Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

Post by repler » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 2:15 AM UTC

ysleepy wrote: post #196

jpm_sd wrote: post #27

>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. I'm not sure if he's saying these hard-working generalists are hard to find, or undesirable to employ?

Could someone elaborate what specifically is meant with having high risk tolerances?

Post by astura » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 2:23 AM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #216

dsp1234 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your average undergrad program... CS degree never doing anything novel in CS Is this different than any other field? I was under the impression that most BS programs do not require novel research. That doesn't come until post graduate courses.

I don't necessarily mean publishable—that's doable but difficult in CS—but novel in the sense of requiring non-trivial creativity and insight within the field rather than replaying things you were taught directly. An example might be writing a compiler for a language you design with features not covered in the book. It's probably not publishable, but it is doing CS in a way that just following instructions in a book…

Post by kenhwang » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 2:32 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #60

zbentley wrote: post #53

> People underestimate how effective a generalist can be at things which are done by specialists. People underestimate how deep specialties can run. These are simultaneously true. This is really, really important. In my experience, this is not just unknown but actively ignored and disagreed with (either explicitly or effectively) by a large majority of people involved in software businesses. This hamstrings: companie…

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…

Post by fjsolwmv » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 2:46 AM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #271

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…

I agree with all of that, though spending 4 years to make that determination seems crazy to me. A competent employer can figure out which hires are worthwhile in about a month or so. There’s another issue with using educational attainment as a proxy of intelligence: it doesn’t really help you distinguish among candidates who all have a bachelors degree. All you know is that they’re above some threshold, but not how f…

Post by astura » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 2:53 AM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #283

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 sou…