> It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there.
How can someone read a statement like this and immediately decide whether they agree with it or not? The meaning of this sentence is so ambiguous I need to break it down to decide what I actually think about it.
Firstly, what do we mean by "get ahead"? Presumably they're talking in the general sense of "getting ahead in life", which usually refers to career-related goals. In this case, it's probably easiest to assume they mean something along the lines of "out-performing your competitors". So we can reframe the question as "it is hard to out-perform your competitors without cutting corners". But what do they mean by "cutting corners"?
The term cutting corners itself is morally ambiguous. A shady mechanic who uses cheap, low-quality parts could be seen as cutting corners. But a developer who uses a library to take care of some task rather than writing custom code from scratch could also be seen to be cutting corners. In the context of the questionnaire, we should probably assume that they mean cutting corners in the negative sense. So the statement ultimately becomes something like "it is hard to out-perform your competitors without using shortcuts that cause some amount of harm to yourself or others". Notice that they used the word "hard", here; they're not asking whether I think it's possible, only whether I think it's difficult.
I think I would have to say, then, that I agree with the statement, since I often cause harm to myself by cutting corners (not organizing files correctly in the moment, for example) in the interest of saving time and out-pacing my competitors. Choosing not to cut corners would still be doable, but it would be harder.
I look forward to doing this for all the other questions so I can finally discover what a huge jerk I am.
> Firstly, what do we mean by "get ahead"? Presumably they're talking in the general sense of "getting ahead in life", which usually refers to career-related goals.
I think that there's a much wider sense to "get ahead" - social climbing and perceived status, as well as in your career.
Saying it's about "out-performing competitors" is also a little narrow, and is going to depend on how you measure out-performance. Do you measure it purely by the merits of what you do, or do you measure it purely by how much you get ahead of others, regardless of how that is achieved?
> But a developer who uses a library to take care of some task rather than writing custom code from scratch could also be seen to be cutting corners.
In this modern world I'd say that knocking something up from scratch, when there's a perfectly good library right there, is the worse behaviour! And I definitely wouldn't consider that corner-cutting.
> In this modern world I'd say that knocking something up from scratch, when there's a perfectly good library right there, is the worse behaviour! And I definitely wouldn't consider that corner-cutting.
I mostly agree, but this also depends on the context. If the library is bloated and you only need it for one small task, it could be considered corner-cutting.
This just goes to show how much difficulty I have answering these types of questions. There are so many different interpretations, I often end up trying to decipher what I think the question is trying to ask me rather than what my own personal reading is.
How can someone read a statement like this and immediately decide whether they agree with it or not? The meaning of this sentence is so ambiguous I need to break it down to decide what I actually think about it.
Firstly, what do we mean by "get ahead"? Presumably they're talking in the general sense of "getting ahead in life", which usually refers to career-related goals. In this case, it's probably easiest to assume they mean something along the lines of "out-performing your competitors". So we can reframe the question as "it is hard to out-perform your competitors without cutting corners". But what do they mean by "cutting corners"?
The term cutting corners itself is morally ambiguous. A shady mechanic who uses cheap, low-quality parts could be seen as cutting corners. But a developer who uses a library to take care of some task rather than writing custom code from scratch could also be seen to be cutting corners. In the context of the questionnaire, we should probably assume that they mean cutting corners in the negative sense. So the statement ultimately becomes something like "it is hard to out-perform your competitors without using shortcuts that cause some amount of harm to yourself or others". Notice that they used the word "hard", here; they're not asking whether I think it's possible, only whether I think it's difficult.
I think I would have to say, then, that I agree with the statement, since I often cause harm to myself by cutting corners (not organizing files correctly in the moment, for example) in the interest of saving time and out-pacing my competitors. Choosing not to cut corners would still be doable, but it would be harder.
I look forward to doing this for all the other questions so I can finally discover what a huge jerk I am.