Wednesday Wisdom

Hot take: If you want to work in this field, you need to understand computers.

Read and watch at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/keeping-it-real

You might be a distributed systems genius or the world’s best leet coder, but without tech support, your life would be miserable. Remember that next time you go to IT.

Read at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/appreciate-your-it-support.

 Interviewing is a skill and, much like penalty shootouts during major soccer tournaments, can be trained. Raw talent helps, but in a pinch, preparation beats talent and experience nine times out ten.

Read, watch, and subscribe at: https://josvisser.substack.com/p/candidates-please-prepare

It's a magical quality that will save you, even when you (like me) are the dumbest person in the building...

Read (and maybe watch) at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/getting-stuff-done.

I typically spend a large part of the weekend and most of the public holidays resisting the urge to sit down and do some work. That is obviously a terrible state of affairs and it is not a lot of fun either, so what’s up and why not give in?

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/taming-the-monkey-brain

Being certain means that you don’t have to think about anything anymore, which results in more speed. You might be going in the wrong direction, but at least you are going fast, which is a great boon for all the people who confuse motion with progress. It also makes you look decisive...

Listen here or read and subscribe at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/the-unfortunate-desire-for-certainty

English is a great language and given that we all have to work together we need to speak a common language. I don’t care whether that’s English or something else, but since, for better or for worse, it is English (much to the chagrin of the French. by the way), let’s be aware that many people speak, read, and write English phenomenally well, but not perfectly, and let’s have that awareness influence our communication.

Read the full article, with bonus content at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/you-can-read-this

You should give yourself time to really reach the summit of any mountain you are going to climb, but you need to attack that mountain with a plan, and not just start ambling up the incline...

Read this article at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/ramping-up-is-hard-to-do. Includes bonus links!

Great chefs know more than just the recipes. They understand _cooking_.

Read the full article (with video!) at : https://josvisser.substack.com/p/the-black-box-engineer

Your value to the company is not that you can design the shiny city on the hill, that’s the easy bit. Your value is that you know how to get there while keeping the swamp that you are in right now functioning.

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/the-swamp-and-the-city