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The dispassionate developer

blog.ploeh.dk

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Re: The dispassionate developer

#171

Post by varispeed »

nickjj wrote: post #154

I like the article overall but I'm not sold on the passion ethos section as it was written. The author hints that they wouldn't want a surgeon who is passionate because they should be making rational decisions. But IMO passion isn't all about making an on the spot emotional decision without thinking things through. It's about their willingness to continue learning and advancing their craft because they have the motiv…

I know people who are exceptional developers and they don't do it as a hobby, because they have other hobbies more important to them. They have tasks at work that are fulfilling enough and carrying it home or making it more than it is would probably burn them out. It's not like if you are a surgeon, then it is the only thing in your life.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#172

Post by jaccarmac »

It's a thought-provoking article, but contains several serious contractions in terms.

> For reasons that are complicated and that I don't fully understand, the software development community in the eighties and nineties developed a culture of anti-capitalism and liberal values that put technology on a pedestal for its own sake.

Liberalism is by definition pro-capitalism. It's not pro-capitalism in the libertarian sense of "free markets", of course, but it's not like Silicon Valley doesn't have its right-libertarians, too. I think this analysis has it exactly backward. I find the position proposed in The Californian Ideology much more compelling: The culture Mark is talking about was a fusion of market liberalism, countercultural signifiers, and techno-utopianism.

> The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product.

This is almost exactly what the notion of "free software" was invented to oppose. "Freedom" in software isn't supposed to be about price, but about liberty. Free software can absolutely cost money, but if it starts treating its users like products, it is by definition no longer free software. Of course, this is exactly why "open source" became so popular...

> The idea of open source, too, seems largely defunct as a means of 'sticking it to the man'.

Open source was never about "sticking it to the man". Open source is a defanged version of free software, where the only freedom left is the one which hurts the man the least when exercised.

Post-Open Source by Melody Horn is also recommended reading here.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#173

Post by fbleibel »

elanning wrote: post #164
908B64B197 wrote: post #124

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. What's the compensation like? Stock? > 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 You'll also find out that the people you really want to hire…

A lot of senior engineers would refuse to do a fizzbuzz. I'm really not seeing the problem here.

On the contrary, I think this is a huge red flag. Just go along with the interviewer, maybe highlight that this is typically and entry-level problem, but solve it. You really don't want to hire someone who not only can't solve fizzbuzz, but also refuses to hear about it and complain that it's 'beneath them' (what a annoying attitude!).

Re: The dispassionate developer

#174

Post by varispeed »

nickjj wrote: post #163
nightski wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, the surgeon obsessed with self promotion and status seeking might not be the best one as they may be more focused on themselves than the task at hand.

> Meh, the surgeon obsessed with self promotion and status seeking might not be the best one as they may be more focused on themselves than the task at hand. The ones I've talked with are more interested in the implementation details, changing lives for the better and sharing what they've learned so everyone as a whole can rise. Their practices are also wildly successful without content promotion and no to very littl…

It does not mean everyone is like that. I was in care of one of world renown specialists in their field and I was just a case to them. They were more interested in documenting what I am going through in their journals than finding out how to help. At least this is how I felt about it. It may look great for an outsider, as they write papers, speak at conferences, show their findings, but somehow the human element is lost in all that.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#175

Post by varispeed »

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.

I think prestigious school is all about contacts and networking rather than actual knowledge. Sure they are expected to have great quality teaching. The thing is - if company is looking for people from prestigious universities, chances are the owners also are and they just seek for people they know and are familiar with. This could also be the other way - owners are coming from poor background and this way they want to feel superior over people who had what they always dreamed about but couldn't get. Either way I stay away from such companies. In my experience there was always something toxic about them.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#176

Post by anyfoo »

wpietri wrote: post #80
Derpdiherp wrote: post #5

Maybe it's the jobs that I've worked, or the country I'm in ( UK ). But I've really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV's. Every company I've worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth. I wouldn't think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a famil…

I'm hiring a few engineers right now. I agree that some companies exploit "passion", and that companies doing that tend to over-weight weight things in a way that encourages having no life. I think that's a mistake. That said, I do think some sort of "passion" is really useful. I've been coding a long time. I'm on something like my fifth major language. My first computer had 4K of RAM; now my phone has a million time…

I know exactly what you mean, people being proficient in some very specific legacy domain (Vax BASIC is a good example, another might be AS/400/IBM i by now). Often going above and beyond in their niche expertise.

Though it's hard to get a full picture. Maybe past gigs or other circumstances have given them enough financial stability that they don't strictly need to work anymore. They then continue consulting out of passion for their particular niche, or somewhat opposite because they don't have any drive to learn anything else, but still don't want to retire completely. I feel like the people I have in mind there seem to be in a more good than bad situation.

But I've also encountered the other category you're hinting at, people who are fused to a legacy system (i.e. a particular project at a particular company), not a technology in general. A few friends of mine do that, and they are much younger and much further away from feasible retirement than the aforementioned "gray beards". I sometimes do wonder about their prospects, but, again, no full insight.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#177

Post by bcrosby95 »

austincheney wrote: post #46
Uberphallus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! When I was single I had a lot of free time to tinker and go through coding tests, etc, etc, and cater to whatever hiring shenanigans were in place. First marriage, then a kid, and I find myself grabbing my laptop after work maybe once a fortnight. I'm always "open for new challenges" and I regularly apply to positions in interesting (to me) projects, but more often than not, at some point in their process…

So I am married with kids and I have two separate careers in unrelated industries to balance, only one of which is full time though. Still I find time to spend with the wife and kids and I still contribute daily to open source. It is all about budgeting and balance. What are you willing to sacrifice. I don't have social time outside the family and I don't watch much television unless I am traveling away from the fami…

I doubt I would be able to juggle 2 jobs with my current pandemic induced schedule. Basically, my time is spoken for during the week from 630am until 8pm. And that gets me 6 hours of work. I need to find 10 hours outside that time to get myself up to a 40 hour workweek.

I'm pretty lucky in that my wife is a stay at home mom. My sister in law has a dual income family. They basically never see eachother, because one has to work during the day during the week, and the other works nights and all weekend. They're lucky one of their jobs is so flexible.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#178

Post by notagoodidea »

A friend of mine had the saying "Innovation is for the product not the employees." When a talking about a former place of work mentality. I use it in my cover letter when I explain why I choose to apply to X company by stating that they don't fit this mold.

Same during interviews, when asked if I have contributed to open source library, I answer not at at work and that I don't program that much on my free time. It may not serve me well but it is the last bastion of honesty that the hiring process allows me. Besides that you are still just selling yourself to whoever take interest in your case.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#179

Post by potatoz2 »

sokoloff wrote: post #61
notsureaboutpg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

People in China often don't speak fluent English because they grow up in a country where it's not a spoken language.

People who don't contribute to OSS typically don't do it because they don't have the ability (some OSS code is held together by duct tape) but because they don't have time, interest or think it's harder than it is.

If you have better tools to determine if someone is good at writing code for your company, why use a proxy measure that's different in many ways?

Re: The dispassionate developer

#180

Post by danaliv »

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.

Yes. I build wooden boats. A neighbor is seemingly obsessed with the notion that I could start a business selling them. And I can think of no faster or more effective way to ruin boat-building for me.
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