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Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

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Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#161

Post by zBard » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

prolikewh0a wrote: post #62

themagician wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inflated sense of ego associated with “saving the world” and “solving tough problems” has almost completely turned me off from tech, in the Bay Area in particular. My problem isn’t with the sentiment—it’s that 99 out of 100 times it’s pure bullshit. There are a few people out their doing really amazing things, but the vast majority of people who have big egos aren’t the people working on that stuff. Tech is the n…

>The inflated sense of ego associated with “saving the world” and “solving tough problems” has almost completely turned me off from tech, in the Bay Area in particular. My problem isn’t with the sentiment—it’s that 99 out of 100 times it’s pure bullshit. There are a few people out their doing really amazing things, but the vast majority of people who have big egos aren’t the people working on that stuff. I see this m…

Or they get tired/can't keep up with having to continuously learn and adapt, which cognitive dissonance defensively turns into disdain for 'something new'.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#162

Post by zBard » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #145

userbinator wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not my job to judge the value of a coworker’s work. It most certainly is, when you have to work with and clean up the mess. Much like there is the notion of "10x" programmers, there are also "-10x" ones. Unfortunately they can stay around for a surprisingly long time.

What I was trying to say by “value” is that it’s not my job to determine the worth of a particular position to a company. i.e. it’s above my pay grade to decide what a web developer is worth vs a backend engineer, etc. Judging the quality of someone’s work _may_ be my job if I’m asked for peer feedback, but even there I disagree. I feel it should be up to a manager to determine whether his or her reports are doing go…

Shouldn't everyone be judging (and improving) the quality of everyone's work in a team, if you want the project to succeed ? How is a manager to judge the quality of technical output other than peer feedback ?

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#163

Post by flukus » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

Zelphyr wrote: post #16

axlee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever says web is "easy" never had to build or maintain a large web application. The ecosystem is incredibly deep and constantly evolving, to the point where best practices change every six months.

Not to mention; web developers are constantly having to context switch between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Old school days they also had a backend language like PHP or Perl. Many still do. Then there was/is SQL. By my count, that's at least five different languages to know all at once.

Before "full stack" was invented that used to be spread out across 2 or more jobs, you'd have frontend people, backend people, maybe database people, maybe even designers in addition to the front end people.

The context switching existed but not at the same frequency.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#164

Post by h4b4n3r0 » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

I was a hiring manager once. The mere mention of "off the beaten path" languages on the candidate's resume signaled one thing to me: that the guy is willing to put in the effort and learn something new. That gives you a leg up over the horde of other folks who, all other things being somewhat equal, don't really give a shit about their craft.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#165

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

bastijn wrote: post #13

I think the negative comments on webdev come from the php era where websites were not much more than information portals. Nowadays webdev is more about web apps, considerably harder to create and maintain. In addition the usage expanded so scale became a thing. Over time it is more that the apps traditionally seen as "true programming" moved to the web but the stigma is only starting to fade. On the writing style; ho…

The author seems to be female, so "fangirl" maybe isn't so out of place.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#166

Post by h4b4n3r0 » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

jstewartmobile wrote: post #87

Coming from embedded, the web is such an awful platform. No versioning. Polyfills everywhere! XML (satan's markup). Javascript... Every line of code is a rabbit trail into "can I use" BS. Web devs didn't make it that way. They're just the ones who have to live with it. We should be buying them lunch and thanking them for their service, not crapping on them.

Embedded has plenty of its own ugliness, though. It just doesn't change at such a rapid clip. In fact, once you ship a thing, it's unlikely to change at all. I appreciate this "do once and forget about it" approach, but at the same time the tooling for embedded can be ugly AF as well.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#167

Post by throwawaymath » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:17 AM UTC

freshhawk wrote: post #154

throwawaymath wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a statistic, nor is it quantifiable. I'm not taking issue with your experience, I'm taking issue with the fact that you've implied your claim has quantitative rigor to it, because I'm extremely skeptical that's the case. For what it's worth, I'm challenging you as someone who is neither a JavaScript developer nor a Clojure developer. I'm of the opinion that biases like the one the author laments are perpet…

In english, "statistically speaking" can mean you are making a claim about the odds of something rather than a 1:1 correspondence. It is extremely common and absolutely correct. For example I have not run a study but I am very confident that, statistically speaking, tall people are better at basketball than short people. I am saying that I have an opinion that if you were to try and choose good basketball players, bi…

If you believe this is about pedantry and the literal meaning of words, you’ve missed my point. However, you’re speaking to it: the commenter used the phrase “statistically speaking” to indicate their confidence in their assertion. I’m taking issue with the fact that they used the phrase - which, as you say, is strong enough to describe the way taller people are better at basketball - to generalize that Clojure developers are more likely to be qualified than JavaScript developers.

Idiomatically, any way you use the phrase implies great confidence in the corresponding claim. But I have not seen any substantial explanation of why this effect makes sense, which makes me extremely suspicious that the effect exists at all. I don’t particularly care about whether they’ve conducted a peer reviewed study. I care about whether or not their heuristic is backed by anything empirical. “I’ve noticed this...” doesn’t cut it, no matter how fast and loose you want to play with the literal meaning of the word in context.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#168

Post by wellpast » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #152

smhost wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I was just wondering whether the mean for women is significantly to the right of the mean for men, or whether mid-to-low skilled women aren't being hired for some other reason (hiring bias, self-selection, or whatever). Or maybe my experiences don't generalize, and there actually are a bunch of mid-to-low skilled women whom I've simply never encountered.

My subtext is that commercial software development is so cognitively unremarkable and routinized that you're not going to see any indication of male/female cognitive differences in the demographics of our field. It's an argument that doesn't play well on message boards, because software developers love to believe that they're part of a cognitive elite "inventing the future" and "eating the world", when in fact really…

I love the deprecation bc I think we sw engineer’s deserve it to a degree.

But I will also say that various software shops I know of large and small are always desperate to find good talent. I’ve hired quite a bit myself and finding capable talent is very difficult. So our work is not as totally deprecatable as you make it out to be.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#169

Post by dokem » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

jordanlev wrote: post #151

dokem wrote: post #94

It's really not that complicated. Technical people recognize technical ability. Throwing together a CRUD site in some framework is really not that complicated and can be achieved without really understanding what's going on. When you started learning Clojure you got a little more respect because you were broadening you're horizons. It's not some conspiracy systems programmers have against web-only devs: The web dev l…

"Throwing together" anything using anything is not really that hard, but understanding the problem, making trade-offs with limited time and budget, writing maintainable and well-tested code, making something easy to use, accessible, efficient... these are all very difficult to pull off regardless of whether you're building a CRUD site or not. I would also disagree that the web dev learning curve is not that steep...…

I'm not saying all web software is simple and all web devs suck. The fact is that most web apps are CRUD, and not well designed or 'beautiful' and written by devs that really don't care about SWE or broadening their skill set - just collecting a pay check - and that's fine. The ecosystem of operating system, compilers, distributed systems, embedded etc is a bit more rigorous because the bar to entry is higher.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#170

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 3:31 AM UTC

wellpast wrote: post #168

tptacek wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My subtext is that commercial software development is so cognitively unremarkable and routinized that you're not going to see any indication of male/female cognitive differences in the demographics of our field. It's an argument that doesn't play well on message boards, because software developers love to believe that they're part of a cognitive elite "inventing the future" and "eating the world", when in fact really…

I love the deprecation bc I think we sw engineer’s deserve it to a degree. But I will also say that various software shops I know of large and small are always desperate to find good talent. I’ve hired quite a bit myself and finding capable talent is very difficult. So our work is not as totally deprecatable as you make it out to be.

Believe me, I don't doubt there's a skill to doing this stuff; I've dedicated a big part of my career to finding and assessing that skill. But there's skill and aptitude to all sorts of things, from legal work to baking. We don't often talk about how there are lots of men or women bakers due to the distribution of intelligence.

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