Live data from Hacker News

Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

blog.cerebralab.com

161–170 of 350 posts

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#161
Don’t forget that it’s not just “programmers” that are building a product. You’d need designers and product managers in the mix too, and you’re probably not going to offshore those people to Vietnam or Ukraine. It’s pretty hard to have those people in one country and your “programmers” in another since they need to be in such close contact with each other. Personally, I communicate much more with designers and product managers than I do with other engineers on my team.

But also, you don’t want to hire “programmers,” you want to hire engineers—people who are capable of making large systems work together.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#162
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an European perspective, this has not exactly been my experience working with an international team. The US collective mentality is sometime overly optimistic specially in public. This is sometimes a positive since it removes almost any inhibition regarding challenges, but it can lead to things blowing-up spectacularly, and then having to put in place hacks and brute force to make it kind of work relatively inef…

Can confirm this is a problematic aspect of our culture. I'm one of the people who's entire professional niche is being the counterweight to this positivism. Endemic to the way things are done is the understanding that forgiveness is often easier to attain than permission, and unfortunately putting your foot down and holding otherwise is rather frowned upon, or at least gets you marked as needing to be handled delica…

I've spent my entire career being told that pointing out problems doesn't help the situation, having these problems blow up and having the same people say they wish they had listened... and being told that pointing out problems doesn't help the situation.

I had a real heart-to-heart with the CTO where I worked since he only gets along with one of the managers and doesn't like his directors. He said the only reason he approved my promotion was because he was tired of hearing Yes Men telling him things were fine right until they blew up in his face. He's a tech guy, not a business guy so probably outside the norm.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#163
post #13

It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture. If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too…

To add to this a bit, one thing that I haven’t noticed anyone talk about is that to a huge degree, programmers are supposed to manage themselves. It may not seem like it to those who have worked in tech for a while, but as someone who is in a different field where it’s not the norm (Academia), it makes a big difference in efficiency.

In my corner of academia, programming is almost always seen as grunt work and delegates to undergrads and junior grad students. Of course students aren’t trusted to actually manage the project so usually mid-level scientists or post-grads are assigned to oversee and manage them. The managers usually have no idea how to program or what it entails, nor do they have any interest in the project. At most they’ll want to use the software after its finished. If agile/waterfall programming annoys anyone, just be thankful you have a methodology for software development at all. Since literally everyone is senior to the programmer, but nobody else knows how to program, everyone just justifies their time by suggesting new features. Since no one knows how long anything should take, all new features are accepted into spec at anytime. Eventually, the project starts to run long, and since nobody knows why, management responds by adding more layers of management. Finally, the programmer either quits or graduates and the grant for the project runs out. The final product usually either has no resemblance to the proposal or only works on sample data. If it’s a website, no one bothers maintaining the server. If it’s a package, all dependencies go out of date within a year of release. The PI, or a PI down the hall gets a new grant to do basically the same project again, and the cycle repeats itself.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#164
post #46
post #13

It seems to be missing a very big factor: culture. If your goal is to implement some code for, say, healthcare, it is a lot easier to explain the business process to someone who is already familiar with how stuff is done on a higher level. Whenever you hire someone from a different culture / country, you need to start from the basics by explaining the very core of your society. An American programmer might not be too…

This remind me of the recent Microsoft AI that can write code demo. You give the AI instruction and explanation in English, preferably as clear and as detailed as possible and you get back code. Essentially its very similar workflow when working with offshore developer, in the future you could in theory replace the offshore dev with AI, except with much less latency.

We had a similar technology for a long time. You give the computer instructions and explanation in a language, as clear as detailed as possible and you get back machine code.

It's called a compiler.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect of culture: how one-sided the communication is. Silicon Valley and Scandinavian cultures are very flat, so it is possible for "the man on the floor" to tell management that it doesn't work to put diesel into a gasoline car. In authoritarian cultures this would be a mistake as it's seen as embarrassing the management by saying they made a mistake. If you want to continue being employed then it is much b…

As a part time military officer (extreme authoritarian culture) and a corporate software guy (no interpersonal structures to be heard of) I find that this is a common assumption but it’s actually quite wrong. First a little background: The military is a highly confrontational culture, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In that kind of culture you tell people the disagreement immediately without tripping over pleasa…

> Superiors are generally better about considering the advise of their experts because the decision maker owns all risks and consequences.

Even though it still does not literally happen anymore, there is still the tradition of the captain going down with the ship. The captain's authority was unchallenged on board the ship. But, if the ship sank, the captain paid for it with his life. This would inherently cut a lot of the bullshit. If you are the captain, your life depends on your people telling you the facts, not just what you want to hear.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#166
When people collaborate the work-product is 10 IQ points higher than max(IQ1, IQ2) than when people work alone. Therefore remote work is likely less productive as there are less face-to-face interactions and serendipitous interactions, and co authoring is harder. Also today USA software engineers are greatly rewarded for self-initiative vs other countries. These initiatives might be culturally more difficult to gain from foreign born workers.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#167
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus. The whole "democratic" decision-making process takes time and leads to a sequence of decisions spread throughout the time domain, which, taken together, might lead to a suboptimal result compared to what might be achieved by following the steps of an "enlightened benevolent dictator".

The problem with that is that dictators usually fail to be sufficiently enlightened or benevolent.

The closest to an enlightened, benevolent dictator in modern times I think is Lee Kuan Yew.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#168
> There must be some justification that's keeping IBM from firing all it's US staff and cutting costs by 90% + rent by hiring people in Vietnam

Every intervening layer or other impediment between understanding/interpretation of customer requirements and coding reduces efficiency. Language and cultural understanding barriers, whether directly exposed or mitigated by adding an intervening translating layer between the technical team and customers are real problems. And the customers with money to spend are disproportionately in richer countries. So even with equally valuable raw technical skills, programmers in richer countries are legitimately worth more. But the money offered and immigration/non-immigrant worker policies mean that the most valuable workers from poorer countries will, over time, being drawn into the richer countries, exacerbating the divide.

And, in any case, even with neoliberal global trade regimes, there are additional transaction costs to overseas outsourcing, even with programming and other information/intellectual work. So, of course the law of one price that applies in idealized integrated markets doesn't apply.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect of culture: how one-sided the communication is. Silicon Valley and Scandinavian cultures are very flat, so it is possible for "the man on the floor" to tell management that it doesn't work to put diesel into a gasoline car. In authoritarian cultures this would be a mistake as it's seen as embarrassing the management by saying they made a mistake. If you want to continue being employed then it is much b…

An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus. The whole "democratic" decision-making process takes time and leads to a sequence of decisions spread throughout the time domain, which, taken together, might lead to a suboptimal result compared to what might be achieved by following the steps of an "enlightened benevolent dictator".

Only certain types of work and usually very mundane work can be done with authoritarian culture. Note that creative people do not enjoy working in an authoritarian regime. Universities are an example of an anti authoritarian organization where creativity often flourishes.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#170
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus. The whole "democratic" decision-making process takes time and leads to a sequence of decisions spread throughout the time domain, which, taken together, might lead to a suboptimal result compared to what might be achieved by following the steps of an "enlightened benevolent dictator".

"An authoritarian culture, however, can get work done much quicker while staying with a razor-sharp focus." Only in the extreme short term. In the medium term, the dictator inevitably ends up severed from reality by the inability of (true) data to flow back up to the authority, which results in their decisions becoming increasingly suboptimal over time. This is the pragmatic argument in favor of free speech, really.…

> In the medium term, the dictator inevitably ends up severed from reality by the inability of (true) data to flow back up to the authority, which results in their decisions becoming increasingly suboptimal over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU_Principle

Post reply on HN