Our best devs are consistently people who don’t have CS degrees and have good creativity, patience, curiosity, and who have some code to show that isn’t buzzword-chasing nonsense.
Huh, maybe you just suck at hiring people with CS degrees.
Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
31–39 of 39 posts
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#32I always assumed A player meant worked 60-100 hrs per week, but they expected you(not directly) to write 40-50 on your times sheet. And only paid for 30. But, don't worry your changing the world.
That seems like overly 'business' thinking. People as numbers. While necessary on some level. I've found the best performers don't work any specific number of hours, but actually employ a 'chop smarter, not harder' mentality. Some of my best people work a 30 solid ( dense ) hour week. Those are heads down, no distraction hours. No Facebook, no podcasts, just technical design and code. I don't enforce it, they just do…
I respect every part of your approach, except the GitHub bit. Not all devs code on the side.
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like overly 'business' thinking. People as numbers. While necessary on some level. I've found the best performers don't work any specific number of hours, but actually employ a 'chop smarter, not harder' mentality. Some of my best people work a 30 solid ( dense ) hour week. Those are heads down, no distraction hours. No Facebook, no podcasts, just technical design and code. I don't enforce it, they just do…
I respect every part of your approach, except the GitHub bit. Not all devs code on the side.
It's also hard to judge anything from GitHub code when lacking necessary context. Most of repos on my profile are from 48 hour game jams, so their code quality hardly matches anything written professionally.
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#34Our best devs are consistently people who don’t have CS degrees and have good creativity, patience, curiosity, and who have some code to show that isn’t buzzword-chasing nonsense.
I think it's even less than that. I think the critical element is interest. I think even an average individual can have valuable contributions to a codebase if: a) the requirements, what needs to be achieved and standards of quality are clear b) they are interested in contributing. That's it. I think the bar for software development is pretty low at the time being (but I'm not in the SF area, so maybe my outlook is m…
> [...] you can improve things noticeably if you just... care... and think things through [...]
This. Also: What the blogpost highlights well in this regard is that since the "bar" is orthogonal to real world skills and/or motivation, not only will you reject great developers who do (or would) care, there's also some chance you gather others who don't instead.
I'm also under the impression that "not caring" in this sense contributes largely to problems as those discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164728
(i.e. just ship what the customer/boss wants, don't bother understanding the problems or think things through)
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#35It's good to have a high bar. But it's dumb to use someone's academic achievements alone to measure whether they meet the bar or not.
> it's dumb to use someone's academic achievements alone I'm sure they don't - the author just seems a little touchy because he doesn't have a degree. I understand - I have a CS degree with a good GPA, but the school isn't all that impressive. I know it's cost me jobs (because they've told me). However, it's a pipe dream to think that there will ever come a time when degrees are irrelevant - unless human civilization…
Are they riskier? The company risks, say, a month of trial time...
They are riskier for recruiters who are enforcing artificial scarcity.
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#36My boss just dropped the offer salary for a new candidate by 25% because they weren't from a top tier school...I really hope they still accept b/c I _really_ need the help! I know that's a bit different than what the article is talking about but still similar reasoning. They were the strongest performer on every metric we have and for no other reason than the name of the school they did their graduate work at, they a…
> I _really_ need the help
No. What you need is to start looking for another job.
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#37plain and simple: formal education gives a shitload of knowledge you rarely get otherwise (because students devote lot of time getting familiar with that knowledge in an environment that supports learning). a good dev with proper education is better than a equally capable person without the education. that said, BS degree is bs if you ask me.
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I respect every part of your approach, except the GitHub bit. Not all devs code on the side.
It's also hard to judge anything from GitHub code when lacking necessary context. Most of repos on my profile are from 48 hour game jams, so their code quality hardly matches anything written professionally.
Yes, and most my (All?) professionally written code are proprietary and belongs to the company I work for.
Re: Your “high bar” is wrecking your team
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like it or not, economy needs ads.
Economy has functioned by word-of-mouth for millennia. Ads as an industry are relatively new (maybe 300 years). (Sure, word-of-mouth is a form of advertisement, but OP clearly refers to the ad industry, so I'm going with that meaning.)
Those millennia world was mostly in Malthusian trap.