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Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

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Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#201

Post by blurbleblurble »

JepZ wrote: post #175
eightysixfour wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them. Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

> Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism. Yeah, thats part of the pattern. Generalists often do not appear as professional as specialists (which does not mean that everybody who looks unprofessional is a generalist).

Right. And believe me, I'm not the pinnacle of professionalism, but I have core values of respect and a motivation to do work that people find valuable. Last time I checked they are pretty well intact. I believe this person mistook specialism and accolades for professionalism.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#202

Post by brutus1213 »

Not sure I agree with these two:

"Salaries in the tech industry are up a lot in the last few years, caused by: a tight labor market, collapse of a cartel organized against the interests of workers, increasing returns to scale at AppAmaGooBookSoft, and the like.

Investor money does not pay most salaries."

But the rest are pretty sage. As one would expect of patio11 :)

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#203

Post by bittercynic »

rogerbinns wrote: post #133
valuearb wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just an IQ test, it's a test of ability, which is different. Your college record shows that you a) Whether you were able to get the work done. b) Whether you were smart enough to do the work well. It's the combination that's important, not either single one. Employers want people who show up on time, actually care enough to try, and are smart enough to figure it out. The college degree has a better than zero…

It also shows that you could do that for several years, following the rules set by someone else, and passing.

Nice double meaning with 'passing' also meaning something like: "able to appear to be what those in power want me to be."

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#204

Post by msla »

chubot wrote: post #181
msla wrote: post #35

I do not doubt this: > Most open source software is written by programmers who are full-time employed by companies which directly consume the software, at the explicit or implicit blessing of their employers. It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes. But I wonder how many important Open Source projects were started that way, by employees of companies which wanted to use those projects. Linux,…

Yes, I think this sentence oversimplifies things. The conclusions should be divided between: 1) Most open source software written and released today 2) Most open source software you use The code in category #2 is much older on average. Most people here use bash every day, but as far as I can tell, there's about one person behind it, who doesn't get paid for it (Chet Ramey). And you're right that a lot of projects sta…

> And you're right that a lot of projects start free, and then get commercial contribution once they are valuable. Linux, git, hg, and Python all fit that profile.

I think you used the wrong word here, or at least a misleading one:

Linux, for example, is still free and Free for most reasonable definitions people have of those terms. (Anti-copyleft trolling is not reasonable.) Its development is funded, yes, but that funding doesn't give IBM, for example, special rights which a sufficiently determined individual hacker couldn't also have: Both have the ability to have an idea, code it, and get the code accepted, and IBM isn't immune to a Linus veto just because IBM's poured money into their team of kernel contributors.

I rant, but it's an important distinction between Open Source and closed source. It also reminds me of an old joke: Back in the 1990s, Apple, bereft of Jobs and nearly dead against Microsoft, was moving towards IBM in terms of strategic partnerships. So, the joke went "Apple + IBM = IBM", as in, if you move too close to IBM, IBM engulfs you and you lose your identity. My point is, IBM can't engulf an Open Source project unless absolutely nobody outside IBM cares about it and all the repos outside of IBM's purview utterly stagnate.

> In the "non-company" category, I would put Linux, git, hg, gcc, Apache. A lot of people still use Apache. nginx was in this category too until very recently.

I don't know if you noticed, but you put Linux in two different categories.

> SVN is interesting because it was started by a company (CollabNet), but I believe they diverged and the company no longer had much economic interest in it.

That is interesting.

> It's not as simple as what's in that Tweet.

Things rarely are. :)

Good post!

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#205

Post by brucephillips »

claudiulodro wrote: post #75

> The chief products of the tech industry are (in B2C) developing new habits among consumers This was a profound revelation I didn't realize until I read it just now. Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. have all done so well by starting a habit for their users. ("Check Facebook daily to see what your friends are up to." "Google it whenever you need info." "Buy your stuff conveniently on Amazon when you don't want to go to…

It's not actually insightful. Every product trivially creates a habit amongst its users of "when , use ."

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#206

Post by r00fus »

eponeponepon wrote: post #170
claudiulodro wrote: post #75

> The chief products of the tech industry are (in B2C) developing new habits among consumers This was a profound revelation I didn't realize until I read it just now. Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. have all done so well by starting a habit for their users. ("Check Facebook daily to see what your friends are up to." "Google it whenever you need info." "Buy your stuff conveniently on Amazon when you don't want to go to…

> I think lots of industries are ripe > for "habit-ifying", and I'm going > to pursue that further. Brilliant > insight. This is, of course, the same insight that the gambling and tobacco industries and cults thrive on. Not talking you down - just reminding you never to forget the moral angle.

Is it a moral issue if the habit a starts a virtuous cycle? Like my Apple Watch making me exercise more?

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#207

Post by drittich »

brucephillips wrote: post #172

> Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. This is wrong, and I'm surprised it's repeated so often. Some ideas are better than others. If you doubt this, ask yourself if, when starting a company, you would choose a random idea or your best idea. Of course you would choose your best idea, which implies ideas have different value. EDIT: I'm happy to debate this point with anyone who would other…

To recast what you are saying to remain congruent with the original premise, one might say ideas can have different potential value.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#208

Post by ptr_void »

wnoise wrote: post #3

> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.

Yet not having a CS degree makes getting a programming job 10x more difficult.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#209

Post by JepZ »

hobofan wrote: post #153
shostack wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also often a messy transition period where a team goes from a bunch of generalists to more specialists. This can be extremely rocky for all involved as often generalists have lots of historic operational knowledge and strong opinions, but the new specialists come with external knowledge of best practices and how to scale. It is important that historic knowledge is respected for the context it provides, while…

Disclaimer: I would categorize myself as a generalist so I might be biased here > Unfortunately, this change often means generalists lose jobs in favor of specialists as a company grows > And this is not inherently a bad thing for the company Yes, it is not _inherently_ a bad thing, but I would say that it is _generally_ a bad thing. Sure, if you are raising a Series C and everything is about optimizing the hell out…

I am not sure if it as bad as described here. Yes, over time the relative part of generalists in a company shrinks. But it does not necessarily mean, that generalists loose their jobs, just because some specialist knocked at the door.

I think it is more like an organical transition where newly hired personnel are more likely to be specialists. And that is totally okay, because when you start a company there are about 0% specialists onboard ;-)

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#210

Post by brucephillips »

md224 wrote: post #104

> Charge more. Charge more still. Go on. This might sound stupid, and maybe it's my inner hippie talking, but did this make anyone else slightly uncomfortable? I get that it's "good business", but something feels kinda gross about saying "extract as much money from other people as you possibly can." Like... shouldn't you just charge whatever you think something (a product, your time) is worth? I realize that "what so…

Assuming perfect information and rationality, you can't charge more than something is worth, at least in the long run, so there's no conflict.
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