191–200 of 290 posts
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Your comment peaked my interest to read the HBR article you mentioned. Thanks. http://hbr.org/2010/07/the-big-idea-no-management-is-not-a-p...
No, it piqued your interest.
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No, it piqued your interest.
Is there a name for that phenomenon, where people hear terms in use but map them to the wrong words? Or the opposite, where people learn words through reading but mispronounce them?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1477763
Apologies in advance for engaging in the clichéd 'submit a Wikipedia page' pattern!
Hiring managers don't list a salary. If they do they're looking to hire really junior engineers who probably can't write a linked list reversal program anyway. In my 13 years working at startups I've never applied for a job that listed a salary range. Ultimately, within reason, good programmers are worth whatever you have to pay them and bad programmers aren't worth what you pay them. There are way more bad programme…
The salary that a company offers might not be listed in a job offering, but the culture and many other factors are neither. And even though they are not listed you probably heard of companies with a great culture etc. Don't you think the same is true for salaries?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Solve that problem to solve this one.
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I disagree. Medicine is not that powerful. Doctors don't have that big power over people's lives. And the ones that do have are mostly edge cases, like it is in programming. Most of the doctors just move you around the "system". I can tell you this because I am a doctor myself. And gave up medicine in favor of programming. Medicine is a beauroucratic closed society, that is not willing to accept new members. They hav…
Okay, I've just graduated as a vet and I had a bit of a crisis where I was worried: 1) That medical professions remain in their elite positions by using inaccessible language and a closed community 2) That there was a limited range of tools where much clinical work is just remembering someone else's solution to a particular disease and involved little in the way of problem solving and as a consequence something that…
I wanted to debunk the myth saying that medicine is the holy grail of professions. It is not. It's overrated, over-regulated and over-idolized. It's quite like the music industry. And it has to change, but changing it will be much more difficult than changing music industry.
Looking at a lot of the posts on here, it seems that the bar to finding good programming staff is (1) finding good programmers and allowing them to find you and (2) weeding out the chaff. Furthermore, it seems that weeding out the chaff is something probably everybody could agree on - that is, what would be nice is some kind of informal certification process or standard test. Nothing like an AMA board certification o…
The best way I've seen to evaluate the ability of a programmer and their* fit at your company is to:
1) Ask them to program something simple in the language you expect them to use.
2) Present them with a problem your team recently faced and ask them to talk through how they would approach finding a solution.
3) Ask them about things that relate to your startup/corporate culture (eg. if you're a bunch of practical jokers, ask them about practical jokes they've done or been victim to)
4) Ask them what part of your product sucks the worst. What specific thing would they do to improve it? Why would that be an improvement?
5) Have all your short-list people meet and spend some time together. In a followup interview, ask each about their opinions of the others.
* I hate to use "they" and "their" as a gender-neutral, singular pronoun but haven't really found anything better :-(
I have a simple theory. Most managers are still educated according to Taylor's Scientific Theory of Management, where the managers are more intelligent than the "factors of production," and their role is to "scientifically" direct their work so that they create additional value (which is multiplied by how many workers they have reporting to them). Their salaries reflect that model, and thus is proportional to the sal…
I have a simple theory. Most managers are still educated according to Taylor's Scientific Theory of Management, where the managers are more intelligent than the "factors of production," and their role is to "scientifically" direct their work so that they create additional value (which is multiplied by how many workers they have reporting to them). Their salaries reflect that model, and thus is proportional to the sal…
Are you really suggesting that programming is the first profession to arrive on the world-scene in which productivity scales with intelligence? I think that's a bit egocentric. I can think of a few others.
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> The best programmers I know seem to be indifferent to cash. No, they do care about cash. How do I know? >They work on the most interesting project they can find that pays them enough to live. There. That's why. If they weren't making enough money to meet their needs, they'd be looking to trade up. Money isn't the only answer. Everyone likes to talk about how money isn't the solution. I'm pretty sure every one is ma…
I work in a pretty unsexy field (MySpace apps), and there's no amount of money I could pay to my researcher friends to drop their computer graphics projects and work for me instead.
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> The best programmers I know seem to be indifferent to cash. No, they do care about cash. How do I know? >They work on the most interesting project they can find that pays them enough to live. There. That's why. If they weren't making enough money to meet their needs, they'd be looking to trade up. Money isn't the only answer. Everyone likes to talk about how money isn't the solution. I'm pretty sure every one is ma…
Yes, but offering more money to someone who feels like they already make enough is amazingly ineffective. My point is that, in my experience, great programmers place a much higher value on doing interesting work than they put on making more money.
Which is completely besides the point. Listen, I understand that point of view. I agree with it. I live it.
> My point is that, in my experience, great programmers place a much higher value on doing interesting work than they put on making more money.
Only after they have enough money to not have to worry about it.
Offering programmers minimum wage isn't going to entice them from their 6-figure job, even if the work is challenging and fun. Most likely their 6-figure job is already exciting and fun enough.