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Comment by _7acn | Hacker News Reader

I can speak from the perspective of someone who happens to belong to the "not so good" group, with 20 years in IT. I have a rather specific specialization, and I consciously avoid taking on programming because I know that the quality of my code would be, at best, average. If I do program, it's purely as a hobby, while professionally, I only work on scripts and automation, which I really enjoy.

If you feel like you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to change the room. There is absolutely no way for someone average in grasping complex concepts to suddenly become smarter. The problem seems to be that someone at your company hired these people and assigned them to roles they don't fit. You should consider moving to a better company — one that has higher standards and employs better specialists. There's no other solution to this.

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> If I do program, it's purely as a hobby, while professionally, I only work on scripts and automation.

I've always find it strange about the exclusion of "scripting" from programming. Scripts are programs, writing script is programming.

I've found there are a couple biases that people have, and scripting is viewed as not-real-programming. I thought maybe because there's no binaries, no compiling, but python seems to get a pass.

I recall another bias from the past regarding windows administration. People looked down on windows administration as a real job, I believe because it was gui-based and "anyone can use a gui".

On the other hand, I have also seen a lot of people hamstring themselves.

One friend I knew was exceptional at math and actually quite a proficient fortran programmer. He had a lot of experience, but he was just missing a few key concepts. For example, some function with tricky arguments, he would just call it a bunch of times in a row instead of figuring out how to use a loop.

Or people who hunt and peck, have been doing it for decades, know exactly where all the keys are, but only want to use their index fingers to type.

I think there are some people who are SO CLOSE, but lack a few bridges to fluency or independence or something similar. Sort of frustrating to see from the outside.

What? Competent Windows admins are probably the best/most hardworking sysadmins in the world. Not because they're inherently better, but windows is so complex and dumb, you have to be great to be good at this.

I remember my first internship, we tried to install IIS and 2 different PHP version (along with their crypt lib, that's what caused difficulties), it took us 3 weeks. Using two PHP version on any unix, even for people who have no idea how to, is extremely straightforward. Mad respect for windows sysadmins.

I know, right? But that's the bias I saw. It was unenlightened.

Sure, in the same way that building a sandcastle, a doghouse, a single family home, and a skyscraper are all construction.

I work on all of them, if you have skyscraper of a project, which I worked on a quite a few, you can't run them without having the supporting "scripts" to define infrastructure, test, deploy, run canaries, gather metric putting them into dashboard, setting up alarms etc. etc.

You'd be surprised at how much engineering effort is NOT going into that skyscraper despite everything being built around it.

> The problem seems to be that someone at your company hired these people and assigned them to roles they don't fit.

It could also be the Peter Principle in effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

This also leads to an interesting conclusion. If we assume that, generally speaking, the most competent individuals tend to get promoted, then those who have stopped being promoted are likely the least incompetent among all possible options :D

and the chain of least incompetent really sounds rational, no? Surely moreso than the chain of perceived peak competency... which is just a gamble.

Personally, I find the so-called hydraulic theory of management the most accurate. The crap flows from the top to the bottom.

did you mean "the most incompetent"?

No. The Peter Principle states that in a hierarchical organization, everyone gets promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. This means we could conclude that if someone has stopped being promoted, they are incompetent in their current position.

However, if we assume that promotions are generally given to the most competent individuals within a group, then ultimately, while such a person may be incompetent, they will still be the least incompetent option compared to others.

ah, i remembered the principle wrong - incompetent people get promoted, because competent people are most valuable right where they are right now.

No, wrong way around. Competent people get promoted, until they end up in a position they are not competent in.

This is pretty much the opposite of every explanation I have seen of this principle

because it's not quite the same principle. i remembered it wrong.

Otherwise known as the curse of competence.

> If you feel like you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to change the room.

Being the dumbest person in the room can be an extremely awesome experience. You can learn a lot, very quickly.

> If you feel like you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to change the room.

but ... there always has to be a smartest person in the room!

Interestingly the way this is phrased could be interpreted a couple ways. Sure one interpretation is you should leave the room and find another.

Another might be you should change the room itself. Instead of leaving figure out how to modify the room (presumably to help the growth of others). Possibly until one surpasses you.

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