Super-star programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: Super-star programmers

#121

Post by gruseom » Sat, Jun 16, 2012, 6:26 PM UTC

batista wrote: post #120

gruseom wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pointed out that productivity can't be measured (though that hasn't stopped you from invoking the concept). Something else that can't be measured? "Business value". Let alone the "business value" of an individual programmer's commits.

> Something else that can't be measured? "Business value". If it makes money, it has business value, in my book. If it makes MORE money, it has more business value. Actually it might be the ONLY measurable thing in the whole discussion.

Well of course, but that's just a trivial restatement of the problem. Anyone can measure dollar amounts once they have them; money is a measure. The question is how to assign such amounts.

For business value to be measurable means you have a function M(x) that maps x to money. The trouble isn't with the range of that function, it's establishing what the domain is and how to compute M.

People often talk about business value on software projects as if they have such an M when they don't. What they have is an imaginary M whose domain is "what I care about" and whose output is "what I want to believe". Such discourse is dysfunctional.

The truth is that you have M for the business as a whole and maybe for specific products (though I can cite cases where even that was dubious) and it typically breaks as you try to get finer-grained.

Re: Super-star programmers

#122

Post by gruseom » Sat, Jun 16, 2012, 11:09 PM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #99

gruseom wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, statements like "skill in coding isn't important unless it leads to tangible business results" seem to suggest that there is a way of linking the two. But there isn't. So it's misleading to talk this way. In practice, people just use it to confirm their prejudices (specifically about who is and isn't productive), which they've arrived at for other reasons. I think "business value" is a particularly bad phrase b…

Hmm... I can't agree. "Business value" is a useful term for describing sources of value beyond revenue. It's extremely fluffy and usually unmeasurable, sure, but it's still a useful way of talking about things that are worth doing that don't produce revenue, such as competitive differentiation, market research, brand promotion, philanthropic efforts, and relationship building. For software that doesn't produce direct…

I don't think we understand the term "business value" the same way. It seems to me a better term for what you're talking about would just be "value".

The power dynamic aspect is this: who gets to decide what has "business value"? I would like the answer to be: anyone who has good insight and can convince their team. But when the answer instead is "a class of people called 'managers' or 'businessperson'", that is what I object to. Membership in that class is a matter of organizational status, not insight or merit.

But in a message board discussion it's hard to tell where we're talking about the same things and where we're not. Wish there were an easy way to get semantic diffs.

Re: Super-star programmers

#123

Post by tetha » Sun, Jun 17, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

jdlshore wrote: post #84

barrkel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My worthless opinion is based on about 20 years of newsgroup / forum membership, but the few years I spent working in companies whose software product was a cost centre for its customers was particularly enlightening. We (the guys working on framework / architecture stuff) tried to grow some of the people from the domain-specific side of things into roles on our side of things. It was an uphill struggle; these people…

That's the tricky thing about productivity, isn't it? You said that those domain-specific programmers were "not great at producing code," but I would argue (with tongue firmly in cheek) that in fact they were the productive ones, and you were not. Let me explain. Productivity is defined as output over input. Programming input is activity--usually, time working--and output is software capability (or, more generally, b…

At this point, the terms grow a bit wonkey though, and I am struggling to communicate this properly in upcoming interviews. The big, underlying question is: How productive is a programmer that enables other programmers to be productive. Especially if the enabling programmer works slower and only outputs things no customer will ever see and especially if the work done with the framework outweighs the time spent creating the framework by magnitudes?

Re: Super-star programmers

#124

Post by randomdata » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 4:08 AM UTC

larrys wrote: post #76

randomdata wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why a good programmer needs to be around good business people Partnering with a business person for my next venture is something I'd like to try, but it's not exactly clear where you find a good business person who wants to partner up. The business people I am in contact with are already busy with their own things. Unlike a programer who might be presently doing the 9-5 corporate job, it seems like a good bus…

"where you find a good business person who wants to partner up" My first question would be to ask you where you are located? Not sure if you want to reveal a specific city or not. Where you are matters. "The business people I am in contact with are already busy with their own things." True. Which is why you need to be somewhere where there is a chance of meeting people who are in between, recently graduated etc. Ther…

My first question would be to ask you where you are located?

Rural Canada, which I assume does not bode well. There's certainly no startup scene, so to speak.

Where you are matters.

Which is unfortunate because one thing that has always excited me about software in particular is that it democratizes location. I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing organizations from around the world without having to be physically present for any of them.

If you build it and it makes sense from a business perspective and have a prototype you can attract that one or two people you need. With just an idea of course you can't. Care to elaborate on the idea at all?

That's fair. I've built "hundreds" of prototypes before. Some I've come to realize are simply bad ideas, others I've decided were still good and were taken to market with some mediocre success. In those cases I have felt were limited due to my lack of business acumen. What is not clear to me is where to go even after a prototype has been made and still shows merit.

I don't mind sharing the idea, but after some further research I discovered some companies who are already working on pretty exactly what I had envisioned, so I'll spare you the details. Though I do appreciate your advice in general as there are millions of other problems that need to be solved so it will no doubt come up again.