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Never Heard of It

262 点作者 Ashuu超过 11 年前

41 条评论

ritchiea超过 11 年前
Thank you so much for posting this. I developed a bad habit of avoiding admissions of ignorance at the very start of my career because I felt shunned or slighted when I was honest about my lack of knowledge. It was terrible. For a long time I felt trapped, I felt like I had to lie or mislead to be taken seriously and that very lying hurt my ability to learn more.<p>If someone at the start of their career asked me about having this problem now I&#x27;d instinctively tell her or him that it&#x27;s not worth working with the people you find yourself being dishonest around. But how do you find the good people? It&#x27;s hard, and it&#x27;s when you are least experienced that you will have the most trouble differentiating between the knowledgeable and the hangers on.<p>This is a huge huge problem in our industry. And I think a lot of it stems from the fact that 3 years ago when I knew nothing but the HTML &amp; CSS I picked up on hobby projects and a couple college CS classes, what was I? I was a web developer. What am I now after 3 years of real projects, working with devs that know far more than I do, reading a ton, going to talks, and taking on increasingly more responsibility on projects? I&#x27;m still a web developer. In that context it&#x27;s very challenging to be the person who is new to the field because everyone wants you to be the expert, and can be mean when you&#x27;re not.
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jrochkind1超过 11 年前
“Sass’s new placeholder syntax is pretty great, isn’t it?”<p>You say: &quot;I haven&#x27;t taken a look at it yet, what do you like about it?&quot;<p>They say whatever.<p>You say: &quot;Wow, that does sound pretty great, I&#x27;ll definitely have to check that out.&quot; And then you do so, sure.<p>Human psychology is such that they often will actually react by liking you BETTER than if you had (presumably truthfully) said &quot;Oh, yeah, it&#x27;s great.&quot; Because you demonstrated that you valued their opinion, listened to their opinion, and then told them that they were right on!
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bowlofpetunias超过 11 年前
Interesting that this comes from a woman. In my experience this is mostly men that systematically cover up not knowing or not understanding.<p>I always know that when I have to talk to a group of women I have to be well prepared. Men are generally easy to bullshit, they won&#x27;t ask questions like &quot;could you explain exactly how that works?&quot;, at least not in front of their peers. Women seem to have less of an issue with it, especially when there are no men around to give them condescending looks.
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wmeredith超过 11 年前
The smartest person in the room is usually the one asking a lot of questions about the stuff they don&#x27;t know. Particularly if there&#x27;s an expert there to answer them in a manner that provides more insight than your typical Google search.
kaffeinecoma超过 11 年前
I&#x27;ve always appreciated interviewing job candidates that would respond with an honest &quot;Hmm, I actually don&#x27;t know&quot; rather than trying to BS their way through a question for which they obviously didn&#x27;t know the answer. Expecting even great developers to know 100% of everything is unrealistic.
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mapgrep超过 11 年前
There&#x27;s a Japanese saying I came across recently while reading the book Tokyo Vice:<p>&quot;To ask a question is a shame for a moment. Not to ask the question is a shame for your whole life.&quot;<p>(The author of the book, a newspaper reporter covering crime and the Yakuza, gets very far in his career by asking &quot;dumb&quot; questions.)
bluetidepro超过 11 年前
This post hit the nail on the head for me. This (<i>the first few sections mainly</i>) is something I have been doing for years and am trying to get better with. It makes me happy to know I&#x27;m not the only one that does this. Great article, Lyza!
kordless超过 11 年前
I appreciate the post addresses the fears in admitting you don&#x27;t know about something, but I also think it&#x27;s fair to attack the validity of the question itself assuming the original question was asked in a similar way to how it was presented.<p>&gt; Sass’s new placeholder syntax is pretty great, isn’t it?<p>This question could be considered a leading question, especially when considering the context: I don&#x27;t write CSS at all, and never have heard of it - why are you assuming I know what it is? I regularly write CSS, but don&#x27;t know how to use Saas - why are you assuming I use Saas and find it useful? I&#x27;ve used Saas in the past, find it confusing, and have decided to stick to CSS - why are you assuming a tool you use is a tool I should also want use and like?<p>Just ask the question in a way that doesn&#x27;t make assumptions!
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etler超过 11 年前
I do this sometimes, but no longer because I fear looking ignorant. Unfortunately, I&#x27;ve realized that most people are really bad at explaining things. It&#x27;s not their fault, teaching is hard, but I often find asking questions to the wrong person can lead to a hard to escape, but well meaning tech rant that I can&#x27;t remotely discern because it relies too much on domain knowledge. I often find that it&#x27;s easier to just look it up on my own.
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bjornsteffanson超过 11 年前
A lot of it has to do with the culture of shame that causes us to posture in the first place. We bullshit because we&#x27;re afraid of what the other person&#x27;s reaction will be like.<p>I feel fortunate to work for a company that has a zero-tolerance policy for shaming others and their code knowledge. In fact, it&#x27;s much more common to hear something like &quot;I&#x27;m not familiar with that - could you teach me?&quot; instead. Weekly, we show off new tools or techniques we&#x27;ve discovered so the chances of being left in the dark are slimmer. It leads to a lot more open discussions and a better overall base of knowledge across the entire company.
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timje1超过 11 年前
When you&#x27;re new to the game, it&#x27;s quite easy to admit gaps in your knowledge and pick up on what you&#x27;re missing.<p>One reason why this remains a persistent problem, I&#x27;ve found, is that the more experience you gain, the more likely people are to treat you like a guru - or worse, <i>the guru</i> - which makes it more difficult to say &quot;Sorry, I&#x27;ve not heard of that... could you fill me in?&quot;.
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chiph超过 11 年前
My first job out of college I worked for a man that had left the world of mainframes for the then-new world of the IBM PC. His reasoning was: &quot;It&#x27;s such a small box. It shouldn&#x27;t be hard to know everything there is to know about it.&quot;<p>2 years later, he realized just how wrong he was.<p>With the truly stupendous number of potential things to know about today, not knowing something is the far-more-common case. And there shouldn&#x27;t be any shame in not having heard about something.
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hobbes300超过 11 年前
One of the best pieces of wisdom I have received that relates to the IT industry hugely is &quot;no matter who you are talking to and how experienced they are, there is always something that you know that they don&#x27;t and vice versa&quot;.
JohnBooty超过 11 年前
Great article. I&#x27;m a big fan of admitting I&#x27;m not familiar with something!<p>It&#x27;s scary - but it&#x27;s so much better than <i>actually</i> knowing something and having your expertise dismissed because you&#x27;ve already blown your credibility.<p>Looked at another way, I suppose my readiness to admit I don&#x27;t know things is slightly egotistical: when I say I know something well, I want motherf----- to believe me.<p>Being up front about what you don&#x27;t know well is kind of the price you have to pay... well, that and actually knowing stuff in other areas.
jiggy2011超过 11 年前
Admitting ignorance often may be a good pragmatic practice when you are trying to get something specific done where that knowledge is important but it&#x27;s not necessarily great for your career.<p>I have met numerous people in my career who seem incredibly impressive when you first meet them, like they are so smart and know something about everything but if you try and pin them down on specifics you realize that they are mostly full of hot air and are just parroting something they heard somebody else say. These people can often get promoted fast, assuming that they can do it convincingly because for every person that called their bluff they left that sparkling first impression on 50 more.<p>I wonder if it&#x27;s that they are so good at BS that they have convinced the organization that they really are an expert or whether the organization actually values people who can convincingly BS for more senior positions? If you are in a position negotiating a large contract for example, it&#x27;s definitely a good thing to look like you know what you are talking about.<p>In many , many cases you can get away with this BS because the issue itself might not actually be very important. If you can say &quot;uh huh yes, I am familiar with framework X&quot; and the conversation moves on to something else because it was never really about framework X in the first place, admitting ignorance may not be the best strategy.
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lewispollard超过 11 年前
Being a part of a company like a tech startup is an exercise in knowledge sharing. I know I learned this lesson when I did an internship. For the first 3 months imposter syndrome hit me hard and I wanted desperately to prove myself as a good developer, not to admit any spotty parts of my knowledge for fear of looking stupid. And then, like the article states, quickly googling it in my own time. It started seeping into my work - when I hit a problem I couldn&#x27;t solve, I&#x27;d spend days of time googling and trying things through trial and error when I had the best resource all around me: the other developers who&#x27;d seen this stuff 100 times before.<p>My manager at the time noticed this behaviour after a while and basically told me that the whole point of the internship is to learn, and no one would be surprised or disappointed if I didn&#x27;t know some minutae about the field I was working in. In fact, most people enjoy sharing their knowledge, it makes them feel smart and useful.<p>This doesn&#x27;t just apply on an internship - you might have been hired into a company as a respected, talented programmer, but the situation is still the same - you&#x27;re there to share your knowledge with others, and be shared with in return, and use that cumulative knowledge to build a product.<p>Once you&#x27;ve &#x27;looked stupid&#x27; once by asking a question, you&#x27;ll quickly realise it&#x27;s not so painful after all - and it saves the company a lot of time if you go &#x27;actually, I&#x27;ve not heard of that&#x27;, and it takes your colleague 5 minutes to explain, than having to Google for info and decipher Wikipedia articles and arcane documentation every time.
alabut超过 11 年前
Good post. It&#x27;s a developer-specific flavor of Imposter Syndrome that I&#x27;ve struggled with too. Must learn all the frameworks! Now! And my designer side wants to master ever style I see on Dribbble until Photoshop stands up and starts clapping.<p>A book that helped me overcome it is called Mindset, written by the psychology researcher Carol Dweck. I can&#x27;t recommend it highly enough. Apparently the problem gets <i>worse</i> as you gain skills, not better, if you don&#x27;t consciously take steps to counter it.<p>I was just chatting with a friend this weekend that I also recommended the book to because he identified Imposter Syndrone as his major obstacle in life, even though he&#x27;s highly accomplished and his blog is constantly on HN. Talking to him made me realize that it not only affects more people than I realize but that it probably also affects generalists more than specialists, since being T-shaped means by definition that you can only pick a few areas to go deep.
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Nursie超过 11 年前
I think this is a measure of confidence and maturity.<p>If you are confident enough, mature enough in yourself and work in an atmosphere that&#x27;s mature enough not to criticise for it, saying &quot;nope, that&#x27;s new to me, is it something I should learn&#x2F;look up?&quot; is a good thing.
was_hellbanned超过 11 年前
This reminds me of an issue I had with a coworker. Personally, I&#x27;m reluctant to answer questions about the behaviors of a codebase I work on (e.g. &quot;what kinds of input can you give in field X of dialog Y?&quot;) without reviewing the code first. There are far too many combinatorial logical possibilities, not to mention the fact that a mature codebase becomes so fractured and diverse that nobody really knows what&#x27;s going on at any given code location.<p>Meanwhile, my coworker would confidently answer with whatever he thought was correct. He would often be close, but he would also, alarmingly often, be completely wrong, to the point of describing behavior that had nothing to do with the product in question.<p>As luck would have it, none of his lies&#x2F;misrepresentations ever mattered. Whatever prompted the questions ended up being unimportant, or the support issue was resolved through other means. He ended up promoted to manager, at which point the department imploded on itself under his watch. To my knowledge, he never had any idea how incorrect he was, since he was simply wildly confident in himself.
bchjam超过 11 年前
Owning up to posturing<p>I think it&#x27;s good advice to be aware of doing this but you can go too far in compensating. Don&#x27;t derail other people&#x27;s speech by riddling them with questions or admissions, but if they ask you if you know be honest.<p>In other terms, nodding to a speaker can mean &quot;please continue&quot;, I think it rarely actually means &quot;I understand completely&quot;.
JoeAltmaier超过 11 年前
I say it all the time; it gives folks the chance to show off, educate all of us. Its a conversational ploy that&#x27;s useful even when you DO know.<p>Pointless to argue sex bias; who cares? It happens all the time that we feel our ignorance is on display. I revel in it, ask questions, find out if the other guy really knows what they&#x27;re talking about.
csours超过 11 年前
Question about phrasing: &quot;This is the first time I&#x27;ve heard of that&quot; sounds better to me than saying &quot;I&#x27;ve never heard of that before&quot;. It feels more like I&#x27;m grateful to the person who has introduced me to the topic rather than dismissive of this thing they may have just made up.
ErikAugust超过 11 年前
Great point here:<p>&quot;I go through periods of self-doubt about my qualifications as a web developer. I have a sense I’m not alone in this. Our field is by nature a generalists’ field, where expertise involves synthesis of concepts and technologies, not complete mastery of a single, static topic. It’s hard to know how to tell if you’re good at your job.&quot;<p>I&#x27;d say, I&#x27;d agree fully but you can look at it as an advantageous position, in my opinion.<p>The ability to bend a lot of different concepts&#x2F;technologies that were put together by experts into something that solves the problem puts you in an important place.<p>I&#x27;d say show love for the open source community and the people who know everything about a particular framework or technology, but really it comes down to asking, &quot;No, not familiar, what are the advantages of this [new thing] over what we&#x27;ve been doing?&quot;
abhiv超过 11 年前
I generally enjoy admitting ignorance and asking questions that seem dumb as a way of educating myself. You do have to be mindful of who you do this with. The person you&#x27;re speaking with has to have a certain level of maturity themselves in order to not consider you stupid for your admission of ignorance.<p>In an ideal situation, you&#x27;re speaking with someone who will allow you to probe them on the subject with a series of &quot;stupid&quot; (sounding) questions till you have a good basic understanding of the topic.<p>Unfortunately, many people are not like that. They will simply think that you&#x27;re stupid and move on to the next topic. Sometimes these may be people you want to make a good impression on, for a variety of reasons, so some diplomacy is required.
fnbaptiste超过 11 年前
I can think of at least two employers who gave me the job because of my honesty when admitting to my ignorance of certain job-related knowledge during an interview. It&#x27;s a really great trait for recent graduates, many of whom will nod along and say, &quot;Oh yeah, I&#x27;ve used such-and-such before.&quot; My first two jobs out of college the boss told me after giving me the gig that a big part of me getting hired was that I didn&#x27;t appear to be over-stating about my abilities and it was clear what they were getting by hiring me. So if anything, young developers should just remember to be honest and that you can&#x27;t be expected to know everything right off the bat. Employers will appreciate the honesty.
Osmium超过 11 年前
I think this definitely comes with experience, and therefore confidence. I own up to not knowing things <i>all the time</i>, but I doubt I would&#x27;ve four or five years ago. It just becomes easier when you&#x27;re confident in what it is you <i>do</i> know.
thatthatis超过 11 年前
There are too many topics to be an expert on everything. I&#x27;ve found that honesty leads to better conversations and higher trust long-term relationships.<p>&quot;That&#x27;s not really my area of expertise, what do you mean by that?&quot;<p>&quot;I haven&#x27;t looked into that much yet&quot;<p>&quot;I&#x27;m sorry, I don&#x27;t know that word&quot;<p>&quot;I&#x27;ve been meaning to look into ____, can you give me the 5 second overview&quot;<p>I can separate the world easily into two types of people: those who will asks questions if they don&#x27;t understand, and people I&#x27;m unlikely to trust.
ilaksh超过 11 年前
There is a new significant technology released every week. Sometimes there are several in one day. When people seem surprised that I haven&#x27;t heard of their new favorite tech it makes them seem inexperienced or dumb to me. Actually I think you can almost take any two random developers and there is a good chance they are each working on technologies that the other has never heard of. The thing is new technology comes out as soon as people think of it and type it in.
gprasanth超过 11 年前
This is the right attitude to have about learning stuff related to your field. But, I think it is very important to really know your field very well if you want to be good at it. It may be really obvious but I had to write it[1].<p>[1] - <a href="http://serenecode.org/2013/11/proper-education-is-a-must/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;serenecode.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;proper-education-is-a-must&#x2F;</a>
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vacri超过 11 年前
When I was in neurology, my favourite sales rep was the guy who would answer a question with &quot;I&#x27;m not sure. I&#x27;ll find out and get back to you&quot;. He didn&#x27;t always get back, but he usually did, and you were better off for it. Much better than the sales reps who gave you a bit of hot air masking that they didn&#x27;t know the answer.
hotpockets超过 11 年前
This is a common cognitive bias, overestimating familiarity with expert domains. Sometimes called the curse of knowledge, or the terminology illusion (specific to overestimating familiarity with jargon).<p>Unfortunately, it happens naturally and automatically, and is thus very difficult to overcome.
maaaats超过 11 年前
I find myself doing this as well. But often it is with people that just won&#x27;t shut up with their technical mambo-jambo of how great something-something is. Asking questions would just make them talk for even longer, so I shut up, nod and am on my way as quick as possible.
mathattack超过 11 年前
Great point. Not only is it personally empowering to be open with what you don&#x27;t know, there are frequently 4 or 5 other people who are happy when you ask for clarification.<p>When I&#x27;m on sales calls, I now go out of my way to ask those questions of my own people.
mbesto超过 11 年前
Here&#x27;s one thing I&#x27;ve learned about knowledge&#x2F;implementation of technology:<p>I&#x27;ve gained a lot of trust from clients for being knowledgeable in the field of emerging tech. I&#x27;ve earned a lot of money by actually using it to provide solutions.
makerops超过 11 年前
This post hit a lot of nails right on the head, for me at least (I even played midfield).
wil421超过 11 年前
Why is the top of your heading <i>A List Apart</i> hidden behind your translucent navigation bar at the top.<p>.killer-logo { margin-top:55px;} That might do the trick.<p>Edit: 42px would be best as your logo is cut off at the top of the letters.
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plus-超过 11 年前
I feel terrible because while I can relate perfectly to the author&#x27;s fears, I&#x27;m finding I envy her ability to write so well.
Zecc超过 11 年前
This is completely off-topic, but Lyza Danger Gardner is a pretty badass name.
ScotterC超过 11 年前
A simple rule I go by: This brain is for processing. Not storing.
trusche超过 11 年前
&quot;Just-in-time googling&quot;. That made my day, thank you!
brianhanly超过 11 年前
This is what I was looking for. Perfect way to phrase it.