Comment by conductr

This thread started by referencing grad students, and I can vouch for it from personal experience with physics grad students.

I don't know why mathematicians got lumped in with physicists further down the thread. In my experience this is a well known stereotype of physicists and while of course not universal you don't have to look very hard to see where it came from. In my experience mathematicians stay very much in their lane and often seem to be overly modest even within it.

The best/smartest professionals I meet operate this way (because we know we're wrong quite a bit and don't know everything). It's definitely a personality trait. Inquisitive, curious, intelligent, but also there's some metacognition involved where we can be confident in what we do NOT know.

In contrast, I studied chemical engineering for a short stint. First year, first semester chemistry classes and labs were riddled with these types of students. Tell you you're wrong, IQ 197, scoff when you ask a question, etc...

Listen, if you're the smartest person alive that's fantastic, but please don't talk down to me or the mere mortals that I prefer to hang around with. We get along much better and have a lot more fun saying "I don't know, let's find out".

Like your sibling comment I saw this mainly with physics people doing data science:

> Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people.

There is nothing more frustrating as a colleague than having a smart person walk in, insist you're all wrong, and then burn all the energy and goodwill in the organisation having to rebuild absolutely everything from the principles they currently understand because they refuse to listen to the experience that has built up already (in the entire field, let alone the organisation), only to produce something worse on every dimension than what already existed.

It's possible to step out of your area of expertise in a way that's confident but also humble. Arrogance is not necessary. The person who signs everyone's paychecks might be making it mandatory, but that's not quite the same thing.

    > we treat understanding new systems as something approachable

And, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers don't?

    > from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it's someone else's turf I'm blocked until they get back to me.

Humblebrag alert! This has little to do with being a physics grad student, and much more to do with your motivation.

You can get pretty much all the same benefits with additional upside and fewer downsides by just showing curiosity and eagerness to learn from others' expertise. Yes, on the internet you might get better answers by being confidently wrong rather than asking for help, but when talking to other humans directly you'll get a lot more people who will just try to end the conversation as quickly as they can if you're arrogant, whereas people tend to respond really well to respecting their intelligence and experience.

I've personally found that doing the opposite of what you say and being willing to look like the dumbest person in the room by asking whatever questions I need to for my own understanding often ends up working out quite well; people are often wonderfully willing to share their knowledge with me even if I feel like I'm asking something very basic as long as I'm actually being friendly and humble, and there are plenty of times where there have been others who told me they have same question but didn't feel comfortable asking.

In some ways, it's similar to when I played bass in two different bands in college. In one of them, I was probably the most talented musician in the group, and it was fairly boring for me to practice with them, but we needed it as a group, whereas the other was with a friend of mine who was an insanely talented guitarist possibly more talented in music than pretty much anyone else I ever met. I loved practicing in the second one because I'd learn so much from him just by exposure and getting to pick his brain, but I imagine it got boring for him sometimes as well having to wait for me to "catch up" to what was easy for him. Being the smartest one in the room feels like it would get old after a while, but having smarter people around to learn from is endlessly engaging.

It’s not about being in your lane. It’s about approaching things with an open mind plus the desire to solve the problem instead or proving yourself right.

It is quite possible to be wrong and not annoy people, and it's not even terribly difficult to learn. It does require a bit of humility and introspection though.

You don't have to not stray into areas you don't understand, but be humble when doing so - if you think something is being done in a stupid way, you probably don't understand it yet.

> Glazing as a service is a hell of a drug.

You my friend made my day.