Comment by neutronicus
1 month ago
From a one-time physics grad student, I do think there advantages to being ... like this.
The flip side of being confidently wrong sometimes is that we treat understanding new systems as something approachable. So, yeah, it's annoying that we don't stay in our lane, but, 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.
Like, ultimately you can't be a knowledge worker by just waiting for answers and instruction from experts and relaying them back and forth. Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people.
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.
But there is a difference between not listening to experience and examining whether the resulting implementation/decisions based on the experience are actually valid. I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it, that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence.
At least in my experience (as a physics grad), me and all my fellow grads are much more likely to apply Chesterton's fence and then make decisions than not doing that and steamrolling existing decisions.
> I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it
You're actually doing the problem behavior right here: denying the validity of the experience of seeing exactly this happen, not as a one off, but repeatedly in completely separate situations and institutions.
> that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence.
I mean the problem is they're arrogant. The two aren't mutually exclusive, far from it.
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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.
And, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers don't?
Humblebrag alert! This has little to do with being a physics grad student, and much more to do with your motivation.
I guess all I'm doing here is arguing that a little hubris can help a person avoid being timid, and far be it from me to say that computer scientists, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers have not been imbued with any hubris by their educations.
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.
Yeah, I guess my point is that IMO a lot of people have so little interest in solving the problem that they aren't even approaching it at all, open mind or no.
It's not my experience that I'm constantly arguing with people, for what it's worth. I get positive feedback for being willing to work on areas of the codebase I'm not already familiar with, and develop an understanding of areas of the codebase no one is familiar with.
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.
I agree!
Missteps are inevitable, though.