Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 245. Why Most Advice Is Probably Wrong

Transcript

245. Why Most Advice Is Probably Wrong · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: How do I know if I'm getting good advice?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: If I get advice from a successful person, does that mean I should follow that advice?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: These are important questions to ask because no, successful people do not always give good advice.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now it seems logical, but at the same time, it seems like we still follow successful people.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about it.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would encourage you to evaluate any advice you get.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that even includes advice from me.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about it in today's episode of Dev Questions.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Software development is more than just writing code.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the rest of it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, let's talk about how to evaluate advice.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And to start off, I want to acknowledge that I give you advice every week on topics around software development.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: When I do, I would encourage you to evaluate it in the same way I'm saying to evaluate any advice you get.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say that I'm perfect or that everybody else is wrong.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm saying is this advice I'm giving you is to evaluate even me, not just everybody else.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the advice.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And to do that, we should discuss a topic called survivor bias, because this is one of the important parts about understanding advice.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea behind survivor bias is that if you evaluate the traits of those who succeed and draw conclusions from there, you miss out.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, you might look at people who go viral on social media and try to identify how to replicate their success.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they post silly dance videos.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: So your conclusion is that posting silly dance videos is the way to go viral.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: However, what you're leaving out is that for every viral sensation doing silly dance videos, there are tens of thousands of people who are doing silly dance videos who are not successful.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you only evaluate the survivors, the ones who were the viral successes, you often can get the wrong information.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because they are doing something that a lot other people are also doing, possibly, and yet one person's having success and the other isn't, or the whole group isn't.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where sometimes luck comes into play a lot more than you want to believe.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, imagine that a person who was successful at silly dance videos on social media wrote a book called How to Make It Big on Social Media.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: That book would probably sell, and it'd probably sell especially well, especially since if the author had 10 million followers on social media.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, as we pointed out, just because you follow those steps doesn't mean you'll be successful, as tens of thousands of people could tell you.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's survivor bias.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've read business books, you've probably seen a lot of survivor bias that's couched in this is how to do things, how to get rich, how to do this, how to do that.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because that person did it, therefore they're saying, well, that worked for me.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, okay, now you understand survivor bias, let's talk through how you evaluate the advice you get to see if it's good advice or not.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And step one is to ask the question is this survivor bias or is there more to it?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So evaluate if the advice is a corollary, meaning they they survived and they did this, but the two aren't necessarily connected?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or if it's causative, meaning the advice is what caused the survivor or survival.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's where a lot of business books fail the test.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So what it is is they say, well, I did this and I was successful.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: So do this too.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but did that help you succeed?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Was that the reason you succeeded where others failed?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the reason?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or was there more to it than that?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to evaluate first, is it just survivor bias?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you might have to make a judgment call here.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I would encourage you to look out and see: well, if other people follow that advice, did that also give them the success they're looking for?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it just this person was very successful doing it and others weren't?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's step one to evaluate is it survivor bias or is there more to it?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Step number two is is the advice sensational?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a big red flag.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So often you'll hear sensational advice that's just not good advice.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: For example, become a developer in seven days if you follow this plan.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably not great advice.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now it could be, and you still need to evaluate because yeah, I could tell you how to become a developer in seven days if you follow that plan, but that seven days would have to be like 24 hours times seven spread out over the course of a year or something like that, where yeah, we could make that work and you know, kind of there's there's usually books called like Learn Software Development 24 hours.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't mean in one day.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: They meant 24-hour single chunk, you know, one hour chunks, 24 hour time, 24 times or half a year essentially.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but be careful because when you hear someone say, well, you can you know shortcut it just seven days if you become a developer.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big red flag.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's sensational.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you know, make$50,000 in 30 days by following this advice.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because that seems too good to be true, it probably is.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: This type of advice plays on your desire to get something quickly without a lot of hard work.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: If something doesn't involve hard work, it's probably just a fantasy.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know that's hard because there's so many uh shortcuts in life that are promoted.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: For example, gambling is one of those shortcuts where you know what, just you know, just put down a dollar here, just just bet$5 here, and you could be the next millionaire.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is true.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: One person was out of how many million that tried it.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it was doing this playing on your desire for a shortcut.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: But in life, there's not really shortcuts.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, one person won the lottery, but millions didn't.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So in general, when it comes to advice, you should look for does it involve hard work?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it doesn't involve hard work and anybody could do it, then it's probably gonna give me great results because if anybody can do it, then everybody's doing it, and therefore it's not valuable.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone can get$50,000 in 30 days, well, why wouldn't they?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So in that case, then why wouldn't we all be just rich?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because it's not really that that easy.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right, it probably involves hard work.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, step number three, does the advice apply to me?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is a hard one for software developers, especially newer software developers, because they want to get that advice.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: They they really want good advice.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I encourage you to get good advice, but you've got to evaluate any advice you're given.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Does it apply to me?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Not all advice applies to everyone or every situation.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's why senior developers say it depends so often, because it doesn't always apply.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just because something works for one person doesn't mean it works for everyone.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: For example, for a long time, the advice of being a successful entrepreneur was to get up early.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you got up early, you're gonna be more successful.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Put in that time early on in the morning and you're gonna set your day up for success, you're gonna be more successful.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't work for me.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's if you make me get up early, I'm gonna be miserable the entire day.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I just can't function that way.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what I do?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: I work late.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: So right now it's 11 o'clock at night.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Not a problem for me because that's when I work well.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I work late.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm following that advice somewhat, but I said, you know what?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: The advice of get up early doesn't apply to me because I'm not successful doing that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Others are.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have a buddy who would, you know, stop work and say, you know what, I'll get up at four in the morning and continue from here.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: It drove me nuts.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't do it, I couldn't imagine.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that just makes me depressed thinking about.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: But it worked for him.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that advice worked for him.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean it worked for me.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, I would stay up late, work till two, three in the morning, get it done, and then go to sleep.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So evaluate the advice to see if it's advice for you or not.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So does this advice apply to me?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Step three.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Step number four is is there a track record of success following the advice?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now be careful not to get caught up in survivor bias again.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: But have you seen others succeed when following this advice?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: For example, if you're considering going to a boot camp to build up your skills, what do former students have to say about it?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard a lot of people saying things about certain boot camps versus others.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I've heard some people say, this is great.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: That really helped launch my career.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, other boot camps I've heard, you know what?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was horrible.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: That was awful.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: That was, you know, and so you want to maybe if you hear, go to this boot camp.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do the the people who evacu who graduated say?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And again, be careful about survivor bias.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: The how many people started in the class versus graduated.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in a calculus class in college, and we started off with 50 people.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: We ended with 12, half of who passed.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you might say, well, the sir the survival rate of that class was 50% because half the class that went to the end passed.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: But really, we lost a lot more than that, right?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: We only had about a 12% success rate for the class because we started with 50 people, we ended up with six passing.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's not a great track record, right?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to evaluate that, not just the six people who passed and what their thoughts were.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So another example.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you're being told to get a degree in software development, what do the people who have graduated with that degree say with the program and if it's worth it?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to a person that's five years down the road.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Say, hey, was that degree worth it?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Did it did it help you along the way?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to multiple people and say, hey, was that worth the cost?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Was that worth the time?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Was that worth the the effort that you went through?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And find out from there.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Evaluate the advice.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So don't just take it at face value, but say, is there a track record of success following this advice?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, step number five is what went into forming the advice?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Find that out.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: So advice doesn't come from nowhere, or at least it shouldn't.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: It should come from hard won experience that taught people a lesson.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So find out how that advice was formed.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Some advice is just cheap advice.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: A person has an opinion.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Just having an opinion, everybody's got one of those.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not really a value.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: But instead, did the person that was giving the advice learn it from one situation?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or have they seen the value of this advice over multiple situations?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So identifying, you know, what's the track record here?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a if have you seen this advice work over time?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: How did you come about developing this advice?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's just an opinion, that's not really advice, even necessarily.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's an opinion.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it might be a good opinion, but it's you gotta evaluate really hard in that case because it's a little more sketchy.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So identifying the right advice can be very difficult.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that makes it easier is to trust the person giving the advice.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So specifically in the area they're giving it as well, though.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So when you are evaluating that person, you say, hey, I trust you, um, make sure that you also trust them specifically in the area they're giving advice.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I work really hard to earn your trust in the area of software development.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that I've proven that the advice I give is limited to what I have built up over decades of work in this field and over the course of dozens of companies and hundreds of applications and thousands of students who I've worked with.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if I talk about software development or being a software developer, you can count on it being my best advice that I can give.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that comes from a lot of experience and a lot of history.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if I give you advice on the stock market, I would hope you would be much more heavily weighted towards evaluating that more thoroughly.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because I might have some good advice, but my experience level in that area is a lot less than it is in software development.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you trust me and say, hey, you know what?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I know that Tim has been there, done that, and I know that his advice works, and I've tested it out myself, and so on, that's great.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that makes it easier to trust me in the future when it comes to software development.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But just because you trust me there doesn't mean that you shouldn't more heavily evaluate other areas that I give advice, right?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Which I try not to.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I try really hard to stay in my lane of things that I have a lot of experience in.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So if you trust me, there should still be a level of trust based on the type of advice.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: The last bit of wisdom I'm gonna leave you with is this.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: When I was raising my sons, I would tell them they had a choice.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: They could either learn from my mistakes or they could make them themselves.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: You should be careful in evaluating advice, but you should also be just as careful that you don't ignore hard one advice.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you might end up making the same mistakes that we did when we were first faced in that situation.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the stuff I teach you is hey, you know what?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let me show you the right way of doing this because I didn't do the right way at first.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: I had to learn the hard way that nope, that's not it.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So be careful when evaluating advice that you both make sure it's good advice, but at the same time, don't ignore hard one advice and then stumble on the same problems that the Git ver did.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: All right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope this has been helpful.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, I am Tim Corey.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCorey.com and enroll in a course.