[ChrisMarshallNY]

I’ve encountered this regularly.

I love to learn. I never want to stop learning.

Apparently, I’m in a minority.

I have often offered to work with folks, and teach them how to develop shipping software. This is something I’m actually fairly good at, having done it, my entire career. I’m retired, now, but continue to develop shipping software. I often offer to do so, with others, so they can learn in an actual production context.

Valuable stuff. They could actually learn skills that could boost their own careers into LEO.

Instead, they invariably ask me to do it for them, or, more annoyingly, say they’ll do it, then never show up, and castigate me for going ahead without them.

[toomuchtodo]

Meta: This is why HN attracts curious people. They are rare. Finding and hiring them is hard. The forum cultivates for them, like gardeners tending a garden for pollinators. My best tip for hiring has always been "Hire curious people with a proven ability to build, get out of their way, and retain them as long as you can by meeting their professional expectations (comp, work experience, meaningful work, broadly speaking)."

Find Your People - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074017 - May 2025 (283 comments)

(strongly agree working with people who do not care or do not want to learn is soul crushing, engineer around it to the best of your ability, or change your operating environment to improve upon it, when able to; your time and energy is non renewable)

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Thanks for that link.

I think one of my advantages has been, that I’m a high school dropout, with a GED. I never took a matriculated college course.

Almost all of my education has been practicum. I learn by do.

Having to direct my own education has been both liberating and exhausting.

I haven’t had any “tracks,” since I was 16.