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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

#281

Post by ZenoArrow »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #73

> Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees. This one. Every job I see when I go looking is 40+ hrs a week, likely with plenty of idle time and projects I don't believe in. Part of this is…

I'm a fellow generalist. I got lucky that the company I'm with values my work, but I can see something that isn't said out loud about generalists but appears to be true (in my experience at least)... generalists are harder to manage.

If you've got someone who is largely autonomous and can wear multiple hats, steering them in a single direction may be more tricky than a specialist that doesn't seek work outside their remit.

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

#282

Post by wyclif »

curtis wrote: post #234
westoncb wrote: post #169

Anyone want to take a crack at expanding this?: > The tech industry is fundamentally unserious about how it recruits, hires, and retains candidates.

Given the amount of money and resources that goes into recruiting and hiring, I find it hard to believe that the industry is not serious. On the other hand, the current approaches clearly don't work very well, and everybody knows it, but nobody seems to be interested in seriously thinking about what we need to do differently. (patio11 and tptacek are notable exceptions)

Aline Lerner is interested: http://blog.alinelerner.com/

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

#283

Post by jondubois »

I agree with most points except this one:

>> 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.

Most open source projects don't go anywhere... They have about 3 stars on Github and nobody uses them.

To say that open source is not charity work is quite unfair. The number of people who make money from their open source projects is tiny... Even among popular projects with thousands of stars. The real motivation behind most open source projects is a strong desire to learn and explore new ideas and to share these ideas with others.

The financial stuff might come later but most of the time it doesn't come at all.

Outside of the cryptocurrency space and big corporations, very few people who get into open source do so because they think it is a good way to make money... Because it's not.

I believe very strongly that most open source projects are founded on altruism. The motivation might change over time but you cannot disregard the initial intent.

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

#284

Post by djellybeans »

enraged_camel wrote: post #230
inopinatus wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And will also not prepare you for a job in computer science.

They might prepare you for an intro-level job in software development though, if you actually continue learning things and honing your skills after completing them.

For what it's worth, these bootcamps are the current "trade schools" for software jobs where the barrier to entry is lower. They're accelerated programs that use job placement as a strong selling point.

It's almost like they rose from the death of many for-profit technical schools (DeVry, WestWood et al.) and took their ecological niche. But in contrast to bootcamps, these for-profit schools were too big, slow, and ineffective.

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

#285

Post by bordercases »

extra88 wrote: post #241
patientplatypus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money so whether it "technically" should be a monastery of cloistered academics pondering the universe (based on some high minded notion of what learning "ought" to be for) is besides the point. University costs a shit ton of mone…

> the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money Which is it, "all" or "90%?" I went to a private liberal arts college so maybe that automatically puts me and my classmates in the 10% but I did not think the overwhelming majority of us were there to make money. The fact that lots of students still major in subjects that can be very worthwhile and val…

I really hope we see greater specialization of mid-line universities that don't know whether they want to be an academic school or a trade school. Programming-as-inquiry is extremely difficult due to the amount of effort and math required to produce novelty, and programming-as-trade is much less difficult in comparison as a lot of the systems you're composing together already have their principles worked out. You can work from the manual in the latter case, while you're defining the manual in the former.

Meanwhile a university not knowing whether it wants to be a trade school or a research school has mixed incentives that results in an inconsistent quality of education. You get professors who don't know how to teach and teachers who don't know how to go in depth. By requiring both you've made your staffing requirements that much harder to fulfill if you don't want to trade off education quality.

On that note how have bootcamps been doing lately?

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

#286

Post by toasterlovin »

vilmosi wrote: post #267
Phlarp wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An IQ test can be used during the hiring process but the employer has to be able to defend its use as directly relevant to the work at hand. So most employers aren't willing to spend the legal fees related to defending the use of a direct IQ test... Possibly because the college degree is a good enough litmus test for IQ to satisfy their needs.

If it's difficult to prove that IQ is relevant to the job... Maybe it's not. Also, I doubt that's the reason.

It’s not difficult to demonstrate that IQ is relevant to job performance (its the best predictor of performance for most jobs). The problem is to demonstrate that it doesn’t have a discriminatory effect (there are large, persistent differences in IQ between races).

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

#287

Post by bordercases »

jknoepfler wrote: post #247
patientplatypus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money so whether it "technically" should be a monastery of cloistered academics pondering the universe (based on some high minded notion of what learning "ought" to be for) is besides the point. University costs a shit ton of mone…

There are two things wrong with this perspective. First, if you walk out of a four year degree in computer science without a strong foundation in discrete mathematics, algorithms, data structures, and at least one of distributed systems theory, stochastic systems theory, control, statistics/machine learning, AI, data visualization, or design, you've stunted your horizons for growth as an engineer pretty badly. I use…

Where the heck do you work? How long did it take for you to get to that position? What was your role as a junior?

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

#288

Post by slededit »

cosmie wrote: post #237
rhaps0dy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job. It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations. I'm a competent, high performing generalist who…

A lot of comapanies have "A" teams they send in when necessary. The US Digital Service was one example of this.

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

#289

Post by shostack »

khedoros1 wrote: post #151
dsnuh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>often generalists have lots of historic operational knowledge and strong opinions *citation needed Edit: to be clear, in my experience the specialists that aren't also generalists on some level are the least productive on the team because they have trouble participating outside their knowledge domain. Maybe I have worked at the wrong places though...

Starting dev of some product, you might have a lot of generalists. They make the original architecture and design decisions, do the first implementations of features, etc. It's their baby. Later on, the company identifies laser-focus areas where specialists are appropriate, and you contract or hire some. The original devs (the generalists) will have knowledge about why something was built a certain way, and might rea…

>"That's the messy part of the transition: There's kind of the implication that past decisions weren't correct. It's easy for people to get emotionally involved and take personal offense."

Thanks for highlighting something I missed in my post. Some of the time yes, the decisions might just be wrong because generalists may not be experienced enough to know the right way to do things. But quite often, they were in fact the right decision at that time and circumstances change.

So any sort of process and culture that helps take the emotion and risk of personal offense out of those situations is really critical to gaining the benefit of historical context in a positive manner.

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

#290

Post by ZenoArrow »

cosmie wrote: post #237
rhaps0dy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you framed your anecdotal evidence as supporting the OP's statement, but also that you misunderstood such statement; and you actually present evidence against it. If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job.

> If companies find it hard to reliably staff generalist positions, _and_ you're a generalist as you claim, then you would find it _easy_ to get a job. It's incredibly hard to get a job. But your versatility will ensure job security for as long as you care once you're in the door, thanks to your ability to get into the critical path of different department's operations. I'm a competent, high performing generalist who…

> "I'm a competent, high performing generalist who can work autonomously and self-sufficiently with enough confidence in my capabilities to have a high risk tolerance. In my current company I got tossed around from starting under a marketing manager, to getting shifted under the CTO after stepping on IT's toes too often, to getting pushed into a newly formed Operations group, to finally just reporting directly to the owner. While officially I manage a data management and BI team, in practice I'm the guy you escalate random problems and needs to. Creating a BI team was a byproduct of being a generalist and being the first person that needed a consolidated view of everything (and having the ability to execute on that need)."

Your job and experience sound very similar to my current role. I don't have an accurate job title anymore, and I very much see myself as the oil that makes the engine of the company run more smoothly. I wear about four or five different hats, all depending on what fires I need to put out. Good to meet someone doing something similar.

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