[icedchai]

Do you really want to be "average" at your job? What do you really want to do?

I've worked with barely average developers and believe me, they frustrate the rest of the team. They'll copy-and-paste the same code 5x instead of asking where they should put a new module. They'll commit untested code into main, and leave it to the next guy to clean it up, just so they can close their ticket. Communication is often poor. We all don't know things. The problem with "average" is they don't ask questions.

[throwaway1183]

Yeah, totally.

At least I would try to communicate on important decisions. However, I have zero interest in making decisions, making presentation, trying to prove things or any of that. All I want is a task that is achievable in given allocated time and fits my skill level.

I have given up on hopes of learning. There is no such thing as learning after highschool. It's always one thing after another. College is chasing grades. Post graduate chasing papers. Never got a true chance to dive and learn. There is no room for failure. All I had to do was put of patch work to clear the subjects. How can I expect myself to be good when I have cheated the system throughout my life.

Hence, if I get the chance, I would love to be average. No responsibility. Slightly better pay. I feel I can study what interest me just to crush my own ego.

Hope it makes sense.

[icedchai]

It sounds like you just want to get paid and go home. I'm not going to judge, but I think you need to focus on specific industries, not job titles. All the roles you list can be quite demanding. Look for a non-tech, older company where they are set in their ways and have to deal with a ton of regulations. Think banks, insurance, defense, government.

[throwaway1183]

Oh!! Thank you!! These are the answers I am looking for because these never crossed my thoughts. These are boring and no one likes them! Exactly my taste.

[icedchai]

Good luck! Also, consider a tech adjacent role like "scrum master." I once worked with a scrum master who did an hour of work a day if he was lucky. I mean, he did eventually get laid off... but...

[Exuma]

Talk about a loser mentality. Stay far away from my companies … barf

[throwaway1183]

wow, what is wrong with being average and trying to enjoy life? I am pretty sure you have zero contribution to llvm, pytorch, react, vue, js, c, python, linux, or heck even the device you are typing. You also fall on same average category. If you had any idea, you would have written something about it.

The talent at top are polite enough to see the difference. Your arrogance reminds me of some egoist friend.

[Exuma]

You have so many warped views I don't even know where to start. God have mercy on your soul.

  I have given up on hopes of learning. There is no such thing as learning after highschool. It's always one thing after another. College is chasing grades. Post graduate chasing papers. Never got a true chance to dive and learn. There is no room for failure. All I had to do was put of patch work to clear the subjects.

  How can I expect myself to be good when I have cheated the system throughout my life. 

  I would love to be average. No responsibility. Slightly better pay.

  You also fall on same average category. If you had any idea, you would have written something about it.

These statements are the true definition of a loser. You should find a way to change that and contemplate how absolutely absurd the statements you are making are. Have a moment of deep self introspection and reflection instead of knee jerk whining.

Just the single statement alone "There is no such thing as learning after highschool" is quite literally one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Start with that one... contemplate how........ absolutely, and utterly, incorrect that statement is. If you disagree, then start to pick apart your reasons for disagreeing, analyze how others outside yourself seem to be doing it and you are not. Stop lying to yourself.

And most of all, raise your goal posts above being as mediocre as possible, jesus christ.

Contemplate, even further, how ridiculous it is that you think its only possible to enjoy yourself if you have no responsibility and are a mediocre piss-ant. I can't even type this without feeling physical pain at your views. I hope you are 18 years old or something, and these things will sort them self out for you later in life.

[badpun]

> These statements are the true definition of a loser.

I never got how someone who wants to simply get by by doing minimal (or prererably none, but that's not usually possible) amount of work is a loser, but someone who say inherited millions and does nothing their whole life is not a loser.

[throwaway1183]

Okay, so going by your definition, I am a loser. Your first attempt put me in a derogatory way saying, "Stay far away from my companies.... barf"

Then you stick to the idea of calling me a loser from your point of view. I don't know what you are trying to prove but I was just asking a question on a way to genuinely get by in life.

We do not live in the same world. So what rule applies to you doesn't apply to me. Yet still I asked this question because being an average has a statistically better chance (as the law of large numbers holds). I wanted to get a realistic view of average people and what they do. If you look at other comments of mine, I am not against learning. I am against the definition of learning which is phony. It is one thing to know something, and it is a different thing to learn. I have seen many so-called learned ones struggle with the applications of their knowledge. At that point, how do you know if the person has actually learnt anything? People can grow beyond their limits. There is multiple dimension in life. And learning doesn't necessarily mean always learning the next hype stuff or yada yada. That is practically useless.

I humbly request you to point out the number of situations in your life where you applied second-order partial differential equations to solve anything that you are doing. (If that rings a bell, that is.) Or heck even used some esoteric algorithms to improve some heuristics. Bet you still use the fundamentals you learned in college and apply them. Did you ever truly learn new things? Are you apt to catch up on all the buzz that is going on in the AI, dissect everything and teach to a high school graduate? Can you learn the graphics and say implement Gaussian splatting on your own system? Or even write your own transpiler to do something? I do not know your background. I do not understand why you are so offended here to think that I am a brainless person who burts or whines without thinking.

There are multiple thoughts and stages of thoughts before admitting something. You make it sound like I never tried. Trust me, I have. I have done more than you. It sucks to be blocked when I can't show any physical result of learning because of limitations from financial stuff. Then if someone would fund, there is a lack of confidence. The guilt that I may expend their resources over nothing.

The only reason I want to be average is because I know I am slightly above average say (51%). It is just easy for me down there to work in an average way. It is more relaxing. I don't have to challenge myself or pull out my hair. Then eventually I hope to find something else in life.

We have a different perspective on life. You think in your own way, to rise above mediocrity. I think of embracing it. I just want to know what are the options so that I can make some life choices.

I regret choosing a hard path in life. It never gave me anything. Now I want to stop pursuing it. Stop spinning in the wheel.

[Exuma]

Answering in order:

First of all, YOU are not a loser, but your viewpoints are. That is a large difference, as at ANY point you can have a moment of introspection to change your mind and beliefs, to be better. That's one of the greatest things about life is you can choose to be whatever you want to be, simply by doing it.

Tough love never hurt anyone, I find the best answer is the answer which resonates the truth. I personally don't prefer to be coddled and told "im a good boy" when my work fucking sucks. I want someone to tell me my work fucking sucks. This is the SHORTEST path from A->B (improvement), and if you respect your own time/energy, and care about efficiency, then it makes sense that this is a good approach.

Your third paragraph I don't even understand. Personally I learn for around maybe 1-6 hours per day depending on what I'm doing. Each morning starting at 5am I wake up, make coffee, and spend the entire morning getting in the right headspace learning about vastly different subjects through experiential learning. For example, an app I built recently that is doing well involves a large amount of statistics, and while I learned bayesian stats/linear algebra for a previous project/algorithm, I now have to re-learn a lot of things that I forgot. So I wake up, do that for hours, and I enjoy it, every second of it. All the things I'm learning I utilize in my own work. Another example: Ive spent the last 40 days converting/optimizing my 10+ year vim config to neovim, so for that I had to learn Lua (easy), how neovim works, etc etc. I've spent maybe 100+ hours on that alone over 40 days, ALL of that was learning. I have maybe 50 forum posts/IRC questions where all I did was learn for some purpose. Nowhere in here did i mention "hype stuff". Literally nothing in my day is concerned with hype. The vast amount of my time, 10-15 hours a day is spend coding on any one of my companies, learning all I need to for them (I am a solo developer on all of them with no tech employees).

> I humbly request you to point out the number of situations in your life where you applied second-order partial differential equations to solve anything that you are doing

I once spent over a year developing an ad network bidding optimization algorithm, and while it didn't involve differential equations it did involve a large amount of advanced statistics topics + machine learning topics, in essentially how to perform billions of ad auctions to optimize X with hundreds of input variables. I did that completely alone in my own bedroom. Ad network bidding mechanisms are black boxes because no one wants to expose how their X-priority pricing optimizations work, so I basically had to learn everything myself entirely from scratch, only scraping the bottom of the barrel with multi-year old white papers on ad network optimization. After some time doing this myself, just spending hours and hours each day doing this, I showed my work to the #2 developer at the largest mobile ad network at the time who developed their algorithm, and he told me that he was extremely surprised to see I got that far as a single person in the time I did, and mentioned it took their whole team to come up with something similar in a longer amount of time. And yet....... I didn't go to school for computer science. I literally went to college for the arts. Everything I have ever known is 100% self taught. I've never had mentors, classes, or anything. I dont even REMEMBER the things I learned in high school or college. Regarding graphics... one time I wanted to learn how rendering engines work so I learned all the math behind how to make a spinning 3d cube using different projection matrices etc, and then learned all the math that goes into that, and WHY it works. I'm horrible at math, btw. That took about a week, and I got to make a 3d cube, that had proper lighting etc, simply by just lots and lots of learning and reading. I have a HUGE amount of examples like this, literally hundreds over the many years.

I am not offended, I'm more disgusted, as anyone who personally sets their own goal posts far lower intentionally to "get by in life", has a repulsive mindset to me. It's literally "repelling". Notice I said the mindset, not the actual PERSON. I personally aim to be the best I can possibly be, in every manifestation of everything I do. Every single thing I partake in, I optimize/improve it, I try to be the absolute best at it. I'm not saying every person has to be like that, as obivously they are not, but they should not SEEK to be average, they should spend energy introspecting what blocks them. For me personally it feels organic, natural. Nothing to do with ego, and only to do with what "makse sense" in the most blinding way possible. We are put on this earth with free will, and the ability to grow, so why should the "grow" subprocess not take priority, as long as health and joy are balanced along with it. I find the actual process extremely rewarding and joyful.

It sounds like you should try to be an entrepreneur perhaps, where you will learn all of that on your own and actually do what you will. If you are smarter than average, then start utilizing it to its fullest potential. There are hundreds of millions of dollars to be made when you stop working for other people and work for yourself. That advice isnt good for most people though, but if you feel like you want to challenge your mind and USE the things you are better than average at, then do it. Theres literally so many avenues in tech that you can do that with, and they DONT involve........ startups, funding, or even other developers. I have worked with the same business partner for many years, and we have built countless very hard technical things that have absolutely crushed. I am not the smartest in the room (my last comment was an IQ test I took that was ~125, so nothing spectacular), but I am absolutely the best at integrating intelligent design with execution, in a way non-technical people can understand, while also getting my hands dirty with the most complex technical aspects, even if it means learning an entire part of a field to do it. This to me is the sweet spot.

What is your exact thing you are stuck on, if you had to distil it down into a single problem? Is it that you can't find a way to convert your above average intelligence into dollars?

[jstx1]

This isn't average:

> I have given up on hopes of learning. There is no such thing as learning after highschool.

This is refusing to learn at an industry where continually learning is one of the most important things you need to do. You're actively choosing to be bad at your job.

[throwaway1183]

I don't know how to argue on that. Learning is a slow process that takes time and effort. The results aren't visible immediately. Meanwhile industry wants to get the job done and be over with it. We are hired to work.

I don't want to go home and learn more about the things so that I can do the job better. There is literally no incentive in doing it better than just doing it alright.

I would rather learn things from diverse topics and interests that will benefit that I can enjoy in the long run.

[icedchai]

Learning is part of the job. Finding information on technical topics is soooo much easier today than it was 20 or 30 years ago! Watch youtube, download an ebook, look at somebody's blog. When I as a young teenager, learning about programming in the early 90's, I had to convince my parents to order physical books that would take weeks to arrive.

[android521]

By definition , most people must be average programmers. everyone cannot be 'extraordinary'. I am pretty sure that you're probably average too unless you're better than 99% of the programmers.

[Exuma]

I'm absolutely not talking about "average programmers", also I am better than average by a large margin (based objectively on what I have achieved alone as a developer/entrepreneur, and comments made by another developer who is a pioneer in his field, and one of the best developers I know), but that is beside the point. I'm talking about WANTING to be average, and the other assorted insane views this OP has.

Nothing wrong with being average programmer, everyone starts somewhere, and my early Stack Overflow questions are hilarious.

[badpun]

People don't start at being average. Average is (by definition) where majority of developers arrive at after years in the industry.

Also, it's perfectly fine to aim at being average - one may be aware of various limitations (health, intelligence, memory, ADHD and similar disorders, family situation) that will likely limit them to being average at best. If they aim for being a star despite those limitations, they risk burning out and getting nowhere.

[badpun]

That's not average, that's bottom of the barrel. Average developers do a decent enough job, but aren't super fast about it. They also can't conceive of large refactorings in their head, don't follow all the latest trends in their area of expertise etc. They're just average. Majority of working developers are like that, by definition.

[throwaway1183]

It seems like both of us have similar definition of an average. That's really cool that you got my idea of being average. Thank you!

So do you have any clue how I can optimize the position in the industry? I am interested in the most of the subtopics in the field of computer science. I just want to find a route with highest reward for an average developer.

Apparently average research engineers makes a lot compared to say web developer, but the route requires PhD.

What do you think is a good track?

[badpun]

Those "average" PhD researchers are in reality all very smart and hard working people. If you want big salaries, people who get them often have PhD degree from top20 universities in the world. They will be your competition when interviewing.

In general, if you want to maximize money, it does not make sense to go into any hard and niche fields (graphics, machine learning research etc.) because they're filled with very talented enthusiasts, and if you're not that, you will have a very hard time even being average in such fields. Not to mention that such fields often (but not always) pay less that your run of the mill backend development job, and have 1000x less open positions, which means it's harder to apply for jobs, you may have to move more often etc. It's basically all downsides pretty much, and the only upside is being able to work on your passion - which is what motivates people who get into those fields.

[throwaway1183]

> It's basically all downsides pretty much, and the only upside is being able to work on your passion - which is what motivates people who get into those fields.

Yes!! I can totally relate to what you are saying. I got started because I was interested and I am still passionate about it. But there is only so much that I can do. It just doesn't make sense for me to continue for PhD because even with PhD there is no guarantee that I would be able to get somewhere as I am definitely not someone coming from those top20 universities.

So by definition I rule out the chances of being an average research engineer. That's one clarity! Thank you!

Since I have most background in hard niches as you mentioned above, is there a way to transition to something else? What would the possible path be like if my ultimate goal is to become staff engineer or principal engineer?

[badpun]

This really depends on your previous experience. If, for example, you have previous experience with C++ (which is what is often used in those hard niches), it would make sense to just apply to generic C++ roles, and work your way up to high salary by getting promotions or changing companies. If you're in the US, it probably wouldn't hurt to apply to FAANG-type companies, as they rely heavily on the leet code, so your lack of concrete experience in things they do will not be a big problem (likely will just get you a low pay grade, but you can change that with promotions later).

[icedchai]

I've met several PhDs in "data scientist" positions that write complete garbage code. Simply having a PhD (or any other degree) doesn't mean you'll be a good engineer.

[icedchai]

You are correct. I was being polite, thinking about people I've worked with in the past. They literally commit untested, not even runnable code with syntax errors, merge it into main, and wonder why other people are frustrated. It goes beyond "attention to detail" issues which are also very common with average developers.