There is a skill I’ve been gradually using more, from information glut, from interviewing candidates, and in examining projects from an architectural perspective. The one in mind is inference. “Given this, I can reasonably believe that, without explicitly seeing.” I don’t have the time to be a to-the-detail coder, and I would be supplanting someone else’s role if I was.
There’s a lot of room to (try to) be creative or clever. I often google for information, and then note on the way how difficult it is to find good information, using the latter to infer additional information on how risky the technology I’m researching for is.
For people, I might notice that they use a certain phrase or terminology out of context. Or perhaps a rarely used term or technology, correctly, in a pretty complex context. If one used the wrong term in one context, and go on to talk about a similar concept in another context, I might wonder a little. Similarly, if one use an unusual term like “grok”, that tells me a little bit about where the speaker’s been/read.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s very hand-wavy, but it’s the best I can think of given: 1) limited time and 2) the lack of “blind-trust” worthy, prepackaged solutions to complex problems. The latter refers to the dearth of premade software for medium-to-hard problems that I can just assume works as I need it; this derives from the software industry’s immaturity, a state which is improving.
As the title suggests, I get more information, at increased risk that the information may be wrong. Hopefully, practice will reduce the chances of that.
