[HN Gopher] Does Your Office Have a Library?
___________________________________________________________________
Does Your Office Have a Library?
Author : jppope
Score : 101 points
Date : 2023-02-16 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jonpauluritis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jonpauluritis.com)
| bmitc wrote:
| At one previous employer, yes, and it was lovely. It was huge,
| and we could of course request books for interlibrary loan,
| request the library to purchase, or request personal purchases to
| keep at our desks. Checkouts were indefinite until someone else
| requested it except for newly purchased books. I loved going
| there and relaxing with a book.
|
| I have a rather extensive personal library, filled woth books I
| haven't read yet. It creates the same feeling of a lot of stuff
| still to discover
| Arainach wrote:
| It depends on how abstract you consider a "library". My employer
| does have a library of physical books, but they're almost never
| used. On the other hand they have an enormous amount of _digital_
| internal data - Wikis, API docs, design docs, Stack Overflow-
| esque Q &A, and more - that's well indexed and can be
| collectively searched via one query. Those assets are used
| constantly every day by everyone (and even moreso if you consider
| code search part of your library).
|
| Books have a higher cost to entry - you have to buy them, you
| have to store them, you have to get out of your chair and go get
| them, and you have to find the relevant data point in them.
| They're not suited to topics where the answer or the state of the
| art changes every few months.
|
| I have a library in my home office, but there's nothing in it
| that I consult every week or even every month. Broadly, my
| library can be broken down into a few themes:
|
| 1. Books that I found valuable and lend out often (but don't
| necessarily need to reference) - things like "The Design of
| Everyday Things", "Working Effectively With Legacy Code", "Staff
| Engineer", "Peopleware", etc.
|
| 2. Books that contain information that is not easily and
| immediately available in an internet search (most often non-
| technical history books)
|
| 3. Subjects I reference on occasion but need detailed information
| from (Skiena - Algorithm Design Manual, CLRS, etc.)
|
| 4. Things that bring me joy to reread or even just look at and
| reminisce about reading (this is for anyone a personal list - for
| me it's things such as Ignition!, R.V. Jones' Most Secret War,
| the works of Neal Stephenson and Robert Caro, and more)
|
| There are of course exceptions, such as the unspoken category 5
| (virtue signaling) - I'm probably never actually going to read
| those Knuth tomes or even finish that Dostoyevsky, but they look
| impressive on the shelf behind me in video calls - but over time
| I've gotten better about eliminating those.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| Can you elaborate more on the architecture of your single query
| system. Is everything in one source or are you searching
| multiple sources with one query
| Arainach wrote:
| Searching multiple sources with one query. It's really just
| an internal search engine.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| This is a great list of excellent questions. I think their value
| is when applied in large numbers, and not just one by one.
|
| If one day you are pondering whether you want to make a career
| decision, or a life decision, questions like these could be
| really useful to start your thinking.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Would it be okay to sit and read a book at your job?
|
| Never had a job where the answer was yes, which is a shame,
| because that's still by far the fastest way to really "get"
| anything. They'd much rather I spend weeks googling one-off
| questions and wasting other people's time than being
| "unproductive" for a few days just going through actual
| documentation. Very frustrating.
| superfrank wrote:
| Maybe a stupid question, but what would happen if you did?
|
| I've never had a job explicitly tell me that I could just go
| read, but I've done just that at multiple jobs and no one has
| ever said anything about it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Usually some form of snarky "we don't give you enough work to
| do?" from somebody who's not even my boss but one of those
| types who for some reason gets away with acting like he is.
|
| Of course, with work from home, things are different, but I'm
| still at the mercy of the time-tracking system: every hour
| has to be accounted for and charged to a pre-approved
| bucket... and reading isn't in one of those buckets.
| CSSer wrote:
| What if you were reading about something relevant to one of
| those pre-approved buckets?
| CSSer wrote:
| I've had the same experience. Obviously there's a balance
| here. You have to know what percentage of something does
| actually need to get done from day to day, but when things
| are slower I definitely spend my time reading. It's paid off
| too many times not to do so.
| [deleted]
| pradn wrote:
| This is one of those old school things I missed when I moved from
| Microsoft to Google, another being having a private office.
| (Though Microsoft is switching to open plan offices as well as a
| cost saving measure.)
|
| The Microsoft library had tons of books, subscriptions to
| scholarly journals, and made it easy to order new books.
| jedberg wrote:
| Lots of good questions in this, but to answer the question in the
| title:
|
| When I started working corporate in 1999, every engineer had
| their own library of tech books. We would all share books with
| each other. You could tell how senior someone was by how big
| their book collection was.
|
| At once point, one of our senior people got laid off. Since the
| books were bought by the company he had to leave them all behind.
|
| Us juniors descended on his cube like vultures, negotiating and
| trading all of his books to start building up our own libraries.
|
| When I left the company they let me buy my books for $5, so I
| took them with me, and took them to my next two jobs. I stopped
| carrying them when everything the contained could be found
| online.
|
| I have to say, I do sometimes miss learning tech stuff from
| books. While it's all online and in theory up to date, there is
| something to be said for the curated experience of a book.
| sjsanc wrote:
| I feel like I've read this before some here...
| sjsanc wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33403174 I have!!
| neilv wrote:
| I carried around an impressive software engineering personal
| library, through various jobs and grad school. And it had a few
| benefits.
|
| Even when I was poor and sleeping on the floor because I didn't
| own furniture, and didn't have health insurance, I'd still buy
| books (and cheap lunches with the team). I'd also print out a
| lot of tech docs from the Internet, and put them in discarded
| binders that I labeled neatly.
|
| In addition to what I learned from the books and could
| reference from my library, there might've also been a signaling
| benefit. Early in my career, I was a kid with no degree,
| working as an intern at a hardcore software&hardware
| engineering company. I suspect that, on occasion, the
| impressive library signaled to people coming by my work space
| that at least I had interest/ambition/hustle (or maybe just
| presumptuousness).
|
| Nowadays, the tech industry has _way_ too much signaling,
| posturing, and self-promoting. But, before I get too
| judgmental, I should remember when I was starting out, and at
| least had an inkling of awareness that colleagues seeing my
| books couldn 't hurt my opportunities.
| abc20230215 wrote:
| It would be good enough to create a pair-programming-free and no-
| tap-on-shoulder and no-approach-if-in-headphones environment...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Even if it did, would I use it to look things up, or would I use
| the internet? Because as much as I like the feel of a book, I'm
| not going to find a reference that's almost certainly already out
| of date for the things I need it for =/
|
| (and if it's for personal development, doubling down on the "is
| this book even current?")
| zwayhowder wrote:
| Some good questions there, for reflection or the dreaded "do you
| have questions for us" bit in the interview.
|
| With regards the library. Yes, but I paid for every book in it.
| And most are never touched. It's frankly a little depressing.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| Maybe if the books in your library aren't touched, that's a
| sign that the chosen books aren't the most valuable
| karaterobot wrote:
| On the other hand, my bookshelves are almost entirely full of
| books I haven't read. I get rid of most books after reading
| them to make room for more. In that sense asking whether I'd
| read every book on the shelf would be like seeing a
| refrigerator full of food and asking if I'd already eaten
| everything in it.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have a ton of books I might want to refer to though and
| there are things I do want to re-read now and then. (And a
| lot of new stuff is digital.)
|
| I've pretty much hit steady state though. No more
| bookcases/piles of books. I don't have a lot of incentive
| to go beyond that for now, though I'll probably donate at
| least a few more bags to my library's book sale at some
| point over the coming months.
| sritchie wrote:
| Haha, I think that's what the parent was hinting at with the
| "depressing" title.
|
| But I disagree with the diagnosis! As Patrick Collison says,
|
| > I guess I fall somewhere in the middle in the Umberto Eco
| theory of the library[0].
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_to_Travel_with_a
| _Sa...
|
| (Quote from https://patrickcollison.com/bookshelf)
| jppope wrote:
| (OP) Never considered the "do you have questions for us"...
| thats an interesting thought.
| rjsw wrote:
| I found it a bit depressing that I was the first person to
| borrow most of the books that I got out of a university
| library.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Yes, and it's all tech-heavy stuff, lots of equipment manuals,
| architecture handbooks, language manuals, etc. All stuff I've
| bought because I use it.
|
| I've had a few other on-and-off contract workers on site over the
| past few years. Everyone was far more likely to get wrong answers
| off StackOverflow than reading the (recommended to them) manual.
| Oh well, at least the pages don't get dog-eared!
| mindcrime wrote:
| Well, since the Fogbeam Labs offices are my home at the moment,
| the answer is "yes" as a I have pretty extensive personal
| library. I don't have all my books cataloged (shame, shame, I
| know) so I don't have an exact count of how many books I have,
| but it's somewhere over 1000 based on the last "back of the
| envelope" calculation I did. And I've bought more than a few book
| since I did that calculation.
|
| Sadly I'm pretty much out of room for books at this point, and
| I've actually had to pack up a few and put them in a storage
| unit. My "dream" home would include a library large enough for
| _all_ of my books and some room to grow. :-)
|
| And when we finally have an actual corporate office, there will
| probably be a library there as well. One day...
| bicx wrote:
| Do you read books as you put them in your library, or is it
| more of a collection of books that you are working your way
| through?
| mindcrime wrote:
| It's a mixture of both, but I will say that while I read
| fairly fast, I can still buy books faster than I can read
| them. So the unread portion is always getting larger. Which
| is kinda sad, but I'm at a point where I'm OK with it. :-)
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is an interesting list, some of the questions seem good, I
| like the ones that basically get at "are you learning from
| experienced employees."
|
| On the other hand,
|
| > Does your company care about diversity? If so are they hiring
| conservatives, the religious, or people with unrelated degrees?
| Hell are they hiring people without degrees or from places with
| no major metro around?
|
| This seems like kind of an annoying political gotcha question. If
| asked this question, I'd probably say "I don't really like to
| talk politics and religion at work" and I'd be a little worried
| that the person who asked it might like to talk politics and
| religion at work.
|
| Edit: I mean I'm not a robot, I know the political alignment of
| some of my close colleagues, but obviously no company in their
| right minds is collecting the data required to answer this
| question on a company-wide statistical level.
| Notorious_BLT wrote:
| The questions are meant to be asked of yourself, unless I'm
| mistaken. So I'm not really sure what you mean about "the
| person who asked it".
|
| I would speculate that the point of the question is that
| "diversity", in the corporate world, has some very specific
| meaning, and in my experience, it doesn't include these
| categories. My own employer does a lot of lip service to how
| important it is to have people from diverse backgrounds, and
| yet, somehow that seems to translate to "young people from many
| different ethnic groups who all lean liberal, have never
| mentioned their faith in the time I've known them, and have
| degrees".
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think you are right. I was looking at it through the lens
| of potential "now do you have any questions" type questions,
| like in an interview, as some of the other comments here have
| mentioned. But that isn't mentioned in the article. They are
| probably just for introspection that sort of question makes
| more sense.
| jppope wrote:
| (OP) Correct. The first couple sentences stress this, the
| questions are just mini thought experiments. Not an
| assertion of anything. Have fun with them, don't belabor
| them. If all or none of the questions aren't your cup of
| tea, who cares.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Yeah right. Your concern that massively overrepresented
| groups might be overlooked while underrepresented groups
| are emphasized is just a bit of fun.
|
| It's a fun position to be in where whether you get a job
| or not is just a thought experiment.
| fleddr wrote:
| You're still not getting it.
|
| The thought experiment regarding diversity challenges the
| (typically) inconsistent implementation of it where it's
| more like a candy story where you pick what you like (or
| deem socially acceptable) and dismiss or even discourage
| anything else. That's not true diversity. It's equity.
|
| Similarly, as you suggest that representation matters,
| and if you'd consistently believe that, then we should
| immediately reallocate a huge amount of women to do the
| shittiest, riskiest, lowest paid jobs that men currently
| do. Likewise, we should immediately deploy a huge amount
| of men in female-dominated professions, like HR,
| psychology, the like.
|
| I bet quite a few would now lose their appetite for
| "representation". We might as well just stop pretending
| and admit that we have no principles or beliefs, we just
| want whatever is best for us or our "group", whatever
| that means.
| tomlockwood wrote:
| Part of that is a reflection of the American population!
| America is increasingly ethnically diverse and irreligious.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| > When was the last time your senior manager said: "I don't know
| the answer, but I'll research and get back to you"
|
| This is not an interesting question. An interesting question is
| whether they ever got back to you.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| In 7th grade I had a question once and my teacher said he
| didn't know and he'd get back to me. And then he did! And I was
| so excited that he'd gotten back to me, but I'd also forgotten
| entirely that I'd asked the question in the first place; it was
| just a passing idle curiosity. For some reason he got really
| upset about this, and looking back I guess he must have put
| considerable time and research into finding out the answer, for
| something that I was really just spur-of-the-moment wondering &
| completely forgot about 20 minutes later. Although I think he
| didn't realize that the fact that I'd forgotten the question
| didn't really diminish the joy I had at receiving the answer
| days later.
|
| Anyway, it was during us studying the U.S. constitution and the
| question was about the order of succession in the case of the
| concurrent deaths of the president, V.P., Speaker of the House,
| and President Pro Tem of the Senate, so that it went to the
| Cabinet; I was wondering what order the Cabinet officials
| succeeded in. The answer is the order in which the positions
| were created, so Sec of State first, then Sec of Treasury, etc.
| I didn't remember this all these years later; you can find the
| info here: https://www.usa.gov/presidents#item-35877
| fleddr wrote:
| No need to get back to you when "putting a pin in it", going
| forward.
| [deleted]
| animanoir wrote:
| No, but my home, where I work, does!
| rwmj wrote:
| I have worked at a place which had a library (maybe still does).
| It was great to go and sit there reading a journal or borrow one
| of their copies of _Horowitz and Hill_. But also I can understand
| why these days companies probably shouldn 't have libraries. They
| should instead simply have quiet reading places and allow people
| to go off and research topics without pressure.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| My current company has the "hall of knowledge". I've contributed
| a few shelves to it.
|
| Previous company had a science fiction library.
| curiousDog wrote:
| Microsoft HQ has an awesome library. Every big tech should have
| such a space for some quiet reading
| ixtli wrote:
| Some of these really speak to me, but others, like the conflation
| of "diversity" with modern American political conservatism, are
| frustrating.
| fleddr wrote:
| That means its an ethically sound question, so you're clearly
| not getting the point of these questions.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Seems like a fair question to me. If not managed carefully,
| diversity is just simple racial bias (which has been illegal
| for a long time). These initiatives are usually justified as
| avoiding a monoculture that builds the wrong products or fails
| to understand its target audience - in which case considering
| American political conservatives seems reasonable.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| Not yet but I'm starting one!
| feoren wrote:
| Several of these questions are hinting at whether your company
| culture is overly stratified or not: e.g., do seniors ever ask
| juniors for help. I can sense the author has worked in places
| where he wished he asked those questions sooner, and I think
| they're good questions to be asking of a company.
|
| A couple of them highlighted, at least for me, how lonely it is
| to be one of the very few competent software developers in an
| enormous (non-software) company. I literally _can 't_ ever find
| someone who has actually done anything I'm working on, outside of
| my small team.
|
| But most of them are _utterly bizarre_.
|
| > If someone is really really good would you hire their wife? How
| about their friends?
|
| _What_!? Why on Earth would you ever even entertain the
| possibility of institutionalized nepotism? Not only is there
| absolutely no reason to believe their performance in your job
| would be related to your star employee 's, but other employees in
| the company will see this happening and either become completely
| disillusioned toward the idea that your company is a meritocracy
| (because it's _obviously not_ ), or they'll get pissed when you
| don't hire their spouses and friends too. No, I've never thought
| of this, because it's a _horrible_ idea. (Note that this is not
| the same as considering a husband /wife pair that want to be
| hired together; in that case you'd evaluate each on their own
| merits and do it only if they're _both_ good.) Have _you_ ever
| thought of showing appreciation for your star employee by
| shitting on her desk? No? Well then you 're not a DEEP THINKER
| like this author is!!
|
| > If someone is really really good why are or aren't they working
| with their friends?
|
| Is "their friends" a static set of people? Why can't they make
| friends at work? Why do friendship and professional life have to
| overlap at all? Is this like handing out Nerf guns to all new
| employees to make your office seem more fun?
|
| > Do you have any enemies? Why doesn't someone out there dislike
| your strongest beliefs? What do you value about your enemies?
|
| "Don't be a pussy, stand up and have some beliefs. If nobody is
| disagreeing with you, that means you're not taking a stand!" says
| the shitty high-school debate teacher sick of seeing his students
| check out in his class. This is a childish, black-and-white, lazy
| take, and it has no place in the professional world. You should
| not have "enemies" at work.
|
| On the other hand, there are people literally advocating for
| genocide in the world. So from that point of view, this should
| also be a tautology. I thought we were talking about work?
|
| > How often do you turn around and ask your self what aren't you
| asking yourself?
|
| "Dude, nobody ever just _stops and thinks_ anymore. I 'm the only
| one who gazes out of a bus window and actually _thinks_ about the
| world, man. Everyone is just sheep, man. Sheep people, man.
| Sheeple, man. But not me, man. Man. No, man. Dude. Man. _I 'm_
| the only deep thinker in the world, dude."
|
| - This author
|
| > What would you take a pay cut for? What would you work on for
| free that makes money for someone else?
|
| If you're making money for someone else, you're either getting
| paid or getting taken advantage of. This sounds like some half-
| baked inspirational poster: "what are you so passionate about
| that you'd do it even while I was hitting you with a rusty
| chain?" What? Why the fuck are you hitting me with a rusty
| chain!?
|
| Utterly bizarre.
| themanmaran wrote:
| Yea everyone is just replying to the title, not any of the sub-
| questions.
|
| The first 5 or so are pretty standard (but definitely
| indicative of a terrible work environment). Then you get
| weirder ones ("would you hire their wife", "do you hire
| conservatives", etc.)
| munificent wrote:
| I found the Internet got a lot more valuable for me when I
| decided to deliberately take the most charitable interpretation
| of what I read.
|
| _> > If someone is really really good would you hire their
| wife? How about their friends?_
|
| _> What!? Why on Earth would you ever even entertain the
| possibility of institutionalized nepotism?_
|
| It's a thought experiment. You likely spend the majority of
| your waking day at work. It seems like if you're trying to
| optimize your total quality of life, it would be great to have
| that time also include some of your close friends or partners.
|
| Now, if you're trying to entice a particular person to work at
| your company, is this a perk you would put on the table?
| _Probably_ not. But I find it interesting to consider what
| ideas are just unthinkable (as in we don 't even think to think
| it, not that we morally object to thinking it) because of a
| deeply ingrained notion of work/life separation.
|
| My father and his wife own a business together. That experience
| is clearly profoundly valuable to both of them. Perhaps the
| nepotism makes this a negative experience for some of their own
| employees. But maybe not. There are plenty of other famous
| examples of partners working together. Should we deny people
| like my dad and stepmom even the _possibility_ of this kind of
| life? What do we lose by having a black and white approach to
| nepotism?
|
| _> Why do friendship and professional life have to overlap at
| all?_
|
| Because the minutes of our life are finite. If we can spend
| some of those minutes at work _and_ with close friends, we 've
| enriched our lives and increased the number of experiences we
| can put in it.
|
| Why do we assume that we should spend most of our waking lives
| with people we don't particularly care about? That goes against
| the way humans have lived for almost the entirety of our
| evolutionary history.
|
| _> This is a childish, black-and-white, lazy take, and it has
| no place in the professional world. You should not have
| "enemies" at work._
|
| The article isn't clear about this, but it's not necessary to
| strictly interpret _all_ of these questions about the
| workplace.
|
| _> On the other hand, there are people literally advocating
| for genocide in the world._
|
| Do any of those people _know_ what you oppose them? You aren 't
| their enemy if they don't know who you are.
|
| Should they? What does it say about the causes you support if
| the people directly opposed to them don't even know you exist?
| Should they at least know about groups you support that oppose
| them?
| deanmen wrote:
| spousal hires exist in academia
| fleddr wrote:
| Your hysteric response isn't any less bizarre. Not every
| question has to have a profound meaning or be personally
| relevant.
|
| For example, you consider even entertaining the possibility of
| hiring the wife of a top performer bizarre, based on your
| explicit opinion that this is a terrible idea. That doesn't
| mean the question is bizarre. It's a normal ethical question to
| which you have a clear answer. What's the problem?
| srinathkrishna wrote:
| At my previous job, I ran a small-ish library at my desk. Just
| brought up all my books and had them under my desk for people to
| peruse and take.
|
| At current job, I do have a good enough library - but I hardly go
| into the office ;D
| ewhanley wrote:
| My first job had domain-specific libraries on certain floors,
| primarily geoscience and reservoir engineering. About a year
| after I started, they decided to liquidate the libraries to make
| room for more offices, and we all got to grab a few books. I
| still have a copy of "Statistical Methods in Research &
| Production" with a call number tag on the spine and ARCO ALASKA
| INC., LIBRARY stamped across the edge of the pages. It was cool
| to have a library available at work, and realistically most of
| the petroleum engineering stuff isn't available online.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| My current employer is a state agency. Yes there is a library.
| Most of the books in the library are legal books. All of the
| programming books are currently in our workgroup's offices. I've
| brought a few programming books from home, they're in my office.
| breck wrote:
| Microsoft has an amazing library in Redmond. I used to spend a
| lot of time there.
|
| You also could request any book and it would be waiting for you
| at your desk or reception, usually within a day.
|
| BG clearly values reading. I loved that.
| blakesterz wrote:
| My last job was in a corporate library. My job title was
| "Librarian". I was technically a Records Manager. The people I
| worked with appreciated the work I did and the found the library,
| and me, useful and helpful.
|
| Corporate librarians are out there and do good work!
| apetresc wrote:
| Which corporation, if you don't mind me asking? And did you
| have a background in IR/library science specifically, or just a
| generalist?
| blakesterz wrote:
| It was actually in a power plant, which was not as
| interesting as it sounds. At least most days. My masters
| degree is Library Science. I've had a weird and winding
| career. I'm a sysadmin now.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Library Science sounds fascinating. I always assumed you
| master dewey decimal and you collect your certificate as a
| librarian. What other (broad) topics does such a degree
| cover?
| blakesterz wrote:
| If there's a bad Dewey Decimal joke, I ain't heard it! I
| got mine in the late 90s, right when the web was taking
| over, so it was pretty different then. I was pretty
| lucky, I saw the web and went for it. I was a web master
| for one of the first ever online classes, and just kind
| of stuck with it over the years. The degrees are pretty
| tech heavy now, people end up doing all sorts of
| different things.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| It's a part of information science.
|
| Libraries are systems to organize large amounts of
| information (not necessarily physical locations, there
| are digital libraries now). So I imagine you learn
| sorting and indexing techniques, processes for getting
| information and metadata in and out of the system, and
| much more
|
| A library is a database of unstructured documents with
| structured metadata, which might need to be indexed,
| queried, and accessed in many different ways
| [deleted]
| Minor49er wrote:
| My first tech job had a small bookshelf dedicated to programming
| resources and business perspectives. I remember some MySQL and
| PHP books, and also Edward De Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" being in
| there
|
| Another employer had a book sharing Slack channel where people
| would share ebooks related to programming and software
| development
|
| Yet another one, which was completely remote, had an ebook
| service where you could request any ebook you wanted from Amazon,
| be it work-related or not, and they would order it for you for
| free. Everyone had a pretty healthy mix of work- and non-work-
| related items from what I remember
|
| All in all, I think over half of my employers in the tech field
| have had some kind of library or book service of some kind
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