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Stop Speaking in Bullshit

blog.danilocampos.com

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Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#21

Post by mfukar »

cperciva wrote: post #17
InfinityX0 wrote: post #7

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them - not the latter one. Those first descriptions make me wonder if it's really OK to run the same startup template again and again, even if you say that it makes you "human". I expect to read that first job description amongst a million three-person startups - besides maybe the profitable…

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: " We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture. " Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfe…

I don't think it's unusual; it's very rare for job postings to say anything of substance about what the job/position really entails. From May to September, while I was looking for a job, I must've read a thousand or more of job descriptions, and none (OK, maybe a handful) would leave me confident that I knew what I'd be doing there, in case I got the job.

It was extremely frustrating and kind of scary to be in that state of uncertainty.

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#22

Post by cperciva »

danilocampos wrote: post #20
cperciva wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: " We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture. " Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfe…

In fairness to the original posting, there are concrete examples of what you'd be doing (as their programming generalist) that I omitted in the original draft of the post: "Depending on the task, we program in Ruby (on Rails), Javascript (a lot of this), PHP, Python, Objective-C (iPhone), and Java (Android). Flexibility is a plus." Updated now.

That's part of the answer, but not all. Telling me what tools you need me to use helps me determine if I'm qualified or not; but it doesn't tell me what I would be doing with those tools.

I'd rather solve interesting problems in a language I hated than solve boring problems in a language I loved.

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#23

Post by nostrademons »

strebler wrote: post #19
nostrademons wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I read the "we're profitable" as "we make enough money to keep ourselves alive with ramen noodles and maybe hopefully pay rent". Perhaps I've just grown cynical in my old age...

"Ramen profitable" would be the term for that :)

Yes, but does any startup actually make the distinction between "ramen profitable" and "profitable" in their want ads? If so, props for honesty, but I'm not so sure about their business sense...

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#24

Post by nkurz »

danilocampos wrote: post #20
cperciva wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: " We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture. " Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfe…

In fairness to the original posting, there are concrete examples of what you'd be doing (as their programming generalist) that I omitted in the original draft of the post: "Depending on the task, we program in Ruby (on Rails), Javascript (a lot of this), PHP, Python, Objective-C (iPhone), and Java (Android). Flexibility is a plus." Updated now.

I think it might be a question of which double-speak speaks to you. The listing of languages is concrete in a sense, and says lots about the sort of culture they aspire to, but tells me nothing about the job. The other ads also say a lot about the culture you'd be working within.

Personally, I would care tremendously about what I am doing, and not just which tools I'd be allowed to use. The fact that you respond positively to it means that it's serving its purpose as an advertisement, but I'm not sure that means it's any more or less clear as to the job description.

So while I'd probably prefer being part of this mystery company to being a "Front-End Architect" in a cubicle, I still have no idea what the job would be and the ad doesn't offer enough specifics to make me excited in the abstract.

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#25

Post by ryanwaggoner »

In all fairness to Microsoft, telling people why they should be excited about a smartphone in a crowded market is a lot harder than explaining why you should care about autonomous vehicles.

The elevator pitch for cars that drive themselves is: "These cars drive themselves."

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#26

Post by Devilboy »

olefoo wrote: post #10

But speaking bullshit is so comforting, it makes you feel safe. When you're synergizing your core competencies dynamically, nobody understands what you meant and nobody is going to challenge you. You have the power. You must be important, people are paying attention to you, or at least doing a good job of faking it. Besides baffling them with bullshit is what makes meetings work, and meetings are where things get don…

The great thing about bullshit is I don't have to know what I'm talking about at all!

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#27

Post by awakeasleep »

I don't even think this phenomenon is limited to technical communication. Have you ever noticed yourself resorting to cliches when speaking to your friends or loved ones? I have.

Cliches are uttered as if they were abstract nuggets of knowledge/feeling we use with precision and understand.

But when I look at myself they're actually vague scabs covering topics I haven't actually thought about, am scared to think about, or am purposefully trying to avoid.

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#28

Post by MrIncognito »

cperciva wrote: post #22
danilocampos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness to the original posting, there are concrete examples of what you'd be doing (as their programming generalist) that I omitted in the original draft of the post: "Depending on the task, we program in Ruby (on Rails), Javascript (a lot of this), PHP, Python, Objective-C (iPhone), and Java (Android). Flexibility is a plus." Updated now.

That's part of the answer, but not all. Telling me what tools you need me to use helps me determine if I'm qualified or not; but it doesn't tell me what I would be doing with those tools. I'd rather solve interesting problems in a language I hated than solve boring problems in a language I loved.

Heh hold your horses, Colin. The tools are only there to show you that you can't live in one and ignore all others here.

And you're right, I spent a lot less time telling you what's great about the company than I did on trying to make it obvious who we're not looking for. That's because we're looking for a very specific breed of person.

In this startup, you will not only be doing engineering, but also answering customer emails and chat messages. You will likely be an important part of strategy discussions, and you may have to write the odd press release. You may even need to go door to door and figure out what our customers want. Not every engineer is interested in that stuff, and I wanted to make sure those people didn't apply.

You will basically a cofounder-level person coming in at a stage where a lot of the risk is removed.

As far as some of the interesting challenges...

Heavy image processing, data processing, and analytics. Primarily client-side web application with client side data processing. Very heavy database loads with poor potential cacheability. Data synchronization across multiple clients. Near duplicate document detection. Graph problems which need to be precomputed to varying degrees to make the application very responsive. Spam detection.

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#29

Post by hasenj »

cperciva wrote: post #17
InfinityX0 wrote: post #7

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them - not the latter one. Those first descriptions make me wonder if it's really OK to run the same startup template again and again, even if you say that it makes you "human". I expect to read that first job description amongst a million three-person startups - besides maybe the profitable…

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: " We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture. " Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfe…

I actually find it boring to apply for a job to "design algorithms to target advertising".

Think about it: do you want to do that for the next 10 years of your life? Do you want the next 10 years of your life to revolve around such a thing? Even if you don't mind it: is that what entices you to apply for the job?

I don't care what the work itself is. I care about the environment and the culture.

I'd rather design a spread-sheets application in a hacker-centric culture, than design hard-core search algorithms in a typical management-and-sales-centric culture.

Re: Stop Speaking in Bullshit

#30

Post by anigbrowl »

I think the problem is that some people want the abstraction and the strategic plan, some want a quick idea they can make a snap decision about. A seller doesn't know in advance which sort of buyer he's going to meet, but there's a good chance they tried out a 30 second pitch on a bank manager once, only to be asked a bunch of complex questions for which they didn't have an answer.

It's like job hunting, or dating. Every so often there's instant chemistry, but most people fall back on the laundry list.

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