Does anyone here hate having to do this? For example when something trendy kind of comes up you can kind of tell it’s just some low-effort buzzword companies are trying to use to boost their stock price or something - like, you can just sort of tell because of spidey senses or whatever.
For example, let’s say some bigwig goes to you and they’re like, “yo CS you like computers and shit so what do you think of using BLOCKCHAIN (or insert trendy thing here like omg CHATGPT) and how about you spend like all of next year making that happen.”
And then I’d want to just say that’s a dumb idea but in order to come up with a coherent argument I’d actually have to spend a good deal of time researching X and getting to know everything about X just to say why it’s a terrible idea, but then the time I spent doing that could have been spent towards fixing actual but boring problems like organizing spreadsheets on the company shared drive or maybe doing some of that data validation we never got around to because I keep getting roped into things like this.
Or I can just push back with something equally meaningless but that would make me no better, so…
Does being the person with this skill (thorough investigation of new, non-standard opportunities) make you valuable to the company, perhaps uniquely so? Do you think mgmt recognizes the value difference between a knee-jerk answer and a well examined answer?
Then there is the personal satisfaction you get from doing such work. Even if the company related questions above were positive, that would be more important if you feel you are portable.
If you are frustrated with mgmt’s prioritzation or distribution of tasks, do you want to be in mgmt?
I’d like autonomy over what I’m doing but not to the extent where the only thing I do all day is make decisions on what other people do.
Well, I like technology but a lot of it is hype and isn’t going to be the magic bullet executives think that will let them achieve the expense ratios they desire. A good example is shitty data, a tale as old as time. My preference is to do it the old fashioned way - hire a bunch of people to do basic but high quality data entry whereas upper management really, really wants to have a data scientist build statistical models to make up for poor data labeling but will probably never be able to handle edge cases, ever, and will require a hiring a bunch of IT people to maintain anyway.
So I’m like, how about we hire a person to learn how to do this labeling thing and then start labeling, and they’re like um no, make us a thing that will do it without having to hire the person. And I would cost at least 3 times as much as the person.
I can’t tell you how many certifications bootcamps actuarial credentials degrees it took me finally accept…no one gives a shit about my blockchain AI diploma
Executives dont understand this stuff and just feel like they need to follow the herd in order to keep their job. It’s a form of risk management when you think about it. In the sense that you’re less likely to be fired from a high paying executive job when you screwed up doing what everyone else is doing vs screwing up doing something that everyone else isn’t doing…
