Glen, I have always had a similiar experience, albeit on a different path. Every computer program I've written, maintained, upgraded, or assessed has been intrinsically part of a real-world process. The fun thing for me has been understanding the real-world business, mission, process, or system. Over the course of roughly fourty years, I've learned about a huge variety of industry, military, and business activities. Just in the last 10-15 years I've learned about pipelines, gas, awl bidness, 'lectric utilities, and railroads. What's even more amazing to me is that things I learned 30 years ago keep coming back up - GPS is a neverending resource I keep calling back up for control systems, Smart Grid, mobile phones, radios, ships, and all kinds of other systems.
BTW, the difference is that I've rarely actively looked for something new - it always seems to land in my lap. Sometimes, my hobbies have rolled over into my work. About 15 years ago, I was gamemastering a group of folks in an apocalyptic cold war game called Twilight 2000 set in post WWIII Poland. Part of the game is set in Oswiecim, long-known for it's chemical industry making insecticides and poison gas. So I read up on poison gasses and branched into biowarfare to make the game as realistic as possible. A few months later, I was asked to assess a bio-agent detection system. Imagine the customer's surprise when I walked in talking their jargon from my reading for an RPG. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: [email protected] SIPR: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: [email protected] (send NIPR reminder) On Jul 14, 2015, at 2:40 PM, glen wrote: > > Both of these comments touch on something that irritates me quite a bit. > Because I have a chip on my shoulder and enjoy confrontation, I regularly > apply for jobs even when I'm only a tiny bit interested in changing jobs. > (Plus, who knows? Maybe someone will make a really good offer.) In doing > so, I often apply for jobs for which I'm "over qualified". I don't get paid > much for what I _am_ qualified to do. So, it wouldn't be much of a hit to > take a job for which I'm over qualified. These jobs almost always have > something educational about them. I regard the education as part of the > compensation. I'm willing to take a lot less money in exchange for the > chance to learn-on-the-job. > > The interviewers never seem to understand that point. When it comes down to > the practicals of offering me a job, they often get caught by my inadequate > answers to the question "Why would you want to do these jobs, for this > salary? Why give up what you have already?" I don't know ... YOLO? It > happens so often, perhaps I should be less enthusiastic about whatever > projects I'm working on at any given time. Maybe if I'm all grumpy about the > sh!t I have to do, I'd get less complaints about me being over qualified for > some other job ... which obviously I'm not. My incompetence knows no bounds. > I've never had a boring job, from selling carpet water proofing > door-to-door, to sacking groceries, selling electronic parts at the > university store, flowcharting assembly code for obsolete avionics, etc. > There are always boring tasks to every job, but the jobs have never been > boring in their entirety. > > In any case, it seems to me like incentive is always weaker than motivation, > regardless of the dimensions involved. But, then again, I'm a white male > from a middle-class household in the US. So, surely that biases me. > > > > On 07/14/2015 01:05 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: >> Motivation is such a subjective thing. Like most people, I like to work on >> things that are at least a little challenging intellectually, but >> sometimes, just seeing the end result and knowing that I did it is reward >> enough to make the tedium bearable. A few years back, I did a bunch of very >> tedious work that synchronized video of conference speakers with their >> slide presentations NM INBRE. The idea was to create a Flash presentation >> that showed the video of the speaker, but displayed static images (taken >> from the PPT presentation) representing the auditorium's screen. This saved >> a lot of bandwidth compared to streaming a composite video of both the >> speaker and the actual screen, and in the 2006 timeframe, really was >> necessary. >> >> So, I had “capture” video from tape from two sources (speaker and screen); >> scrub through the two resulting videos, recording slide translation >> timings; export and trim images for each slide; compress video into >> appropriate formats; import images and video into Flash, and enter the >> timings that I recorded; etc etc. All that multiplied by 10 or more >> speakers, it took me over a month to complete. Kind of like mowing your >> lawn with a pair of fingernail clippers. I automated as much as I could, >> but given the number of tools that I had to deal with, I really didn’t have >> time to automate very much. So, I just became a robot for a month or so. >> But the end result was very nice for the time, and despite lack of >> intellectual challenges, was one of my proudest accomplishments that I was >> able to make myself stick to it. In fact, I even did the same robot work >> again the next year. I’ve always been meaning to get to automating that >> type of work... >> >> On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Marcus Daniels <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> "Interesting vs. boring is orthogonal. So, there's interesting-hard and >>> boring-hard. I'll accept money for either type of work, though I much >>> prefer interesting-hard ... obviously." >>> >>> How about engaging, imaginative, educational, or surprising work vs. >>> detail work. Doing detail work may be delayed gratification or it can no >>> purpose other than to respond to extrinsic motivation. Remove the >>> extrinsic motivation (money), and it is boring and depressing. >>> >>> Ok, if one is tasked with making an app to print checks, it could be >>> educational to learn how to put widgets on a screen or to do page layout. >>> What that discovery process is over, either another naïve person is needed >>> or extrinsic motivation. >>> >>> Marcus > > -- > ⇔ glen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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