职业与工作方法benkuhn.net
你真的需要去做难题吗（2020）
You don’t need to work on hard problems (2020)
2020 — 2021，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Ben Kuhn 的文章讨论如何挑选值得做的工作：一个问题的价值主要来自它对他人的影响，而不是技术难度。人们偏爱"难题"，部分是因为难度显眼、能带来地位感，但很多难题其实在解决无关紧要的事；把普通的事做到极好、或选择在技术和非技术层面都稍有难度的问题，同样有价值。
为什么经久不衰：它戳破工程师文化里"只做难题"的默认假设，给出更看重实际影响与自主性的择业视角，多年后仍适用于每一次职业选择。
HN 评论精选
把平凡的工作做到极致本身就是价值，靠的是耐心与纪律而非聪明。
我喜欢做平凡的事，但要做得非常非常好。我的大部分工作都是开源的，因为我做的东西谈不上创新或值得申请专利。我工作的价值主要在于我怎么做：我做事细致，把文档写得极其详尽，拼命测试，花大量时间打磨细节。这任何人都能做到，只需要耐心、自律和用心。我大概有点怪——我太享受最终成果，所以愿意花时间把活干好。以我的经验，我这种工作方式非常不受欢迎，有时我聊起自己怎么工作，甚至会有人感到被冒犯。
ChrisMarshallNY查看英文原文
I enjoy doing pedestrian stuff; really, really well. Most of my work is open-source, as I don't really do anything particularly innovative or patent-worthy. Most of the value in my work is how I do it. I work carefully, document the living bejeezus out of my work, test like crazy, and spend a lot of time "polishing the fenders." This is something that anyone can do. It just takes patience, discipline, and care. I'm weird. I enjoy the end results enough to take the time to do the job well. It's been my experience that the way I work is deeply unpopular. Some people actually seem to get offended, when I discuss how I work. Go figure.
只追求难题而不问用途，可能让人做出有害的产品。
我常遇到的一种情况是：有人在做对社会非常有害的东西，比如人类行为改造（广告）系统，却每天早上兴致勃勃，因为技术挑战让他们保持兴趣。我一般避免招这种人——他们往往公开表示并不在乎自己工作的用途，"只想解决难题"。
gfodor查看英文原文
A common thing I've run into is people working on very, very toxic things for society, like human behavior modification (ad) systems, who get up every morning excited and enthusiastic about it because the technical challenges keep them interested. I generally avoid hiring people like this, who often will state openly they don't care very much about the application of their work, but "just want to solve hard problems."
建议一半对一半错：影响力优先更实惠，但难题总得有人做，关键是选合适自己的问题。
这既是最好的建议，也是最坏的建议。说它最好，因为它确实成立：我见过无数出色的工程师埋头啃难题却回报甚微，而水平平庸的同行靠挥手画饼就能惊艳全场。如果你能找到一个重要又不至于让你无聊到流泪的问题并解决它，短期看肯定更划算。但话说回来，没有聪明的工程师去做难题、偶尔发明出真正伟大的新东西，人类也走不远。所以如果你能放弃名利，做又难又有趣的问题很有意义——总得有人做。我个人认为，选一个适合你的问题比选一个结果更重要：结果不会让你快乐，但围绕对的问题走过的过程会。
kirillzubovsky查看英文原文
This is the best and worst advice all in one. It is the best because it is true. At least from what I've seen, there countless amazing engineers stuck doing really hard problems for little return, while their rather lousy counterparts razzle-dazzle the world with hand-waving; no brains necessary. If you can find an important problem that won't bore you to tears and solve it, it's definitely more important in the short term. That said, without brilliant engineers working on hard problems and occasionally inventing really great new things, we wouldn't get far in life. So if you can forgo the fame and the riches, there is a lot of sense in working on hard/interesting problems. Someone's got to. Personally I think picking a problem that fits your is more important than picking an outcome. The outcome won't make you happy, but the journey around the right problem will. I think.
作者的难度判断基于自身的高起点，真实世界的问题需要多项能力都不拖后腿。
这种看世界的方式有个问题：作者其实是站在一个能提前一年读完硕士、然后断定自己"在数学方面一般没问题"的人的立场上，来判断技术难度的。那当然没问题。但这就好比说阿里平时不太会遇到街头犯罪——这并不能得出可推广的方法。他描述的问题其实很像当一名优秀的格斗选手：不是靠一项技能彻底碾压对手而忽略其他，而是在某个方面比对手强一点，同时在所有"简单"的方面都不犯错。就算你是全地球出拳最厉害的人，一推就倒也没用。即便在规则极度受限的格斗里，你也得十项技能都过得去、一项出色。而在现实世界解决普遍问题，你得从税务会计到销售、从算法分析到团队建设，一百项技能都拿得出手，哪一项都不能是灾难。
candiodari查看英文原文
The problem with this way of viewing the world is that in reality, this guy is judging technical difficulty from the basis of someone who can complete a college master degree in one year less than planned, then concludes he doesn't generally have problems with the mathematical side of things. Well of course. Unfortunately this is no more helpful than stating that Muhammad Ali usually doesn't have a problem with street crime. It does not make a generalizeable approach to the problem. The actual problem he's describing is a lot like being a great fighter. It is not so much about utterly defeating your opponent in one narrow skill, ignoring everything else. It is about being a little better than them in one area and not fucking up in any other ("easy") area. You can be the best at giving punches on the planet, it will do zero good if you easily loose your balance. Even in already the artificially very limited area of competition fighting, you have to be decent at 10 skills, and good at one. In the real world to solve general problems you have to be decent at 100 skills, from tax accounting to sales, from algorithm analysis to team building. None of these you can be a disaster at.
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