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You can't git clone a team

virtualize.sh

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Re: You can't git clone a team

#11

Post by plam503711 »

tra3 wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I can't tell whether this is a promotional piece for something.. That said, I do agree with the premise of the article that it's hard to learn "the stack", especially with the advent of generative AI. "Back in the day", when google spat out a link to something resembling your problem, you still had to deconstruct the answer given to apply it to your particular case. That required some…

Hi!

It's not a promotional piece of something, it's my personal experience as a CEO and co-founder of a company using Xen as the core of our stack. I like to share my views in a transparent fashion on how it's hard to do very technical stuff, not just for technical reasons, but due to the lack of people trained for.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#12

Post by plam503711 »

htrp wrote: post #10
gbuk2013 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a lead consultant on a gig where the CTO outright told us that he’s not really interested in growing their (frankly, under qualified) engineers, just wants them to get on with the job - it’s very short-sighted and sad. That said, in my previous job in a startup we hired very junior engineers and gave them plenty of opportunity and support for growth and several people did stunningly well. Pity the company didn’t…

>That said, in my previous job in a startup we hired very junior engineers and gave them plenty of opportunity and support for growth and several people did stunningly well. Pity the company didn’t do very well (IMHO due to focusing more or this sort of thing rather than making money). Mentoring is a key part of technical leadership, way easier to help the talent grow into your requirements (even if they are under-qu…

I agree but there's also the extra difficulty to do mentoring remotely (we are a remote first company). I *really* like being remote first and provide the choice if you want to work on site or wherever you want. But it does come with some challenges.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#13

Post by throw093209 »

> System teachers: now rarer than RGB-free laptops

LLM are quite good at explaining systems and frameworks. I would never got into kernel programming without Deepseek guidance.

As for universities: too expensive, too much paperwork, too slow, too elitist.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#14

Post by plam503711 »

throw093209 wrote: post #13

> System teachers: now rarer than RGB-free laptops LLM are quite good at explaining systems and frameworks. I would never got into kernel programming without Deepseek guidance. As for universities: too expensive, too much paperwork, too slow, too elitist.

It's true but until some extent. When you are talking about a hypervisor (like Xen), and many many subtle things depending on your CPU brand/model, it's really really *hard*, even with an LLM (and even more with an LLM hallucinating some CPU features or forgetting basic things like Meltdown and Spectre).

However I agree: to learn a topic, LLMs are providing a great speedup. As a CEO/co-founder, I have no issue to hire people without a degree if they are good at what they do. However, our biggest chances are to scout directly in universities to find motivated students (motivation >>> everything else)

Re: You can't git clone a team

#15

Post by gbuk2013 »

betterThanTexas wrote: post #9
somanyphotons wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just means the market is saturated. When there aren't enough people they'll accept less experience

...this doesn't make sense. Surely you need to factor in price point. Often times junior engineers deliver disproportionate value. Some ratio of juniors:seniors just seems rational, and those juniors grow into seniors. Maybe there's a good argument against training, but it could also just be irrational and stubborn in this case.

In my experience it only works if you pull in juniors into strong teams and keep the proportion of juniors reasonably small. You also need to have a process in place for training them - it’s not enough to rely on ad-hoc mentoring from peers.

If you get the ratio wrong, with too many juniors and weak technical leadership then you will end up in a very bad place in your code base.

In terms of value, even if juniors are half the cost, it is much wiser to hire one senior instead of 2 juniors for the same money.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#16

Post by maximumgeek »

tra3 wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I can't tell whether this is a promotional piece for something.. That said, I do agree with the premise of the article that it's hard to learn "the stack", especially with the advent of generative AI. "Back in the day", when google spat out a link to something resembling your problem, you still had to deconstruct the answer given to apply it to your particular case. That required some…

If you find that to be the case when you use ChatGPT, maybe you should quit using ChatGPT.

Sometimes, probably most of the time, it is better to work through it and understand an issue than to blindly copy pasta.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#18

Post by pier25 »

tra3 wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I can't tell whether this is a promotional piece for something.. That said, I do agree with the premise of the article that it's hard to learn "the stack", especially with the advent of generative AI. "Back in the day", when google spat out a link to something resembling your problem, you still had to deconstruct the answer given to apply it to your particular case. That required some…

> No learning is happening. Does not bode well for new folks coming in.

Recently got into a completely new language/framework and used Copilot to understand what was going on. I still made all the big decisions and wrote most of the code myself.

You can definitely use AI to avoid learning though (up to a point).

Re: You can't git clone a team

#19

Post by thenewwazoo »

As an aside, TFA says:

We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it.

If you are that person, what is the best way to market yourself? I am the person described. I've got experience from poking registers in firmware, to wireline transport protocol implementation, to infosec, to writing microservice framework middleware, to pipeline orchestration at the OS level, and on and on. In the last week I've debugged Linux UDS issues and TLS cipher suite problems, and wrote code to provision WiFi-connected devices over BLE.

But it's incredibly hard to demonstrate that in an interview, if I can even find a role that warrants it. You're not going to find me on a university campus or in a research lab because I'm at a FAANG trying to pay my mortgage.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#20

Post by artyom »

polishdude20 wrote: post #2

I think the issue started way before AI when it comes to not having enough fresh blood for this industry. Companies have decided they don't want to train juniors. They want seniors who already have the skills.

I agree but it was always like that. Also there isn't any incentive anymore in growing juniors if they're going to immediately take the next better offer that comes around when they know enough, and you have such thing being offered on a daily basis (at least until a couple years ago).

I would love to work on low-level, systems stuff (anything as close to the hardware as possible), that's even my education and area of expertise. BUT SaaS companies in reality:

- pay better

- have lower costs

- are way easier

- don't have that many (or any at all) geographical restrictions (e.g. importing hardware prototypes).

People follows the money.

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