
What Rock Climbing Taught Me About Engineering - hbz
http://flatiron.engineering/culture/2017/06/14/What-Rock-Climbing-Taught-Me.html
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sshrinivasan
This is a really stupid article, painfully trying to find a connection between
2 activities in an attempt to sound insightful. Just climb, and don't try to
pretend you are a monk finding divine insight in unlikely places.

And also, if you're writing design documents for trivial features, I'm glad I
don't work at your company.

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hbz
Designing software related to healthcare / electronic medical records requires
more thoughtfulness than other kinds of development.

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collyw
And probably less than some others.

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kzisme
Having never been rock climbing before - how hard is it actually to get into?

I suppose it really depends on where you live (the author mentioned using
climbing to get out of the gym, but I think that's the only place I ~could~)

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Eric_WVGG
I've been a gym climber for about ten years, never felt any urge to take it
outdoors. Great community, very easy to get into, addictive as hell.

In fact, my local bouldering gym has a co-working space, I set up with my
laptop and jam out in javascript all day, with periodic breaks for climbing.
It's great. One of the gyms around here even has a weekly "startup night."

Personally, I'm partial to bouldering, where the walls top out at about 12-16
feet, and there are no ropes (18-24" padded floors for accidental landings),
so I can do it without a partner.

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snakeboy
Wow, that sounds like the perfect set up, yet I've never heard of anything
like it. Where is this place?

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ferentchak
I know of a great one in Boulder and another in Denver. ;) Also the top rope
gyms often times have sections like this around here, in my experience as a
novice it can be hard to find problems(routes) that are easy enough for me to
solve.

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hluska
Are you talking about bouldering problems or top rope problems?

If you're talking specifically about top rope problems, a great way to up your
game is to gain a reputation as a really good belay partner. It sounds weird,
but spending time on belay teaches a whole lot about tempo. In my experience
(I'm a mediocre climber), tempo is the biggest thing that separates novice
climbers from mediocre climbers.

Otherwise, climbers tend to be extraordinarily friendly people. If you're
stuck on a problem, feel free to ask someone for beta (advice on a problem).
There is some etiquette involved (ie - don't ask someone who is on belay), but
as long as you're humble, you will find climbers who will help you solve
problems you once thought were insurmountable.

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ferentchak
Most of the top rope gyms have challenging bouldering problems for my skill
level since it really isn't their focus so it was hard to learn without doing
the same problem over and over. Which was why I was recommending going to a
gym that focuses on bouldering if you want to learn it. Just more fun stuff to
monkey around on.

As for being helpful, I couldn't agree more. The culture is much nicer and
more inclusive than any other sporting group I have seen.

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sovietmudkipz
The site appears to refuse scrolling after my ad blocker prevents a pop up
from appearing...

Providing article text here, in case others run into the same issue.

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<article> <p>In the past five years, rock climbing has ridden high atop the <a
href="[http://www.climbingbusinessjournal.com/gyms-and-trends-
of-20...](http://www.climbingbusinessjournal.com/gyms-and-trends-
of-2016/">wave) of newly expanding fitness activities</a>, and distinguished
itself as a hip way to stay in shape. Climbing has lured people of all
backgrounds and professions, and created communities of enthusiasts who are
eager to break the monotony of the traditional gym. Routes up the climbing
wall have a wide range of difficulty grades, and require a type of physical
problem solving that is absent from weight training. In fact, even climbing
terminology reveals that problem solving is a core part of the culture. Paths
up a wall are often referred to as “problems”, different types of hand and
foot holds have specific, technical names, and the <a
href="[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_climbing_terms"><e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_climbing_terms"><em>Glossary)
of Climbing terms</em></a> Wikipedia page has hundreds of terms that I’ve
never even heard of. It is no surprise to me that so many technically-minded
people have adopted climbing as a hobby.</p>

<p>I think climbing has more to offer than helping you get ripped. Since I
began climbing in college, I’ve learned a lot about problem solving from
observing other climbers, thinking critically about my own technique, and
receiving great advice. Moreover, many of these lessons have reverberated with
elements of our engineering culture at Flatiron. In this post, I’ll lay out a
few observations from climbing that have made me a better engineer, and detail
how Flatiron has built processes and <a
href="[https://www.flatiron.com/values">adopted](https://www.flatiron.com/values">adopted)
values</a> similar to those of rock climbing.</p>

<h2 id="strive-to-preview-the-route">Strive to preview the route</h2>

<p>Some of the best climbers spend several minutes before each section of a
climb looking ahead at how they might overcome the next set of problems. They
estimate how much effort the section will require, create a plan for
navigating the holds, determine what gear will be required, and importantly
look for the next place to rest and reassess.</p>

<p>When I started climbing - much like when I started working as an engineer -
I had a thoroughly naive planning process. I would walk up to a problem, throw
myself onto the holds and head right up until I found myself stuck and
confused. By watching other climbers, I have developed an appreciation for
planning and estimation. Investing more time up-front towards thinking about
the nuances of a problem can reveal new ways of solving it that may be
drastically simpler and reduce technical debt in the long run.</p>

<p>At Flatiron, “design documents” are one way that we structure planning and
estimation without sacrificing velocity. Engineers may write a design document
for anything from a small feature to a large system, with the goals of
planning out a solution, communicating with other teams, and soliciting <a
href="[http://lifehacker.com/the-30-percent-rule-and-the-art-of-
ear...](http://lifehacker.com/the-30-percent-rule-and-the-art-of-early-
feedback-1619474527">30%) feedback</a>. Writing design documents, even for
seemingly trivial features, has forced me to think through my plans more
rigorously. Sometimes, a design document leads me to change my approach to a
problem all together.</p>

<h2 id="be-self-critical">Be self-critical</h2>

<p>In climbing, as in life, the difficulty of a problem can be mitigated by
implementing a more effective technique. I have often spent twenty minutes
failing to get more than half way up a route only to watch another climber
casually climb the whole thing forward and backwards by making a slight
alteration to my approach. Strength is certainly a factor in some cases, but
more often, the other climber has a better sense of technique - shifting her
weight gradually and using holds in non-intuitive ways.</p>

<p>Watching the elegant technique that other climbers employ to solve certain
problems has inspired me to be self-critical of my methodology. Over time,
being self-critical has helped me develop the intuition to recognize when I
powered through a move to compensate for sloppy technique, and how I could
have solved a problem differently.</p>

<p>Being vocally self-critical is actually one of our core values at Flatiron.
This value can manifest during a monthly retro, an incident post-mortem, or
even on a casual whiteboard design session. I am always impressed by how my
colleagues are able to avoid getting attached to their ideas and ask “what are
the drawbacks of this design?” The culture of vocal self-criticism has helped
us re-visit stale processes and designs when we otherwise may have accepted
the status-quo.</p>

<h2 id="design-human-proof-protocols">Design human-proof protocols</h2>

<p>Climbing can be a dangerous activity. There is an undeniable risk in being
held 50 feet above the ground by harness and rope, secured by nothing but your
trusty college buddy. This risk multiplies when you leave the gym and head
outdoors, where you must set up anchors and tie knots on your own, rely on
your teammates, and navigate uncertain holds.</p>

<p>In order to mitigate this risk, the climbing community has developed a
variety of safety protocols with the goal of human-proofing the activity as
much as possible. Critical climbing gear like carabiners almost always have a
safety, such as a foolproof locking mechanism. Load bearing anchors are often
set up with 2x or 3x redundancy. Most importantly, even the simplest
activities that require communication have a defined checklist or set of
commands. For example, the <a
href="[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaying#Communication">belay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belaying#Communication">belay)
protocol</a> defines precisely how to communicate as one teammate secures the
other while ascending a wall.</p>

<p>Rock climbing is undoubtedly safer because of protocols that avoid human
mistakes. Learning about climbing protocols has helped me realize the value of
automation and checklists for engineering operations. One protocol that has
helped me avoid countless mistakes is Flatiron’s culture of creating on-call
and deployment playbooks. Our playbooks have been a safety net for me during
my first months in the on-call rotation; they have helped us on-board team
members quickly and expand our <a href="[http://blog.sandglaz.com/increasing-
bus-factor-in-project-ma...](http://blog.sandglaz.com/increasing-bus-factor-
in-project-management/">bus-factor</a>;) and they have served as documentation
for various systems and their dependencies. A culture of playbooking
aggressively has helped us work towards our goal of being able to easily train
our own replacements and strengthen our resilience as a team.</p>

<p><br> Climbing has helped me learn a great deal by overlaying physical and
technical problem solving. I’m grateful to the many mentors I’ve had at the
climbing gym, and also to the great mentors at Flatiron!</p>

</article>

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peterwwillis
Can you please put that in a pastebin.ca and provide the link, rather than the
whole article text?

