small changes that compound over time.

Build teams that: make progress, understand why their work is important, have meaningful feedback loops.

Some good starting points:

[1] The Management Flywheel - https://skamille.medium.com/the-management-flywheel-c076f398...

[2] Work is Work (In which returns diminish) - https://codahale.com/work-is-work/

[3] Model, document and share - https://lethain.com/model-document-share/

[4] Why limiting work-in-progress works - https://lethain.com/limiting-wip/

1. Mono-tasking. Really, this can't be emphasized at all. Right now I'm on HN, The Verge, Reader, my blog etc.. but when I work, everything (including email, funny remarks from the guy next to me) is muted. Oh, I work in chunks and that's why it's okay to mute everything else for that brief time..

2. Work Editorial: As a writer, a content editorial has helped AMAZINGLY. You can apply that elsewhere too.. start with a set of 3 tasks with 3 chunks of time and 2 breaks between them. Work editorial is like planning. Nothing new.. but it's a hack I desperately need. I guess many will do too.

I found Work Cycles [0] to be somewhat helpful. I also saw a doctor and found out I had some vitamin-levels too low, got a few shots and now get a refresher about every six months since apparently absorption of vitamins isn't working great from food for me.

What really completely changed the game, and I know people here don't like that, was Modafinil. If you're not anti-medication, I strongly recommend to look into that.

[0] https://www.ultraworking.com/cycles

It's important to distinguish two, seemingly contradictory positions:

1 People won't love me for who I am. In fact, it's the job of the rest of the world to show me where I need to improve. But, on the other hand ...

2 I should love people for who they are. It's not my business to make people over. My job is to make myself over. There's more than enough work to be done there. Working on other people's supposed failings is just a distraction from my real business.

That's a rough paraphrase of Byron Katie's "Work", an approach that has helped me tremendously for the last dozen years or so. Whenever I get miserable it's usually a clue that I'm working on someone else's 'business'.

I caved and started reading A Song Of Ice And Fire after Game of Thrones S4 finished broadcasting. First book was good, and I'm just starting the second. I've also been binging on cheap self-published horror and apocalypse ebook collections from Amazon (just can't resist those 99p anthologies), and my ongoing 'serious' book is Work by Studs Terkel. Like a couple of other books mentioned in this thread, this is a real eye-opener that reminds me how lucky I am.

Hi folks! I’m an engineer at YC and the main developer of Work at a Startup.

Startups are an increasingly popular place to work in the tech industry. At the same time, the most common problem founders need help with is hiring people. Work at a Startup is a new way to help solve this pain point for both parties by connecting people interested in working at startups directly with the founders of the 1100+ active YC companies by completing a common application.

This the next iteration of the "Work at a Startup Day" idea that YC started hosting way back in 2010 [0][1][2]!

For now, Work at a Startup is targeted at software engineers who want to work at US-based companies since that’s the most common need of YC companies. We will be expanding to other roles and countries once we've validated the product for applicants and founders.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346103

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2888696

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3676578

I share the same point of view “choose work” thing. Even if I agree with you, reading the post (http://danielflopes.com/choosework/), at least the first part of it, makes it feel like it's some kind of a military life, while it's not the case, at least on my side. It's all about the way you present the thing or yourself and in this particular case the post's tone is too much ”rude”, ”strong“, ”military“. It sound like cult propaganda. The second part fails to lower the stress the first part provide. Form advice: The text must be longer, with citations & explanations. Content advice: Work Work Work. What does it mean anyway? When I learn a new technology, I don't feel like I'm working, when I code at home most of the time I don't feel like I'm working... What is significant in my particular case is ”focus (on the craft)”. CS is my passion, I want to learn it, but that's not the only thing I do, as working on any target also means that I need to take the time to break the loop to breath fresh air (with or without focus on self-improvement). Good focus needs a balanced-life.