One thing I've found (I started programming when I was 11) is that you can get better at judging situations/application/specifications and choosing NOT to write code in certain obvious ways or at all. Sometimes the right solution isn't the same old skill.
I've also come to realize that MOST hiring managers barely don't what they are doing as programmers or as managers. They have the authority of position but zero common sense or learned social skills to know what they are doing in their position - they are BEST IGNORED. Which can mean you won't get hired by them but often that is actually for the best - if you care about an idea, you should be the boss or be working with like-minded people who know what they are doing instead. That corporate job might just be 100% pure trash and a waste of time.
This last reality is why I do NOT value the idea of working for FAANG companies - there's nothing good about what they do or how they do it. They are generally evil in that sense. So why would anyone work for them? Mostly to make some money and because you don't know any better.
It would be nice. The problem is the same as self-driving cars: they work but ONLY in certain very constrained and limited application scenarios that limit their adoption.
Self-driving cars will never do well in snow country during a blizzard.
Airships will never do well in thunderstorms or other similar severe weather.
Failing to recognize the limitations of an idea or technology is the #1 way innovators, inventors and startups fail - they lack the critical thinking rigor and fail to nip bad ideas in the bud because they are too emotionally attached (by ego or by lack of brain cells) to KILL their bad ideas. You attack your own ideas as aggressively as any competitor would to get good ideas.
> Self-driving cars will never do well in snow country during a blizzard.
> Failing to recognize the limitations of an idea or technology is the #1 way innovators, inventors and startups fail - they lack the critical thinking rigor and fail to nip bad ideas
Another failing is to assume your experience is the norm and failing to identify significant market niches.
I'm not sure if you meaning to, but you comment hints that you think self driving cars won't succeed because they cannot drive well in blizzards. I will tell you now that a significant portion of the worlds population has never experienced a blizzard, let alone attempted to drive in one.
If you were just using blizzards as one example of many for the reasons automated cars will fail to catch on, my apologies. That said, I think it's a great go to market strategy to identify a smaller niche to start with, and slowly expand as your product utility increases to service broader markets.
> Failing to recognize the limitations of an idea or technology is the #1 way innovators, inventors and startups fail - they lack the critical thinking rigor and fail to nip bad ideas in the bud because they are too emotionally attached (by ego or by lack of brain cells) to KILL their bad ideas. You attack your own ideas as aggressively as any competitor would to get good ideas.
I vouched for this comment based on this paragraph. I have watched this play out in press releases over and over: an innovation is presented as the next huge revolution in X, where it is actually a great improvement only in section 3.5.227 of X, and overextending it to try to revolutionize the entire field kills the innovation.
> Self-driving cars will never do well in snow country during a blizzard.
to be more specific, human visible spectrum cameras looking for white lane markers will never do well in snow country.
For certain situations, different technologies are useful.
Drivers without polarized glasses won't perform optimally in snow or rain.
You include technologies like lidar, infrared, and radar and self driving can "see" a lot more in the snow and rain at a much longer distance than 20/20 vision through a safety windshield, with wipers.
"Self driving" "cars" that aren't dependent on properly marked roads, aren't sharing with human drivers, she drive at a "safe" speed will do just fine.
> "Self driving" "cars" that aren't dependent on properly marked roads, aren't sharing with human drivers, she drive at a "safe" speed will do just fine.
Then you've just reinvented personal rapid transit, which has failed in the past because in general building totally separate rights of way only really works out cost-wise with really space-efficient modes like trains.
Failing to recognize the limitations of an idea or technology is the #1 way innovators, inventors and startups succeed, too!
Every innovator I've talked to, when I asked them, "if you knew ahead of time all the problems with your original idea, would you have gone through the trouble?", all answer pretty much the same way: The only reason they saw it through was that at any point, they thought "That's gotta be the worst part. Now how hard can the rest of it really be?"
There's a reason why it didn't work before during the 1960s. And why dirigibles died in the 1930s. Nothing in technology or the laws of physics have changed enough to alter its viability!
MOST people, in my experience, who push, fund or jump onto the bandwagen for such things have ZERO STEM knowledge, zero economics/finance knowledge and zero market knowledge. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation made before they "jumped" with both feet would have nipped the stupid in the bud and saved a lot of wasted money.
I live in a place that barely have 3G and mostly not even that. The best strategy is to simply adjust to not having or using cellular.
When I need to make a cellular call, I simply have to get in my car and drive the 8 miles into the nearby village. There's a certain part of the village where you can get both cellular and data. The rest of the area only gives audio phone.
I live about 30 miles from our state capital and you only need to be about 2 miles outside of the city limits and there's zero cellular.
For personal security, that's why we own guns. For personal health, that's why we make friends with neighbors. This is simply how it is. The best strategy is to get used to it and stop whining about what cellular providers will NEVER provide.
Only up to a point. Not everyone can be "supremely good leaders" but most can become better than average. The difference is personality and especially empathy and charisma. Without those, it's hard to reach the heights.
One thing I've found (I started programming when I was 11) is that you can get better at judging situations/application/specifications and choosing NOT to write code in certain obvious ways or at all. Sometimes the right solution isn't the same old skill.
I've also come to realize that MOST hiring managers barely don't what they are doing as programmers or as managers. They have the authority of position but zero common sense or learned social skills to know what they are doing in their position - they are BEST IGNORED. Which can mean you won't get hired by them but often that is actually for the best - if you care about an idea, you should be the boss or be working with like-minded people who know what they are doing instead. That corporate job might just be 100% pure trash and a waste of time.
This last reality is why I do NOT value the idea of working for FAANG companies - there's nothing good about what they do or how they do it. They are generally evil in that sense. So why would anyone work for them? Mostly to make some money and because you don't know any better.