i hesitate to pursue a career of any kind, especially tech, because of all this. you have to have a pretty good personality and charisma in order to work well with your manager, or else you will make no progress which means you get fired. people are born with all kinds of quirks, peculiarities and qualities. while im a better programmer than most of the people who i went to college with, i have a special problem with my personality and charisma. i have absolutely zero intuition about what to say to other human beings. conversations with me are always like chewing sandpaper, unless they focus on some very narrow interests of mine. conversations that are very focused and intellectual always get a good response but i seldom meet people who want to have those even among engineers. 99 percent of the people i meet, even among "tech" people, i am rejected. i guess ill just scrape by.
>conversations with me are always like chewing sandpaper, unless they focus on some very narrow interests of mine.
Basically, that's the problem. In order to establish a repertoire, you need to have more than dense interests. It's cool to be passionate about one or two hobbies. Lots of people have none, and this makes conversation dull. However, it is vital you can maintain ordinary conversation on lay topics too -- It's strange to not be able to talk about the local flair, family or relatives, hot vacation spots, annoying ordinances, and neighborhood politics. If you can't maintain a casual conversation about some the above, you are quickly deemed "dangerous", as you failed the "same species as me" test.
This is not an indictment of you. Just plain fact.
The good news is that it's straightforward to learn. Plain osmosis works. Find some meetups which you won't find totally repulsive (say, boardgames, movies, etc) and just listen to how conversations between normals work. You can literally copy and paste these and pass the "am I human" Voight-Kampff tests with this information.
> unless they focus on some very narrow interests of mine.
I think OP's problem is that "other people" are not an interest of his. If it was, he'd never run out of things to talk about with these other people.
I also think that's a main reason people find those who can't keep up a conversation disturbing. They sense that you're not interested in them, and that makes you potentially dangerous.
I think the problem is that most casual conversation just isn't relevant. If we're having a conversation to have a conversation, what's the point?
I happen across a lot of conversations where people are just blabbing at each other, but don't actually listen to what the other is saying (or are clearly not interested in what each is saying), but still continue to have a conversation. I don't get that...
"If we're having a conversation to have a conversation, what's the point?"
You're actually halfway there with the question. Indeed, the point is not conversation, or at least not the literal contents of the conversation.
When I was younger, I had a hard time understanding this stuff too. I'm not 100% sure why (I'm not convinced I'm even slightly on the spectrum, but it's not out of the question entirely; it's also just possible that I was simply too different as a kid from the other kids), but one of the steps to resolving it is just to realize that yes, there is logic to almost all of what is going on, and it isn't actually that complicated of a logic either. The biggest impediment to not being able to understand these interactions is the belief that you can't understand them, or that there's some sort of virtue in not understanding them. The second-biggest impediment is the belief that these things are essentially irrational, in the older sense of "essential" as meaning something like "inseparable from the whole"; there is actually a level on which this is all shockingly rational behavior. Once you get over those ideas, and accept that the surface levels and what's actually going on in the relationship between two people is not the same thing, it doesn't really take long to figure out what's going on.
(There's... a few other ideas you'll find you may want to discard. For instance, while politically incorrect today, there are reasons to be initially distrustful of people not in "your group". If you can't believe that's true today, it was certainly true in evolutionary terms. So there are instinctual protocols for determining whether someone is "in" or "out", and there are reasons for them, and there are reasons why they involve difficult-to-forge signals like simply knowing some in-knowledge from a culture, or burning time on seemingly-inconsequential conversations. And these things operate at instinct level; it doesn't matter if you think they are wrong, out of date, or politically incorrect; they do what they do anyhow. Start putting a few of these things together and it all starts making much more sense. There's reasons why these things exist and persist.)
Unfortunately, I don't really think I got what you were intending to say with this message.
You basically said there 'is' a reason for inconsequential conversation, but then only proceeded to hint at it's existence outside the last paragraph, and that was described as a different idea I might want to discard.
As such I can only hope that I'll eventually figure it out as I get older. So far the only thing I'm finding out as I get older is that humans are indeed irrational, and that often you just have to deal with that.
a lot of time it is to signal interest and create so called social lubricant. It is not about the content of the conversation, but more about having a conversation with someone from the group.
I’m a little bit on the spectrum, but what’s helped a lot for me was to go on drinking sessions with people from widely different backgrounds (teacher, lawyer, businessman, trainers, other types of engineer, social workers).
I was lucky in that these were instigated by my more outgoing brother, but I picked up a lot of the patterns which smooth these interactions, to the extent I can have decent conversations. Helps to be able to code switch as well. You’re not necessarily going to have a deeply intellectual discussion every time, and that’s fine.
This is what is generally referred to as "soft skills" in the industry, and is given way too little importance by engineers until it is too late. Obviously technical knowledge is important, but at the end of the day shit only gets done if people are collaborating and working well with each other.
I mean, what other magical field allows otherwise difficult to get along with individuals to have a full time job? There’s tons of leeway for weird socialization in tech. While the soft skill requirement goes up year over year, it’s still not the same as many other fields. I guess night time clerk at a gas station...?
anyways all these social skills are learnable. But only if you think they are, truly believe it, and only if you try. It might be hard. But hey.
Also consider therapy. Consider it a way of learning how to operate your mind.
Its definitely an important quality to be able to sweet talk and create pleasant relationships with the other colleagues.
But for myself it becomes really hard to do so with people, with whom my relationship might have downgraded, which in a working environment can have a serious impact in your progression, your evaluations and how much respect other people actually give you.
On the tech side, I have also felt that most people don't want to talk about anything related to tech, or when they do it's rather vague and blank, without properly backing up there convictions.
It would be nice to be able to share experiences with other employees regarding their favorite programming languages, opinions on the new X/Y/Z language, what could be done to improve our project, and so on. But most conversations don't evolve to any of that, it's mostly making fun of each other (on a nice way), flirt, sports and gibberish.
I am currently trying to gain knowledge after work on different topics such as: Docker, Kubernetes, services exposed by Cloud Providers (Azure on my case) and how to manage/deploy them, but I don't think anyone from my team would ever be interested in talking about it, which simply makes me feel like I am on a place where I don't belong.
You sound like a good fit for tech actually. Every company is different, and even within companies there is much diversity across groups. Part of why networking (and interning) is important is to find people that you can easily talk with. There is much less risk if you are accepted into the tribe before you hire on. From my perspective personal hygiene is more important than social skills, I care less about being offended than I do about getting sick.
Change the way you think about it. Gamify conversation. Don't try to learn intuition about conversation flow, teach yourself through observation which I'm sure you are probably very good at.
i would say both renting and buying a house are bad ideas. when you rent, you have to pay a huge amount of money to pay for your landlords premium gasoline for his lambo. when you buy (in a city), you are having to take on the cost of every other person who bought before you -- nobody ever willingly sells a house for less than they bought it, so houses are like ratchets that go up and up and up in price. when you buy a house in a city you are also paying for someones premium gasoline. its an endless cycle of people buying the house and making it more expensive.
i would say that buying a remote home is where its at. with solar power, electric cars, self driving (even in its current state), and the soon-to-be mesh of satellites that will provide decent internet to every corner of the globe, along with a whole lot of other things, remote land and home ownership is a very exciting prospect indeed.
most of the cost of a house in a city or heavily populated area is in the land (location) and in paying for the profit margin of all the buyers who came before you. so building your own house on remote land is extremely affordable because there were few previous owners and its not close to anything -- you dont need financing like with a regular house.
i saw a story, i believe it was here actually, about a woman who bought a cheap house somewhere remote but good, and just did a four hour commute on the train. you can make just about anything work. and from my perspective, having your own land and a place to sleep that is truly your own is so fundamental and vital that extreme measures feel justified.
i currently share an apartment with a bunch of people. our complex holds at least 200 or 300 units. at an average of two thousand dollars for each unit, all 200 of them. the people who own this complex bring in almost half a million dollars every month before taxes. a while ago, a pipe broke in our kitchen -- a pipe behind a wall, underground that carries sewage. our entire kitchen and dining area were flooded with foul water. it took them almost a month to even get someone to look at it, even though i visited the office every day to remind them that half of my home was flooded with foul water. their response was that getting a plumber to do a job like this is very expensive, so they had to go though a bidding process instead of just hiring someone asap. i dont have a lot of money or free time so i was powerless in this situation. eventually, the pipe was fixed. when you rent, you are powerless. the power dynamic is obvious both in principle and in experience. why then are so many people eager to enter into this demented arrangement in which they are essentially a modern peasant?
i think everyone should own some kind of house somewhere because there is absolutely nothing worse than getting stuck without somewhere to stay. life is chaotic, rent is very expensive in many areas and housing can be difficult to come by and there have been times when i almost wasnt able to find housing. definitely one of the worst feelings ive ever experienced. unlike some people, i have no nets to catch me. if i had a remote home, not finding housing in the city would transform from a ulcer-inducing nightmare into a short vacation back to the country while keeping an eye out for good housing on craigslist.
i recently saw a paper that called into question the expansion of the universe. i think it was by a man called eric lerner. he provided evidence that seemed pretty convincing. is there anything to this?
can anyone give me advice? im starting a small online service that will charge customers -- i guess you could call it a "saas." i am the only person whatsoever involved with this project. am i required to incorporate if i start charging people for my online service? do i have to file taxes as a business? isnt there a clear and straightforward guide for this kind of thing?
Lawyer here, but not your lawyer. We're just talking about generalized nonspecific hypotheticals here.
You aren't required to incorporate at all (but in many cases it's the best course for mitigating risk). People start businesses all the time without forming a separate entity. However, in the eyes of the law, that means that you and your business are one and the same. So if the business does a Bad Thing, you as an individual are responsible for all of the consequences of such Bad Thing. Similarly with taxes, all of the business' income gets attributed to you as an individual. Most people don't want these two things to happen, so they form an entity. You can go without, but it comes with significant risk, and you may end up forfeiting favorable tax treatment as a result.
These same issues get more complicated as soon as you involve others. Talk to your accountant. And consider what your risks are and how much your business is going to make. Find legal assistance for small businesses, or talk to a business lawyer as soon as you can.
You would want to talk to a lawyer (which, if you are starting a business, you will want to have one), but you are not required to incorporate your business if you don't want to. However, incorporation does offer several benefits, which is why some people choose to do it.
this is what frustrates me. i cant afford a lawyer. from the looks of it, i cant afford to incorporate either. how is anyone supposed to bootstrap themselves these days?
Same way you'd bootstrap if you needed developers, and couldn't afford to hire developers. You can either study and try to do it yourself, you can offer equity (although lawyers are generally smarter than developers in this area, and few will take just equity, but you might be able to find someone), or you do it the old fashioned way and get a small business loan from a bank.
Although, as has been said, you don't need an LLC if your business is not "there" yet.
You definitely do not need a lawyer. And you don't need an LLC either. Both of which are definitely "premature optimization".
If you are in the US, you can just use your SSN and sign up directly with your payment processor as a sole proprietor.
If things take off, you can start worrying about talking to a lawyer. You really won't have any reason to form an LLC until you need to hire real employees (W-2 employees).
i appreciate the effort to make video content accepted here on hn, but this is not video content that i think should be on the front page. this is flat out not very intellectually interesting.
do not buy an xps. i bought a thirteen inch xps and the linux compat has some minor issues and the power supply died on me less than a year after purchasing it. my next computer is a thinkpad for sure.
we seriously need a better solution for toilets. toilets use huge amounts of water. if you want to have a toilet in a moving vehicle, or anywhere that is not directly connected to a sewage line and a giant water treatment plant, then you are just out of luck because all the mobile toilet solutions out there suck. it amazes me that a good solution has evaded us for so long.
when considering how to travel where-ever i want and for cheap i considered a van or rv. in both cases im stuck chasing after land installations that allow me to essentially use a toilet. with the rv, you have to offload somewhere and with a van you have to be near someone else's toilet.
the best solution i can think of is to have a special toilet that uses plastic bagging. a continuous sleeve of plastic is fed through the toilet and lines the inside of the "bowl" and is sealed at the bottom of the bowl forming a plastic bag. waste is collected and then the plastic material is rolled out -- so the bag descends and is replaced with new plastic material above. plenty of extra plastic is reeled out and a heating element comes in and seals the bag above the waste, simultaneously creating a new "bag" to catch waste and sealing completely the waste in the old bag. the end result is a completely clean bowl and fully contained waste. the waste bags could then be disposed of in an incinerator or a processing plant at some later time. the bag could be made biodegradable and a sterilizing agent added to the bag before its sealed to allow the bags to be disposed of without processing.
Yeah uh, water is at least fairly easy to reuse and isn't "wasted". My old apartment recycled water on site (one of the first in north america to do it) for the toilets/landscaping. If cities would just put in non potable water lines and make it code for new buildings to use it for toilets and landscaping we'd really reduce how much drinking water is used.
im not sure how you and every single other person who responded to my comment came to think that this was about saving resources. the only reason i dont want to use water is because water is a terrible way of taking care of waste on a mobile platform. water is super heavy and you have to use a lot of it each time you flush. and on top of that, the result is a toilet that slowly gets super dirty. plastic is better because you could store hundreds of "flushes" in a small box that doesnt weigh anything and because the toilet is totally and completely clean after every flush assuming all the waste stays inside the bowl and doesnt splatter up and out all over the place (which is a pretty good assumption). and lastly the waste can be stored with almost the minimum possible weight overhead and doesnt make its storage tank dirty or smelly. overall you have a lightweight, highly clean and maintenance free system.
in the end, water and plastic are largely the same thing. oxygen, hydrogen and carbon are all you need to make either. recycling plastic will, in the future, be trivial. same with water and all other substances.
I follow the van dwelling scene a bit (got a site in the space: https://vanspiration.com) - it seems that many beforehand overstate the need for a toilet. Those moving a fair bit amongst urban areas often make-do with public or business toilets and go months without needing to use their in-van solution. Those out in the bush are digging holes.
Many will typically have a pee bottle, and then a bucket double-lined with plastic bags and filled with dirt or cat litter. There are contoured lids that fit over common bucket sizes and make something of a seat.
There are loads of cassette-type portable toilets too.
kids who are not raised well are usually the ones who turn to things that are not looked upon well by their community and society. or kids who have some kind of festering problem. there are a some kids who are given zero guidance by their parents in school or life, or who are sabotaged by their parents, and if those kids are not exceptional in some way they will fall behind socially and academically. in this society, falling behind socially and academically to the point where you feel like you cant catch up is sort of like being handed a death sentence. so if you have no future, or you are convinced that you dont, then what is the point of avoiding cancer? what is the point of anything?
i was riding my bike last night and was almost home when i came upon the four way stop in front of my complex. it was very late at night and there were no cars. there was not a soul there -- totally quiet. so of course i didnt stop for the stop sign and of course a cop pulled up right as i did it. i was pulled over, questioned and given a huge fine for doing something completely safe and well-intentioned. we need to change our laws so that cops cant pull over random black people and hand out huge fines to people who arent threatening the community.
this is a waste of time. besides all the great points made elsewhere, about the availability of land, there is the fact that this technique does not provide a good house. concrete houses are usually re-enforced with steel. where is the re-enforcement? concrete is supposed to have "aggregate." without it, you basically have a pile of hardened mortar that expands and contracts way too much when exposed to water.
