Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The dispassionate developer

blog.ploeh.dk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 262 posts

Re: The dispassionate developer

#61

Post by sokoloff »

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #50
deergomoo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're having a bit of a debate about this internally as the company I work for is struggling to hire good candidates. For a while we've had a take-home test and that has increased our success rate somewhat. But as you say, we really don't want to lay unreasonable expectations on people who may have other obligations, but we've had many people in the past who've interviewed very well but turned out to be completely in…

>For a while we've had a take-home test and that has increased our success rate somewhat. But as you say, we really don't want to lay unreasonable expectations on people who may have other obligations These are mutually exclusive things. Candidates who have more free time to code are more likely to be better at it than those who don't (all else equal). Candidates who have OSS maintenance / leadership experience are m…

We should try to eliminate irrelevant biases in the hiring process but we are fundamentally trying to select people to hire who will join our company and write good code. That quality is not evenly distributed in the population.

Some of the gymnastics thinking that I see seems to suggest that we’d seek to hire fluent English speakers by interviewing evenly across all populations. By all means, I’d be more than happy to hire someone fluent in English from China, but if I’m looking for a fluent English speaker, I shouldn’t spent 18.5% of my recruiting efforts/budget in China out of "fairness".

Re: The dispassionate developer

#63

Post by LennyPenny »

regarding the OSS points: The only reason that Google, Fb, etc can freeload off of OSS is that we abandoned going for viral licenses (ie AGPLv3)

The big corps simply will not use such OSS because they would have to also make their code open.

More wide adoption of these licenses would encourage a more healthy relationship between corps and OSS devs.

It's easy to imagine that in a world where essential low level software and useful libraries are AGPLed, the current big corps would probably not be as big as they are today. Instead more transparent organizations with more sustainable business models would gain a real advantage.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#64

Post by tayo42 »

agloeregrets wrote: post #4

I'm betting on this article being controversial here somewhat. The point on OSS is hilariously true though. Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? OSS is great for almost everyone, don't get me wrong, but in whole, the largest tech companies in the world have gotten an entire community to test, fix, and develop…

Yeah I struggle to find the words but I lost interest in hacking on stuff because it's mostly just corporate stuff. Like any major project, it's for businesses. I think user/people focused computing use is mostly solved. None of this stuff is for making regular people's lives better, it's for making businesses run.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#65

Post by rgoulter »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #27
giantg2 wrote: post #10

Working in the industry kills one's passion. It did for me.

This is true of most things, I've noticed. My neighbor is an amazing carpenter. He makes beautiful furniture from exotic pieces of wood he's had for 10 years just waiting to be used on that perfect project. I told him he could make a fortune selling things like what he's got in his living room, but he just shrugged and said it would take away all the fun. He's right.

I believe it's the need to be reliable that takes out the fun.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#66

Post by jkingsbery »

lordnacho wrote: post #30

"As you start to ponder the implied ethos, the stranger it gets. Would you like engineers to be passionate as they design new bridges? Would you like a surgeon to be passionate as she operates on you? Would you like judges to be passionate as they pass sentence on your friend?" I'm not sure what exactly he means by passionate, but I do know a surgeon who spends time reading and lecturing about the history of surgery.…

I had a similar reaction when comparing software engineering to other professions. My brother is a lawyer, and he has to do continuing legal education (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_legal_education). I have friends who are doctors that go to (and sometimes speak at) conferences. I'm not sure that we software engineers need to spend all our free time on leetcode and answering StackOverflow questions, but reading a book about something outside of normal work hours seems like pretty tame stakes.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#67

Post by DC1350 »

whatshisface wrote: post #37
kodah wrote: post #33

I do like when teams will ask for side projects (if I have them) or OSS projects. Software has an inherent bias towards people from prestigious schools (but especially CS programs) and enforces that bias via heavy algorithm testing that is otherwise mostly not needed in software. Not to say it's never needed, but the 90% use case does not involve knowing how to do binary search by hand. As I built my knowledge around…

> Software has an inherent bias towards people from prestigious schools and enforces that bias via heavy algorithm testing that is otherwise mostly not needed in software. Can't any school teach the same algorithms material? It's not exactly secret. Algorithms interviews seem more like surreptitious IQ tests than anything else.

Any school can teach it but most people still need to do lots of practice to reliably get through interviews. That’s not taught, and it’s something that students from average schools don’t even know they’re missing until they start looking for a job. Remember that the average student still believes that just getting a CS degree is enough to get employed.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#68

Post by not_knuth »

zabzonk wrote: post #3

Totally agree about "The passion ethos" - nothing gets up my nose more people who claim to be passionate about things that it really isn't possible or sensible to be, and who don't seem to know the meaning of the word, but just use it because it is expected of them, or they think it is.

The more people use it this way, the broader the acceptance of that usage becomes, the more often you will encounter people who will apply the argument you provided to your usage of the word.

- yours sincerely, the descriptivists of this world

Re: The dispassionate developer

#69

Post by sokoloff »

commandlinefan wrote: post #41

Quite a few years ago, I was approached by my then-employer who asked me if I programmed in my spare time outside of work, and I said I did. He said, "great, I have this outside software that I sell, and I'd like somebody to work on it outside of work hours, but I don't want to pay you to work on it." He was disappointed to learn that I wasn't as "passionate" as he had hoped.

Glad to hear that they're an ex-employer. I 100% believe that conversation happened, but I 0% understand why people think that would be remotely reasonable for you to agree.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#70

Post by ofrzeta »

LennyPenny wrote: post #63

regarding the OSS points: The only reason that Google, Fb, etc can freeload off of OSS is that we abandoned going for viral licenses (ie AGPLv3) The big corps simply will not use such OSS because they would have to also make their code open. More wide adoption of these licenses would encourage a more healthy relationship between corps and OSS devs. It's easy to imagine that in a world where essential low level softwa…

You should not forget that they open sourced a massive amount of code themselves.
Post reply on HN