[HN Gopher] Most advice is pretty bad
___________________________________________________________________
Most advice is pretty bad
Author : samglover97
Score : 110 points
Date : 2021-12-23 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (atis.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (atis.substack.com)
| errantmind wrote:
| In my experience, most situations and their associated decisions
| are context sensitive, so most general advice is unhelpful, or
| even harmful. Heeding generalization is the root of many bad
| outcomes.
| exolymph wrote:
| Advice is best regarded as suggestions for future experiments.
| Nothing beats trial and error plus a willingness to do new
| things.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| _Work smart, not hard._
|
| If you knew how dumb I am, you'd realize it's not up to me.
| pdpi wrote:
| The best advice I ever got was that advice is pretty bad in
| general because the person giving the advice doesn't have skin in
| the game. It's usually much better when you instead tell the
| other person about relevant experience you've had in the past as
| a data point for them to base their decision on.
|
| So: less "in your situation, I would do this", and more "when I
| was in this similar situation, I did this, and that happened".
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This also applies to doctors. You would think they are
| intelligent, highly trained and experts in their field. But the
| you look at the statistics for medical mistakes and how many
| people die every year from drug complications and it brings some
| needed perspective.
|
| I think the problem is people are biased, and play out roles. You
| show a carpenter a nail that sticks up and he will hammer it
| down. What else would you expect, this is what he was trained to
| do.
|
| A doctor is trained to give you drugs or operate, the bias is
| towards taking medical action. If he doesn't do anything and you
| die, he might get fired, your family would have a clear case to
| sue and so on. Even if statistical doing nothing may be
| preferable. It's just probably hard to nothing in some cases.
| KerryJones wrote:
| I agree with the title and disagree with the article.
|
| I was hoping the article was going to talk about how much advice
| comes from survivorship bias and people's general inability to
| see the difference between cause and correlation of what they are
| recommending and true effect. On this subject, I could rant.
|
| As others have pointed, "non-obvious advice" doesn't inherently
| have any reason it's better. The vast majority of people I know
| who struggle with problems aren't struggling because they haven't
| been told helpful advice, it's because of some combination of
| lack of conviction of the advice, lack of discipline, and in some
| cases (as the author points out) is hard to discover how to take
| the advice . (While advice that lays out clear actionability is
| good advice, I don't think that advice that is more general is
| bad advice.)
|
| Take diet. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who said
| salads were unhealthy. I believe most know that they would lead
| to less heart problems in the US, they are cheaper, and would
| help lose weight.
|
| The more I have gone into philosophy and that path of many
| successful people, most of them have taken to simplifying
| everything they do. It's said that only masters can truly
| simplify. It's the amateur who overly complicates. But I digress;
| I firmly believe that obvious advice is often the most useful.
| Personally and professionally, most of the problems with advice
| that arise is that it wasn't followed, not that it needed to be
| non-obvious.
| DarylZero wrote:
| > Take diet. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who
| said salads were unhealthy. I believe most know that they would
| lead to less heart problems in the US, they are cheaper, and
| would help lose weight.
|
| Eating things doesn't help you lose weight.
| onecommentman wrote:
| Better title: Most (tactical business/career) advice is (rarely
| helpful in the general case, often unwise as long-term life
| strategies and full of survivorship bias).
|
| Yep. Such books are written to get the author into the business
| equivalent of Oprah's Book Club. They have the half-life of your
| average K-pop group.
|
| The beef jerky and Mountain Dew at the feast of life insights. If
| you are starving and nothing else is available...
|
| The In-and-Out burger wrappers in the library of worldly wisdom.
| They can, at least, be useful bookmarks...
| jacobr1 wrote:
| A better title would be something like: "Most advice sucks: how
| to determine when it doesn't"
|
| The important point I got out of the article, wasn't that most
| advice is bad, which seems clearly true, but a theory as to
| why:
|
| 1) Not novel - it just repeats what everyone already know, but
| maybe with a new anecdote! 2) Not actionable - the advice to
| vague to be practicable, good advice needs to be more specific
| which probably mean not applicable to everyone, which means not
| oprah scale. 3) Not based on evidence - why does this advice
| work, as opposed to being survivorship bias or junk
| extrapolation of real research.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| I disagree with the article somewhat, I think a more accurate
| take is that the well of good advice that is _generally
| applicable_ is fairly shallow and once exhausted is not worth
| revisiting. From there you need to start looking for advice with
| an eye to the specific context of your life.
|
| For me personally, the first time I understood that my life would
| be really easier if I was really good at something, and that the
| best way to get good at something was to work at it every day,
| was a bit of revelation. That may sound a bit silly to say, but
| we don't come into this world knowing everything. The advice has
| improved my life immensely and is exactly the advice the author
| is bashing _but_ it was only good because I understood how to
| apply it.
| mbesto wrote:
| IMHO I think _free_ advice is the worst. I 'm gonna generalize,
| but free advice usually:
|
| - There is no incentive to give you good advice
|
| - Ulterior motives are much more prevalent
|
| - Rarely contextualized
| emodendroket wrote:
| When I have a question, I rarely settle for one piece of advice.
| Instead, I read a bunch of them, often in a forum like this one.
| Inevitably people will start arguing with each other, and I will
| find myself sympathizing more with one or another side of the
| argument. Well, there you are: that's what I think I should do.
|
| On the other hand, "how to be successful" is so nebulous that I
| think your first step is defining the question better. Of course
| the advice is vague and un-actionable, because what you need to
| do if "being successful" means being the world's greatest Tekken
| player is different than if it means starting a business, and
| different again if it means being a great parent, and different
| once more if it means doing well as an employee in the company
| you work for now (and among these one can imagine many more
| variations). I guess in most cases the unspoken premise here is
| that we're talking about a tech-based startup, but even then, if
| your startup has so few unique traits that you can ask such a
| broad question, what's your competitive edge, really?
| ncmncm wrote:
| You can take advice or leave it. If you take it and it works,
| it's not bad. If you can't or don't take it, that doesn't make it
| bad if somebody else could. It's bad only if, when you take it,
| it will produce a worse outcome for you. Most advice is not bad
| in that way.
|
| The most useful thing a piece of advice can be is something you
| would not have thought of yourself, that somebody else learned by
| hard experience, that you wish somebody had said to you before
| you got it.
|
| It is in the nature of the very best advice that it is not
| obvious why it is good advice. If it doesn't seem like good
| advice, it might be because you have just not thought it through.
|
| What we can say is that most posts on substack are bad.
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| So does this advice.
|
| You can definitely develop conscientiousness, and not just
| genetics. Saying everything is genetics is just lazy.
| frenchyatwork wrote:
| OP never said you can't develop conscientiousness, just that it
| was almost certainly partially genetic. You can learn to run
| faster, but some genetic profiles will never make it to the
| Olympics by just practice.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| "Be hard to compete with" is also not bad advice, at all. What
| it really boils down to is, start learning to do something that
| takes a long time to learn now, and once you know it, you'll be
| ahead of the people who are starting then. And once you've done
| that, start learning something _else_ that takes a long time to
| learn.
| bidivia wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| In my career I started getting close to the people that had
| already done what I wanted and just asked them for advice.
|
| The advice they gave me was incredible and the most useful thing
| you could do.
|
| The most important thing is that it must be an active process.
| You must do the work to decode and extract the information.
|
| Different personalities will give you different advices. If
| someone has a very strong visceral nature, her advice is going to
| be "don't be too visceral, think before you act", because that is
| the advice she needs, but not what you need.
|
| That advice is completely useless if your nature is thinking too
| much, and you don't have a problem thinking, you love to think
| all the time. The advice you need is acting instead of thinking,
| to take decisions.
|
| So you need to be active and ask specifically the problems you
| are having when trying to do what you wanted. Most of the time
| you will realize the super big problems that you have are the
| most stupid and obvious thing for the person you are asking.
|
| It is so easy for them because their own nature or personality
| makes it so for them. 9 times out of 10 they will give you an
| easy, "obvious" solution you never thought about.
| kangnkodos wrote:
| Yes. It's important to analyze why the person giving the advice
| is suggesting a particular course of action.
|
| If it's face to face, after I ask for advice, I always follow
| up with "Why?"
| dsizzle wrote:
| I wonder if what people get out of the general advice literature
| is more like a reminder or motivation, rather than actual
| insight.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| My wife once called it "affinity porn," in that a lot of demand
| is the feeling of proximity to something great gives you some
| kind of essence of that greatness, like it will rub off in some
| way. Why do people like getting signatures of sports figures
| (ignoring second order financial motives to serve to the those
| with genuine interest)? Or to shake the hand of a political or
| religious leader? So much of the advice literature seems like
| it falls into that category, especially those that are memoirs
| in advice-book form.
| polote wrote:
| VC give pretty bad advice in general. Their advice is the the
| description of founders they want to invest in. Most of the
| founders they give money to, more or less follow the advice they
| give (not directly, but because they have been selected like
| that). But as all vc most of their companies fails, showing that
| the advice in fact doesn't work.
|
| Don't forget that if they really knew what to do to start a
| successful company they wouldn't be investors but founders
| jnovek wrote:
| "Don't forget that if they really knew what to do to start a
| successful company they wouldn't be investors but founders"
|
| I can't stand this philosophy, e.g. "those who can't do teach"
| kind of stuff.
|
| Perhaps VCs prefer their job to being a founder?
|
| Not everyone who is _capable_ of being a founder _wants to_ be
| a founder. It's exhausting work that takes all of your time.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| And plenty of VCs are former founders.
| Rapzid wrote:
| And they, of course, know it's a numbers game. Why suffer
| all the failure and risk never having another hit when you
| can let others do it for you?
| polote wrote:
| My point is that only a handful of people have been able to
| create several successful companies. Because we don't know
| how to create such company, so most advice in that case are
| wrong
| bell-cot wrote:
| "...for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the
| wise, and all courses may run ill." - Gandolf (fictional
| character by J.R.R. Tolkien)
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| "Even for us, though, we can often increase our impact a lot by
| improving our generalized effectiveness."
|
| This rings of Scott Adams' 'Talent Stack'. He posits that having
| expertise in multiple, unrelated fields both expands your
| generalized knowledge and helps you stand out in the combination
| of talents you possess. One example of a real person is one who
| holds expertise in artistry (oil painting), mechanical
| engineering, and cycling.
|
| If I were to claim my own, it would be program management, poker
| and music.
| jacobian wrote:
| I think part of the dynamic here is that when people give advice
| it often comes from one of two very different modes:
|
| 1. There's a piece of advice I want to give, and I'm going to
| give that advice to some degree regardless of the question or
| situation. Maybe I'll wait for a question where my advice fits,
| or maybe I won't, but it's a play _I_ want to suggest, so I'm
| going to suggest it. For example, "use Django" is advice I might
| give to anyone who asks anything about web apps because I know
| Django and it's easy advice to give.
|
| 2. I really listen to what someone's asking, and give them
| specific advice for their situation, without letting it be
| colored by my own experience or the moves that have worked for
| _me_ in the past.
|
| The second is a lot less common! It's really hard to pay that
| level of attention, and force yourself to question your own
| assumptions. But it's also a lot more useful, since it's specific
| and tailored.
|
| Critically, in a blogging context, only the first mode is really
| possible. There isn't someone asking for the advice, it's just me
| writing a blog post for some imagined asker. This is why most
| unsolicited advice isn't that useful, which absolutely includes
| whatever blog post you're reading. Including one of mine.
| emodendroket wrote:
| For #2, I think that a secret to being perceived as a great
| advice-giver is that, in their heart of hearts, most askers
| already know what they want to do, but need your help
| discovering it. It's more effective to simply restate the
| question in a novel way than it is to just tell them what to
| do.
| User23 wrote:
| Giving unsolicited advice is disrespectful and will do your
| relationship with the person in question no favors.
| Contrariwise, soliciting advice from someone else is
| respectful, and will often improve their disposition towards
| you. The simple rule that I endeavor to follow is to never give
| unsolicited advice, but to give solicited advice if I can be
| helpful.
|
| A blog post isn't unsolicited advice because nobody reads it
| without choosing to visit your blog. Incidentally that
| indicates the reader has at least some respect for your
| thoughts. It probably won't be as helpful as personalized
| solicited advice, but it's still potentially valuable.
|
| Another rule I follow for advice-giving is asking myself, am I
| suggesting a way that is really better or just how I would do
| it? If it's the latter case then I'll often demur, or at least
| say it's really just my opinion and there are probably other,
| possibly better, ways to do whatever it is.
| foobarian wrote:
| I don't mind 1 if I know what it is. It's an existence proof of
| sorts. "I took this path to get somewhere and the fact I got
| there" tells you something about the level of obstacle on the
| way.
| javajosh wrote:
| Advice is a way to get someone else to try out your hypothesis.
| dwheeler wrote:
| I agree that advice that "isn't practical" is bad advice, as the
| article states.
|
| I do _NOT_ agree that advice that "isn't insightful" or "is
| obvious" is bad advice.
|
| The author complains that "Work hard" is bad advice, and I don't
| agree. Some people I meet are _not_ willing to work hard. _You_
| may think it 's obvious, but that doesn't mean it really is
| obvious. Even if it's obvious, people often need reminding of
| obvious things, _because_ "obvious" things are easy to forget.
|
| Vince Lombardi was famous at starting training from the
| beginning. He would start his training courses by telling highly-
| trained athletes, "this is a football."
| https://jamesclear.com/vince-lombardi-fundamentals Excellent
| athletes continually train and excercise the fundamentals,
| because they are fundamental. "Obvious" things _do_ require
| reminders. They require reminders because they 're boring, & we
| often want to shift to the novel thing instead of focusing on the
| important thing.
|
| Even worse, if it's novel, then it's often wrong. Sometimes the
| new can be really helpful - but seeking novelty for its own sake
| misses the point. You want _good_ advice, not _novel_ advice, and
| the two are not the same thing.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I wonder what the fundamentals are of coding, that you could
| practice, starting from "this is a football"
|
| 1: Naming Things 2: Testing (Unit or otherwise)
| tdrdt wrote:
| Most advise is like: do what I did, if you were me, in the exact
| place and time as I was, surrounded by the same people as I was,
| and so on...
|
| I think advise in the form of a small life lesson is more
| helpful. For example: 'Take good care of yourself if you work
| hard.' is more helpful than 'Work hard to become successful.'.
| jmath wrote:
| "smile" is an exception
| slap_shot wrote:
| I've thought a lot about this recently: what type of person is
| subject to a greater amount of variance in the outcome of
| something due to good/bad advice than a founder?
|
| Other professions with the potential for drastic upticks of
| success or net worth (e.g. a professional athlete, an
| entertainer) are so standardized that the advice to follow is
| pretty much down the center of the fairway.
|
| Given the complexity/uniqueness of a company and its market,
| almost any piece of advice given to a founder is at best
| inadequate, at worst, gravely detrimental.
|
| Paul Buchheit had a slide at founder school that read something
| like "Advice = Limited Life Experience + Over generalization" - I
| have no idea if I interpreted it correctly, but most advice I've
| received (and thought was great at the time) ended up being
| wrong. The people giving me the advice weren't being malicious -
| they were just looking at my problem with _their_ life experience
| and abstracting it a very general way.
|
| And the worst part is - and I say this with a lot of experience -
| when someone else's advice was wrong, you can't blame them, you
| can only blame yourself.
| katmannthree wrote:
| I disagree strongly with the article's central thesis, but it is
| still worth critically examining the source and utility of
| advice. Even honest and sincerely given advice is often more a
| form of nostalgia on the part of the giver than a lucid examining
| of your specific situation and the nuances therein.
|
| It's most often a form of "well this is what I wish I'd done when
| I was in a similar situation years ago" or "here's what I did
| when I was in your position and let me tell you how great a
| choice it was." That is meaningfully distinct from and a lot more
| common than the much more useful version "I once had something
| similar happen and afterwards concluded that I should have done
| X, but the world has changed over the decades and now it seems
| like kX would yield better outcomes based on Y."
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| Changed over the decades? Your issue with advice is that the
| giver must have had something happen so long ago that they can
| tell you about how the world has changed in the meantime?
|
| By your reasoning, you would have rejected that person's advice
| if they had given it to you earlier because it would have
| looked a lot like the form of advice you have an issue with.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| It was an example of how someone could give advice while
| trying to take into consideration the nuances and
| circumstances of the person's context.
| katmannthree wrote:
| The majority of advice I've received was founded in
| experiences 10+ years in the past, yes, and did not account
| for the substantial societal changes that have occurred
| since. My issue is not that the giver hasn't noticed changes
| in the world, it's that _most often_ the underlying reason
| they give advice seems to be as a form of nostalgia rather
| than a careful consideration of what my best options are.
|
| > By your reasoning, you would have rejected that person's
| advice if they had given it to you earlier because it would
| have looked a lot like the form of advice you have an issue
| with.
|
| No, I am not saying that any advice should be immediately
| rejected. It should be appreciated, always, when given in
| good faith. It should also be silently examined, always,
| before application.
| zerocount wrote:
| I understood it along the same lines as you and don't
| understand the down-voting.
| ninkendo wrote:
| I'm reminded of a quote from the "Wear Sunscreen" song/speech
| from back in the 90s:
|
| > Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those
| who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is
| a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off,
| painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than
| it's worth.
| superposeur wrote:
| Agreed -- when I'm on the receiving end of advice, I try to
| suss out the distinction you describe. Is the advice-giver just
| lazily ruminating (usually the case) or are they actually
| thinking through my particular circumstances and reflecting on
| the optimal path given these constraints and/or plugging a
| particular blind spot holding me back? You can often feel,
| viscerally, the difference between the two types of advice-
| giving.
| [deleted]
| black_13 wrote:
| Advice is free like kittens. Really affecting the outcome of
| someone elses circumstances costs money and time and very few are
| willing to do that. Especially when the someone is outside our
| family or tribe.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| I think most advice is bad because the person giving the advice
| somehow also wants to sound like a hero or at least somebody you
| would want to look up to.
|
| Unfortunately most of the times the reality to do the things for
| which the advice is sought is rather mundane and sometimes not
| even something a person would be proud off.
|
| Like for example, if you want to be a very successful business
| the _reality advice_ is to market more aggressively, lock people
| in your walled garden, save taxes, inflate prices, make a
| commission on other people 's work, etc but the advice you give
| is make better products, innovate, make it user friendly, create
| brand loyalty, etc.
| bckr wrote:
| It may be helpful to think of advice from the perspective of a
| "science of life". In science, you often want to spell things out
| that many people might consider "obvious". The point isn't
| necessarily to instruct, but to document.
| csallen wrote:
| Our obsession with non-obvious advice stems from our base
| addiction to novelty. For good reason, pathways in our brain
| become myelinated and more efficient the more often we use them,
| to the point where we can process well-worn thoughts almost
| subconsciously. Thus, toys we've played with too long become
| boring. Advice we've heard too many times before seems blah.
|
| We're hardwired to notice more when we encounter things we've
| never heard or seen before. Novel advice just _pops_.
|
| However, most good advice is _common_ advice. In practically any
| field, grokking the fundamental advice and actually sticking to
| it will get you 99% of the way there. As Charlie Munger once
| said, "Take a simple idea, and take it seriously."
|
| But the fundamentals are boring. We'd prefer to ignore them and
| say, "Yeah yeah I know that already," even if we're totally
| ignoring it. Then we retweet the next dopamine hit of novel
| advice we see on Twitter.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| > grokking the fundamental advice
|
| This is much harder than it sounds! The roots of true
| fundamental understanding go very deep.
| roenxi wrote:
| One other - more subtle - point is that nothing is easy and
| nothing is obvious. There are people in the world to whom "you
| need to make eye contact when you talk to someone" is a new
| idea.
|
| Good advice is based on evidence that the receiver does not
| understand something. Nothing is novel to an expert.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| The best advice -- real wisdom, in fact -- is often readily
| available as platitudes on door mats or fridge magnets but they
| don't resonate with us. Because real wisdom and the best advice
| is useless without a certain time and experience to recognize
| it, and a great deal of practice in putting it to life.
|
| I first recognized this learning to meditate. Life is
| impermanent and leads to suffering so stop cravings and
| avoiding! Okay, well I've heard that a million times so what.
| But then learning to observe my experience a lightbulb goes
| goes on.
| WJW wrote:
| Most advice is quite specific for people in certain
| circumstances and useless or even harmful for people outside
| those circumstances.
|
| Should you save save up for retirement and be generally
| financially sensible? Of course, but there are plenty of
| exceptions. For example, for the terminally ill it is
| terrible advice, and neither is the traditional "save 10% of
| income and invest in index funds" advice applicable to newly
| minted millionaires who have just won the startup lottery.
|
| "Turn the other cheek" is great advice 99% of the time, but
| terrible advice in a relationship with an abusive spouse.
|
| "When in doubt, assume stupidity over malice" is extremely
| easy to abuse by malicious actors.
|
| In general, even well-meaning advice givers on the internet
| often don't realize that their advice is not universally
| applicable or forget to add a warning label stating the same.
| (And, of course, not everyone on the internet is well-meaning
| in the first place)
| mjr00 wrote:
| > However, most good advice is common advice. In practically
| any field, grokking the fundamental advice and actually
| sticking to it will get you 99% of the way there. As Charlie
| Munger once said, "Take a simple idea, and take it seriously."
|
| Definitely. There's also an issue on the flip side of it: many
| people asking for advice are not doing so sincerely. You'll see
| it in the new year on fitness forums. People asking for advice
| on which fad routine (coughCrossfitcough) will make _this_ the
| year they keep that weight off, or whether they should get a
| Peloton or a Bowflex. If you give them the simple, obvious
| advice that most experienced lifters would agree on--do a
| barbell strength program and count your calories--they get
| extremely defensive. That isn 't an option for them because
| it's _boring_. It requires repetitive, uninteresting, and
| physically strenuous effort multiple times per week. They 're
| actively looking for, as you say, the new and novel advice that
| gives them the dopamine hit.
|
| So yeah, I disagree with the article's assertion that good
| advice is not obvious. There's a reason the advice is obvious;
| it's likely pretty good advice!
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| I don't think this is the same thing. They're asking for a
| fun activity they can use to lose weight, not for a novel fun
| advice about losing weight.
|
| It's not the advice itself that's boring, it's the activity
| the person will have to do every other day.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| This depends on whether the field is an arms race. In plenty of
| areas, common advice is quickly implemented by most competitive
| participants. See college admissions or even getting jobs after
| university.
|
| At one point founding a charity was considered evidence of
| leadership. By my graduating class for high school, half the
| class had a charity. The person I know who has been the best at
| admissions has founded 4. But now there is nothing special
| about charity creation.
|
| Same with getting jobs after university. It used to be that you
| earned your degree and a good job awaited you. But then lots of
| extra people went to university and you started needing better
| grades, an internship, and now several internships to be
| competitive.
|
| In those cases you need something novel to stay ahead.
|
| Or consider unlimited vacation for developers. At one point
| that was a fairly novel perk. Now, everyone has that. I would
| be surprised to work for a company with fixed vacation ever
| again.
|
| It was once a perk that would win you staff. Now, it is just
| being competitive for certain kinds of people.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Or consider unlimited vacation for developers. At one point
| that was a fairly novel perk. Now, everyone has that.
|
| I would argue that nobody (or hardly anyone) has this.
| Otherwise you'd find most developer only working 6 months a
| year.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Fair, it is not truly unlimited, but for plenty of people
| (at least where I have worked) it has still ended up being
| 5-8 weeks a year.
|
| In contrast to the more traditional employers who say that
| you can start with two weeks and after 3 years of loyal
| service with no real raises, you can have three.
| simplestats wrote:
| People I know take about four weeks a year. 8 weeks seems
| nuts. Do their managers push back all the deadlines
| related to their projects since they take a lot of
| vacation? I'd imagine managers don't even consider it and
| plan deadlines according to a typical (e.g., 50 weeks a
| year) worker output.
| fvdessen wrote:
| The managers indeed push back the deadlines or hire more
| people
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I haven't ever worked for a company with hard deadlines.
| Always enterprise software, so delays are no seemingly no
| consequence.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Ah, I guess that makes sense from an American
| perspective. For context, 5.6 weeks (28 days) is the
| legal minimum for absolutely every full time employee
| here in the UK, and I believe that's one of the lower
| legal minimums in Europe. Higher allowances are not
| uncommon here.
|
| My employer considered introducing unlimited holiday, but
| we said no once they admitted that they were hoping it
| would result in us taking less holiday in practice. I'd
| rather have my 5 weeks guaranteed, no guilt, than be
| worrying about whether I've taken too much unlimited
| holiday.
| mc32 wrote:
| Indeed. It's a wolf in sheeps clothing.
|
| It's like letting the kids mind the house by themselves
| while you go on holidays.
|
| If they take too much liberty, they never get that
| privilege again. If they do it within implied constraints
| they get to have the house more often.
|
| If you have power (not necessarily managerial) you can
| exploit thus and be okay, if you're mediocre and you take
| the same advantage, you could very well have signed your
| own pink slip.
|
| Now if you have a minimum everyone takes, then even as a
| mediocre worker, you're not an outlier.
| _jal wrote:
| > Or consider unlimited vacation for developers.
|
| Is there any evidence that developers (or anyone else with
| "unlimited vacation") take more time than they did
| previously?
|
| I've assumed that was more akin to "open offices" - selling a
| cost-cutting measure as something hip.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I only have anecdotes from the two companies I have worked
| for with it, but developers taking 5-8 weeks off is not
| uncommon.
|
| And whether or not you do take it, you can if you
| need/desire to do so.
|
| It stands in contrast to more traditional companies that
| offer you two weeks to start and an extra week after three
| years of service without a raise.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| I too only have anecdotes from myself and
| friends/colleagues, but a few experiences stand out:
|
| * The accountability culture really matters. Are teams
| responsible for their own commitments/deadlines? If you
| think you might get fired, or at least a lower
| performance review for taking vacation (because you
| shipped less while out) then you are less likely to take
| vacation. Of course the problem here isn't the PTO
| policy, but unlimited PTO in a company like this is worse
| than a defined amount of time.
|
| * Are senior leaders work-a-holics? If so, that might
| breed a culture where, even these same leaders always say
| the right things about everyone needing to recharge and
| take advantage, the ambitions see those above them, and
| ape the behavior of working more. This trickles down,
| though it might be inconsistent across the company.
|
| * As time has gone on with these being more common, some
| strategies have emerged to take advantage of them more
| effectively. Such as being more aggressive with 3 day
| weekends, or flex schedules, or remote work, or vacation
| hybrids (like going abroad for a 6 weeks and working
| every other week). Taking a bunch of multi-week vacations
| may or may not work in your company, but figuring out the
| broader category of "flex work" seems to be getting a ton
| of experiment.
| rocqua wrote:
| I have vague memories of stories that it leads to less time
| off taken. Something about people feeling more guilty
| taking vacation when they have to pick their own limit.
| milkytron wrote:
| My company recently switched to unlimited, and everyone has
| been consistently taking more than we were offered prior,
| which was a generous amount compared to previous places
| I've worked for.
|
| So far in the 4 months we've had unlimited, I've taken
| 40-50% more time off than I would have otherwise. I think
| many employees know of the issue you mentioned, and we're
| collectively taking steps to prevent that from happening.
| It mainly has to do with culture and not have too many key
| person dependencies.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Good advice:
|
| 1. Try, try until you succeed.
|
| 2. Stop beating a dead horse.
| vaxman wrote:
| Good point. How to classify:
|
| 'Don't risk catching Omicron and passing on to others who may
| die by going to see the latest, widely panned, episode of The
| Matrix starring Doogie Howser as a psychotherapist, a middle
| aged woman as an action hero all set against a stalker's
| perspective on romance. Same goes for Yaamava which
| opportunistically released a commercial with a Morphius-like
| narrator over slow motion scenes.'
|
| Is this obvious, non-obvious, common (or novel) advice?
| mc32 wrote:
| Not everyone is "addicted" to novelty. I've travelled a bit and
| there are places where people repeat and repeat old advice
| about lots of general things and don't go for novelty... but
| that may be because they're not plugged in to a bias of novelty
| = modern = more savvy = better = more admiration.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Hence the attention economy promoting informational junk food.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| The best advice I heard was don't listen.
|
| - Cousin Stizz
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Most advice is _advice_ : advice, n. An
| opinion about what could or should be done about a situation or
| problem. Information communicated; news. An
| opinion recommended, or offered, as worthy to be followed;
| counsel; suggestion.
|
| If the advice is based on something that has worked for someone,
| it is good advice. It's up to you to figure out if the advice
| will work for you. If the advice didn't apply to your own
| situation, or wasn't appropriate, it is your responsibility to
| figure that out, not theirs.
|
| You can of course try to blame everyone else for the paths you
| choose to take in life: you didn't get the right advice; they
| didn't give you the right tools; they didn't explain something
| well enough. But none of that changes the fact that you,
| ultimately, are the only one that controls whether you will take
| that advice and use those tools, or go find others. You own your
| own decisions.
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