Heisenberg Developers (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#161

Post by philh » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

throwawaymsft wrote: post #140

philh wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I attended a hackathon with a number of Amazon employees, and one of my distinct memories was a Principal Engineer who didn't even know what "publicly traded" meant and was sure that Bezos owned 100% of the company. It's not clear to me why that knowledge would be especially useful to a principle engineer at Amazon. I think it's a generally good thing to know, and difficult to avoid picking up. But clearly someone…

What would you think of a government employee who didn't know the US was a democracy?

Depends on the role. For example, I think a postman is a government employee? In that case, about the same as I'd think of an Amazon engineer who didn't know that. I have no idea how they don't know it, and I think a little less of them for it. But if it's not relevant for their work, I don't judge their skill by it, and I don't think less of them than I do of anyone else.

If you want me to be - offended? shocked? contemptuous? - of what someone doesn't know, please tell me why it's so important for them to know it. Not just why it could potentially be useful for someone in their role. Why it's so important for anyone in this role, that this particular thing gets singled out, suggests in lieu of all other data that they're incompetent.

I'm an engineer at a publicly traded company. (Or so I assume. I could be mistaken.) I can think of dozens of things I don't know that would be useful for me to know. I do know what a publicly traded company is, but this knowledge is not useful for me in my role.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#162

Post by badminton1 » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #113

badminton1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the author describes is that the manager manipulated the consensus building in the team, by adding friends to the team so he can start ignoring them. Consensus building is a key part of any organization and doing this is not ethical. Then, what you describe: reducing technical debt is a nice to have? life is too short to care about quality? That's pretty much, in your own words "the coward way": "checking out me…

This is almost completely wrong. Building consensus is just one management style. It is by no means the only one, or even the only effective one. It's not unethical to manage in a different fashion. The people being managed don't like it, but that doesn't make it unethical. Just find a better job. Checking out and doing what you're told is a rational response, one that management would not be opposed to seeing. You'r…

Let's face it, you are going to spend the majority of your life at work. Is money the only thing you care about? If so, why not doing something else? Nobody gets rich being a checked out employee.

You not only get paid with money, you get also paid with experience. That experience has a market value.

If your resume reads: "mindless checked out employee in tyrannic sweatshop using 15 years old tech", your market value will be lower than "engaged employee in innovative company using cutting edge tech". So if money matters to you, you should care about investing your career in experiences that lead to a higher market value.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#163

Post by scruple » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

shiftb wrote: post #83

CryoLogic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent my teenage years building fan sites and social networking sites for games. I made enough money to pay off college, get a nice apartment by the water and have a couple k leftover come graduation. I was curious why I wasn't getting a lot of hits on my resume, so I talked to a recruiter at a networking event who had seen my application (for one of the "unicorns") and she said they where uncomfortable with how en…

That's odd. We get excited when we see an entrepreneurial profile like yours. We have several developers who want to start companies and actually try to help them along that path. The benefit to a motivated engineer is you can give them problems to solve instead of specs. The outcome or results can be less predictable but can also be much more effective.

I've had the same experience as the poster you're replying to. I had to remove any bits of the fact that I bootstrapped my own fledgling (small, successful in it's own right, yet not capable of sustaining full-time wages) startup from my resume to get interviews. I was told that my resume was "intimidating" and "sending the wrong signal" by friends who are developers whose input I trust.

But I completely agree with what you've said. I am a problem solver or a product engineer or whatever this skill set combination is being called these days. I pull from a wide range of experiences to solve problems and I'm not very happy when I have to work off of a rigorous spec.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much to most employers in my experience. I don't fit in to most places and most places don't know what to do with me. It's made for a rather frustrating career over the last decade but I simply don't know what else to do.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#164

Post by vinceguidry » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 6:38 PM UTC

JanneVee wrote: post #158

vinceguidry wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem here is lack of leadership and the organization is trying to solve it with management. Management is a resource that can be easily added or subtracted from an organization, leadership is not. Good leaders are rare, but management can be taught.

Yeah and management alone doesn't suffice. Only managing the adding features and not managing the quality is a problem, and as I see it lack of leadership.

You didn't seem to grasp my point.

Management is a resource a company can throw at a problem. Leadership is not. Positing solutions that can't be implemented is the very definition of wishful thinking. Calling it a lack of leadership isn't helpful. You need to break the problem down further and try to find a way to solve it that doesn't involve supermen.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#165

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #144

marcosdumay wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that staying 8 hours a day in a job you don't care about is less consuming than staying those 8 hours in a job you love. I can't even imagine where did you get that from. One will cause deep depression and burnout in no time - the other is a wonderful life experience.

I can care about doing a good job and keeping a tight ship without having to care about company politics. A job is what you make of it. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not breaking rocks apart with a hammer for 16 hours a day, and I have some bargaining power to make my lifestyle better, so why complain? I don't understand people that have to turn work into some grand quest to make the world better. I think these sorts…

> I can care about doing a good job and keeping a tight ship without having to care about company politics.

In this case, no you can't. Company politics has placed a superior of yours explicitly tasked into order you to do a bad job.

I do completely agree with the "just find another job" line. What I don't agree is with that "cheer, your job is less stressing now".

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#166

Post by lizard » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 8:17 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #113

badminton1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the author describes is that the manager manipulated the consensus building in the team, by adding friends to the team so he can start ignoring them. Consensus building is a key part of any organization and doing this is not ethical. Then, what you describe: reducing technical debt is a nice to have? life is too short to care about quality? That's pretty much, in your own words "the coward way": "checking out me…

This is almost completely wrong. Building consensus is just one management style. It is by no means the only one, or even the only effective one. It's not unethical to manage in a different fashion. The people being managed don't like it, but that doesn't make it unethical. Just find a better job. Checking out and doing what you're told is a rational response, one that management would not be opposed to seeing. You'r…

What I see from many of your comments, and why I think you're getting so much opposition, is that you are suggesting we should be satisfied simply being programmers while many people here on Hacker News want to be more than that.

The reality may be that many of us are just programmers and that the real struggle isn't with the project management but with our refusal to accept our role. I can't argue with that. We can't all be architects; someone has to lay the bricks and you can spare yourself some trouble, and even find some satisfaction, by accepting that from time to time someone will tell you to lay the bricks the other way. But I wouldn't demean people for wanting to do more.

Personally, I don't find programming very fulfilling. I don't get satisfaction from producing a sufficient quantity of code, but from solving sufficiently challenging problems. Coding a means-to-an-end for me, just a medium to express my thoughts and ideas like pen and paper to an artist. When my job became more about bullet-point features and timelines than the problems the system was supposed to solve I struggled. A lot. In fact I started looking for new problems to solve in lieu of the ones I had been working on, like why the project was struggling and how to convince the project managers they were just digging us deeper into technical debt.

Fortunately I'm being moved to another team as part of a restructuring in our organization and had the opportunity to explain my perspective to my new manager, who suggested I could be put on more of a leadership track. Will it happen? Will it be better? I don't know, but trying means I can see if my current employer wants to see what else I can offer and help me grow or if they just want me to sit down, shut up, and spit out some code.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#167

Post by throwawaymsft » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 8:21 PM UTC

philh wrote: post #161

throwawaymsft wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you think of a government employee who didn't know the US was a democracy?

Depends on the role. For example, I think a postman is a government employee? In that case, about the same as I'd think of an Amazon engineer who didn't know that. I have no idea how they don't know it, and I think a little less of them for it. But if it's not relevant for their work, I don't judge their skill by it, and I don't think less of them than I do of anyone else. If you want me to be - offended? shocked? co…

Would you want to work with someone who "is sure" of a trivially verifiable fact? It's ok to be ignorant ("I have no idea who owns what") but to be sure of something that pants-on-head false?

What else are they "sure" about?

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#168

Post by JanneVee » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #164

JanneVee wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and management alone doesn't suffice. Only managing the adding features and not managing the quality is a problem, and as I see it lack of leadership.

You didn't seem to grasp my point. Management is a resource a company can throw at a problem. Leadership is not. Positing solutions that can't be implemented is the very definition of wishful thinking. Calling it a lack of leadership isn't helpful. You need to break the problem down further and try to find a way to solve it that doesn't involve supermen.

The thing is that I'm only telling what the solution isn't. Solution might be, to ask the people doing the actual work the right questions. But if that is not happening or if no one is listening to the answers, the solution is for an individual to change company. Because in my experience when the shift to wrong type of management happens, it seldomly fixes itself. And as a lowly peon you can't influence enough to change a culture that isn't a good fit for yourself.

I.e. the company is ruined if you think it is. There are no solutions, you are doing the company and yourself a disservice by staying.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#169

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #148

throwawaymsft wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you think of a government employee who didn't know the US was a democracy?

Well it isn't. Officially it is a republic. A democratic one, but a republic. Unofficially political power is so unevenly distributed it should be called an oligarchy. Officially, North Korea is also a republic. Now, if the person thought the President was a king of a monarchy, then I would say they have been listening to too much talk radio.

> Well it isn't.

Yes, it is. Or, at least, if not, not for the first reason you present.

> Officially it is a republic. A democratic one, but a republic.

A democratic republic is still a democracy (usually, a representative democracy, but since any political system which isn't a monarchy can be correctly called a "republic", a direct democracy could also be a democratic republic.)

The idea that "democracy" and "republic" are mutually exclusive categories is quite wrong.

> Unofficially political power is so unevenly distributed it should be called an oligarchy.

And so connected to wealth that it should be called plutocracy, according to some, sure.

> Officially, North Korea is also a republic.

And a democratic one, too.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#170

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Feb 03, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

philh wrote: post #135

CryoLogic wrote: post #4

One issue with how developers are hired these days, is many large companies are hiring largely for classical knowledge (aka, memorizing: Algorithms, DS) and mathematical ability. Try interviewing at MS, big G or Amazon and you will see what I mean. These developers are great as code monkeys, but a lot of them don't have any idea what their code contributes to, or even how their business makes money. I attended a hack…

> I attended a hackathon with a number of Amazon employees, and one of my distinct memories was a Principal Engineer who didn't even know what "publicly traded" meant and was sure that Bezos owned 100% of the company. It's not clear to me why that knowledge would be especially useful to a principle engineer at Amazon. I think it's a generally good thing to know, and difficult to avoid picking up. But clearly someone…

> It's not clear to me why that knowledge would be especially useful to a principle engineer at Amazon.

Assuming that Amazon has any equity portion to compensation (which is common in even large tech companies, not just startups, though I don't have any direct knowledge of Amazon's typical pay arrangements) its pretty critical to understanding what he is getting in exchange for the labor he provides, so there's that.