When you (or the author) say programming, do you mean the literal act of typing code? Or do you mean the larger concept of building/delivering software?

I’m reading the book now. A fair ways into it - it’s like a heavy duty analysis of the office masquerading as a wannabe 48 laws of power or whatever other psychopath armchair psychology books you can think of. Not that it’s terrible, I just think the author’s claims are overstated and exaggerated.

I’m definitely somewhere between the author’s definition of “sociopath” and “clueless” but I think simplifying something as complex as organizational human behavior into such narrow categories is futile and dumb.

A lot of the conversation talk (powertalk, etc) comes really naturally to me but I guess it doesnt for a lot of people in tech with lackluster people skills. So none of it really reads like shocking revelations to me.

Dont mean to tear it apart but i wouldnt treat that book as your bible, seems like an easy way to become miserable.

^that all said I’m a naive noob with very little industry experience. Maybe I feel differently in ten years. I learned a lot of this power dynamic bullshit in my old career.

jjshabado, The book doesn't define programming, and it uses indistinctly programmer and software developer.

I think when it uses programming I see it like the activities you do in the role of programmer, but it varies from company to company. So to answer your question I would say the larger concept of building/delivering software

To be qualified for a 7-figure job, your career has to be about demonstrably adding value and for most people that are not world-class experts, that generally means having a variety of useful skills and being resourceful enough to apply them wherever you can add value. I don't even know what it means for your career to "about programming" or "about management" - that's not how any even semi-successful person frames their career. You're going to need a lot of skills not directly related to coding to get there, but that's true even for a senior engineer role at a reasonable company.

A very small percentage of project managers (you could substitute this for any function, including "programmers") are qualified to be CTOs at a large company that employes a large number of technologists. Again, it's not about what you happen to be doing right now, it's more about what skills you have, what kind of motivation you operate with and what skills you can pick up in the future.

Your future is far more about who you are than what you happen to be doing at the moment. The main reason why future tech/business leaders are more likely to have been software engineers (or in adjacent roles in tech), IMO, is that a lot of the young elite are going into tech. A significant percentage of the people who would've become investment bankers, management consultants and lawyers at top law firms, are instead starting their careers at tech companies, because these are some of the best jobs for those coming out of top schools.

A lot of these people would've been successful regardless of what they did in their first job - them going into tech makes it more likely that future leaders will come from tech.

I didn't read the book but I imagine it reads a lot like the red pill type of nonsense, but applied to the office setting. Whatever is correct in these types of content is usually super obvious stuff and what's not super obvious is usually wrong. The real problem is that the applicability is inversely correlated with the quality of people you surround yourself with and it's far more important to be in the right crowd than to optimize your standing in the wrong crowd. The likely outcomes of taking this type of advice seriously are either 1) being demotivated and not improving your situation OR 2) optimizing your mentality for small wins in terrible situations and never being able to improve your situation.

My personal experience - I'm old, have a pretty good memory and know lots of people in a wide variety of situations so I feel it's pretty applicable - is that people who are trying to game social situations or play politics or whatever, don't do very well in life. You don't need to, it's not that hard do very well in life if you're motivated. And I think the biggest problem with a cynical approach is that it's tiring and demotivating even when it leads to a few locally optimal decisions.

I whole heartedly agree with this.

If you’re in a career with very limited advancement potential - playing politics / power games *may* be advantageous. I’m thinking situations like in the days where you spent your whole career at a single company and most advancements required someone above you to leave and competing against your immediate peers.

That is not tech or software development. It’s ok to switch jobs. It’s relatively easy to find fast growth companies to work for. A network of people that you’ve worked with that know you do good work + are pleasant to work with will pay way more dividends than almost any other silly advice. It doesn’t take long in your career to gain meaningful contacts spread across a large number of companies.

i've been reading some peter thiel-derivative writing lately about memesis as a source of pointless conflict. like, my niece doesn't even like a certain video game, but when the family is playing it, she insists on playing and cries whenever she loses. whenever you find yourself in struggling with others in zero-sum games like office politics, try to reframe your problem by reminding yourself what your long-term goals are. why did you join that company? was it to fight the guy next to you for that next promotion? i find that that tactic refocuses me on the right goals and is very calming. ultimately, playing stupid games to win stupid prizes in a small pond doesn't matter to achieving my long-term goals, which will be directly impacted by what i'm devoting my effort to today, and barely at all by what my coworkers are doing.

Not sure where this idea of cynicism in the approach came in. Are there shitty people to work with in software development? Of course. Are there great people to work with? Of course. For me I still get such a kick from developing software that I feel extremely fortunate to be a developer. I’m old too, still is a great ride. Pointing out that perhaps some discretion is called for in pursuing your career is cynical?

This is sort of a nit, but sort of not. Office politics isn't a zero-sum game and you probably shouldn't treat it like one.

i may have been oversimplifying. the point i was trying to convey was that we often get wrapped up in low-sum games because we're wired to try to outcompete others, even when there are huge opportunities just sitting around for you that you're not exploiting.

Even within a company, sometimes you get caught up in who gets assigned some prestige project and forget about the greenfield idea you have that could really transform the business.

Yea I don't get this whole zero-sum game. Don't be a dick and do some good work and good things will come to you... if it doesn't, go find a different company that will treat you better. Easy game.

I find that people who spend time over-analyzing why their managers or companies are terrible and that they can't get promoted because of X, Y, Z are usually terrible to work with. If it's that bad, then move on and get the fhk out. I'm tired of people whining.

Interviewing is really hard and stressful and time consuming.

Admittedly, now is a pretty great time for devs.

I'm not actually sure what you're saying here but the author is using the same term to describe his ideas (to be fair I have not read the book):

Also the definition of cynical would seem useful, from Google:

From just reading what DontGoft and jmakin are saying about the book, it seems fairly clear to me that to fully accept what the book is selling as the truth is to be cynical.

This is true but it's not a bad thing. In my ideal world, people that are willing to deal with things that are hard and stressful should have more opportunities. Given that good opportunities are, almost by definition, limited, if it's not effort that decides who gets them, it's going to be something much more unfair.

Leetcode premium for coding + read about and practice system design questions. Focus on becoming a strong IC before looking for team lead roles.

I’m not doing very good at these practice problems. I could articulate the approach and think of the solution and pitfalls to most of them but when it comes to the actual coding I’m slow as hell and need to rely on googling a lot of things.

I’m not sure how much practice is gonna help me but I’m probably just rusty

Practice is everything. There aren't really that many potential interview topics

It's usually recommended to do Leetcode type practice questions for a couple hours a day for a couple months prior to interviewing, so if you are just starting it makes sense you would be struggling a bit.

If I tried a lot of those questions right now I would struggle a bit too I think, but after a couple weeks of practice most questions would be quite easy.

That makes me feel better but I dont have a few months. Didnt get paid today. It’s time to go.

Luckily I am good at articulating solutions even if I cant write them up, that has carried me before.

It’s not the problems that are giving me trouble it’s the coding.

Sorry to hear that man. I don’t think I would be working until they got caught up on pay that’s for sure.

Lol i’m not, really

Just read a random suzzer post in the wild on hn posted within the last 10 mins!

Jmakin,

Sucks to hear that of course but you learned some super valuable stuff and are very smart. If you give the leetcoding some time you will get really good at it. Its basically memory and pattern recognition with a side of being good at figuring out puzzles. All of which you are highly skilled at.